The Silt Mother of Veenhuis

Wouter van Aldenkerk wanted nothing more than to finish digging the irrigation canals of Laag-Kerk and keep his two stubborn oxen fed. But when his plow snags an ancient, seamless black tube in the alluvial mud, his life in the trenches ends. The tube is a signal key. With a single breath through its aperture, the mundane river silt around him hardens into moving, sharp-edged alloy, crushing canal gates and swallowing bronze spears whole. The God-King’s chariot generals have scoured the continent for this 'tongue of the river goddess,' needing it to wake the colossal iron silt-harrow buried beneath the delta. Hunted across mountains and marsh-realms, Wouter must race to the river's mountain source to disable the reservoir before his homeland drowns in living metal.