by Jamie Smith
“So?”
“There are a lot who say that, in the days of the old empire, when Ignata controlled the mountains, the ash geysers were commanded by magic. Some think that the frostslivers might be the thing we need to be great again. So they say we need more land and we need frostslivers. It’s a matter of survival.”
“If you say so,” the young soldier said. “Not sure I want a monster poking around in my head.”
“The officers may not give you much choice.”
Sabira’s attention, already rapt, focused in on that piece of information like a hawk. What were the Ignatians intending to do?
Apparently she was not the only one curious, as the young man asked, “Has anyone tried to bond with one?”
“They had someone try. Didn’t work out. I figure they must want to get an Aderasti to tell them how to do it without killing more of us.”
Sabira hoped that frostslivers could not be fooled into a bonding—but what if they could? If she were caught and forced to reveal what she knew about bonding, the Ignatians might have hundreds of bonded frostslivers at their command on top of their army.
As she lay on her ledge watching, Sabira’s will turned to iron. She needed that strength, for as the two men fell silent, eating their food, Sabira realized with a chill that the fate of Adranna had settled onto her shoulders.
FOLLOWING THE IGNATIANS felt less like a sensible plan with every hour, but Sabira could see no way around it. They were moving in the same direction, after all. Down into the mountain, tracking the course of the glacier.
WE CANNOT LOSE THEM.
The frostsliver kept telling her so, but Sabira knew it all too well. There was no escape from the constant tension. What if they discovered her? The man with the whip would brand her and probably kill her. She couldn’t think like that, she knew, but awful possibilities kept occurring to her. She concentrated on her feet and on not making a scrap of noise, moving only when she was sure that the Ignatians had moved on far enough for it to be safe.
The continuous concentration and fear began to take its toll as the minutes—or hours—dripped by, her path lit by the dim glacier light. Every time she caught a snatch of conversation, Sabira had to fight not to jump out of her skin.
“I’m freezing” was a common refrain, as were swear words and curses against Aderast. Through it all she remained a panicked shadow. Fortunately, the mountain granted them an easy path, the passages broadening and slanting gradually downhill.
“Well, guess we know which way we’re going,” said the young soldier, not far ahead.
“Now that I can agree with, conscript.”
Lifan. Sabira crept closer. If they were making a choice about which way to go, she needed to know what they decided. The group was standing at the end of a wide cavern peppered with a handful of tunnel mouths. Most of the passages were small and lit dull blue by clumps of luminous fungi. The one the Ignatians picked was wide, straight, and clear. The glacier was flowing out of it.
Sabira waited a spell until the sounds of the soldiers’ boots had faded, then ventured out. The passage they had chosen, lit brighter than the others by the frostfire, angled down slightly and didn’t seem to bend in the slightest.
She couldn’t follow, she realized. They’d spot her with a single glance back.
“Keep an eye out for those creatures. Don’t let any sneak up on us,” she heard the sergeant major say distantly. Well, that settled it.
“They’re following the glacier, and you can always lead us back to it, right?” Sabira silently said to the frostsliver.
PROBABLY.
That would have to do. She stepped down a tunnel that seemed to be heading in a similar direction, her path lit by blue fungal lights.
The tunnel split again and again, and Sabira feared she had walked into a maze. The frostsliver’s senses steered Sabira through the winding passages, eventually leading her to a flat rock wall. A dead end? No. There was a tiny hole in the base of the wall, barely wide enough for her shoulders. Nothing she had passed through had been so small, and the idea of fitting into it filled her with dread.
“Seriously?” she whispered. “Isn’t there another way?”
I THINK THIS IS THE ONLY WAY FORWARD. IT’S NOT LIKE I WANT TO RISK OUR LIVES.
She decided to face the challenge after getting a meal into her—her insides had been protesting for a while.
Sabira looked through her pack for something appetizing and found few choices. Her meat was mostly gone, and she had only one pastry left. It hadn’t come through its soaking well, and flopped wetly when she unwrapped it.
