The Girl and the Stars

by Mark Lawrence

  Pome made a violent gesture toward the hunter with the star and the massive metal body slammed back across the chamber as if struck by some invisible hammer that only a god could wield.

  The thing clattered to a standstill yards back, having narrowly missed crushing several of Pome’s followers. The hunter picked itself up as the men and women who had thrown themselves aside got to their own feet.

  “I trust this!” Pome held the star aloft, twitching with effort. “The hunter has a star like this at its heart and as I control this one I control it too.”

  The hunter began to advance again. When it reached the fissure it would be over in one stride.

  Yaz stepped to meet it, shaking off Quell and Thurin, who both reached to stop her.

  “Bring her to me.” Pome clutched his star as if it burned him and gestured the hunter toward her.

  Yaz extended her will across the ice-rimmed fissure. Her mind skimmed across the blaze inside the hunter’s iron casing and settled instead on the rapid pulsing of the star-stone in Pome’s fist. Something had been done to the star, some subtle alterations to its patterns. Pome had called the hunter the regulator’s gift, his miracle, and Yaz sensed the old priest’s hand in these changes. And behind the priest stood the Black Rock’s Hidden God. And behind the Hidden God? Just like the Pit of the Missing there was no telling how deep it all went.

  Undoing the priest’s changes to the star was beyond Yaz’s ability, certainly at a distance and in a hurry, but she had an alternative. At the last moment Pome sensed what she intended but his opposition was clumsy, as weak as a toddler wrestling a full-grown man. She dimmed his star’s fire, reducing it to a molten glow.

  Immediately the hunter slowed then stopped. It lost direction, casting about for its target. The crimson glare from its eye slits slid across the Broken on both sides of the cavern.

  “Bring her!” Pome roared, extending the star toward the hunter as it teetered on the fissure’s edge.

  But Yaz had hushed the voice of Pome’s star and instead the monster painted him with the fierce glow of its eyes as if considering him prey. And in that moment, with the light of Pome’s star no longer streaming between his fingers, Yaz noticed it. Two stains retreating to regain the shelter of the sleeve that had been pulled back when Pome reached his star toward the hunter. A black stain and a scarlet one, both moving like oil on water. Evidence that the star he now struggled to hold had already broken free parts of his mind.

  “Pome’s tainted!” Yaz shouted, pointing. “Look! Devils under his skin!”

  As she shouted her accusation the hunter seized Pome in its oversized metal hand and at the same time jabbed its killing-spike at his closest guard, Bexen. The gerant, with his unsettling stare, one eye savage, the other milky, looked small for once. The spike’s tip punctured the great shield he was holding and tore it from his grasp, sending him sliding perilously close to the fissure.

  On all sides the Broken began to run. Nerves, already stretched to breaking point, now snapped. The instinct to run from hunters was strong, and they ran. Yaz ran too, straight for Quell. “This is it. We need to leave now. We get Zeen and then get out of here.”

  They sprinted from the cavern with the last of the stragglers, the floor behind them thick with broken icicles. Turning the corner into the next smaller cavern Yaz found Thurin waiting for them. Quina had stayed with him, Kao hulking at the back. Petrick hung uncertainly at the opposite exit.

  “Where’s Maya?” Yaz looked around, half expecting to find the girl stepping from a cloak of shadows.

  The rest shook their heads.

  “She’s good at hiding, that one. She’ll be with Arka or the others.” Thurin looked worried despite his easy words.

  Quell shrugged. “If we’re going to get Zeen then let’s do it.”

  “And after that?” Quina asked. “All those things you said, Yaz? Do you think we really can escape?” Screams came from the Icicle Cavern.

  “I think we should try.” Yaz didn’t want to lie to them. “I think the dangers won’t be worse than what we have to deal with down here. Just different.”

  “Is it true though?” Quina asked. “About the green place? Somewhere we can live?”

  “I just want to go back,” Kao rumbled from behind Thurin, his voice a man’s, his tone a child’s. A great crash made them all glance toward the tunnel they’d fled down.

