The White Foal River stirred like an awakening animal, expanding through the
trees on either side of the upper ford until its shining tendrils crept across
the General’s Road toward the Street of Red Lanterns. The alleys Downwind were
already underwater, and the Swamp of Night Secrets had become a pond.
Water gurgled over the marshy ground above Fisherman’s Row and tugged like some
marine thief at the small boats tied up on shore. Waterfront merchants labored
mightily to protect their wares or fought over the carts that could take them to
higher ground. In Caravan Square water stood in muddy pools. But the river
roared its frustration where the high banks narrowed it, and nibbled angrily at
the supports of the bridge.
Things were not much better elsewhere in the town. Water pounded on tiles and
shingles, and roofs which had been at best inadequate turned into sieves. It
seeped downward and mud walls began to sag. It pooled in streets and overflowed
gutters, floating away the accumulated filth of years. Block after block, the
water scoured, hurrying its captured debris toward the gaping mouths of the
sewers, whose hollow roar soon became a constant undertone to the drumming of
the rain.
Drowned rats and bigger things were swept onward- bodies thought long buried,
pieces of rotting wood, wagon wheels, cracked dishes, a mercenary’s scabbard, a
beggar’s precious heap of rags, all became part of the stream. And presently,
where pallid waterweed had rooted in the underground channels or where bricks of