Her family home was just outside the great wall that contained the heart of the River City, a ceremonial district studded with holy mounds. The house was small and neat with a steep, thatched roof, and plastered walls painted red and white. Walks In Mist had always liked its modesty; it was far more expensive, far more well built than its deceptively simple design would suggest. But this spring the small fenced garden was coated with the dust that had blown in during the long summers of drought. The solitary chestnut tree was withered. The plasterwork was faded by the relentless sun of the drought years, and stained by windblown dust.

And now, the rain had come. Walks In Mist had lived in this place all her life. She knew the weather. Every summer it rained; every summer the rivers rose – every normal summer anyhow. But the summers had been dry for years. Now, at last, the rain came, but this was spring, not summer, and never had she known such rain.

The River City was close to the confluence of several great rivers, including the mighty Trunk that ran all the way to the ocean in the south. The city’s wealth came from the rivers and the trade goods they brought through this place, copper and mother of pearl from the south, buffalo and elk hide from the north, more exotic goods from over the oceans. But anybody who had grown up here knew that the rivers were also a danger, when the rain came heavily. And the rain had never been as heavy as this.

She approached the house at last. Through a curtain of rain she could see the Mountain of the Gods looming beyond – not a mountain at all, of course, but man-made, the greatest of more than a hundred mounds in the ceremonial district, an artificial mountain built on a flood plain to celebrate the divine generosity that had produced such a rich country as this. The view of the Mountain of the Gods inside its walled compound was one of the house’s best features. But today water was pouring down the mound’s stepped slopes, and as she watched a chunk of one face broke away, disintegrating. Flood-plain clay was not an ideal material for building mounds, she had once learned from a visiting Northlander engineer; now he was proven right.

The cart pulled up by the house. She told the driver to wait, and ran to the door. Her children were both inside, she found to her relief, Bear Claw and Yellow Moon, fifteen and ten. They were playing chess on the cotton carpet, with the expensive set she had brought back from Northland last year. The rain hammered on the thatch roof.

‘Where’s your father?’