Chapter 861: Deadwater

The water was cold and gray, and it was thick like soup.

Rudra went down through it with his eyes open. He could not see far. The light from the stars was gone after a few feet, and below that there was only gray. Grass stems drifted past his face, torn loose from ground that was not there anymore.

He kicked down. There was no bottom.

He should have been afraid. He knew the sea, and he knew what it meant when a man went into water with no bottom at night. But he was not afraid. Something in him had gone quiet and easy the moment the water closed over his head.

It was not the Soother’s easy. It was older than that. It was the feeling of standing on a deck in a big swell with your knees soft, and knowing the ship.

Deep Water.

He had never used it. He had held it for weeks like a man holding a letter he did not want to open.

Now the water opened it for him.

The gray turned clear. He did not see better. He knew better. He knew how far down the water went, and how wide it was, and where it was moving. He felt it the way he had once felt the whole length of a ship under his feet.

It was a lake now. It was half a mile across and deeper than a mast was tall.

And there was something in it, moving.

It was below him and to the north. It was long and broad and smooth, and it swam with slow, heavy sweeps of its body.

It was pushing outward as it went. Everywhere it pushed, the ground at the edge of the lake gave way and became more lake.

It was heading for the white stones on the north side, where Lily’s line ran out.

Rudra kicked toward it.

On the shore, Almond reached Lily.

She was standing at the edge of the water with her arm out and Kayla behind her. The pale line ran out from her fingers along the ground.

The wanderer stood a few steps north with his hand over the line. His bare feet were sinking into the soft earth up to the ankles.

"Let go," Almond said. "Let go, Lily. We’re here."

"If I let go, it comes in."

"It’s already coming in. North side."

Lily turned her head and saw it. A dozen Frosthold tents had slid into the water. People were wading out of the flood with children on their shoulders. Ainen was on the bank, hauling them up by the arms.

"Kayla," said Almond.

"Her heart’s too fast." Kayla did not take her hand off Lily’s back. "The baby’s fine. She isn’t. If she holds it much longer, I’ll pull her off myself."

Almond took Lily’s free hand.

Carry.

He felt the strain go into him. It was heavy and cold, like a wet sail. The shake went out of Lily’s arm, and some of the gray went out of her face.

"Hold it for one more minute," Almond said. "Rudra’s under."

"Rudra’s what?"

"He went in."

Lily looked out at the gray water. It was flat and shining under the stars, and there was nothing on it at all.

"That idiot," she said.

Under the water, Rudra came up behind the thing.

He could feel the shape of it now. It was like a whale with no face, wide and flat, and its whole front was a round soft mouth. It did not bite. It did not need to. Where its mouth pushed, the ground stopped being ground.

It had felt him coming.

It turned. It turned slowly, the way a big ship turns. The round mouth swung toward him.

Rudra felt the water around him change. It pulled. It was not a current.

It was the water itself going thin under him, the way the ground had gone thin under the grass, as if the thing could end the lake too, and drop him into whatever was under it.

His stomach dropped. He sank.

Helm.

He stopped sinking.

He was the captain of this water. He had decided that when he went in, and the water knew it. He set his heading and held it, and the pull slid off him like rain off a hull.

The mouth came closer. It was as wide as a door. The thing did not hurry.

Rudra did not have a crew down here. He did not have a ship. He did not have the old Deadwater Dominion that he had once poured over whole armies.

But he had the water. And the water was deep.

Deep Water.

He pushed.

The gray water around him turned black.

It went out from him in a ring, fast, the way ink spreads in a bowl. It went black and cold and heavy, heavier than water should be.

The thing felt it and tried to turn away. It was too slow. The black weight came down on it from every side and pressed.

On the shore, the lake went black from the middle outward.

Almond saw it happen. It looked like a shadow falling across the water, except there was nothing in the sky to throw it.

"That’s him," Big D said.

The black spread all the way to the edges. It ran up to Lily’s line and stopped there. It ran north, around the end of the line, into the flood inside the ring, and the people wading there yelled and scrambled for the bank.

The water stopped moving.

The waves on the edges stopped in mid-lap. The floating tents stopped drifting. The whole black surface of the lake went flat and dull and still, like a sheet of slate.

Stillness.

Out in the middle of the black stillness, something shoved up from underneath. The surface bulged. Then it went flat again, and did not move.

"He’s frozen it," Corvin said. "With himself in it."

Almond let go of Lily’s hand.

"Hold the line," he said to the wanderer. "Thirty seconds."

"I’ll try," said the wanderer. "I’m not good at holding."

Almond stepped off the bank onto the black water.

It held him.

It was hard under his boots, harder than ice. It was not cold. It was not anything. He ran out across it, toward the place where the surface had bulged, and he could feel Rudra under there.

He could not have explained how. He felt it the way he felt everyone he had ever carried.

He was about two hundred paces out when Rudra’s voice came up through the black. It was faint and muffled, as if it came from the bottom of a well.

"Almond."

Almond stopped.

