“I’ve been astonished every day since I came down the pit.” Yaz shrugged.
Arka fixed her stare on Erris. “Are you one of the—”
“He’s not one of the Missing, no,” Yaz said. “But Theus is part of one. Several parts of one. And that’s where we’re going.”
Arka shook her head. “No. We’re going to secure the city. We’re making it our new base. If we deny Pome access to the iron then his power won’t last long.”
“You’re not worried about the hunters?” Erris asked.
“Always. But I’ve been worried about them for twenty years. And besides, we have Yaz now and something about that star behind her tells me she knows how to handle hunters.”
Yaz shook her head. “I’m going to get Thurin and Kao and my brother back from the Tainted.”
Arka blinked. “That’s insanity. Two of you? You need to come to the city with us.”
“I can’t.”
“I’m still your drop-leader, Yaz.” Arka’s face hardened. “We need to secure the city before the next collection. Once we have the trade goods from the next shipment we’ll start to regain control. Pome’s faction won’t do so well without fish and salt.”
“The next collection isn’t for twenty-three days,” Yaz said. “Erris and I will be coming to the city once we have the others. There’s time.”
Surprise overwrote the resolve on Arka’s muddy face at the mention of twenty-three days. “You don’t know as much as you think you do, girl. There’s going to be an unscheduled collection very soon. The coal-worms are on the move. That’s a sign.”
Yaz was about to ask how Arka knew what the coal-worms were doing when she became aware that Arka was no longer looking at her or even at the hunter’s star but at some spot to the left on the wall behind her. The ice seemed to be glowing from within but Yaz sensed no star.
“What is—”
A sudden cracking sound heralded a white explosion and the chamber vanished in a tumult of roaring, curiously warm water. Yaz had no time to grab hold of anything, just a brief impression of bodies tumbling amid crimson waters and then an impact with something hard that took the world away.
* * *
YAZ CAME TO her senses spluttering and coughing water from raw lungs. She found herself facedown in several inches of the stuff and felt as though she had choked the whole lot out from inside her chest. She quickly became aware of a savage heat and a fierce red light that was not her star. She turned her head to stare across the steaming waters still draining from the cavern. On the far side a creature writhed on the wet stone. A creature not unlike the seaworms that sometimes cling to whales, only this one was too wide for her to wrap her arms around, many yards long, its soft, segmented body a putrid grey streaked with black, and where a seaworm had a complex head of ugly mouthparts ringed with bone hooks, this creature had only a glowing mass the colour of a forge pot melt and twice as hot.
“Hsssst!”
The thing looked as groggy as she was, swaying its head back and forth across the water, sending up great clouds of steam each time it dipped too close to the surface. The ice above it was in full thaw, meltwaters raining down to vaporise on the worm’s glowing face.
Beyond the creature gaped the tunnel from which it had been ejected at speed by the pressure of meltwater behind it. Water was still pouring out, colder now and less ferocious.
“Hsssst!”
Yaz had thought the worm was making the noise but now she saw Erris lying against the ice wall opposite. He had tucked himself back in the channel made where the flow of warm water had cut into the base. He was waving for her to do the same. Yaz found she’d become snagged on some irregularity in the stone floor but managed to free herself and roll to the side just as the scorching head swung her way.
She huddled back into the ice channel and looked for the others, finding no sign. She guessed Arka and her friends had been swept away in the flood, and if they had any sense they’d keep on running. Judging by the height of the tunnel and what she had been told Yaz guessed that the specimen before her was a baby. It fuelled her resolve never to meet a full-grown coal-worm.
The creature seemed disoriented, perhaps surprised at having been flushed into a void within the ice, not so adept at sensing gaps as an adult. In any event, its head appeared to be cooling as its fright wore off, now glowing only a dull red, shading into black. In a series of disturbing undulations the worm flowed across the chamber and set its head to the ice wall opposite, slowly melting its way in while pushing the meltwater out with ripples that ran the length of it.
Yaz lay shivering and in the space of a few minutes the entire length of the worm vanished into the wall, leaving a tunnel from which water gushed in a continuous stream and would continue to do so, she guessed, until the worm started heading down again.
“Yaz! Are you alright?” Erris came hurrying across to her, the concern that had been absent when facing a spear now written across his face. “Nothing broken?”
“I’m not sure.” The words came through chattering teeth; she was as weak as the rest of her drop-group had been the day they arrived, shivering and dripping. Yaz had once believed that there was no such thing as cold water. By definition it wasn’t cold—it was molten ice. Ice would never melt inside an Ictha tent without flame. “I think so.”
Erris helped her up. Only the dim radiance of the walls lit the chamber now. “Where’s your star-stone?”
Yaz cocked her head, listening for the star’s heartbeat. “That way.” She pointed at the exit through which most of the water had drained.
They found the star lighting the tunnel joining the next chamber to the one beyond that. Whether Arka and the other two had been washed further way or had been unwilling to pass the star in the tunnel in order to return Yaz didn’t know, but they were gone now.
“Better hurry then.” She stooped to collect her star.
“You need to get dry.” Erris took a handful of her skins and made a fist. Water dribbled out between his fingers.
