Holy Sister

by Mark Lawrence

  “The Corridor will close and we’ll all die,” Nona said.

  “Most will.” Tarkax nodded. “But even if just one in every ten makes it to the ice, and if just one in every hundred of those makes it to the hot seas that are all that will be left to sustain us . . . they will outnumber the tribes.”

  Nona blinked and discovered that frost had begun to form on her eyelashes. She had known the ice-tribes were few in number, especially those that spent their time in the deep ice rather than hunting the Corridor seas and the beasts that lived in the margins. It had never occurred to her quite how few they might be. “So what is it you plan to do?”

  Tarkax shrugged. “Being prepared and forewarned is a plan in itself. But there are those among us who think that the Corridor can be saved, at least for a while longer. A few centuries perhaps. Zole has been gathering information. There’s no treachery intended. We want to help you and, by doing so, to help ourselves.”

  “How?” Nona narrowed her eyes at the warrior. For years she’d imagined him to be some wandering mercenary. It took an effort of imagination to refashion him as Zole’s uncle, watching over his niece and hoping to save all the nations of Abeth.

  “Ah, well that is the tricky part.” He twisted a smile. “We didn’t send Zole just to watch you.”

  “You sent me because I needed to learn more than the ice-speakers could teach,” Zole said.

  “We did.” Tarkax nodded. “You may have noticed, Nona, that my brother’s daughter is an exceptional child. Our tribe has access to two Old Stones and no member of our people has ever held both and been fully purged. Not before Zole. And still she has not ascended. The ice-speakers now say that it will take four Old Stones, one attuned to each of the bloods, to forge her fully.” He glanced at the hand Zole had just unwrapped. In the wind’s bite her flesh looked paler than Nona had ever seen it, but across her palm a scarlet stain spread like oil on water. “And now she has exposed herself to a third.”

  Nona shuddered, and not just from the cold. “And if Zole does ‘ascend,’ so what? Will it stop the ice from closing on us?”

  “We are also interested in your emperor’s Ark, Nona.”

  “Because it can control the moon?” Nona shook her head. “You thought Zole could open it? But surely the Argatha prophecy was just nonsense, made up for local politics, to entertain the people.”

  “The Ark can guide the moon.” Tarkax glanced around at his fellows as if they too might need convincing.

  “If that were really true, why would the emperor, and his father, and his father’s mother before him, all have banned the books that say it, and made criminals of anyone trying to find a way? If shiphearts were the key to the Ark, why would they still lie scattered? Wouldn’t generations of emperors have been trying to bring them to Verity? I know Sherzal and Adoma seem to think it’s true, but that doesn’t mean it is. Or even that they really believe it.”

  “Your emperors tried many ways to open their Ark, Nona, for hundreds of years. But do you know the most important thing that they discovered?”

  Nona kept silent and waited for Tarkax to answer his own question.

  “They discovered that when you hold a treasure of incalculable value and potential, having it closed to you and beyond use is not the worst thing that can happen. The most dangerous thing that can happen is for someone else to discover, or even just believe that they have discovered, the means to open and use it. Such individuals will gather strength to themselves and seek to take your treasure from you.”

  Nona frowned. Zole had wrapped her hand once more and stood silent. “So . . . what are you going to do now?”

  “We’re going to send you home, Nona.” Tarkax grinned, then raised his sealskin mask as the wind strengthened. “There are two marvels that will allow it. The first marvel is a work of the Missing. The second marvel is that it is close enough to reach in a day.”

  * * *

  • • •

  NONA TRUDGED AT the back of the group, her mind racing. Zole walked beside her.

  “You were spying on us? Sweet Mercy took you in! The abbess gave you her protection!”

  “Has Tarkax not taken you in and given you his protection?” Zole asked. “Are you not gathering all the information you can and preparing to share it with Abbess Glass on your return? Does the convent not exist in part to train spies?”

