Abi scrambled up beside Padrick, and gulped. Behind the ancient earthen dam was what had once been a wide, meandering valley, probably fed by a river that joined the one that the villagers needed bridged. It was easy to see why the dam had been built in the first place; if the village was having trouble keeping a bridge in place through flooding now, it would have been impossible with this tributary feeding it. And Padrick was right. When the dam caved in, all the water was going to rush down into the river and from there into the village. She tried to envision it; a wall of water, raging the way the Terilee in Haven raged at flood, and her imagination failed. All she could be sure of was that the result would be catastrophic. “Can we plug the hole?” she asked Padrick, feeling sick and cold.

“Not in time, maybe not at all,” Padrick replied grimly. “We’ve got to release water in a controlled manner and drain that basin to let pressure off the dam.” He looked around, as if he expected to find a shovel or a pick-ax right at hand. “Here would be the best spot.”

He pointed to a point just below their feet where the dam met the hillside. Abi nodded; not only was the hill probably more stable than the dam, it appeared to be solid rock right there, where the dam was just earth and fill-rock.

Beyrn lay flat on his stomach a little higher than they were, peering down at the water at the center of the dam. “I don’t see any actual flow,” he called down to them. “So right now, it’s just a seep.”

“It won’t stay that way for long,” Master Padrick said, grimly, then called down to Vance. “Vance, get up here! We don’t need to lose you if it decides to let go while you’re standing there!”

Vance peered up at them from beneath the shade of his hand. “But think of the observational data I would get!”

“Which would die with you! Get up here!”

“Point taken,” Vance replied, and began laboriously climbing the steep slope of the hill to get to them. Once he reached them, he strained his eyes in the direction of the village. “What’s keeping them?” he muttered.

“The difficulty of herding people who have no idea how dangerous this situation is,” Padrick replied, turning his gaze in the same direction. “You heard the mayor. ‘The dam has stood forever,’ so it’s difficult for them to imagine it’s failing.”

It seemed to take forever before Padrick spotted the villagers approaching in the far distance—and even longer before they finally got there. When they finally arrived, it wasn’t Rufous who was in charge.

It was Jicks. And with her was the village magician.