Yaz willed heat from her star, picturing the sigil on the forge pot. “I’m fine.”
“You’re still shivering.” Erris’s dark eyes held a warmth of their own.
“I’m fine.” She pulled away and broke into a gentle run. “We’ll get there faster like this and it’ll stop me being cold.”
28
YAZ AND ERRIS had hurried across the Broken’s territory from the long slope of the city and now approached the bridge over the chasm beyond which the stars vanished and the taint shaded the world into black. As they’d come closer to the Tainted’s caverns the familiar sense of menace had reasserted itself. The old malice waiting patiently for her return.
In all that time journeying from the city cavern they saw no one, heard nothing save the groaning and dripping of the ice. It brought home to Yaz how small the space they all had to live in was, and even so how thin on the ground they had grown. Eular had said she would be an agent of change, and he had been right, but she hadn’t wanted that change to end lives, ruin others, and destroy a fragile existence on the edge of what was possible.
Yaz realised that her fall had, against all the odds, taught her to hope again, to think for the first time that things might become better. The worst had already happened. The threat that had loomed over her life for years had finally come to pass, and the girl who had forgotten how to dream had, despite her conviction that it was selfish and more than she deserved, begun to hope for the future.
Now though, with darkness and despair literally reaching out to engulf her, she knew how cruel and fragile a thing hope is, and how sharp the edges of new-forged dreams can be once shattered.
“The ice is changing.” Erris ran his fingers over the greying walls as they approached the bridge.
“Careful.” Yaz moved to pull his hand away then stopped. “Can those things actually get under your s
kin? I mean, if it’s not real?”
Erris pursed his lips and looked at his wet fingertips. “My skin is real. It’s just not the same as yours. And the answer is that I’m really not sure.” He wiped his hand on his tunic, still wet from the flood. “I’ll avoid touching it.”
“The bridge is just along here.” Yaz led the way, her star’s red light glistening on the walls ahead of her. Everywhere she went the star seemed to bleach the ice, swiftly banishing the grey as though it were reluctant shadow.
The sound of the river reached them now, a muffled roar.
“Will they have guards?”
“I hope so. But they didn’t last time. It’s not a place you can sneak into without light, and if you have light they’ll see you coming.”
Yaz dimmed her star to almost nothing and advanced through the last dim chamber as quietly as she could. She set the star behind her and eased out onto the bare rock before the ravine. A slight warmth, rising from some unknown source, perhaps the river itself, had hollowed out a vaulted roof above the chasm and must be behind the slow disintegration of the bridge. The stars burned few and far between out here, just the occasional tiny point of light in the vast bulk of the ice. On the far side the walls shaded still further into grey and the light died entirely. A group of Tainted waited at the opposite end of the bridge, three adults and four children, two so small that Yaz thought they must have been among those the regulator threw down just before the Ictha arrived at the pit.
All seven were so dirty and shaggy haired that Yaz couldn’t tell which were male or female. Save by height she couldn’t tell young from old. They had descended into a kind of savagery that made them indistinguishable, a monolithic knot of rage and hate. The largest of them clutched a sword that could well be Petrick’s. Other than that they seemed unarmed. Yaz found herself very relieved not to see a spear among them. A hurled spear would bring her attempt at negotiation to a swift and unfortunate end. But the Tainted lived to capture, not to kill, and weapons seemed rare among their ranks.
Howls rang out as they saw her. They rushed forward together, careless of the bridge’s narrowness. One child almost tumbled into the depth but snagged an adult’s leg as it fell and hauled itself snarling back onto the ice. As they came Yaz backed along the edge of the ravine. She let her star rotate into view, increasing its radiance as it did so. The star’s unvoiced song reached out, seeking harmonies from the few points of light wavering through the ice. The Tainted lifted their arms to shield their eyes. Running feet faltered. Howls became hisses. Only the sword wielder staggered on, driven more by his own momentum than by any enduring desire.
The swordsman was alone by the time he passed the cavern mouth that Yaz had emerged from. Erris rose behind him, seizing both his arms. The man stood an inch or two taller than Erris and struggled with a wild, unhinged strength, but Erris held him as if controlling an unruly child, drawing him back into the cavern while Yaz retraced her steps.
Once in the cavern Yaz let the hunter’s star’s crimson light flood out, painting the man in Erris’s grasp in stark detail. Erris had taken him to a sitting position on the ground, squatting behind him, still holding his arms by the wrists.
The man was lean, close to the point of starvation like all the Tainted. A black stain covered and infected one eye, reaching down across his mouth and chin. Under the filth his hair was perhaps brown rather than the black it seemed, and he had the early Axit tattoos on his neck and wrists, indicating he had received his push relatively late. The design needled into his neck sat against a scarlet background, this one due to a second demon rather than more ink. He still held Petrick’s sword, though his grip had slackened beneath the pressure of Erris’s hand around his wrist.
As Yaz advanced, the man began to froth and howl, repeatedly ramming his head backwards in an attempt to hurt Erris while bucking like a landed fish to break free.
“I don’t know how to do this . . .” Yaz held the star before her while the man writhed. She needed to force the demons out of him without breaking his own personality into fragments. It felt like trying to clean dirt off someone’s face using only a lump hammer.
