Smoke shook her head. “While he might try to rule, our family has always been led by a test of strength. Fiametta was an Ender when the old queen died. A series of games and challenges were set up by the old queen, and those who wanted to rule had to survive. Fiametta was the last one standing.” She paused and splashed the shirt she was washing deep into the water, swirling the ash out of it. “Her son is weak in his power, and in his head. He is too caught up in his own vanity to be of any use to anyone. He knows he will never rule.”
She offered me one of the flat rocks and I used it to pound a pair of pants.
There was still something I didn’t understand. “What has happened to make you think there is a traitor, though?”
Smoke’s head lowered. “The lava flows. They are doing strange things, burning people when they shouldn’t. Nothing serious, but you have to understand, Terraling, we don’t burn. The lava, fire, it is our element. It is our home. And it is turning on us. Fiametta says she has it under control, but Brand has seen her battle the lava. Seen her buckled under its power and close off whole sections of the Pit because she can’t stem the flow. And again, there are strange burns. Always it happens around the Pit, as though that is the epicenter.”
Peta sat in the now empty basket, her eye peering at me over the edge. “There is more. Something with the night bells has shifted. People are sleeping longer, and are harder to wake up. I have seen that, too.”
I opened my mouth to ask her what she meant by that. What did bells have to do with sleep?
Without warning, the ground under my knees heaved upward, throwing me forward, head first into the steaming river. The water tumbled me like the clothes we’d been cleaning, driving me to the bottom of the river where the water was cooler and I wished I had my hooked earring that allowed me to breathe water as if it were air. But I’d lost that in the Deep.
Slowly I was pushed downstream, the rocks at the bottom seemed to hold me to the streambed. No, that was what was happening. The rocks were piling on my legs and torso, keeping me under the water; drowning me even as the water shoved me closer to the intersection where the lava flow met the river.
Worm shit didn’t begin to describe the trouble I was in. I clawed at the river bottom, digging my heels in to stop my forward momentum. Rocks flipped up and crashed onto me, smashing me in the head, chest and stomach, knocking the wind out of me. I fought not to breathe in the water, to hold what was left of my air as my lungs burned.
I flailed, fighting with everything I had, but the more I fought, the more the earth itself tried to kill me.
Wait. The earth wasn’t trying to kill me. A Terraling was. Anger snapped through me, allowing me to grab hold of the power of the earth. I pushed it through the rocks, breaking them into sand. With the weight removed, the water slung my body toward the lava flow. Around me, the water heated with each second. I swam hard against the current as I pushed off the bottom.
Breaking through the surface, I gasped in a breath and dared a look behind me. The steady glow of lava and the steaming hiss of the river as it met its brother were far too close.
In the distance, Smoke ran toward me, but she wouldn’t make it in time, and I would burn up in a matter of seconds. Would Fiametta let Ash go when I died? I hoped so.
“Dirt Girl, swim to the edge and don’t dawdle.” Peta snapped me out of my state of near death musing.
I swam toward the shoreline, and was losing more ground to the river, but I knew Peta was right. This was my only chance. She was in her snow leopard form, keeping pace with me on the edge of the riverbank, her round ears pinned back and her eyes narrowed against the steam. The water temperature approached the boiling point. I was slowly cooking, my skin tingling with the near scalding water. I slipped below the water. Peta’s green eyes locked on mine.
“I’m sorry,” she said. I was dying and she felt bad. Bet I was her shortest lived charge. I wanted to tell her it was okay, that I wasn’t really hurting. As a way to die, apparently boiling alive wasn’t all that bad. I might have said something along those lines to her, but I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t feel much of anything.
A fierce, sharp pain sliced into my right hand and a tugging sensation pulled on me. Someone hoisted me out of the water. The pain in my hand eased and then replaced by an even deeper pain in the same place. Like blunted knives driven between the bones in my hand while crunching down on them with a tremendous force.
I screamed then realized Peta had dragged me out of the water at the last second, first with her claws, and then her teeth. I lay on my back staring at the cavern ceiling, noticing all the light tubes pointed at us, making it daylight deep with the mountain.
“Dirt Girl. If you decide to go swimming, perhaps a less dangerous place would be good, eh?” Peta snapped at me as she paced by my head. “Is it not enough everyone thinks I’m bad luck? To lose you on the first day I’m assigned to you would be the end of my reputation completely. How could I ever show my face again?”
I reached to her with my good hand. “Thanks for saving me. That’s three times now. You must like me.”
She snorted. “Why did you dive in?”
Easing myself into a sitting position, I put a hand to my head. “I didn’t. Someone pushed me.”
“No one pushed you. I was right there,” she snapped at me again with her words and her teeth.
“A Terraling pushed me, using the ground to unbalance me.” I backed away from the river, not wanting a repeat. “And they tried to hold me to the bottom of the river.”