  Nona opened then closed her mouth. They walked without speaking for several hours after that. Nona watched the other ice-tribers, trudging with bowed heads to either side of them, three men, two women, and Tarkax, all so swaddled in skins and furs that they resembled great forest bears. Two of them dragged a long, heavily laden sled behind them, sliding along on wooden runners. Nona wondered what the tribes of the deep ice, thousands of miles from the Corridor, built their sleds from. The bones of leviathans hauled from the sea perhaps.

  “Where are we going?” Nona had really wanted to ask whether they were nearly there yet. Her feet were strangers to her and she wondered whether her toes would have to be cut away when they thawed.

  “To the place from where the black ice flows,” Zole said.

  “Why?” Nona had really wanted to say that she didn’t want to go there and that she would rather scale the Grampains naked in an ice-wind.

  “Because there is a wonder buried in that place.”

  Nona could have asked what the wonder was, but without that mystery to draw her further she felt her legs would just abandon their duty and leave the task of getting her there to her arms.

  * * *

  • • •

  IT TOOK THEM until nightfall to reach the long dark streak in the ice and follow it to where it grew darker still and finally turned black before abruptly giving way to white once more. Nona knew from her view while crossing the mountains that the stain looked like a great teardrop from above, the long tail of it running to the Corridor wall miles north of them.

  Zole took over the lead as the light failed, the darkness being nothing to her eyes. She halted them in a place where the malice from below was still only a whisper.

  “You and I will go alone, Nona. We should be swift.”

  Tarkax and the others huddled as close as they could come to the shipheart and formed a barrier against the wind. Tarkax lowered his frosty mask, revealing a grin. “Be strong, niece. And you too, Nona Grey. Be fierce and true, like I am.” He struck his chest with his gloved fist. “Zole is the hope of our people, but there is a hero in you too, girl. I have seen her.”

  Nona couldn’t help but grin back, though her face ached with the cold. She liked Tarkax despite his boasting. She nodded and made a short bow to the ice-tribers. “May the wind be at your backs.” Sister Rule taught that this was a common blessing on the ice.

  “Hah!” Tarkax showed all his teeth in a broad smile. “War is coming, little Nona. Wars are always coming. You give them hell! Remember that anger. You’ll need it!” And with that he covered his face and walked away, the others following.

  Zole and Nona watched them go, standing in silence while the wind moaned around them. When the swirl of ice at last swallowed Tarkax and his people from view, the ice felt a very lonely place indeed.

  Nona turned to gaze out across the wasteland where their path would take them. Here and there a crimson star stood reflected in the smoothness of the ice. Before her, though, there were no stars, only a consuming black void. “If the focus comes while we’re down there we’ll both drown!”

  “There is no focus here, Nona. We are in my home now.” Zole walked out into the darkness. A moment later she took the shipheart from her pack and Nona followed its alien light.

  “Walk where I walk,” Zole said. “The ice is rotten in places.”

  Nona moved closer, gritting her teeth against the invisible, cold fire of the shipheart. She had always imagined the things to be blazing sources of heat and right now she
would love for that to be true. In reality the convent pipes bore sigils where they had passed through the shipheart’s vault and it had been those specially crafted sigils that had converted the radiance into something as commonplace as warmth. If she had the skill Nona would have drawn such sigils on both her boots there and then.

  The malice radiating from below grew as the ice darkened around them. It reached her even through the shipheart’s radiance and Nona knew it to be far fiercer than she had experienced before. This was the source, the place where the evils the Missing had purged to obtain their so-called divinity now leaked back into the world.

  “Here.” Zole halted in front of a fissure disturbingly similar to the one into which she had fallen during her fight with Yisht. “We go down here.”

  “Shouldn’t we fix a rope or something?” Nona had seen that Tarkax’s companions carried iron spikes, hammers, and long thin ropes of woven sinew. “We should have asked—”

  “Their ropes were not long enough.” Zole pulled a coil of the stuff from beneath her coat. “Neither is mine.”