“I’m just the beautiful assistant,” Erris said, using a gap when the man was sucking in breath for more roaring. “You’re the magician.”
Yaz bit her lip and moved the star closer to the man’s head. A moment later he went rigid and began to have a fit, the froth about his mouth starting to colour with blood. Even as he frothed, the black and scarlet stains began to retreat, flowing down his neck. Moments later both had vanished beneath his rags.
“Stand him up, quickly.” Yaz stepped back.
Erris stood the man back on his feet, lifting him with an ease that made him look somehow pretend, as if the Tainted were made of rags and sticks rather than flesh and bone.
“Who are you?” Yaz sent her star away and stepped in close. Close enough for the man’s stench to hit her, and to see the lines of cleaner skin showing where the drool had cleaned his chin.
“I . . .” The man looked disoriented, as if waking from a long and dream-haunted sleep.
“Your name.”
“Etrix, of the Axit!” He glanced around, taking in the chamber then the hands holding his wrists, stretching out his arms. “Who are you?” A snarl reached his lips. “And where’s Tarko?”
Yaz could see the red stain starting to finger its way back up, already touching the man’s throat. “Listen to me, Etrix. You’ve been tainted. The demons will reclaim you soon. I don’t know how to drive them out yet. I’m sorry. But I need you to take a message to Theus for me. You know Theus?”
A shadow of memory crossed the man’s face, fear replacing fierceness. “Theus . . .” A nod.
“Tell him that Yaz of the Ictha is waiting for him at the bridge. I’ve come to fulfil the terms of our agreement.”
“Tell him yourself, bitch!” Suddenly the man was straining to sink his teeth into any part of her he could reach, the scarlet stain running up beneath his ear. “You’re going to die in these caves and I’m going to listen to your screaming.”
Yaz reached behind her and the red star thunked into her open hand. She brought it back toward Etrix’s head and his eyes rolled up until only whites showed. The scarlet stain sank back down his neck. Yaz reached out, tearing the man’s patchwork furs open across his chest. She shone an intense beam of starlight at the retreating anger demon, using the light to drive both it and the malice demon down across prominent ribs. It was like chasing a slippery fish across the ice, a fish that kept sliding free, trying to head off in unwanted directions. But she drove them past his belly before he started to bleed from the eyes.
“Let him go.” Yaz backed off.
Rather than just letting the man fall, Erris lowered him gently.
“What’s your name?” Yaz demanded.
“Etrix!” The man stayed on his hands and knees, spitting blood.
“And what are you going to do?” Yaz asked.
“I’m going to kill that stinking Theus!”
For a moment Yaz thought the rage had him again, but no, this was Axit pride. She saw it in his eyes as he struggled to his feet, shaking off Erris’s attempt to help.
“Tell him that Yaz of the Ictha is waiting for him at the bridge. I’ve come to fulfil the terms of our agreement.” Yaz brought the star a little closer, making the man wince but keeping the demons on the run. “The taint is going to claim you again but if you deliver my message I may be able to help you escape it.”
Etrix nodded. He’d clearly lived with the demons riding him long enough to know that they were still in him. “I’ll tell him. But then I’m going to kill him.” He stalked away from Erris, giving Yaz a wide berth.
At the opening leading out onto the ravine’s edge he turned, some conflict twitching on his cheeks. “Help us. Help the children. Help us or kill us.”
He
was gone, running into the gloom, before Yaz could respond.
* * *
YAZ PACED WHILE Erris crouched. Etrix had been gone some time and the Tainted were still gathering at the bridge, dozens now, though none dared to advance into the light of the hunter’s star. Yaz found herself longing for somewhere soft to sit, somewhere clean and dry and warm and comfortable. She had been cold and wet, hungry and thirsty for too long. Sleeping on hard floors or not at all. Her body ached for kindness and still all that stretched before her was more hardship, more fear, more fighting.
“I hadn’t thought it would be like this.” The first words Erris had spoken since Etrix ran off. “Children?”
“You didn’t know they threw children down the pit?” Yaz had been trying to avoid thinking about the little ones.
Erris frowned. “I didn’t see them in the city. And I didn’t know they were being . . . infected . . . like this. What sort of lives do they live in this place?”
“I don’t know what we can do about it,” Yaz said, feeling helpless. In a single sentence she had become one with those who threw them down the pit in the first place. But she really couldn’t see a way to help them. She didn’t even know if she could get Zeen, Thurin, and Kao free.
“What if Etrix does what he says and kills this Theus you’re trying to bargain with?”
Yaz went to the cavern mouth and peered at the crowd gathered across the chasm. She worried for Thurin if Etrix kept his promise. “I think if Theus were destroyed it might be even worse. From what I see he is the only one that holds them together. Without him they’d all be like Hetta.”
“Hetta?”
“They’d be running loose, just killing the Broken, maybe eating them too. Theus needs them to search the ice for demons that were once part of him. Without their fear of Theus, the Tainted would swarm the Broken within days. They have the numbers, and you’ve seen what they’re like.”
The Girl and the Stars Page 31