  “I can’t go back. I’ve never been.” Thurin pressed his lips into a worried line. “All my life is here. My ancestors. Leaving it would . . .”

  “Would be like being thrown down the pit,” Yaz said. “You’ll survive it and find a new world. Just like we all did. But we need you, Thurin. I need you. Without your understanding of the Tainted and this Theus who leads them I don’t know if we can find Zeen, let alone save him.”

  Thurin’s dark eyes found hers. He took her hands as if there were no one watching. “The surface sounds terrifying but I would rather go there naked than return to the black ice. We will all die there. Those they can’t inhabit become their sport. They torture them to death. Think on it again, Yaz. Think again.”

  “Did your mother think again when she came after you?” Yaz squeezed his hands and felt the fear there, trembling in his bones.

  Thurin hung his head and for a time he said nothing. The sounds reaching them down the tunnel sounded like the hunter’s iron footsteps. Still, no one spoke.

  “You’ll go whether I come or not,” Thurin muttered. He met her gaze briefly. “I can’t let you do that.”

  “You’ve said yourself that the Tainted will come for the survivors when this war is over,” Yaz said. “In days they’ll wash over the Broken and the nightmare won’t just be lurking in the black ice, it will be everywhere. Face it now and we can still escape.”

  The battle raging inside Thurin dragged on. Finally, with the hunter’s glow colouring the tunnel ice and warning of its imminent arrival Thurin looked up again, his eyes bright, his determination rekindled. “Alright then. Let’s go.”

  22

  THURIN LED THE way to the Tainted’s caves. He took them through coal-worm tunnels too narrow for Pome’s rogue hunter to pursue them along. Yaz followed Thurin, Quell close behind her. Quina and Kao coming next, with Petrick bringing up the rear. The hunska boy had followed when Quina beckoned him to join them. He carried a slender sword over his shoulder, the hilt and the pale hand holding it nearly lost in the dark mats of his hair. Normally only the warriors were allowed swords and spears but normal had made itself scarce of late.

  This time the taint didn’t appear as a questing tendril of blackness spreading through the ice but as a slow greying. The air had been growing colder, the stars thinning, winking out until there was no light but the blue glow from the star slowly orbiting Yaz. She drew her skins closer about her, shivering, though more from the pervading air of malice and threat than from the dropping temperature. Ahead madmen haunted the darkness in thrall to demons, all bound to the will of this Theus. And Zeen, if he still lived, was one of them.

  The darkness seemed to press in on all sides, squeezing the light of Yaz’s star, speeding up its heartbeat. Whispers haunted the shadows and they all felt watched. Thurin continued to find his way with the same surety he showed in the Broken’s territory.

  “Demons live within this ice.” Thurin spoke loudly enough to be heard at the back. “They want nothing more than to find their way under your skin. Let one in and it will fill your mind with its ugly thoughts and you’ll lose yourself to its will. The longer we stay in the black ice the more certain that is to happen.”

  In the next chamber the ice shaded darker still, save for the opposite wall where Yaz’s light showed what seemed to be a bruise, the centre black but ringed with halos of colour: a deep maroon, a sickly yellow, a green that came from a different palette than the one used to paint Erris’s world of grass and trees.

&n
bsp; “Where demons of one particular sort gather, the ice can take on their colour,” Thurin said. “Red for rage, green for envy, the yellow ones particularly enjoy inflicting pain. You’ll find many shades here. Where they come together they are black.”

  Yaz moved slowly toward the blackest area, where the ice devoured her light and returned not even a glint. The nothingness of it shared the same draw as the void in which Erris lived, the same fascination that dwelt in the jaws of the Pit of the Missing itself. This darkness held more than that though. The malice there, the ancient evil, the sense that it was waiting with endless patience for her touch, all of these turned that initial pull into a push. Even so, she pressed on, closing the gap still further.

  “Yaz!” Thurin turned back. “Don’t!”

