Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Fate

But then the bridge had tried to blow itself to pieces.

Tildy was far off to the side, merely on the abutment, really, so she hadn’t been hurt; more just shaken up. In the relative still after the blasts, the cries and screams of the people further along had come clearly through, though, and then people started to stampede in every direction and she was caught up and spun around in the press. She couldn’t see a thing except the rioting people immediately around her, and then the dust rose and the smoke from the explosions drifted over and she realized that she was in danger of being trampled to paste on the pavement if she happened to trip, so instead of being dragged along she tried to thrust her own way free. Was she still on the bridge? Was she back on land? There was no way to tell. She felt an unfamiliar desire to scream ...

She clamped down on it and forged ahead. Then suddenly there was daylight ahead, and a gap in the mob, and a crew of police or troops or somebody official trying to sort things out and channel the flow and generally set things back in order. Tildy burst into the open. She was off the bridge - back on that main street, in fact. The police were forcing open a lane for traffic. A closed carriage swept off the bridge as she watched, swerved to miss an oncoming wagon crowded with more police, and rattled off at high speed down the boulevard.

Suddenly a new shadow loomed over her - a man, in a silver and black outfit with a cape. Her breath froze -

Oh, come on, Tildy told herself. You’re not the fluttery sort. But there was no denying she was on edge -

“This is not a healthy place to be,” the man said to her. “May I escort you home?”

Tildy forced her heart back out of her throat again as she realized that the voice was familiar. He was ... he was that guy she’d met at the club, the one who was so interested in her, the one who, well -

But whether she’d liked him or not was beside the point at the moment. It might be better to have help getting clear of this mess. “Thank you,” Tildy told him. “That would be great.”

Suddenly he was sweeping her along, a strong hand on her arm. “Unfortunately my vehicle is in use, so we will have to walk,” the man said. “Let us first get away from this vicinity and then you will give me directions.”

“Thank you,” she was babbling again. Tildy forced her mouth shut. If you can’t talk intelligently, she told herself, don’t. There was nothing to worry about now, not with this man at her side.

Although, relieved or not, she did have to admit he was looking even more attractive now than he had the other evening.

Again a wave washed over his head. Again? How was he alive, then, and not drowned? Assuming he was alive. But he must be alive - death could hardly be this unpleasant.

He was in the middle of a paroxysm of coughing. Not just from the water, either, he realized. He was sick to his stomach. He wasn’t by any means the only thing the water had floating in it. Shaa had warned him against the water, and especially the Tongue, and yet here he was floating in something, and he had been for - for who knew how long?

Jurtan Mont flailed around with his arms. One hand hit a squishy embankment rising up out of the horrid water. That was it, Jurtan realized. He’d fallen through that pit into an inlet off the Tongue waterfront, but instead of going full into the water he’d hung up on the edge, on that mudbank. A mudbank that people apparently used as a convenient place to dump their sewage. Now the water was being agitated by these waves and the bank had been undermined, precipitating him into the water and finally waking him up. Just then another wave rolled through, shoving Jurtan up against the mud and letting him slide, thoroughly slimed again, back down.

He’d never make it up that incline. The thing was totally unstable - he’d risk bringing down a mudslide that would bury him once and for all. Jurtan’s head throbbed horridly, he was on the verge of throwing up, not (he was sure) for the first time, on top of that he felt wretchedly queasy ... but the waves weren’t the only reason he’d woken up. Music was pounding full force in his skull; music telling him to get going, and fast.

A glimmer of light showed ahead, illuminating the curve of a semicircle three times as tall as he was. Jurtan launched himself toward it. For a moment he could touch bottom, a bottom even squishier than the slope behind him, and laden with clinging sea-grass and vines, but then the surface dropped mercifully away and he was fully paddling. This was actually a culvert, Jurtan recognized, and up ahead should be -

The largest wave yet came spilling around the corner. Jurtan felt himself lifted, pressed against the top of the culvert, scraped ahead as the space filled entirely with water... Then he was dropping again. Jurtan kicked madly and dug in with his arms, trying to ride the ebb tide back out, felt himself bash off the wall as the current dragged him around a corner - but now that was full sunlight was up ahead. Another moment brought him through.

Off to the right a forest of pilings signaled the start of the wharves. The long shadow to the left and the stone island ahead announced the presence of that big bridge. Beyond the island and its stout vertical pier some kind of large gray smooth-skinned fish were leaping clear of the water and dancing backward on their tails. Behind them was the much larger bulk of a lumbering whale. From his vantage point low in the water himself he could see the superstructure of a small boat cutting back and forth ahead of the leviathan.

But Jurtan wasn’t here for sight-seeing. The music was urging him on - on, and up. Behind him the bank of the Tongue Water was faced with a heavy stone wall linked to the shoreward arch of the bridge. Was there a stairway, or a ladder? There was a ladder, and a floating landing-stage at its base. Both were crowded with people, people hanging on the rungs, people shouting and waving, people - jumping in? They’d spotted him! They were coming after him.,. no, they weren’t. They weren’t waving and pointing in his direction, either. Jurtan broke his awkward stroke long enough to cast a glance back over his shoulder. Now, looking further up, he saw what his first cursory inspection had missed. The center span of the bridge was in flames. Stones and girders and unrecognizable chunks of wreckage were pouring toward the water in the path of the leviathan. And people, people too. Could he help?

The music roared at him. That wasn’t what it had in mind. There was something more important going on? The music was weaving multiple themes and melodic lines together in a dark tapestry; Jurtan could recognize Max’s motif, and Shaa’s, and his sister’s, and... What was going on out there?

By the time he reached the landing-stage a few moments later it had emptied enough for him to pull himself from the water and grab for the ladder without having to shove anyone out of the way. Not that he’d have had the strength to push through a crowd, but then again the music was quite serious about egging him on. Just behind Jurtan a dory was putting in with a cargo of people pulled from the water; above him, though, a line of people hanging onto the ladder were helping to guide him up, regardless of his slime-caked clothes and thoroughly subhuman appearance.

More quickly than he would have expected Jurtan was collapsing over the top of the seawall onto a short riverwalk stretching beneath the final arch of the bridge. He found his feet and shambled ahead. Now people were falling back from him; now, catching a whiff of his own scent, Jurtan would have fallen back from himself, if possible. A broad stair beyond the arch led up to the bridge, though. His shoes were sliding and slurching on the pavement, and the slick stone of the stairway was even worse; he did fall, halfway up, smashing both knees into the edge of the step and scraping the fresh scabs off his palms. He wobbled to his feet and lurched onward.