Kingdom of Monsters - Empire of Sand Series

Chapter 5.3

The river banged her head into a cliffside, dunked her through another bend, and scraped her cheek on something black.

She thrashed to the surface again.

The river widened, releasing its initial fury. She dragged in deep breaths.

The river was called Hundred Strokes not because it was wide, but because after a hundred strokes, her body would give over to the god's will, and she had used nearly half of her allotment.

Brisk cold numbed her hands, and she began to shiver. She spoke what words of respect she could muster, hoping to reset the counter.

Pieces of her pack floated around her. Her medicine pouch! She wound it around her arm. Thank Eleana for the tight double-weave.

Demian bobbed weightless beside her.

She splashed to his side.

White-rimmed eyes gazed for the blue sky. His mouth gaped above the line of water.

She knotted her fingers in the weave of his vest. Now they would not be separated.

Sylla-Alla plunged them through rock and rapid, past the gushing tributaries fished by her tribe, past the blackened traces of her village. Strange that it should take so many days to travel up the winding river and so little time to volley them down to their origin, and past it.

The steep canyons tapered and brush-edged the water. As they approached the Heron Lake oxbow, she crooned to Demian. "Please come back. We must ease to the sunrise bank while we still can."

He blinked slowly.

If they reached the sunrise bank, she might reunite with her tribe. "Please, before the river godling falls. This river godling is angry and kills all who enter his domain. Demian, walk on this side of the shadelands." She shook him. "Demian? Desateel Khenet."

But that wasn't his true name. He no more responded to it than a village companion responded to a rock.

"Please hear me," she begged.

Sylla-Alla tumbled them over a short fall, knocking her off his chest, then over a longer one. The deep pool closed over them like a glove. Demian thrashed to the surface; she a moment behind. Yes, he had heard her. Coughing and retching, he moved toward the sunrise bank.

Then, he arched backward as though Sylla-Alla had pulled his hair. Pain clenched his teeth.

Lunsa let go and started to swim past him. There, the shore. She grabbed a branch—

He bashed into her. The branch snapped. Swift current sucked his limp body into the center current. She splashed helplessly after it.

Sylla-Alla's fury roared.

He ripped Demian away and threw them both into the air, horrible weightlesnesss, and smashed them into the liquid silence. She struggled alone for the surface.

Overhanging the distant sunset cliffs, long red streamers fluttered in honor and warning of the blood spilled in the old godling's domain.

Scrabble-marks on the cliff showed where, as recently as the last lavender moon after the summer festival, two women had leapt into the pool to impress a boy. One had made it to the left bank and walked the many splits and hills to the nearest safe crossing at the Stone Bridge. The other had not.

Demian bobbed behind her.

She swam away from him, angled for the shallow sunrise bank. Gods willing, she could walk overland to the rivermen's valley. Walk overland through the god's bone-littered nest.

Gods willing . . .

A charred log rolled into the water.

Her gaze raked the shore. What had pushed it from the mud?

The current angled it to face her. The truth thrashed her backward. No thing had pushed the log.

The river godling rolled over lazily. Its maw opened to the middle of its body, exposing one long line of red-streaked teeth.

Demian's unconscious body bumped her from behind.

She kicked harder, working toward the swift center current to move past the godling. She had no wish to disturb it. She only wished to reach the muddy shore beyond its lair.

The old godling rolled again.

"Please," she gasped to it. "We are enemies of the ones who broke the Stone Bridge and violated the river treaties. As you are duty-bound to Sylla-Alla, and as Sylla-Alla is duty-bound to Ammen-Alet the ender of all things, please allow us passage."

The godling clambered onto the mud and paced them along the bank.

"Please let us land!"

It opened its maw in a final warning.

Lunsa kicked furiously, pushing off submerged rock and into the deepest current. Let Sylla-Alla take them where she willed.

The old godling crouched down and slid into the river after them.

"Beg forgiveness," she whispered into the water. Let the godling not punish her willful insistence.

The old godling rolled away from them and drifted against the current, disappearing in shadow beneath the falls. Although the river god had ordered it not to allow them to land, the godling would guard against any of Arctavian's men foolhardy enough to follow.

The river roughened again, the canyons deepened, and they fell toward the black heart of the Serengai. They rushed through narrow cliffs and gushing tributaries, cascaded over waterfalls, and knocked into brutal rapids, and eventually washed into an ever-widening body.

And there, when she could finally reach shore and land, she had absolutely no desire to do so.

Once, her great ancestors had used this wide river to convey bucardos and peccaris between wealthy villages on great, flat rush barges. Then, they had been called the Red River tribe because of the thick red clay.

But in her greatest-grandmother-ka's childhood, invisible devils harried their village with misfortunes. Spirits crept into their huts and stole their children, giants carried off their livestock, and blood-colored trees stole the drinking water from their crops. Monstrous rot festered, driving out ordinary creatures and remaking the landscape, turning this heartland into an uncrossable wild that choked out weaker plants, animals, and humans.

If Demian's fire-breathing army couldn't penetrate its borders, she didn't know how they would escape from its belly.

This river pushed them down its throat.

Now they floated directly into its engorged center.