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The Torrent gushed out of the headwaters as if it were catching up for lost time.
Aminia sat by the overflowing waters, perfectly serene.
The war party suffered no casualties from their scuffle with the Jean’in and foreign priests. They gathered on the higher ground within the stone circle, the last dry land for hundreds of miles around. The Laval contingent had abandoned their camp (which subsequently flooded) and were retreating in an orderly fashion into the southwestern hinterlands. No point in pursuing.
“How are we going to get out?” Sam’iel said. “The floodwaters are too strong to dare wade through.”
“Wait it out for now,” Maat said.
Kur’iel was still injured. Fresh spring water worked its miracle magic on a wine-blot percussive wound on the stormlander’s chest.
“We going to discuss what happened with that fellow there.” Sara nodded at the river god, still meditating at the water’s edge.
“I happen to know the guy,” Rita said. “Well, by reputation. Let Maat handle that. It’s a family matter.”
After an hour with no sign of receding waters, Maat approached the pensive god.
“My influence only stretches as far as the Torrent,” Aminia said, unprompted. “In another thirty minutes or so the cascade will reach that dam they’ve constructed at the edge of the canyon.”
“So, the plan is to sit around and wait?”
“Yes. The river is flowing as quickly as possible. Patience, please.”
The pair sat in silence. The geyser was winding down, slowly, but still obscured a view of the southern shore.
“Thank you for restoring the plains,” Aminia said after a time.
“About that. What happened?”
“You simply blessed those old, stagnant pools with still-holy water from the Torrent. In a few years the valley will be fertile enough to bring back small-hold farming. In a few decades the population will start to rebound. In a couple of centuries, the fumaroles should erode away and my influence will suddenly stretch from the southern shore to the northern barrier mountains.”
Maat mulled over the implications.
Aminia rose. “Hmm? That’s odd.”
“What is it?” Maat asked.
“The Torrent hit that dam with a flash flood fifty meters high. The dam still stands.”
Maat looked over the ebbing geyser. The canyon was visible, though the dam was too far away, masked by a winding river route, to see even by spyglass.
“Didn’t this work years in the past?” Maat asked. “Father said…”
“That was wood. Divine powers are nothing against a glorified log jam. This dam is steel and concrete, for which godly powers are less favored upon.”
Maat raised a skeptical eyebrow. “A god can’t break this foreign metal?”
“… as I was going to say, more time is required. With the headwaters only now unsealed, it’s going to take a while to gather up more energy.”
“Any way we can help?”
“Pray a little?” Aminia said simply. “If anyone wants to go blow the lodestones out of the dam, that would be incredibly helpful.”
For now, the crew didn’t have anywhere to go. They fished out what supplies they could find from the Laval encampment and set up a little camp of their own.
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According to Aminia, the headwaters would recede early the next morning. The Torrent simply needed to catch up from having been inhibited for the past week or so. This left plenty of time to ask the river god about whatever happened to be on Maat’s mind.
“So, what the heck is your deal with dad?” Maat asked.
“What deal? He’s a mysterious outworlder and an amazing conversationalist.”
“That’s all?”
“Pretty much. He was nice and looked like he could use some help. Fast forward twenty years, and here you are.”
“And how was I, like, born?”
Aminia tilted his head, as if unsure what Maat was implying.
“What? We prayed in the spring and three days later you emerged from the depths. How else is it supposed to work?”
That was all the explanation he was going to get. All the explanation Maat felt he could bear really. But this spring was apparently where he was born, twenty years and some change ago.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
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A full night passed with no further rise in water levels and no signs of any retaliation, the crew awoke to find the headwaters trickling along at their more natural level. They could walk through the shallows and return to the isle at large once more.
“Time to part ways again,” the river god said, still wading about in the shallows.
“Could use your help,” Maat said.
Aminia handed Maat another, large vial of blessed river water. “For the road.”
“Need me to do anything with this?”
“Just for good luck,” Aminia said. “If it’s divine assistance you want, blow up the dam. I’ll come running as fast as the water will carry me.”
They sent a trio of Stormlanders back through the fumaroles to tell Hector that the headwaters were clear. Rita led these messengers back to the start of the volcanic maze then doubled back and caught up with Maat’s group.
“Mike always keeps me away from the action,” she explained. “Everything I could do to get out here and get some independence out of town. Your dad’s a little overprotective. Goanna show up and surprise him.”
Maat nodded understandably. The Quarterchief apparently was equally overprotective of the youngest member of the outlanders and his actual biological child.
Well, as biological as god-blessed river birth can be.
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The auxiliary volunteer war party continued south through familiar territory on the west side of the great canyon that marked the young Torrent.
For Maat and the Secondhome crew, it was well-tread soil, having been there at least once before. For their plainswalkers reinforcements it was fresh new territory. And when they reached the cliffs overlooking the verdant Stormheaths, many of their number dropped to their knees. Tears were shed.