  “If we tied them together we’d have hundreds of—”

  “We are going to the bottom. It is more than two miles.”

  “Oh.” Nona felt for her knives, then remembered that she had left them under the ice. “What’s the rope for, then?”

  “To tie you to my back. It will be a difficult climb.”

  * * *

  • • •

  AS USUAL, WHEN Zole said “difficult” she meant “impossible.” And as usual she managed anyway. Nona clung to Zole’s back, seeing nothing but Zole’s arms and glimmers where occasional flaws in the ice returned a fraction of the shipheart’s light. Zole had secured her pack across her front, with the shipheart inside and the flap left open to let the glow escape for Nona’s benefit. Despite being tied to Zole, Nona clung on grimly. She became thankful for the rope later after hundreds of yards of descent. Her arms were aching and her mind too fragile this close to the shipheart to worry about whether her hands kept tight hold. Zole made steady progress. Her strength was inhuman and she compelled holds out of the ice as it suited her.

  While Zole climbed Nona heard nothing but the sound of her breath and of the ice splintering to answer her needs. Each time Zole rested, a new set of sounds became apparent. A constant groaning, a creaking, sometimes bright and almost metallic, sometimes so deep that Nona felt it only in her chest. The slow river of the ice, flowing endlessly towards the Corridor.

  “There’s hardly any dripping here.”

  “No.”

  “Why is this hole here, then?”

  “There is a source of heat below. Only a little above freezing, but just enough to keep this path open.”

  Zole resumed their descent. The shaft was not vertical but slanted with the flow of the ice. Half a dozen times they passed older shafts that had once served as vents but had been drawn too far by the glacier, forcing the heat to create a new escape.

  Time lost meaning: repetition stole it away.

  When Zole finally dropped a foot or so and landed on raw rock, Nona started with shock as if waking from a dream.

  “Where are we?”

  “A temple of the Missing once stood here.” Zole untied the rope that bound Nona to her. Nona staggered back, almost tripping on the uneven floor, her limbs unresponsive, chest aching.

  They had descended the wall of a low-roofed ice-cavern with a floor of bare stone. Where the rock lifted it lay scored all across with parallel lines, wounds gouged by the slow passage of glaciers.

  Nona took several more steps back, eager to put some distance between herself and the shipheart.

  “Stay close.” Zole reached out to restrain her. “The klaulathu here are many and they are strong.”

  “So, where is this marvel?” Nona looked around and saw nothing but the dark. The klaulathu’s hatred needled out at her, ancient and hungry.

  “Here,” Zole said. “Where else would it be but beneath the passage its heat has wrought?”

  Nona turned and saw what Zole was pointing at. A huge ring lying where the rock dipped. It was three yards across, its perimeter a foot thick and two feet wide. The flat surface had been marked with sigils unlike any Nona had ever seen. Their fierce potential screamed into her eyes, twisting the world around them.

  The ring wasn’t bedded in the ground. In places Nona could have slipped an arm between the peculiar crystalline metal and the bedrock beneath.

  “I think . . .” Nona stepped closer to the artefact, unable to look away, her gaze anchored by the sigils. “Have I seen this before?”

  “I do not know. Have you been to the emperor’s palace?”

  “No.” Of course she hadn’t been to the palace. She was Nona Grey. A peasant child.

  “That is unfortunate. If you had seen that one, then it would have marked you and helped draw you to it. It is unlikely that you have seen another. Although the ice-speakers say that the Missing fashioned one thousand and twenty-four of them and set each within an Ark.”

  Nona stood beside the ring now, her hand extended towards it, fingers tingling with the desire to touch the water-beaded metal. “What does it do?”

  “It will take you to another such ring. As if you had simply stepped between them.” Zole joined her and the shipheart’s pressure started the voices chattering again, down in the depths of Nona’s own darkness. “Sherzal showed me a drawing of another such ring that stands in her brother’s palace. It lies within the Ark but not within the inner sanctum.”

