The Girl and the Stars
Above them the yawning throat of the ice shaft loomed, fringed by dripping icicles. Bands of glowing stardust marbled the first twenty yards of shaft and above that all was darkness. Zeen reached Erris, who grabbed his wrist and lifted him to where he could set both hands gripping Kao’s leg.
Yaz met Kao’s despairing stare. “Hold on, just a little longer!”
Before Zeen was halfway done climbing Kao, Erris lifted Maya to pursue him. They both reached the cage together and hung from the bars, reliving Kao of some of his burden. Next, Erris began to climb up Kao.
By the time the cage entered the shaft Maya and Zeen had moved hand by hand to the edges of the cage bottom, still looking ready to fall at the slightest bump. It was Kao who fell though, dropping away with a despairing wail as Erris reached his neck. Quick as any hunska Erris shot a hand out to grab the cage bars even as the pair of them dropped. The whole cage jolted and Zeen cried out in fear. Yaz’s own scream died in her throat as she saw that Erris now had Kao’s thick wrist clasped in one hand while the other kept them both secured to the cage.
Maya managed to get herself from the bottom of the cage onto the side, holding to the bars with hands and feet while the walls of the ice shaft came closer and closer as they rose. She cut the bonds on Yaz’s wrists as she passed.
Gathering her strength Yaz moved the board stacks a little then helped Zeen with the transition to the side of the cage, making sure she had hold of him while he reached and strained.
Finally, with the dark now broken only by the red glow of the star Yaz had taken from Pome, Erris showed more of his inhuman strength by climbing the outside of the cage using only his hands while carrying Kao locked between his legs. At one point the ice wall came in close enough to touch them and Yaz feared both would be scraped away. But Erris held on and soon added himself and Kao to the crush inside the cage.
* * *
ICE WALLS SLID past with surprising speed, glistening in the red light. Yaz had dimmed the star to a glimmer to lessen its impact on the others. For quite some time Kao lay groaning, incapable of motion. Quell beside him made no sound but lay beaded with sweat, watching Yaz through eyes slitted with pain. Maya crouched against the bars, as far from the others as she could get. The darkness seemed to flow around her as the cage rose, making her indistinct in that strange shadow-work way. Zeen sat beside Yaz, as close as his tolerance for the star’s radiance would let him. He said nothing, only hunched around his worries. Alone of them Erris stood, untroubled by his exertions and showing no sign of the recent battle save for the rips and bloodstains across his tunic and trousers. Yaz noted that neither of these garments . . . the word “cloth” floated across her mind . . . were suitable for the surface. Though none of them, even in Ictha skins, would survive long in the wind, damp as they were.
“Well,” said Erris eventually. “We made it.”
“Thurin didn’t.” Yaz could hardly believe they had left him behind. The idea didn’t want to fit into her mind.
Erris inclined his head. “I’m sorry. Thurin proved himself brave and resourceful. Without him Zeen would not be with us.” He paused for a long moment then shook his head and managed a smile. “Still, even without one of our number you have accomplished great things here today, Yaz. Think of it. Your brother and two friends recovered from the heart of the black ice. Taken back from Theus himself. Six of us headed to the surface through a hole you helped put through two miles of ice. The Tainted freed from the horror that ruled them. Theus’s power broken!”
“And Pome’s,” Maya said. “You made the Broken whole and brought them peace.”
“Peace and food,” Kao said. “An entire whale! I never tried whale.”
“But Quell . . .” Yaz turned to him, still horrified by the hilt jutting from his side.
“They’re right, Yaz.” He managed a weak smile. “And you were right to ask me to drop that axe.” A glance toward the knife. “I’d rather this than living with the memory of children that I cut down to save myself.”
Yaz found her eyes blurry with tears and her throat too tight for reply. She shook her head and reached out for his hand.
They sat like that for a long time.
* * *
THE ICE WALLS seemed to slide by quickly in the crimson light but either that was an illusion due to proximity or the hole was deeper than even they had thought, because the first hour passed with no sign of daylight from above.
Yaz’s pain and exhaustion ebbed slowly. Strength crept back into her limbs. She began to realise that despite it all, despite the losses and setbacks, she had won. They had won. The Broken had won. It might even be possible to convince Regulator Kazik to set right what had gone wrong. Quell could be healed. Erris had said so.
And once on the ice they had both shelter and food to carry south with them. She touched the needle at her collar. If the journey proved too hard then, as a last resort, Elias Taproot was out there too and she could find him. Perhaps they would need his help, but she hoped not. She didn’t want to get drawn into his battle with Seus. The green world was a haven, a dream of peace. She wasn’t going there to make war.
“How long?” Kao raised his head from the boards. “Before we get there?”
Yaz looked up. She had seen only velvet blackness before but now it seemed that a single tiny star shone directly above her, a lone point of light in all that dark. “Is that . . . the sky?”
Even as she said it she thought of Thurin who had never in all his life seen the light of day.
39
WE NEED A plan,” Yaz said.
The faint point of light had become a distant circle of sky. Yaz knew they didn’t have too long before they were hauled out into the daylight like fish drawn from the sea in the regulator’s iron net. They had perhaps another half or quarter mile to go.
“Didn’t we have one already?” Kao asked.
Yaz scowled. “I planned on not arriving with all my powers spent, or Quell with a knife in his side, or without Thurin and his ice-work. Now we need something new or the priests will catch me and throw the rest of you back down the Pit of the Missing.”
“What do you suggest?” Erris asked. “The last time I saw the sky the place we’re going to was above the clouds. So assume I have no idea what to expect.”
Yaz pondered. “The element of surprise is supposed to be important when making war. Isn’t that what the Axit say, Maya?” She glanced around. “Maya?”
Suddenly they were all looking for the girl. “Maya?”
“I would say,” Erris commented dryly, “that Maya agrees with you.”
“But where could she be?” Yaz continued searching, arms outstretched as if the girl might have made herself invisible. “It’s a cage!”