For plainswalkers, trees were a rare and essential resource, with each grove being the centerpiece of an entire family’s power and influence. With decades-long droughts, these plains trees were brown and hardy. None had seen abundant, leafy greens in their lifetimes.
“Stormlanders must be an incredibly powerful clan,” said one plainswalker.
“Well,” Maat began.
He realized, rather belatedly, that those of the plains may have collapsed the stormlanders into one big clan, as those of the stormheaths often assumed of the plains.
Instead of venturing down into the jungle right away, Maat lead their group west, back towards the mouth of the canyon for some spyglass recon.
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A wall of shining stone spanned the canyon. There were blocks moved from downriver, likely even from off-isle, waiting to be placed. The whole thing was only half-built, with much of the construction equipment still waiting near the river’s shore.
Even at half-height, the new dam blocked a frothy, churning deluge from the freshly uncorked Torrent.
“What power this Forge God must have, that his steel can keep the Torrent at bay,” said a plainswalker.
“Now, now. I’m sure if the dam were made of iron the river god’s counterattack would have more of an effect,” Lloyd said.
Hard to tell if that was sarcasm or not.
Trees had been felled for quite a ways beyond the Torrent’s riverbed. The Jean’in had established a perimeter. Further examination revealed that a great fence was set up halfway across this perimeter. Any attempt to attack from the lowlands would be seen immediately. And approach proved impossible from the highlands.
Crew were working down in the lowlands. Steamships supplied a constant cargo of the metallic building blocks. And three heavy cranes hoisted them on top of the already-established heap. Construction was moving at double pace, to keep ahead of the surging river behind the dam.
There’d be no attacking such a fortification with just the paltry band of two-dozen. They needed to link up with the united clans and anyone else still fighting the foreigners.
They needed to find Maat’s father. They needed the Quarterchief.
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There was evidence of a camp the Laval contingent had settled in the night before, right at the edge of the twisting pathway leading down into the lush stormheaths. Many such pathways existed, but this was the closest to the headwaters.
“Sure hope that pays dividends,” Maat said to himself.
If Lionli’Laval just takes his force and serves as surprise reinforcements for the regular turncoat Laval war parties, well, it could be disastrous. If, however, Maat had planted a seed in the war chief’s mind…
Marching a squad of children up the cliffs had taken over a day. Marching a volunteer force of adults down the same cliffs took only a few hours in the morning.
Maat, Rita, the twins, Kur, and Sam served as the guides for the group who consisted mostly of highlanders. This was the furthest most of them had ever been from their home tree-manses.
“Seems like a good idea to cross the river. Head into Laval territory,” Rita said.
The Quarterchief should be there now. Linking up with him would provide some much-needed reinforcements for the main war party while imbedding Maat’s group with a force at least five times the size.
Navigation was based on a mental map of the stormheaths, the lands around the river they’d navigated for years.
“So, plan is to cross the river,” Maat began. “There should still be a raft buried at the third tributary down.”
The journey back to the raft they’d evacuated the Secondhome children on took another few hours. It was undisturbed, and another hour of moving dead ferns and accumulated debris as well as performing minor maintenance, and the raft was riverworthy.
The nameless tributary was unaffected by the receding, dammed-up Torrent. They were able to inch the raft down the waterway out into a significantly diminished Torrent.
“This is worse than the damming of the Torrent twenty years ago,” Rita said, manning one of the oars. “The old wooden dam of the clifftop clans only stopped about eighty percent of the water heading into the Stormheaths. This looks more like one hundred.”
“Rainy season would help,” Sara said.
“It’s another year away.” Rita looked out at a former shallow fishing ground on the far shore that was now a dried-up mud flat.
Some water still pooled in the deeper divots where Alabaster catfish liked to carve out their nests. But essential river kelp and waterlilies were already dried out, dead.
By the time essential drought-relieving rains reached the Stormheaths, there wouldn’t be any ecosystem left down here to save.
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Night fell. A bright orange haze blocked the stars further south. The Jean’in had been reinforcing the abandoned river temples. And any route along the rump Torrent offered little mobility as they passed right by multiple encampments.
“We’re going to be in a world of hurt if we encounter one of those steamboats,” Lloyd said.
Indeed, they’d have little choice but to run right into one.
At least they’d see the steam ships coming from leagues away. The mud caking their whitewood raft gave the amateur war party a small degree of camouflage. At the very least they could be mistaken for a log jam.
Before the first night’s travel was done, the meager Torrent brought them within sight of a great camp. This was the source of the flood lights.
The old temple Maat had freed the captive Laval subalterns from many weeks ago now was built and operating at full capacity.
“Moor us amidst the patch of dead river kelp,” Maat ordered.
If the camp was still in operation, there were no-doubt more holding pens full of low-caste stormlanders to liberate.
And this time, Maat had a small army to help raze the camp for good.
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