The Girl and the Stars

“There’s very little here that we can pick up,” muttered Yaz. The chambers she had seen were echoingly empty.

“The Broken have been at this for generations,” Thurin said. “You have to go deep to find anything. Really deep. Some scavengers are gone for many days at a time.”

“Careful here,” Arka called, leading the way across a stone beam that bridged the ravine down whose side they had been working their way.

Even as Arka said it Yaz began to fall. She hadn’t even reached the beam but something snagged her foot and without it the rest of her started to tumble toward the yawning chasm.

“Got you.” Quina’s hand fastened around Yaz’s wrist. She didn’t seem to have bothered with all the usual business of moving the hand through the space between where it had been before and where it now gripped her. Her speed was a kind of magic. She braced herself and hauled on Yaz so that she swung back into the rock face.

“Oof!” Yaz pushed away from the rocks. “Thank you.”

A small smile broke out on Quina’s narrow face, as quick as the rest of her, then gone, but in that moment it lit her up, the pinched look vanishing, replaced by something unguarded and happy. “It’s nothing. Watch your feet.”

“But then I’ll walk into a wall.” Yaz grinned.

“Which will hurt less than falling into a hole!” Another flash of a smile and then Quina was herself again, moving on.

Yaz crossed the chasm, trying to ignore the dark pull of the fall to either side, and hurried on into the gaping chamber ahead. She paused to stare about. The space was nothing more than scarred grey walls joining at right angles, but she found herself snared by the idea that untold years ago the Missing themselves had walked here, spoken, lived, loved . . . if the Missing loved . . . and above them a city had towered, the sunlight falling on its people, the ice a distant threat . . .

“Yaz!” Kao shouted. “Come on!”

Yaz shook away remnants of the images that had filled her mind and hurried after the boy, last out of the room.

 

* * *

ARKA LED THEM on and on. Each echoingly empty chamber or dusty corridor led to another empty room or passage. As the dozens of chambers mounted through scores toward hundreds Yaz became increasingly aware that the place was a labyrinth and if she lost Arka she would never find her way back. Many of the chambers had three or more exits. Cave-ins blocked their advance at frequent turns, rubble piled to the ceiling. Everything looked much the same and Yaz had no idea how Arka could remember the way.

As if reading Yaz’s mind Arka drew their attention to the floor. “Don’t forget, these arrows will guide you out.” She scuffed away some dust with her foot.

Now that Yaz knew to look for them she could see the faint scratches.

“These ones are very old. They need redoing. The real danger though is deep down. If you reach an unexplored area and don’t make your marks, or you get chased into unknown corridors, then you might find that getting out again is . . . difficult.” Arka rubbed her scarred cheek. “I spent seventeen days lost in the deep city once. My food ran out after ten. I’d been a day and a half without water when I finally crawled up the long slope.”

Yaz nodded and made a special effort to stay close after that. The feeling of being followed had returned despite Arka’s assurance that Pome and the warriors with him would not dare to come against them in the city. The silence that had seemed so mystical in the cavern above felt oppressive in the dry emptiness of the undercity, swallowing every noise they made and giving nothing back just as the darkness took their light.

“It’s waiting,” Yaz murmered.

“What?” Thurin looked back at her.

“The whole city. It’s like it’s waiting for something. Holding its breath . . .”

The next chamber was domed, a change from the depressing regularity of right angles and flat surfaces. On the far wall three symbols glowed, each a yard tall. They reminded Yaz of the sigils that turned a star’s light to heat.

“We’ll see more of these as we go,” Arka said. “We don’t know their purpose.” She pointed to areas of textured colour spattering the stone around the symbols, patches of brownish yellow and pale blue-green. “That’s lichen. Another kind of plant, but not good to eat. It grows down here anywhere that there’s light.”

The drop-group moved over to inspect, and as Yaz drew closer the same forbidding that had opposed her at the gateposts flared, though with less force. She ground her teeth and stopped her advance, hoping that nobody would notice. The symbols though had grown brighter and Maya turned to stare at Yaz. “Are they shining because of you?”

Yaz forced a laugh and shook her head. She could see that where the wall was pitted the symbols persisted as if they were written through the thickness of the stone. “No.”

“Come closer then,” Quina said, running her fingers across the lines of the central symbol.

“I . . .” Yaz turned away and went to sit against the opposite wall. “I’ll just rest here.”

“They faded as you walked away,” Arka said, lifting her star toward Yaz. It too burned brighter as it approached her, underlining Arka’s point. “Can you read them?”

“Of course I can’t read them!” Yaz snapped. Then, forcing herself to calm: “I can’t read anything.” But she knew what the symbols said though. They told her to go. They told her she was not permitted here.

Arka stared without comment then led them from the chamber. The symbols flared as Yaz passed them and she felt that stab of pain, the compulsion to go back, but pushed on through.

They came to a great dusty space where the low ceiling rested on innumerable pillars. Here and there a shaft would vanish into the floor, large enough to swallow a boat and with no bottom to it. Other shafts led upwards, shrouded in darkness.

“What is that noise?” Yaz pressed her fingers to her ears but it made no difference; the sound was in her head, a discordant rhythm, faint but wild. “It’s like . . .” It was like the heartbeat of a star, only wrong. It seemed familiar somehow.

“Yaz?” Ahead of her Arka stopped and turned, the others bunching around her.

“Run.” Yaz wanted to say more, needed to say more, but that was the only word to escape her lips.

“Yaz?” Arka repeated, tilting her head.

“Run!” A shout now. “Hunter!”

The screech of metal on stone, growing louder, coming closer. Quina and Petrick were already running back. The hunter dropped from the nearest vertical shaft, scraping sparks from the walls then absorbing the impact of its landing on five articulated legs. A nightmare creature built from scraps such as the Broken hunted, iron plates, springs and coils, chains, wheels, and wires, its core a black fist from which a hot red light leaked, escaping through every chink in the monster’s armour.