She ate it despite its condition, picking over the rest as she chewed. There would only be a day or so of food left. That might be stretched a bit further, but not much. If she got desperate, there were always the mysterious meat scraps that she had scavenged from the monastery ruins. Of course, even if they did not poison her, they were not much of a meal.
“I’ll probably be out of food before we get there,” she mused aloud, and with a pang realized that it would be the same for Mihnir. She pushed thoughts of her uncle away—she couldn’t help him, not until she got out. She was only barely getting by herself.
YOU ARE DOING AS WELL AS COULD BE EXPECTED.
It sounded almost impressed.
“If you say so,” she said, then washed her food down with the last of one of the water skeins before looking again at the evil hole in the base of the wall. It was waiting for her. Best to get it over with.
The space was only just large enough for her to fit into, with no guarantee that she would make it all the way through. There was no room to keep her pack on her back. Sabira took it off and tied it to her foot with a length of rope so she could pull it after her.
She ran her tongue across her lips, trying to think of a way to trick herself into believing that this would turn out well. Suddenly the light changed, shadows dancing toward her from where she had come.
HIDE! I SENSE THEM!
The frostsliver’s chime was a panicked alarm. Sabira whirled around, her heart racing—there was nowhere to hide.
Sabira almost wished that the frostfire would vanish, leaving her veiled in darkness. Then she wouldn’t be able to see the monsters, and more important, they would not be able to see her.
There were three of them at the mouth of her dead-end passage, and each turned inhumanly blank eyes toward Sabira, faces encased in living ice and softly glowing with menace. Yeti.
They were like the creature she had seen among the ruins, and this time she could be sure they were real. Each was vaguely the shape of a person, but that was the only similarity. The things had no necks but still towered at least three heads taller than Sabira, like cliffs of malevolent ice. Small icicle spikes jutted from their luminescent blue skin at random, making them look even bigger. The creatures’ feet and hands were oversized, even compared to the bulk of the rest of their bodies, and their bodies were misshapen, like clay figurines made by a mitten-wearing child.
These must have been the “creatures” that killed that soldier the young Ignatian had mentioned. What should she do?
WE HAVE TO GO!
She would run, but there was nowhere to go. One of the yeti moved toward her in a strange, shambling gait, giving Sabira no chance to think, no chance to do anything but feel sick terror rising in her throat.
There was no roar or bone-chilling scream as the creature stomped slowly down the narrow passage, but the heavy thuds of its ice feet were just as scary.
What did it want? To kill her? To eat her?
Sabira scrambled backward awkwardly, fumbling across the stone and doing everything she could to buy more distance from the creature as it awkwardly stomped toward her. It was no use—the thing had her trapped.
Sabira felt the frostsliver slithering down her arm, but knew that not even its magic could help her. She held up her hands in a feeble defense as the yeti came at her, its paw raised, and saw the frostsliver flow through her glov
e, expanding into a thin, icy shield.
It wouldn’t be enough. It couldn’t be. However strong a frostsliver might be, that thing looked like it could smash through solid rock. Sabira braced herself for an impact—but impossibly, the yeti was slowing down. Stopping. Sabira peered at it, heart thundering, as it looked at the shield curiously, examining it.
A memory came to her of how her mother dealt with dangerous animals, making noise and waving arms in an attempt to confuse them.
SABIRA, I DON’T THINK …
“Get away!” Sabira yelled. “Get back! I mean it!”
It was ridiculous—but the yeti’s paw snapped back as if it had been burned. Astonished, Sabira didn’t know how to react. All she could do was stare with wide eyes and wait for the creature to overcome its surprise and strike. The blow did not come.
She wondered for an instant if the creature really had been scared off by the appearance of strength, but the yeti hadn’t quite backed off—it had just stopped reaching out.
“Please,” she begged. “Just leave me be.”
The giant creature retreated a step or two. It stood motionless, its blank face staring at her.
Sabira sensed something in that look—she couldn’t say what, but there was more meaning there than an animal could normally share. She seized upon the thing’s confusion, or whatever else had come upon it, knowing that there might be no other chance to make her escape.
