Yes, dog, we’re going. I trust dogs can swim. It seems to me I remember hearing somewhere that all the lower forms of animals can swim enough to keep themselves afloat.
It is man who thinks and panics and drowns.
CHAPTER 1
SURUNAN
CHELESTRA
THE SEAWATER RAN SLUGGISHLY THROUGH THE STREETS OF SURUNAN, the city built by the Sartan. The water rose slowly, flowed through doors and windows, eased over low rooftops. Fragments of Sartan life floated on the water’s surface—an unbroken pottery bowl, a man’s sandal, a woman’s comb, a wooden chair.
The water seeped into the room of Samah’s house used by the Sartan as a prison cell. The prison room was located on an upper floor and was, for a time, above the rising tide. But, eventually, the seawater slid under the door, flowed across the floor, crept up the room’s walls. Its touch banished magic, canceled it, nullified it. The dazzling runes, whose flesh-searing heat kept Haplo from even approaching the door, sizzled… and went out. The runes that guarded the window were the only ones yet left unaffected. Their bright glow was reflected in the water below.
Prisoner of the magic, Haplo sat in enforced idleness watching the runes’ reflections in the rising seawater, watched them move and shift and dance with the water’s currents and
eddies. The moment the water touched the base of the runes on|the window, the moment their glow began to glimmer and fade, Haplo stood up. The water came to his knees.
The dog whined. Head and shoulders above the water, the fanimal was unhappy.
“This is it, boy. Time to leave.” Haplo thrust the book in which he’d been writing inside his shirt, secured it at his waist, tucked it between pants and skin.
He noticed, as he did so, that the runes tattooed on his body had almost completely faded. The seawater that was his blessing, that was allowing him to escape, was also his curse. His magical power gone, he was helpless as a newborn child, and had no mother’s comforting, protecting arms to cradle him.
Weak and powerless, unsettled in mind and in soul, he must leave this room and plunge into the vast sea whose water gave him life as it washed away his life, and it would carry him on a perilous journey.
Haplo thrust open the window, paused. The dog looked questioningly at its master. It was tempting to stay here, to stay safe in his prison. Outside, somewhere beyond these sheltering walls, the serpents waited. They would destroy him, they must destroy him; he knew the truth. Knew them for what they were — the embodiment of chaos.
This knowledge of the truth was the very reason he had to leave. He had to warn his lord. An enemy greater than any they’d yet faced—more cruel and cunning than any dragon in the Labyrinth, more powerful than the Sartan—was poised to destroy them.
“Go on,” Haplo said to the dog, and gestured.
Cheered at the prospect of finally leaving this soggy, boring place, the dog leapt gleefully out the window, splashed into the water in the street below. Haplo drew in a deep breath—an instinctive reaction, not really necessary, for the seawater was breathable as air—and jumped in after.
The Chalice was the only stable land mass in the water world of Chelestra. Built by the Sartan to more closely resemble the world they had sundered and fled, the Chalice was encased in its own protective bubble of air. The water that surrounded it gave the illusion of sky, through which Chelestra’s water-bound sun shone with a rippling brightness. The serpents had broken through the barrier and now the Chalice was flooding.
Haplo found a piece of wood, caught hold of it, used it to keep himself afloat. He paddled in the water, stared around, attempted to get his bearings, and saw, with relief, the top of Council Hall. It stood on a hill and would be the last place to be submerged by the rising tides. There, undoubtedly, the Sartan had taken refuge. He squinted in the sunlight that sparkled off the water, thought he could detect people on the roof. They would keep themselves dry, free of the magic-debilitating seawater as long as possible.