Nalia awoke with a start, the cold, damp hands reaching for her in her dream somehow closed around her in the waking world.  She shook her head to shift the lingering tendrils of the dream from her mind.  She looked down to see the clammy, pale hand frantically pulling her arm.

'Oh....Rickar, you startled me!' she said with a laugh that almost felt natural, pulling the boy into her lap in the bed.

'I had a bad dream,' the boy replied, curling into her chest, 'I thought I was -'

'Drowning.' Nalia finished, unsure how she knew.

'Yuhuh, drownding.'

Nalia looked up, wiping the sleep from her eyes and casting about for her Nursemaid.

'Sorry m'lady, I tried to soothe 'im, but 'e insisted.'

'That's okay Aracel.  Go check on the others, and fetch Maecy, would you?  And...uh...'

'Maybe you'd like t' speak t' the wyrmspeaker?'

'Yes, that's what I was going to say.  Thanks Cella.  And could you be a dear and -'

'Kettle's already on m'lady.  I'll send the littluns in to you?'

'If you could.  And thankyou!' Nalia called as the door began to close.  She turned her attention back to her son, but he was already snoring softly to himself in her lap.  If only we could recover so easily she thought to herself, rocking him gently.

It wasn't long before the other two children were clambering into her bed.  Aracel must have found them in the halls already coming to her bedchamber.  Maryellen, the oldest, tried to put on a braver face than her siblings, but it was clear that they had all had the same dream and woken as shaken by it as Nalia.  She clutched them to her and soothed them until their frightened babbling slowed.

The door opened again, and Maecy shuffled in with tea.  Nalia caught glimpse of a pair of steelshanks in the anteroom before the door closed.  Maecy crossed the room and handed Nalia the cup.  It wasn't until she took it that she realised how badly her hands were shaking, still.  The spire advisor smiled warmly in an attempt to comfort her.

'You wanted to see my Lady Nalia?'

'Thankyou for coming Maecy.  I'm sorry to have disturbed you.'

'Not at all.  I was actually woken for another matter just before Aracel knocked for me.'

'Oh?'

'Yes, but it can wait.  What did you need me for?'

Nalia didn't even see where the book and quill came from.  She had been too focussed on getting the cup to her lips without spilling on the children.

'It seems the children and I shared a dream last night.  I couldn't get much sense out of them, but I'm sure it was the same as mine.  I dreamed I was drowning, deep beneath the sea, with dozens of pale, cold hands trying to pull me deeper.  And...I don't know how I knew this...but I'm certain that if those hands had closed around me, I would never have awoken again.'

Maecy simply nodded as Nalia talked, her lips pressed thin, her quill flying across the page to note down Nalia's account.

'Well...hopefully the tea will help.  Dreams can be very unsettling, but I am sure you are safe now.'

Sure as she was that her advisor was right, Nalia took little comfort from the reassurance.  Even the warmth of the tea was barely putting a dent in the cold core of dread sitting in her stomach.

'You said you were woken for other matters?' she asked, in what she hoped was a casual conversational tone.

'Yes my lady.  A raven came from Westlake.'

'Ah.. How are they?  Has Lady Shela given any further thought to sending young Cordis to us?  I know Maryellen would appreciate the company of someone nearer her own age.'

'I'm sorry my lady.  The news is quite dire.'

Maecy pulled a stool over and sat at the bedside.  Nalia sat up a little straighter in the bed, shifting the weight of Rickar so that she could reach out a hand to take the offered slip of paper from Maecy's outstretched hand.

'This is awful,' she said, choking back a sob as her eyes filled with stinging tears that prevented her reading any further.  'How does that happen?  A whole castle washed away in one storm?  I thought...my lord husband said the harbour there was...I mean, it was so expensive, surely it ought to have...'

'It was.  It should have been proof against anything the lake could throw at it.  Whatever storm has taken root in the lake is not anything we could have planned for.'

Dimly, Nalia became aware of the sound of movement somewhere outside her chambers.  Good she thought ser Tiffally is already mustering a response.

'The whole lake?  So it's not just the castle?' she asked, beginning to plan a disaster response in her head.  As the closest neighbour, they would be best placed to offer aid to the Blackwoods.

'No my lady.  Reports from several settlements around the lakeshore speak of the same thing, the waters surging and breaking the banks, sweeping away farms and towns and fortifications with seemingly equal ease.'

Somewhere nearby the sound of a woman wailing drifted to Nalia's ears.  Her chest ached in empathy.  It sounded oddly muffled, as though being heard through a layer of bedding, or from under deep water.  Nalia shook her head, trying to shake the odd sensation.  She felt as though she could hear the sound of rushing water slowly building.  A lingering effect of the dream she told herself.

'I take it ser Tiffally is gathering a response?' Nalia said as she delicately extracted herself from the slumbering bodies of her children.

'I'm afraid not my lady.'

The roar of rushing water continued to build.  Nalia shot a puzzled look at her advisor before crossing the bedchamber to the curtained window and throwing open the curtains.

The window looked North and East, where on mornings like this she would sit and watch the sun rise over the tops of the spear-like trees of Rustmere and Greenwood.

This morning, though, there were no trees.  Even the cliffs which the forest sat atop was barely visible, buried under a wall of muddy brown water and floating detritus that crept slowly but inexorably forward.

Feeling as though she were moving impossibly slowly, as though she were already having to force every movement against the approaching flood, she turned back to Maecy and the sleeping babes in her bed.

'I'm sorry my lady.'

'It's too late to leave?'

'Even if you had Flint himself to ride, you could not outpace the flood.'

Nalia nodded to herself.  She walked across the floor.

'Perhaps if we could make it to Selsa's Reach -'

'The boats in the harbour will be shattered by the storm, my lady.'

'Of course.'

A strange sort of calm settled over Nalia, as she realised there was nothing that could be done to avert what was coming.  She sat on the end of her bed and wrapped her arms around herself, staring out of the open window.

She jumped as the cold hands closed around her arm once again.

'Mama...' Rickar's voice called out again, as he tugged on her shoulder.

'Yes baby, mama's here,' she soothed, turning to scoop him into her lap again.

'She seeks her children mama.'

'I know baby,' Nalia could barely hear own voice over the rushing waters now.

The waters rushed through South Stallken.  Higher than the walls around the city, higher than the towers, higher than Maecy's tower atop Sawler Manor.  The crushing weight of the water and the debris it carried swept everything aside.

For a second Nalia and the children were caught in a tumble of falling masonry and furniture and tree trunks and mud as the floodwaters swept through the room.  And then she felt it again, dozens of cold pale hands reaching for her  The absolute certainty that if they caught her she would never wake again.  She wrapped one arm around the three children, and with the other she reached for the grasping hands.

Just as suddenly as it had swept over them, the roiling floodwaters passed away, and Nalia found herself floating in a vast expanse of clean, clear water.  Her children clutched to her.  She cast about for some way to orient herself, some surface to swim toward, but nothing appeared.  There was only her, her children, the water, and the hands.  They slowly pulled her toward them, and more and more hands clutched at her.  Her lungs burned with the need to breathe.  Her eyes burned from the salt water.  Her grip on her children was faltering.

As the hands continued to pull her deeper into their mass, and she felt herself battling with her own body to remain conscious, she had a realisation.  The hands didn't feel hostile.  The desperation with which they clung to her was the same desperation as she clung to her children.  It wasn't an attack, it was an embrace.

She exhaled, and let the cold water pour into her lungs.