Windwolf started forward to pull her back out of sight but Kakala laid a hand on him, saying, “No, this is Power.”
Keresa searched her soul, trying to hear the words that Skimmer Sang. They seemed oddly familiar, but alien, as if from another language. Then an odd prickling sensation began along Keresa’s limbs, as though a warm wind was blowing.
A dart hissed through the air above them and vanished among the spruce branches. Keresa ducked, dropped to her belly, and crawled up to the edge. The river below them was washing over the small beach where they’d just passed.
“I wish she’d get down,” Windwolf muttered as he slipped up next to Keresa.”
“Can’t you feel it?” she asked.
“Feel what?”
“The Power.”
“No.”
Keresa shook her head. “You belong to Wolf Dreamer.”
In the river, Karigi’s men were having troubles of their own. As she watched, two of the lead warriors waded into one of the channels, fighting the current, searching for footing. Both went under at the same time, bobbing up to be carried away thrashing and splashing. One managed to pull himself out in waist-deep water; the other continued to flounder about as he was carried farther downstream.
The great pine, Keresa noted, was no longer beached, but had been washed away. Two of the small islands they had crossed were no longer visible. A large chunk of ice came bobbing and spinning down the closest channel.
Skimmer’s rich voice called, “Come, Raven Hunter! The time is now!”
Keresa watched in horror as the waters rose, sweeping more of Karigi’s warriors away, whirling them about, whisking them downstream. Others turned back, desperate to return to the far bank. Some even made it.
“Karigi!” Kakala pointed as he came to kneel beside them.
She could see the war chief where he had climbed up onto a great boulder, wet and bedraggled. He kept looking about him in bewilderment as more and more of his warriors lost their footing and were swept away.
Terengi started to crawl up on the rock, only to have Karigi kick him viciously in the face. The man fell back, splashing into the current, and was carried headlong in the rush of the murky waters.
“Wolf Dreamer’s flood,” Windwolf said in awe. “This is from the broken ice dam far to the west.”
“Here? It’s come this far?” Keresa shook her head.
Skimmer bent her head back, shouting to the sky, “Call the thunder, Raven Hunter!”
The quake was unlike anything Keresa had ever felt. A great jolt shook the earth, pitching her body up from the ground.
Her reeling senses recorded a confusion of sights and sounds: the water in the river leaping, vibrating, and rising in spikes of spray; Karigi toppling from his boulder as it rose and fell; trees swaying; and odd spurts of dirt, duff, and twigs rising from the very earth.
Somehow she managed to grasp Windwolf’s hand as they bounced like cones on the pitching shale.
Somewhere through the roar, she swore she heard a great mammoth trumpeting in fear.
Sixty-nine
Blue Wing gasped for breath as she climbed to the high point and looked back. She could barely see the Nightland camps where they tucked up under the jagged wall of the Ice Giants. From this distance, the great cavern was little more than a dark spot in the grimy ice.
I am free.
She walked up to one of the erratic boulders that littered the high ridge and leaned against it, looking back, wondering at what she had lost: her husband, a son and daughter, the sanctity of her body.
“And part of my soul,” she whispered. She looked down at her hand, remembering the feel of the bone stiletto she’d driven between Goodeagle’s ribs.
Did I really do that?
The great quake caught her by surprise. The land leapt, and a rolling thunder filled the air. She barely had time to claw her way to her feet when she pitched sideways. The great stone she had been leaning against rolled on its base and toppled, just missing her.
For too many heartbeats the ground shook, pebbles and gravel leaping as she staggered for balance. Silt rose in a low cloud, only to be carried away by the wind.
And then it was gone. She lay panting, trembling with terror, the thunder fading off to the south.
For a moment, the world was silent, as if holding its breath.
An earsplitting squeal erupted from the Ice Giants, followed by a deep-throated groan.
“Wolf Dreamer, help me.” She started, rising to stare back at the Ice Giants.
Blue Wing watched as the first massive slab of ice cracked loose. It seemed to hang, moving slowly, as if lowering tentatively into the Thunder Sea. Where it sank, white water foamed and a stunning wave of water rolled away from it, traveling at unbelievable speed. The floating bergs rose and fell like a ripple of dots.