  Yaz held her star before her and moved forward, pouring its light into the ice, sure that she must see something of the surface if she only got close enough. “We’re going into this stuff. It’s going to be on all sides, under us, dripping on us. Better to find out about it here than a mile inside the Tainted’s territory.”

  “What’s to find out?” Kao wrapped his thick arms around himself. “It’s evil and it hates us. I can tell that from here.”

  Yaz pushed forward, the radiating malice almost a physical thing. The star in her hand blazed with blue-white light, and slowly, as the distance narrowed from feet to inches, the ice began to grey, revealing itself in glistening ridges. The effect was far from uniform; the blackness pushed back in a ragged circle but some patches of darkness proved more resistant than others, as dirt will cling here and there beneath a flow of water that has carried the bulk of it away.

  One persistent black spot remained amid almost clear ice and Yaz nearly had to touch the star to it before with great reluctance it began to retreat into the thickness of the wall.

  “The demons don’t like stars. We know that,” said Petrick, unimpressed. “It’s all that’s kept the black ice from spreading into our caverns.”

  Yaz shrugged and retreated toward the group, not trusting the blackness not to leap out at her if she showed it her back. “The Ictha find very little that is new to them, and when we do we like to look into it.”

  “We have a much bigger star,” Quell said. “Maybe we should—”

  “No.” Thurin said it so fast that Yaz almost thought he might have voiced his objection just to disagree with Quell. “Carrying something like that in there will alert all of them.”

  Without waiting to argue he led them on into the next chamber. Yaz glanced at Quell, shrugged, and followed Thurin out.

  He caught up with her swiftly, putting a hand to her arm and hissing just for her ears, “I don’t trust this one.”

  Yaz shook his hand off and walked on, saying nothing. Quell gave everyone his trust until they betrayed him. This wasn’t the Quell she knew above the ice nor the Thurin she knew beneath it. She wondered for a moment if they were really at odds over her, engaged in some sort of unvoiced competition for her good regard. She pushed the foolish notion away. They couldn’t be jealous of each other, surely? And besides, if they were competing for her respect then all they were achieving was to let it slip through their fingers.

  A short way along the next tunnel Yaz reached an area of red ice that looked as if someone had dealt the wall a huge wound, leaving old blood frozen in with the water. Passing it, she felt an echo of the anger stored there. Not anger at her in particular, just a bubbling rage of the sort that can lash out in any direction. It proved infectious, blowing at the embers of her own discontent, the fire of resentment she had started to bank even before the Ictha first had sight of the Black Rock. A fury at a world so set against giving her a place in it. She gritted her teeth, hastened her stride, and tried not to let the demons’ anger become one with her own.

  “Will we find the Tainted wandering alone?” Quina hissed as they advanced along a long tunnel through faintly grey ice. “Because if they stay in a big group then what chance have we got?”

  “I saw two,” Quell said. “Both on their own.”

  “What do they even do?” rumbled Kao. “I mean, they’re crazed, yes? They don’t forge or scavenge or tend the fungi. Do they just wander around being mad?” He paused and his stomach chose the moment to growl. “What do they eat?”

  “They eat the fungi from the ground, or better still they eat the rats that eat the fungi.”

  “Raw?” Quina wrinkled her nose, though until her drop Yaz was sure the girl had never eaten a cooked meal.

  “Raw.” Thurin nodded. “As for the rest, they stalk the Broken, looking for anyone they can steal without open conflict. But mostly they search the ice. Mining it. Melting it. Drinking it.”

  Ahead of them the cavern they were crossing opened onto a much larger space and the roar of rushing water made itself known.

  “Search for what?” Yaz asked.

  “Once you’re tainted you don’t think to ask questions like that.” Thurin slowed as he approached the opening. “Theus tells them they’ll know when they find it. He tells them to mine the ice, bring it to the melting pools. Always digging, melting, drinking. The Tainted are full of demons, so it takes a strong new fiend to force its way into them. If they find one it normally ejects one of their weaker passengers. Sometimes, though, the tainted person’s mind breaks entirely and demons flood into them until they contain a multitude. We call those eidolons. Very dangerous. Even Theus can’t control those. They just wander off beneath the ice. Some say they find their way to the surface and haunt the world above.”

