Tales of Noreela 04: The Island Read Online Free PDF

farther down the hill, and the water had a slightly smoky taste when it hit Namior’s tongue, as though it had picked up chimney smoke.
    Kel stood behind her, held her arms and looked over her shoulder.
    “Nothing,” Namior said, because when she looked out to sea, that was what she saw.
    Down in the harbor, waves crashed against the mole and the harbor wall. At the base of the cliffs to the south, the sea smashed, boiled and foamed like a diseased creature, striving to gnaw into the land. Beyond the mole were violent white-crests, waves breaking and rolling and building again, surging in toward the village and promising chaos. And past the waves, out to sea, where clouds flashed but no lightning danced at the horizon, a wall of nothing seemed to be growing in the darkness.
    “What
is
that?” Kel shouted.
    Namior shrugged, comforted by the feel of his hands on her arms.
    “End of the storm,” Trakis shouted. “Sea growing calm.”
    “No,” Mell shouted, and Namior listened because the fisherwoman was wise to things of the sea. “Everything’s about to get worse!” Mell looked up at Trakis, then across at Namior and Kel. When she next spoke it was no longer a shout, but still they all heard. “We should be safe up here.”
    “A wave,” Namior said, dreadful understanding dawning at last. The thud, and now the wave. She’d heard of places far to the south, near Kang Kang, where the ground sometimes shrugged, cracked and turned over. Groundshakes, they were called, though many people thought they were the result of fledge demons deep underground collapsing another seam of that strange drug.
    Mother
, she thought.
    “They’ll be fine,” Kel spoke into her ear, saying exactly what she wanted to hear. But how could he be sure? Namior glanced along and down the hillside at the chaos of rooftops,paths and courtyards, trying to place her house. It was slightly lower than the Dog’s Eyes, and closer to the harbor. Lower and closer…to
that!
    She could not look away from the wave for long. It was a blankness on the horizon, a tall dark space above the foam-capped waves and below the boiling sky. And it was coming closer, making itself known at last.
    The ground shook. The air was filled with the taste of the sea. And a roar was rising, building quickly as the sound of the incoming disaster found the land and announced itself.
    They could only stand there and watch. Namior thought of all the people she knew who would likely be down in the harbor area; friends who lived there, others who worked through the night dealing with the day’s catch. They’d have felt the thud and now they would hear and see the wave. But for them, it was already far too late.
    She closed her eyes, but she had to look again.
    There was a flash of red lightning across the horizon, as though the flesh of the sky had been slashed.
    With a roar greater even than the wave’s, the water in the harbor surged out to sea, leaving fishing boats resting on their hulls and the pale shapes of sea creatures thrashing in their exposure to the night.
    And then the wave came in.
    KEL STAYED WITH her. His fingers sank into her arms, hurting, but the pain pinned her to the land. She was glad for it. It was nothing compared to what her village faced.
    As the wave came closer it slowed, growing higher—an impossible thing that should not be there. The rain and wind seemed to stop for a beat, as though cowed by this monster from the sea, then its base struck the mole. The heavy concrete structure disappeared beneath the foot of the wave, and the water thundered down, broke, swallowing boats andtossing them before it, smashing into the harborside and roaring onward. Buildings disappeared in its white-foamed fury.
    The noise was staggering, the roar of water expending so much power, then beneath that the sound of Pavmouth Breaks suffering a fatal wound. Buildings collapsed, adding their parts to the wall of water surging inland. It scoured the landscape before