Turning, she pulled in the frostsliver shield and dove arms first into the hole, wriggling into the tight space as fast as possible. Too late she had the horrifying thought that the yeti might pull her back by the rope binding her pack to her leg. She pushed forward frantically, hoping the creature wasn’t that smart.
PUSH! PUSH! YOU CAN DO THIS!
The space was like an animal’s gullet, and she the willing prey heading into its belly. It was far too small to turn around in, and the slight downward curve made it impossible to do anything but crawl slowly onward. She couldn’t go back, even if she wanted to.
As her mind touched that last dreaded thought, her glove touched something much worse. Heart leaping into her mouth, Sabira swept her arm back and forth.
Freezing water was everywhere, filling the tiny tunnel, and there was nowhere to go except into it headfirst. She reached in with an arm, desperately praying to feel dry stone on the other side, and finding none. That was almost enough to break her, but for the fact that her hand could feel the tunnel sloping gently upward. That had to mean that there would be air soon after, didn’t it?
WE MUST GO ON. YOU CAN GET US THROUGH.
Curse the frostsliver’s cold logic. Slowly, she sank into the water. Arms, then head, neck, shoulders, waist, and finally legs, before she was fully immersed and pushing past the bend. Every instinct in her pushed Sabira to fight her way clear, though she could do nothing besides painstakingly drag herself, the frostsliver whispering in her mind, A LITTLE FARTHER.
She fully rounded the bottom. She was not yet clear of the water. The slope up was slight, and the way out seemed infinitely longer than the way in. The air inside her already felt stale, and with no end in sight through the dark water, Sabira began to panic. She was going to drown here, her body never to be found.
Then she felt her hand splash out into air, and a flicker of hope cut in. She pushed forward, but too fast. Her body jammed at a particularly tight point and, eyes bulging, Sabira screamed inside her head. She fought and struggled, her seconds ticking away.
With one last wrench, her shoulders dislodged in a moment of sweet pain, and she was moving again. She cracked her head on the roof in her hurry and bubbles escaped her mouth, the awful sensation of water rushing to replace them.
Then her face was above the water, her head spinning with dizziness. What did that matter, though, when delicious air was hers once again? It turned out to matter a little, as she crawled out of the terrible trap and began to recover from the thrill of escaping death. Her lungs were on fire, and her eyes were not much better. Water had gotten into everything it shouldn’t, and her body was bumped and bruised.
Gasping and spluttering water between breaths, Sabira curled into a ball on the floor, her drenched clothing dripping onto the stone.
WE CANNOT STAY LIKE THIS.
She knew it but resented being told so.
Reluctantly, Sabira sat up and pulled the pack through the narrow passage, glaring at it as it popped up above water, jealous of how easy its trip had been. She pulled it onto dry ground and started to untie the bag, interrupted by a fit of coughing that brought up more water. Somewhere toward the end, the coughs turned to sobs, and she had to fight the instinct to cry. The frostsliver stayed silent as she beat her emotions into submission. What could it say, when every hour down here seemed more hopeless, with something worse in store for her? Sabira tried to remember that each one brought her closer to Adranna. To home. But it was hard.
She laid out her furs to dry, shivering as the frostsliver again spread across her skin to keep her warm. It wasn’t working very well.
OUR BONDING DID NOT GO AS WELL AS IT COULD HAVE. MY ABILITIES WERE STRONGER WITH TSERAH.
That did not make Sabira feel better. In fact, she could feel everything welling up inside. The stress, the fear, the fatigue overflowed, and the strength leaked from her limbs.
She rubbed at her face and eyes, trying to clear the panic and terror from her system. Every time something else happened it seemed to burrow further into her. Would it ever leave, even if she made it home?
Sabira felt in her pocket for the ash-cat talisman, and found to her dismay that it wasn’t there. She ran her eyes across the ground. Nothing. She must have lost it in the water—or maybe even before. It was gone, and with it her only memento of her brother.
