The Word

Seventy generations after the Great Dying, peoples strange and varied vie for mastery of the Island. Cities up and down the length of it lie mangled and buried in centuries of overgrowth. Cities destroyed in a cataclysmic war, yet still in the grip of terrible sicknesses unleashed by that ancient annihilation. But a new era is dawning when after long centuries, the fevers of blood and air and water begin to release their hold on these places.
Tribes from the north rise and unite to threaten the whole Island. Tribes whose ancestors came from the remote highlands and across the ice bridge formed after the fourteen-month-winter of long ago. Using captives and slaves they begin a brutal harvest of the cities under their sway, looking for metals, machines and knowledge from the last days of the world before theirs. A world cursed with its gift for destruction.
Only one power on the Island can prevent the march of cruelty and the renewal of an ancient, destructive compulsion. A southern people which had striven in some way to preserve the ancient art of writing. Treachery and brutality conspire against them.
In time their hopes begin to rest on the frail shoulders of an extraordinarily gifted child.
An eight-year-old girl who must survive at all costs ...