  Thurin took them out into a space too large for Yaz to light. Before them a ravine ran through the rock, possibly an extension of the same cleft in the stone that the drying cave looked out over. Far below a hidden river churned the darkness, and reaching out to span the chasm was an ice bridge, ten yards long, a yard wide.

  “Be watchful. The Tainted’s territory properly begins on the far side.” Thurin waved them to gather around him. “We used to maintain this bridge. I remember it being three times this wide.”

  “We?” Quell asked.

  “The Broken.” Thurin scowled.

  “Is it safe?” Quina sounded worried.

  “I doubt it’s stood here all these years waiting for you to cross it so it can collapse.” Thurin smiled. “Besides, if it’s going to break when one of us crosses it then it’s going to be for Kao not you. He weighs as much as the rest of us put together. We’ll send him first.”

  “Hey!” Kao actually took a step back.

  “You’ve got to cross sometime. Why not first?” Thurin stretched out a hand to wave Kao on.

  The boy blanched but with all eyes on him his pride wouldn’t let him back down and he began a reluctant advance. Without saying anything Quell went after him, overtook him, and stepped out onto the fragile span of ice.

  Yaz made to follow him but Thurin took her arm. “One at a time.”

  She started to pull away but in the end surrendered to his logic rather than his strength. Instead she sent a beam of starlight lancing out across the chasm to interrogate the nearest of the dark tunnel mouths on the far side.

  “Why don’t they guard it?” Quina asked.

  “Why would they?” Thurin looked grim. “They want us to go in there.”

  Kao crossed next, protesting that Quell stole his chance to properly test the bridge. Thurin followed. When Yaz’s turn came she focused on ignoring the drop to either side, so reminiscent of the pit. She wondered if there was ever an end to “down” in this world that she had for all her life explored almost entirely on one level. Did everywhere you might drop to have another fall waiting, another pit that might plunge you into a wholly new life if you survived the landing?

  Quell’s hands received her almost possessively as she reached the end of the bridge. Thurin, beaten to her side by Quell, stepped back to encourage Petrick on. Yaz watched the
boy’s awkward progress; his speed wouldn’t save him if he lost his balance. It seemed odd to her that either faction in the conflict, the Tainted or the Broken, suffered the existence of the bridge. It wouldn’t take a couple of gerants with hammers long to bring it crashing down. Perhaps in its way the bridge was a symbol of hope for both groups. The hope that they would prevail and claim what lay on the far side. Destroying the bridge would be an irrevocable act, an admission of failure, a statement that neither side seemed prepared to make.

  * * *

  “SO THE PLAN is just to wander around and hope that we bump into Zeen?” Quell directed the barbed question at Thurin, as if coming here had been his idea.

  “I didn’t know we had a plan,” Thurin replied. “This is all madness. But we’re running from madness too.” He looked tired, as though sleep had evaded him for several nights, dark circles beneath his eyes.

  “We’re going to find someone eventually,” Yaz said. “And if it’s not Zeen then we either don’t show ourselves—”

  Petrick snorted. “We are carrying a light. Which we need. And the Tainted can see in the dark. They’ll see us long before we see them.” He set the point of his sword against the icy rock and rested his hands on the pommel. “I’ll tell you how this will go down. We’ll be advancing along and suddenly one or more of the Tainted will come howling at us out of the night. Others will hear them, and if we’re not out of there fast then we’ll have the whole lot on us. At that point being killed is the best we can hope for.”

  “What in the hells are we doing here then?” asked Kao.

  “It’s a good question.” Petrick twirled his sword on its point. “I just followed you. All I know is that Yaz wants her brother back and is scarily determined to do it. And since I just saw her turn Pome’s own personal priest-given hunter against him, she’s someone I want to stay close to. But marching straight in there is crazy. Unless Zeen happens to be the first of the Tainted to rush us we’ve got no chance.”