Slumping to one side, her shoulder meeting the cave wall, Sabira whispered, “I can’t keep doing this.”
It was all too much. She slid to the floor, giving in to the pull of her feelings.
YOU CAN.
“Something will get me in the end. I can’t keep being lucky.”
The agony was in the expectation. Sabira knew that it was coming, just not how. Would it be a fall? A monster? Shot by a soldier? Perhaps madness would take her, if she were stuck in the dark long enough.
WE’VE COME THIS FAR. FARTHER THAN I COULD’VE BELIEVED.
“Maybe I deserve this place,” she said quietly.
She felt a cold anger wash over her through the bond. The frostsliver wanted her to know that it opposed that idea. To drive the point home, it added aloud, TSERAH CHOSE YOU. YOU ARE STRONG.
Sabira didn’t answer.
GET UP.
The frostsliver’s patience was fraying. Sabira didn’t move.
GET UP NOW! I WILL LET YOU HAVE NO PEACE UNTIL YOU DO.
Really?
UP! UP! UP! UP! UP!
“All right!”
Sabira found herself on her feet, emotions confused. Her despair was edged with anger now, at the frostsliver, at the mountain, at her own weakness. Though she was still tired and cold, her freezing up seemed somehow silly. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to cry or scream, and the war between the two meant that neither came.
Slowly, all of it faded to a dull ache.
I’M SORRY.
“No,” Sabira replied. “I’m sorry I needed it.”
That didn’t mean that everything was all right. She had needed to escape that emotional hole, but physically Sabira was drained. She was ready to collapse and would have if the idea hadn’t felt like failure. Then she looked up and saw frostfire glowing nearby, subtle but clear on the stone.
Sabira grabbed her things and stumbled around the corner into a wide passageway, where the glacier greeted her with its blue glow. She noticed again how it seemed brighter down here than on the surface, purer almost—like the dance of actual firelight. There was not an Ignatian in sight. Her path had been twisty and this passage was direct. Perhaps they had already gone past.
She almost
didn’t care one way or the other. She was safe again—for the moment.
SABIRA!
The jolt of alarm through the bond shot Sabira to alertness. The frostsliver had heard something through her ears—the soft tramp of feet.
The Ignatians had not gone past.
They were coming now.
SABIRA DUCKED INTO the side passage, and not a moment too soon.
Lantern light illuminated the area, and Sabira stayed very still as the booted footsteps approached closer and closer. As the light brightened, it became more difficult to control her quickening pulse.
She couldn’t get away—the only retreat was back through the drowning hole to the yeti, and even Ignatians didn’t seem worse than that. Couldn’t they hurry up and go past?
“Halt!”
Lifan’s shout, steps away from her hiding place, was loud enough to make Sabira jump. She held her breath as she heard the rest gather next to their leader.
“Are you sure this is right?” the sergeant major demanded. “I don’t like it. Keep seeing shadows—and there isn’t any sign of the regiment.”
“They’re probably still a day ahead of us,” the young soldier who had been navigating said. “And, yes, I’m sure.”
“How?” his superior demanded.
“All we have to do is follow the glacier down to the correct altitude, which is what the regiment was doing, and it’s been getting easier the farther we go. Anyone with a mind can see that.”
Sabira could have told him not to say that, but from the sound of pain he let out, the soldier had already discovered it for himself.
“I’m about done with you, conscript. It’s time you learned a lesson,” Lifan announced. “We’ll go ahead, and you can find your own way back to Ignata. Let’s see how confident you are then. I don’t want to see your face again before we get back—if you get back. Maybe if you can manage that, I’ll forget about giving you another lick of the branding lash. Maybe. Or maybe the yeti will eat you, we’ll see.”
None of the other Ignatians argued, not even the older man who had sat with the conscript before. Sabira listened as they moved off, and awhile later the steps of the younger soldier followed at a slow trudge. An idea came to Sabira, a terrible one that she saw no way around. She needed to know what the Ignatians knew, exactly what they planned, and here was one alone and as vulnerable as anyone holding a musket could be.