  “You want us to go to Crucical’s palace?” Nona raised her eyebrows at the thought of the reception they would get.

  “No.” Zole gestured for Nona to step into the circle. “I want you to go there.”

  “But . . . me? Alone?” Nona shook her head at the madness. “You’re coming too.”

  “No.”

  “But . . . what would you do here?” Nona waved an arm at the cavern. “This is crazy.”

  “There are things I need to do on the ice.” Zole met Nona’s stare. Her face, lit from beneath with violet light, was free of emotion.

  “Things?” Nona shook her head. “No! You belong at Sweet Mercy with us. With your sisters. With me.”

  “I would like to go with you, Nona Grey.”

  “Well, come on then!”

  “But I cannot. I made a promise.”

  Nona reached for Zole’s hand. “Break it.” She stepped backwards into the ring, hauling on Zole’s arm to bring the girl with her. Zole resisted, bracing a foot against the outside of the ring.

  “I cannot.”

  Nona released Zole’s arm and took a step back. “It doesn’t matter!” A bitter laugh burst from her. “It doesn’t work.” She laughed again, amazed at herself for ever believing that it would. A ring that could spit a person hundreds of miles across the world!

  “It requires the power of an Old Stone.” Zole lifted the shipheart. “You must carry it through with you.”

  “And leave you in this place! At the bottom of a hole two miles deep? Now I know you’re crazy. The shipheart has broken your mind.”

  “You must focus on the distance and direction that you wish to travel.” Zole carried on as if Nona hadn’t spoken. “It is that direction.” She pointed. “Otherwise there is a possibility you will emerge from another more distant ring.”

  “Zole! Come home with me.” Nona’s voice caught in her throat. The hardships of the journey, and being constantly caught between the mind-tearing power of the shipheart on one side, the invading malice of the klaulathu on the other, had left her weak, awash with broken emotion.

  “I want to,” Zole said, her voice low.

  “Who did you promise?” Nona took another step back. An idea blossomed within her skull repeated by voices that were hers and yet not hers. “Yisht was there to steal the shipheart . .
. She was from your tribe!” Nona had seen it when she saw Zole and Tarkax together with their companions, but she hadn’t understood it, not until this moment. They all had the same look. “Yisht was from your tribe . . . neither of you was working for Sherzal. Not really. You were both working for the tribe. To open the Ark whichever way you could!” Nona stopped dead and tilted her head, staring at Zole as if she could tear the truth from her with the power of her will. “Hessa? Hessa was a price worth paying?”

  “I never intended for—”

  An awful conviction seized Nona and in that moment she didn’t care whether it sprang from reason or from the devils of the Missing. “Who is Yisht to you? Cousin? Older sister? Mother . . .”

  “I—”

  “Whose promise is it that’s keeping you here?” Nona was shouting. What dark vow would have Zole remain in this unholy place and see her scale two miles of black ice to begin a trek into the terrible wilderness above? “Whose promise?”

  “I cannot say—”

  “Whose promise, sister?” Nona put every ounce of her marjal skill behind the question to compel an answer, an effort so fierce that it even quieted the strange voices in her mind.

  “Abbess Glass. I promised Abbess Glass.”

  And with that Zole threw the shipheart at Nona, hard, fast, straight, and true. All around her the ring’s sigils lit with an ancient light. And Nona was falling, and though she clung to the moment she couldn’t save herself.

  * * *

  • • •

  WITHOUT THE PASSAGE of enough time for her heart to take a beat Nona stumbled through a freestanding metal ring. She stepped into a limestone cave, with the shipheart dropping from the hand she had used to ward it away. On every side the air was filled with broken flowstone, fragments tumbling lazily away, blasted from the ring that they had coated. And for the first time in an age Nona knew exactly where she was.

  22