“Bring Davi back!” I shouted, splashing into the water and loping toward them clumsily. “Get him safe!”
Then the very platform itself began to shift and tip, and the entire remainder of the statue plummeted into the water with a groan and a smash. The resulting wave spread so fast there was no time to get out of the way; I was knocked over and plunged underwater, spun about so I wasn’t sure which way was up. I scrambled, twisting, until I found my feet, then stood and almost cracked my head on the EsLosis’ boat. Hadrea was already leaping out beside me and together we dragged it back onto the shore. Davi jumped onto his sister’s back and I helped Salvea out.
She stepped free onto the sand and as her hand dropped away I became bone-chillingly aware that something was wrong. More than wrong. This was not the crumpling of an ancient machine not used in centuries. Amidst the noise and the confusion I had missed it, but now I recognized the sensation in the air, the thickening, crackling pressure around my head.
I looked down the west bank to where the Speakers had gathered, already starting toward them, then stopped dead. When they had used Darfri magic—fresken—against me, they’d had a particular look: intense burning gaze, hands holding something of the substance they were manipulating, slow and controlled walking. Now, instead, the women had fallen to their knees and clutched at their faces and hair, crying. Whatever was going on, they were not drawing on the magic; it looked as if something were drawing on them.
Then the faces in the crowd around them changed, growing exponentially more fearful, and almost as one they started to scream.
I spun back to the lake. The water in the center was bubbling, spurting, raising steam in great clouds that surrounded a watery shape emerging, just like the statue had, from the depths.
But this time, it was no trick.
“Os-Woorin!” the cries picked up again, as they had before, but this time more terrified than awed. The thing rising from the depths was no static humanoid figure, graceful and mysterious, but rather a whirling, formless thing of water and rock and weed, its shape changing and expanding as it rose. Yet it did not resemble the maelstroms created by the Speakers during the siege, nor the earthy fingers that had bound me earlier this morning. It had presence: not quite a face, that I could identify, but a sense of one. And consciousness, and deep intelligence. And rage.
Mist thickened around the thing, swirling over the water in a wafting, spinning cloud. No, not mist, steam: the water was bubbling, boiling, and spurting around the creature. “We woke it up,” Hadrea said, her eyes fixed on Os-Woorin. “Jovan, we’re feeding it.”
Spirits fed on emotion, she’d said, human emotion, and we had surrounded the lake with thousands of people in the heat and fury of battle, with surges of fear and optimism on each side when the army had arrived, and finally the infusion of hope and relief when we thought the fighting was over. And then we had convinced everyone around us that they were seeing the true Os-Woorin. We had made an offering, all right, but not the one we would have planned.
Os-Woorin roared, a terrible booming, gurgling sound like the crash of a waterfall. It turned, looking up at the old city on the east, where terrified Silastians cowered or ran. Part of its great, watery body extended toward the city, as if pointing. Then another deep rumble sounded from beneath the earth and a tower of water exploded out of the ground in the middle of the crowd on the shore, then another, and another.
“Honor-down, it’s burning them,” someone said, and my stomach turned over. It wasn’t the force knocking people to the ground but the gushing, steaming water itself that burned them.
The voice of a man behind me cut through the screams. “Os-Woorin is punishing the heathens! The spirit-killers! They have brought it on themselves!” But even as he tried to rouse support in his peers, Os-Woorin roared again and this time its rage was directed at the western shore; a snaky “arm” whipped out of the surface and crashed back down on the docks, crushing and splintering everything—and everyone—in its path. Darfri or not, Os-Woorin was taking its revenge on the city and anyone unfortunate enough to be near it.
I looked back out to the lake, where Tain was swimming frantically away from the bubbling center, but making little headway. I jumped back into the boat. “I’m going to try to get him.”
Hadrea fumbled in her sodden clothing and pulled out a handful of something green. She stuffed it into her mouth, then shoved the rest at Salvea. “Take it to the Speakers, Mother. Convince them to help.” Then she took hold of the rowboat and pushed it out. I started to row, staring at her as she chewed determinedly.
“What are you—”
Then I realized. The remaining supply of feverhead … what had Hadrea called it when she saw the illustrations? Babacash? She had said it was sometimes used to aid in fresken, and I had noticed but not thought much on her interest in the plant during Tain’s recovery. She had wanted it for herself, coveting the knowledge and power that had been denied her. She had brought it to the catacombs hoping to entreat Os-Woorin, but of course we had not found a shrine under the lake. She’d told me after our own small offering that she felt an open connection to the spirit and now she said it again to me as I pulled away from her.
“We are still connected! And I am going to stop this.”
Then she stepped out of my reach and into the deeper water.
No, not into the water, onto the water, as if she climbed invisible stairs underneath the surface, and her cupped hands held water in front of her. I stared at her as I rowed back toward Tain, struggling to get a rhythm in the choppy waves, but she looked only at Os-Woorin, and her eyes and face took on the same focused intensity as the Speakers’ had. She continued to rise as if on some platform until she walked on the very surface of the lake itself.
I glanced over my shoulder. Tain was treading water, captivated by the sight. I rowed harder.
“Os-Woorin!” Hadrea cried, and her voice carried over the shrieks and devastation, artificially loud. “Hear me!”
Os-Woorin, in the process of tearing the remains of Bell’s Bridge apart, froze in its destruction. It turned slowly, forming and reforming as Hadrea drew closer to it. The water settled somewhat, the great waves caused by Os-Woorin’s movements lowering into ripples. I checked on Tain again. He had seen me and started swimming in my direction, but his body was heavy and low in the water and his breaths more desperate than controlled. I tried to increase my pace, but my arms were so tired and my shoulder weak from the earlier wound; the sluggish haul of the boat seemed like it would never reach him.
Hadrea, by contrast, seemed propelled, gliding as she moved toward Os-Woorin, the water beneath her feet a platform. The crowd’s screams gradually died down as everyone’s attention fixed on the strange convergence of the woman and the spirit.
“Os-Woorin!” she cried again. “I entreat you: enough destruction. You have taken much power from us today. Do not use this against us.”
It made a noise in response, a low roar, but this time somehow it conveyed meaning; as the sound hit me I felt infused by its sense of betrayal and fury. But then strangely, equally strongly, I felt a sense of apology and compassion, and I knew the author of those feelings all too well. Whatever power had clustered around the lake, Hadrea had found some way to use it, too.