“So she is,” agreed Sanglant, “if she yet lives. I walked right into the ambush she and Henry laid between them.”

Burchard shook his head impatiently. “We saw well enough what trap Henry fell into. The daimone with which Presbyter Hugh ensorcelled him spoke his words and moved his limbs according to the presbyter’s command. Henry did not speak. That plan was the queen’s alone.”

“She is a formidable opponent, then. What do we do with her now?”

Staring across the plain toward the Middle Sea, Burchard wept softly. “Perhaps bury her?”

The pall of dust hid the waters, which seemed, impossibly, at low tide, drawn far back across tidal flats.

‘Ai, God!” cried Lewenhardt, who possessed the sharpest gaze among them, able to pierce the haze. “Look!”

The water was rising swiftly. It swelled at the mouth of the bay into a monstrous wave that crested into a wall of foaming white. The wave surged forward across the bay and smashed down onto the town and the shoreline, engulfing it and inundating the land. The water rose up and up, still climbing as it flooded the plain.

“Run!”

The others turned and fled. Sanglant could not bring himself to move. He could not quite believe, despite the evidence of his eyes, that the sea could rise so fast and run so far. The whiter crest that battered the town dissipated quickly, subsumed in the vast tidal swell that rolled inland across the plain. Fest snorted and shied, and he reined him in, turning in a complete circle before the horse settled, uneasy and in protest but holding fast.

“My lord prince!” cried Captain Fulk, returning in haste to rein up beside him. “We’ll be drowned. You must come!”

The tide lapped to its highest extent a stone’s toss from Fest, not even reaching the outlying trees of the forest, and sucked hissing and burbling back into the sea. All that lay strewn over the plain from the first surge rushed outward with it. Even the stone walls of Estriana toppled into the wave, all but the highest tower, which was protected by a double ring of walls that had taken the brunt of the impact.

His men, creeping back, wept to witness the sea’s fury. As the wave receded, the ruins of the town emerged from the water. The stone walls were shattered at a dozen places. Seen through those gaps, the buildings looked like piles of sticks.

‘Ai, God!” cried Duke Burchard. “Queen Adelheid must surely be dead! No one could have survived such a deluge!” He glanced at Sanglant and wiped his brow nervously. “Surely she had a reason for the terrible course she took, Your Majesty. Surely she did not wish to harm the king. She loved him. She is a good woman.”

“Let us hope we do not have to make decisions as cruel as the one she felt herself forced to make,” replied Sanglant.

“I think it most prudent if we retreat,” said Fulk. “We have seen that these unnatural tides are not yet faded. Look how the water sucks back out again. What if a larger surge comes?”