“Take a break, Swarge,” Leftrin confirmed. He made a sound like a low growl in the back of his throat and gripped the bow rail tighter. He more felt than saw Alise coming down the deck to join him. When she reached his side, she halted and put her hands alongside his on the railing. Her eyes swept the scene before them.

There was no channel. Reeds, rushes, and those plants that loved swamps surrounded them. The dragons were bright-scaled giants who moved through the wrong landscape. Even yesterday, the dragons had still ostensibly led the way. For most of this morning, they had moved more slowly and uncertainly. No one was comfortable about venturing deeper into this borderless wet land. Yet there was no where else to go. Except…

“Do we go back?” Alise asked softly.

Leftrin didn’t reply. Two scarlet darning needles flew past them, their wings making a tiny whickering sound. They danced around a nearby bed of reeds before settling, one upon the other, on a seedhead. In the distance, he heard very faintly the cry of a hawk. He glanced up, but the overcast blocked even a glimpse of the sky. The dragons wandered disconsolately around the barge. He wondered what they were hunting. Frogs? Small fish? As the water had grown shallower, the food sources had become smaller and swifter to elude predators. Everyone was hungry, and the keepers felt the hunger of the dragons as well as their own.

“To what?” he asked.

“Perhaps to the other tributary?” Alise ventured the suggestion cautiously.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I wish Tarman could speak to me more clearly. I don’t think the other tributary is the answer. But I just don’t know anymore.”

“Then…what will we do?”

He shook his head unhappily. All he had were questions and no answers. Yet every life in his care depended on him having answers, or at least making good guesses. Right now he had no confidence in his ability to do either. Had he guessed wrong when he’d brought them this way? But he hadn’t guessed at all. He’d listened to his ship, and Tarman had seemed so confident. But now, here they were. They’d run out of river. They still had plenty of water, but it sheeted over the saturated land, and he could no longer guess where it came from. Perhaps a million tiny streams fed it. Perhaps it just welled to the surface in this immense basin. It didn’t matter.