In far Galul, people heard the song and stood amazed while the beasts of the fields stopped grazing and put their heads high, swiveling their ears. Her voice did not blare, it was not loud, it simply filled all space with total sound, emerging as smoothly as the reverberation of a great temple gong, setting forth melody note by note, each note unfading as the next joined with it in harmony, slow, measured, a call that went forth across the sea to its farthest edges.
And was answered.
They heard the answer first, then the shock, as though the world shook.
“Stand by me,” whispered Genevieve to Aufors. “Stand close. Hold on to me.”
Another shock, this one larger, and this time the world quivered, like the hide of a horse, shaking off a fly.
“What’s happening?” bellowed the Chieftain.
“I have sung to my mentor,” cried Genevieve in her huge voice. “I have told the spirit of the world of your decision.”
A third great shock, and this time the desert shook, sands dancing above its surface like rain upon a pavement, the city of Mahahm-qum wavering against the sun-cooked sky, its towers cracking, great billows of dust rising.
They heard it coming. Heads turned, everywhere.
“Storm?” breathed Aufors, clinging to Genevieve’s arm. “Wind?”
“A quake,” she murmured to him, drawing him closer. “And behind the quake, the wave . . .”
They saw it coming then, beyond the walls of the city, a long black line across the horizon, one that grew in height as it approached, a wave that loomed above the tallest tower of Mahahm-qum, one that reached almost to the top of the rocky outcropping Genevieve had pointed out to Terceth, a tidal wave that met the shore of Mahahm and just kept coming. Beyond it, Aufors saw another, higher!
“Take a deep breath,” said Genevieve, drawing Aufors into the circle of her arms, Dovidi close between them. “And hold on.”
30: The Singer from the Sea
The crest of the water curled above them in a glassy mountain, foam edged, growing higher and more curled, then higher yet, breaking at last as the wave lipped over the walls, gulping the city into the maw of the sea. The assembled diggers broke and ran as the surge deepened and swirled, dissolving the walls, the roofs, the alleys, clear water turning dark in a muddy maelstrom that foamed through doors and windows, eating the houses from the inside and outside at once, drowning both the inhabitants and their cries, carrying all before it in a furious flood that raced toward the encampment on the heels of the runners, sucking them up and racing on.
When the water reached Genevieve and Aufors, it was full of struggling bodies, but among them were creatures with flippers and tails who darted invisibly through the groaning torrent. Genevieve held tight to Aufors while the finned creatures of the sea lifted them both up, keeping all their heads above water as thick as soup, while the great wave ebbed and the second, greater one rushed in.
Aufors’s eyes were full of mud. His hands were gripped tight in Genevieve’s hair. He was lost in tumult, swallowing muck, gasping for air, always losing it, always finding it again, plunging deeply only to rise like a buoy as the flood rolled around him, catching panicky breaths while it lifted, while it ebbed, and while other clear waves followed, time after time after time. At the end the water was like crystal, he could see the creatures who helped them though he could not imagine how many of them there had been. He did remember that Genevieve never let go of him nor he of her, and he also had graven into his mind the sight of Dovidi surfacing beside him in the midst of chaos, in company with a great, black-and-white whale who caught Aufors’s shirt in his teeth and held him steady while the water ebbed once more. The sleek body left them only at the last to thrash its way outward with the ebb, into the calmer sea.
When the last wave ebbed, leaving only its foamy followers shushing across the shore, Aufors lay supine beside Genevieve on the sodden, silt-coated sands with Dovidi sprawled across her belly, the baby crowing as though he were being tickled.