The River moved.
Of course the River was in constant motion, flowing and churning and rushing to this moment of cascade. But this was a movement unnatural to rivers. It swarmed up the side of the bank, a long, sinuous, grasping arm.
Mine! it roared in a voice mortal ears would not understand. Mine!
Eanrin gasped. The next moment he was a man clutching the bridge’s rope to balance himself as he shouted, “Run! Imraldera, run!”
She could not hear him. She could see him shouting and waving his arm, his cloak flapping like a warning flag. But she could not hear him.
And she did not see the River’s arm until it wrapped around her legs.
Eanrin saw her mouth open in a silent scream. Then she was gone, dragged down the bank in a moment, vanishing into the churning white water. He stared, gasping as though it had been he who was dragged beneath the deathly waters, his mind unable to accept what his eyes saw.
For an instant, her dark, matted head surfaced. She vanished again, only to reappear moments later. Her desperate arms reached out, grabbing at a boulder. The River tried to smash her against it, but instead she was able to wrap herself around it, holding on. The River was cruel. It pressed her, harried her, battered at her. She could not hold on long.
The falls waited.
In a flash, Eanrin saw the only escape appear before his mind’s eye. Only one instant to decide.
Then he was hauling himself over the side of the bridge farthest from the falls. The River pulled, and Imraldera lost her grasp, disappearing once more into the foam.
“I hate water,” Eanrin growled. Then he jumped.
His fall seemed to take forever. But it ended suddenly as he plunged through roiling whiteness into black depths. The pull of the falls was incredible, and he thought he would never break the surface.
Yet Imraldera’s head popped above the water just as his did. Her eyes locked with his in a moment of terror.
MINE! the River roared.
Eanrin reached out and grabbed tight hold of Imraldera’s shoulder. Then they were on the brink. Eanrin had just enough air in his lungs to scream, “Etalpalli!”
Cozamaloti hauled them down.
13
A VOICE RUSHES in her ears. The voice of the River.
Pretty maid, be mine! Mine!
How silly. Rivers do not speak the tongues of men. But then, many incredible things have happened around her. No world exists beyond the Land. Yet when she left the mountain circle, had she not fled into this very forest? Animals cannot speak with intelligent words. Yet had she not conversed with the cat? Or perhaps it is one long nightmare.
Pretty maid, be mine!
The words tumble through her mind with the power of the waterfall. Then they transform, and it is no longer the River she hears snarling on the edge of her consciousness.
“You were always meant to be mine.”
“No,” she pleads, but no one hears her, for she has no voice. “No, please . . .”
“Wet! Wet! Wet! Wet!”
Imraldera opened her eyes and found that she lay on bone-dry stone, her soaking hair heavy around her. So she wasn’t dead. Every muscle in her body remained tensed for impact, but otherwise she could discern no hurts. Except she could not breathe.
When her lungs heaved, she rolled over and coughed up a fountain of river water. It darkened the red stone underneath her to deep brown. She kept on coughing and retching until she thought she must heave up all her insides. But at last she stopped and lay immobile, her face pressed into the dark patch of stone.
There was no waterfall, no River. Sucking in a great lungful of air, she pushed herself up onto her elbows and pulled back her dripping hair. Sniffling and sputtering still, she looked around for the poet. Being a cat, he had landed on all fours, of course, and was shaking his feline body with such violence she thought his legs might drop off. He paused to give his paw a lick, then shook again, dappling the stones with droplets. He looked like a large, orange, waterlogged rat, all his fluff plastered to him.
“Ugh. Reeeeowl.” He swore in cat and Faerie tongue and set to grooming his bedraggled tail. “My coat is ruined. My life is over.”
Imraldera, her breath beginning to come in more normal draughts, sat up slowly, drawing her knees beneath her. Her eyes could not have grown larger as she struggled to take in what she saw.
They were no longer in the Wood Between.
The towers of Etalpalli were blistered by heat on the outside.
Inside, they were full of palpable shadows.
Hri Sora sat in the darkness inside Omeztli, hiding from her own prisoner, that wretched Faerie maid who knew Amarok’s name. Oh, how could she have let that slip? Trust the little gnat to pester and harp on it! Bite, bite, bite—she could worry even a dragon to death! Hri Sora would devour the creature if she dared.