"Under you. Ten feet. It’s pushing." There was a long pause. "I can’t hold it long. I can’t breathe in this."

Almond knelt and put his hand flat on the black.

He could feel it now too. Under his palm, deep down, the thing was pressing against the stillness. Its round mouth was pushing at the black, trying to end it, trying to make it soft again.

And every time it pushed, a little of the black gave way. Almond felt a crack run under his hand.

Quiet Edge.

His next cut would make no sound and give no warning.

Sever.

He drove his hand down into the black.

It did not go in like a hand. It went in like a blade.

The stillness parted in front of it without a sound, and he cut down through ten feet of solid black water in one long stroke, and the edge of it found the round soft mouth at the bottom.

Sever went through the mouth. It went through the front of the thing, and through the place behind the mouth where whatever drove it sat. It cut the ending off from the thing that ended.

The thing under the water shuddered once. Then it stopped pushing.

On the shore, the soft ground under the wanderer’s feet went firm again.

"Rudra," Almond said into the cut. "Let go."

There was no answer.

"Rudra. It’s dead. Let go of it."

The black went gray all at once.

It went from slate to water in a heartbeat, and Almond dropped straight into it. Cold gray water closed over his head. He kicked and came up, coughing.

There was something floating beside him. It was Rudra, face down.

Almond grabbed him by the collar and turned him over. Rudra’s eyes were shut. His lips were blue.

"Kayla!"

Kayla was already in the water. She had come off the bank the moment the black went gray, and she was swimming out hard. Behind her, two Duskspire men paddled out on a floating tent frame.

They got him onto the tent frame. Kayla knelt over him with both hands on his chest.

Mend.

Nothing happened.

"Come on," Kayla said. "Come on, come on. You don’t get to do this."

Mend.

Rudra coughed up a lungful of gray water onto the canvas. Then he coughed up another one. He rolled onto his side and lay there, breathing in long harsh gasps.

"Is it dead?" he said, when he could.

"It’s dead," said Almond.

"Good." Rudra shut his eyes again. "Don’t tell Ainen I nearly drowned. He’ll make me eat something."

"I’m right here," said Ainen from the bank. His voice cracked. "You’re eating something."

Rudra laughed and coughed at the same time.

It took until dawn to count.

The lake stayed. It lay where the eastern side of Frosthold’s ring had been, a wide flat sheet of gray water with dead grass floating on top.

Eleven white stones had gone under it. The stones that were left stood around the west half of the ring, and their light was thin.

Seventeen people had drowned. Most of them had been asleep in the tents that slid in first. Big D wrote their names. Corvin stood beside him and read out the names. He knew every one.

At first light, Rudra sat up on a blanket by Ainen’s fire with a bowl of broth in his hands. He looked across at the gray lake for a long time.

"I can give it back," he said.

"Give what back?" asked Almond.

"The ground." Rudra set the bowl down. "It was taken. It was Frosthold’s, and Frosthold ate at Ainen’s table. That makes them his guests." He looked at Ainen. "And his guests are mine."

He did not get up. He put his palm flat on the wet earth beside the blanket.

Owed Back.

The lake shook.

Mud rose up through the gray water. It rose in a long slow swell, from the edges toward the middle, and the water ran off it in sheets.

Under the mud came packed earth, and under the earth came stone. It was solid, all of it, as solid as it had been before.

The white stones came up with it, one after another, streaming water. Their light came back. Within a few minutes, the eastern side of the ring stood again around a field of wet, flat mud where the lake had been.

Rudra took his hand off the ground. He was shaking.

"Eat," said Ainen.

"I’m eating."

Big D had walked out onto the new mud. He came back with something in his hand. It was a ring of gray bone, wide as a plate and smooth, from the edge of the thing’s mouth. He held it out to Rudra.

Rudra looked at it. Then he took it, and pushed.

Deep Water.

The bone ring folded in on itself and went round and hard and dark. It was black, the black of the lake when he had stilled it.

[Power Orb created: Deadwater]

[Quality: C]

[Claim a body of water as yours. While you hold still, nothing in it moves unless you allow it.]

Rudra turned it over in his fingers.

"Deadwater," he said quietly. "I had a deck by that name once."

"Now you’ve got a pocket," said Corvin.

The Emperor of the Aurelian Empire had sat by the fire most of the night with Sevrand. He had not said anything while they counted the dead. Now he stood up and walked over to the Sovereign of Voidmere, who sat wrapped in her violet shawl.

"On the road," he said. "You told the champion there was a second voice."

"There was," said the Sovereign.

The Emperor stood still for a moment.

"There was one on ours as well," he said. "Near the gap. It said the safe ground lay east. It said to go quickly, before the people at the Door could take our seed."

He looked at Almond. "I told everyone my scouts chose the way. My scouts went where I sent them. I chose east because a voice told me to."

Nobody spoke.

Big D closed his book.

"Then it’s talking to the ones who aren’t through yet," he said. "Three more kingdoms. Right now. On the road."