The Drowning City - Amanda Downum [113]
When they paused again she saw what had happened. The cauldron hadn’t erupted, but one of the hills flanking the mountain had burst open, spewing smoke and ash. The plume rose before them, past them, blotting out the stars. Sparks flashed in the column like blossoms on a tree. An instant later she cried out again as cinders and ash rained over them.
Asheris cursed and turned, shielding them with one set of wings while the other beat frantically against the thickening air. Zhirin choked on the stench of sulfur and char; grit crunched between her teeth.
Craning her head and shielding her eyes, she saw lava leaking from the shattered mountain, incarnadine blood pouring down the southwestern slope. Flames flared gold and vermilion around the flow. The forest was burning.
The air cleared as they gained distance, though the smell was still thick. Asheris turned and they watched in horror and amazement as the mountain shuddered and split again. A new rift opened on Haroun’s main slope, spitting fire and rock. Lava spilled from the cleft, rushing down the hills.
To her otherwise eyes, a many-headed serpent writhed free of shattered rock, hissing his hundred-tongued fury into the sky.
Zhirin wasn’t sure how long they hung there, coughing on the acrid fumes, watching the mountain rip itself apart. Her lungs and throat burned and tears leaked down her face.
“We need to land,” Asheris finally said, turning away from the devastation.
The air was clearer to the east; the worst of the ashen cloud rolled west, toward the bay. Toward Symir. Useless to think about that now, she told herself. There was nothing she could do.
Asheris’s wings stretched wide and they wheeled downward in a narrowing gyre. The river glittered beneath them. He was landing near the dam.
He touched the ground as gracefully as any bird, but Zhirin stumbled as soon as he let her go. A rock bit her foot and she frowned—she’d lost a sandal somewhere in the sky. She took a step, then kicked off the other. When she turned, his wings had vanished.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
He shrugged, steadying Isyllt with a hand on her elbow. “Stay out of the way until Haroun’s wrath is spent.”
“But Symir is going to burn!”
“There’s nothing we can do to stop that now.”
She turned away, gritting her teeth in fear and frustration. Even the river’s nearness couldn’t soothe her now, though it steadied her, eased the drain of spent magic. She could see the gray bulk of the dam upriver, the sharp-toothed mountains behind it blotting out the stars.
“The dam,” Zhirin said. Her voice sounded odd and distant, like a stranger’s. “If we release the dam, the river can help stop the fire.”
Asheris shook his head. “Then the city would flood and burn. It would only add to the destruction.”
“You always speak of the mountain as though it lived. Do you think the river is any less alive?”
“Fair enough. But men bound the river as they did the mountain. What makes you think the Mir would help us if it could?”
She smiled slowly. “Because I’ve asked.”
Without her charms, Xinai would have died a dozen times on the mountain. As it was, her spells were all but exhausted when she reached the foothills near the Kurun Tam. Her muscles screamed, pushed to their limits, and falling rock and ash left her bruised and burned; her lungs felt scoured raw despite the scarf over her face.
The pillar of smoke blotted out the sky, hid the coming dawn. Lava writhed down the slope like red-gold worms, consuming everything in its path. It would be on them soon.
People moved among the trees, gawking like her. She didn’t know if they were Tigers or Dai Tranh or Khas, didn’t have it in her to care anymore. They’d all be just as dead if they didn’t run.
She might have stood and stared until the fire took her, but the earth shook again and Haroun belched another gout of smoke and sparks. A moment later the rain of stones resumed. A black rock the size of her head landed a yard away, shaking Xinai out of her daze.
A hand closed on her arm, yanking her toward the cover of