The Girl and the Stars
Thurin’s release of pent-up potential, though not directed her way, shuddered through Yaz like something primal, both shocking and thrilling, filling her with want. Above them the ice lit with an orange glow as his flame-work, unused for all the years of his life, launched those long-banked energies into the column of coal. Like Thurin the coal was itself a store of energy held inert for its whole existence and now able to release that heat in one glorious burst. Driven by Thurin’s talent the fire exploded up the column far faster than any natural spread.
“Run!” Yaz shouted before the first drop of water had even hit the ground. “Secure the supplies!”
The first instruction was for everyone. The second was for Thurin. Only someone with power over water could hope to stop their food and shelter washing away in the coming flood.
Even as she shouted, though, she could see Thurin drop, as if the release of his flame-work had hollowed him, leaving an empty skin to flop to the ground. It likely saved his life as a second spear scythed past him and another skewered the empty space where his head would have otherwise been.
The flood came so swiftly that few there would have had time to take hold of something fixed, let alone to start running. Yaz found herself swept along by a white wave of water, tumbling over and over, swiftly losing all sense of direction. She knew enough from fishing the Hot Sea not to scream or to try to draw breath.
Where the rolling beneath wild water turned into rolling to lift her face from cold wet stone she wasn’t sure. She was equally unsure how long had passed between that rapid, uncontrolled spinning and the effort-laden flop that brought her groaning to her side.
The flattened ruins of the city seemed unchanged save for the scores of pools and puddles reflecting the stars above them. A muted gurgling sounded from many quarters as the thirsty depths below drank down the deluge.
Everywhere the Broken lay scattered, Arka’s faction mixed with Pome’s, some beginning to lever themselves up onto their arms, others still lying dazed and sodden. The gerant ranks had been swept away, the individual warriors littered here and there. Pome’s hunter lay on its side, starting to scrabble for the purchase needed to right itself. Of its master there was no sign.
Water still torrented from the shaft but at a fraction of its original rate. The shaft’s mouth now gaped like a crater and chunks of ice lay all around, swept along with the meltwater as they broke from the ceiling.
Amid the crash of water hitting stone after its long drop, and the hunter’s clatter, and the groans of the Broken recovering themselves, there was another sound, more distant but chilling. A howling.
Yaz raised her head and without needing to gather her bearings let the bloodcurdling screams lead her gaze toward the long slope.
“Tainted!” She tried to yell but broke into a fit of coughing before shouting with more force, “The Tainted are coming!”
A ragged swarm of the Tainted were surging down the smooth stone of the slope, their numbers far in excess of Arka’s and Pome’s forces combined. A screaming, raging horde, some armed for war with spears, shields, and bone clubs, many empty-handed, carrying nothing but the furious desire to kill.
“We have to run.” Quell came to help Yaz to her feet, still shaking water from his hair.
Yaz glanced at the gaping hole in the ceiling with no cable hanging from it. At the Broken scattered in disarray, and at the massed insanity sweeping toward them. The cage hadn’t fallen, there was to be no rescue.
“There’s nowhere to run,” she said. “I’ve killed us all.”
36
THE FIRST OF the Broken to be reached by the lead runners of the Tainted were those that had been swept furthest by the flood. The lightest. Mainly the youngest, those the tribes would still call children, and the elderly.
Theus must have been watching from the heights of the slope, waiting to see how the conflict with Pome would resolve, waiting for the best time to strike, when the Broken were at their weakest. Now his minions swept over the most vulnerable of their foe, clubbing them into submission rather than killing them. Yaz saw skin hoods being pulled over faces, wires looped about wrists and drawn tight. The Tainted had a worse fate than death in store for those they captured and they were bent on captives where they could be taken without too much risk. Those who proved resistant to possession would be tortured for sport. Yaz had seen the gruesome evidence with her own eyes.
One of the most far-flung gerants rose before the charge, bearing her large square shield before her, and the advance broke around her, one Tainted bouncing off her war-board with a bone-crunching impact. They closed about her though, pulling her feet from out beneath her.
Pome’s hunter managed to right itself and went clanking toward the attack. Its master still lay hidden somewhere but he had clearly seen where the main threat now lay.
“Yaz!” Kao reached her side, dripping wet and desperate. “What are we going to do?”
Yaz opened her mouth but found no words. She didn’t know what they were going to do. The Tainted were sprinting toward them, just fifty yards away, grinning, howling, frantic, weapons raised. Yaz had nothing but her empty hands. Even her stars were gone.
“Yaz!” Kao repeated. Despite his fear he balled both fists and braced himself for the impact.
Yaz looked past what lay before her. It was hard to see the river that runs through all things with scores of maniacs charging straight at her, but she saw it, its bright waters flowing through the strange angles that lie behind the world. Even as she reached for the power she shuddered to think of the carnage to follow. She doubted it would even save her. The Tainted would leap over the shredded remains of their front ranks and come at her through the gore.
For a moment Yaz thought the noise she heard was some new horror rushing at her through the Tainted’s charge, or even that it came from the river itself. Within the space of two heartbeats the sound swelled behind her, a crashing, whooshing that drove a wind before it, and then ended with the loudest boom in the world.
The Tainted faltered but kept coming, forced on by their own momentum.
“Run!” Yaz grabbed Kao’s arm, hauling him around.
In the place where the coal had fallen a huge piece of ironwork now lay at an angle, partly supported by a cable that led off into the great hole funnelling up into the ceiling. The sudden melting of the shaft must have taken the priests by surprise or been seen as what it was, a cry for rescue, and led to them dropping rather than lowering the cage into which the Broken would load their scavenged iron.
The cage was a tube about two yards wide and six yards tall, large enough to fit a dozen people if they could cling at different heights on the inside without having fingers and toes crushed by the passing ice. Failing that then maybe five or six could cram in together at the bottom, but getting in would require climbing up the slanting outside, and once inside they would be helpless, exposed to any attack until the thing was eventually hauled back up into the ice.