Shadow Queen - By Deborah Kalin Page 0,79

at their base. But not even Clay’s cry could pump blood and strength into my legs now.

‘Tilde,’ Sepp cried, hooking his fingers into the shoulder of my gown and pulling. ‘Come on. You have to get up!’

‘We can’t outrun him,’ I replied, fully spent.

Roshi dragged herself up, but her face twisted with pain when she tried to put weight on her ankle.

A splash and a shudder through the ground told me Clay was attempting the ford. We had only moments left.

Roshi hobbled to the staked rope, slipped a small blade from her boot and set to sawing through the fibres. ‘Hurry!’ shrieked Sepp, his gaze fixed on the golem pushing across the river.

The final fibres separated with a twang, and the rope slithered downstream, whipping Clay away with it.

It was no victory, however. He regained his feet and braced himself against the flow, using the staked rope to anchor his position in the centre of the river. At first he looked trapped, unable to release the rope for fear of being swept away, his only recourse to pull his way back to the opposite bank. Instead he turned his back to us and edged to his right, pushing against the flow. At the same time, he took a step backward, letting the taut rope play carefully through his hands. The river battered him, but with the rope’s aid he had the strength to resist it. Inch by inch, he would reach the unsecured end of the rope, and his path would arc him back to this riverbank, and us.

‘Now what?’ shouted Sepp, rounding on Roshi.

She ignored him and looked at me. ‘The sun can burn without casting heat. The soil can deny life while a stone can nourish it. Water can run hard as a rockfall.’ She spoke as if she knew what I’d done to the earth around Clay’s legs, and how. And why not? She’d been raised to it, raised to women wielding it. Water can run hard as a rockfall.

This time the colours didn’t shift, but still the world thrummed beneath my touch. I imagined the slavering roar of a wall of water, the swell and surge of it as it slammed over the ford, tearing away all it encountered …

Nothing happened. A sting of panic quickened my breath and made it hard to concentrate, but still Roshi’s gaze held me, and I bent all my will to the task. Perhaps I could not manipulate the water, but I knew how to influence the earth – and Clay’s hold relied only on a thin sliver of wood thrust into the ground, a splinter barely scratching the surface of the world’s layers.

The rope’s anchored stake jumped free of its mooring. Clay let out a yell and was quickly swallowed.

I saw the white pinch of Roshi’s eyes relax, releasing me from her gaze and hold alike.

The river foamed across the ford, its rush impossible to withstand without the rope’s aid. A dark head bobbed up and disappeared beneath the white froth and churn. When I next glimpsed him, Clay was a speck far downstream.

Sepp helped me upright. The light alternately dimmed then brightened to a glare, disorienting me and threatening to make me topple. After a moment’s wobbling, I thought I might actually be able to stand without falling. I fixed my gaze on the pines and started walking towards them.

‘The pony?’ Roshi asked Sepp.

‘Panicked and bolted when that creature came close enough to drop worms on her rump,’ said Sepp. ‘All our food is gone with her.’

Dazed, I wondered vaguely why the pines had boughs needled with spear-tips, and trunks with steel skirts and greaves, too. Then the truth seared through me.

‘Iltheans!’ I cried.

THIRTY-TWO

THEIR COVER BLOWN, a swarm of the southern serpents pushed forward out of the pines, spears raised, eyes hard behind the cheekplates of their helmets.

‘Hold!’ cried the foremost, the Turasi word rough and guttural in his mouth. A red horsehair crest topped his helmet, marking him as an officer.

My heart thudded at the sharp spears levelled at us.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Roshi hissed.

If he hadn’t been supporting half her weight, I think Sepp might have sunk to his knees then and there.

‘I seek an audience with Sidonius,’ I said, hazarding what little of the southern tongue I knew.

The name brought a shuttering of their gazes, their spear-tips dipping a little before settling once again on a line for my heart.

‘Naturally,’ the officer answered in Turasi. ‘But why should he grant you an