“A wave,” Namior said, 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 said into her ear, saying exactly what she wanted to hear. But how could he be sure? Namior glanced along the hillside at the chaos of rooftops, paths and courtyards, trying to place her house. It was slightly lower than the Dog's Eyes, she knew, but also 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 scene—an absence—a tall, dark space above the foam-capped waves close to land and below the boiling sky. And it was growing, coming closer and 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 this 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: 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 it was already far too late.

There was a flash of red lightning across the horizon, as though the sky had been slashed.

The water in the harbor surged out to sea, leaving fishing boats resting on their hulls and tipped to the sides.

And then the wave came in.

Copyright

FALLEN

A Bantam Spectra Book / May 2008

Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Bantam Books, the rooster colophon, Spectra, and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-553-90506-9

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