Chaosbound by David Farland Page B

and she could not see the enemy—except for a mass of great beasts out beyond the walls, giants with white skin and startling white eyes, wearing armor carved from bone.
    â€œTo battle!” some warlord cheered. “To battle!”
    And then just as suddenly as it had come, the vision ended, as if a portcullis gate had slammed down, holding the vision at bay.
    Is this a vision of the future? Myrrima wondered. But a certainty filled her.
    No, it is a battle happening now, far across the ocean. Dawn had come to her home here in Landesfallen, but night still reigned on the far side of the world. As Borenson had warned, the wyrmlings were greeting their new neighbors.
    The vision, the sounds, both seemed to be coming from the water, and that is when Myrrima knew.
    She had wondered whether to follow Borenson across the ocean into his mad battle.
    But water was calling to her, summoning Myrrima to war.
    Borenson will find a ship, Myrrima realized. Water will make a way for us to reach that far shore. My powers there will be needed.
    A giant green dragonfly common to the river valley came buzzing over the water nearby, a winged emerald with eyes of onyx. It hovered for a moment, as if gauging her.
    Myrrima knelt then at the edge of the old river channel and laved dirty brown water over her arms, then tilted her face upward and let it stream, cold and dead, over her forehead and eyes. Thus she anointed herself for war.
    There had been a time in Myrrima’s life when she’d made a ritual of washing herself first thing each morning. As a child she’d loved water, whether it was the sweet drops of a summer rain clinging to her eyelashes, or the tinkling of a freshet as it darted among the rocks. It was her love of water that gave her power over it. At the same time, water had power over her, too—enough power so that she often felt pulled by it, and she found herself wanting to go lie in a deep river, so that the water could caress her and surround her and someday carry her out to sea.
    Six years back, she had purposely given up the ritual, afraid that if she did not, she would lose herself to water.
    But this morning was different. Worries wormed their way through her mind, and she had seldom felt so tired.
    So when she reached camp, she found Sage and led her to the nearby stream. It was only a trickle at this time of year. A little water roamed down from the red-rock above. In the winters the rain and snow would seep into the porous sandstone, and for centuries it would percolate down through the rock until it hit a layer of harder shale. Then it would slowly flow out, and thus seeped from a cliff face above. Myrrima was so attuned to water that she could taste it and feel in her heart how long ago it had fallen as rain.
    Not much water escaped the rocks, barely enough to wet the ground. But there was a boggy spot where the streamlet stole through the moss and grass.
    Wild ferrin and rangits often came to drink here, and so had trampled the grass a bit.
    So Myrrima took Sage and with stones and moss they dammed the small stream, so that it began to rise over the course of the morning.
    Rain came to help them, bringing some clay that she had found nearby. As they padded clay between the stones of the dam, Myrrima told the young women of Borenson’s plan to return to Mystarria.
    â€œIt may be a dangerous journey,” Myrrima said. “I can understand why you would not want to go. I hesitate to ask you, Sage. Landesfallen has been your home for so long, I will not force you to come.”
    â€œI don’t remember Mystarria,” Sage said. “Draken sometimes talks about the vast castle we lived in, all white, with its soaring spires and grand hallways.”
    â€œIt wasn’t grand,” Myrrima said. “I suppose it must have seemed so to a tot like him. Castle Coorm was small, a queen’s castle, set in the high hills where the air was cool and crisp during the muggy days of