The Girl and the Stars

by Mark Lawrence

  “Thank you.” Yaz begins to walk. She looks only forward, eyes on the blackness amid the tangled bracken. Grim steps, teeth gritted against the need to look around. If she does that, if she looks again . . . how will she leave? Birdsong fills her ears. She knows the skylark dropping its notes in a silver chain, warblers and fifinch peppering the air with heartbreak. Still she walks.

  “Be careful of Theus. He is so much more than he seems. And so much less.”

  Theus, ruler of the Tainted, and perhaps even of the taint itself. She’s scared of what lies ahead. Scared of finding him in her path. She would be stupid not to be. But if this Theus stands between her and her brother then he should worry too.

  “Wait!” Erris calls. Then softer, “Wait?”

  Yaz nearly turns but the blackness before her is diminishing, burning away in the day’s heat. Now or never. She has to leave.

  She is walking into the dark’s margins now. It rises to greet her. A cold mist promising nothing good. The chill sinks into her bones in nothing flat. Already she’s shivering. The sky above her is a cold whiteness now and a dark stain spreads across it like the claws of a reaching hand. Seus has come bringing another war, a greater one that lies beyond her understanding. But one thing she does know is that she wants no part of it, any more than she wants any part of the Broken’s war.

  “Run, Yaz!” Erris’s voice, distant and panicked. “Run and don’t look b—”

  But Erris is gone. There is only darkness and freezing air and hard stone biting through the thin furs beneath her cheek.

  21

  YAZ! WAKE UP!”

  Someone was shaking her. “Thurin?”

  “You have to get up now.” Thurin gripped her arm and hauled her to a sitting position. “Pome’s coming.”

  “Pome?” Sleep cluttered her mind, fragments of her fading dream still fluttered through. Was this it: the final battle? The cave was small, crowded, lit by a few small stars on high ledges. Everyone else was on their feet, some readying weapons. Others were already leaving, filing out onto the narrow path leading up the side of the ravine. “Pome?” she repeated, still searching for focus.

  “Yes, Pome. Mean little man with an uncanny ability to get gerants to do what he wants them to.”

  “All except Jerrig.” Yaz shook the image of the fallen harvester from her mind. What would he have made of trees and grass and all that tangle of living things? “Why? Why is Pome coming?” She knew what Pome wanted: power, all of it. He was more than ready to kill for it. But those around her lacked the urgency that an attack would bring.

  The cave was emptying quickly. Maya and Quina were there too now, standing beside Thurin.

  “They’re saying he’s come to talk. Arka is meeting him in the Icicle Cavern.”

  Yaz got to her feet. She still felt tired, bruised from the floor, and cold. “Where’s Quell?” It should have been her first question. He had come by himself to save her.

  “He’s in Arka’s council of war,” Thurin said.

  “War? I thought you said Pome had come to talk.”

  “No, I said that’s what he said he’s come to do.”

  “And why aren’t you at this council?”

  Thurin gave a wry smile. “They don’t trust me yet.”

  Yaz frowned. “Come to think of it if Quell is there why aren’t all of the drop-group? He came here after we did!”

  Thurin shook his head. “He’s an adult. You’re all children. And besides, he knocked one of our handful of grown gerants on his arse, and that counts for something . . . apparently.”

  Thurin made to leave but Yaz reached for his arm, holding him back.

  “This is madness, this fighting. Arka said the Broken were already losing ground to the Tainted and now you’re killing each other.” She hunted his eyes. “You can’t not see that?”

  “So we should let Pome have his way? Let him rule us like a king from the stories? That will be his reward for killing a good man? And make no mistake, Tarko was a good man.”

  “Yes,” Yaz said simply. “If that’s what it takes, then yes. What else is there? Do you think Pome has come to talk so Arka can convince him of the error of his ways? He’s here to negotiate your surrender.”

  Maya and Quina looked to Thurin for his answer. He had known these people all his life.

  “Gods damn it!” Thurin pulled free of her grasp, fists balled. “That can’t be the only choice.”

  “It’s the only sane one,” Yaz said. “Unless . . .” She waited until all three of them had their eyes on her. “Unless you come with me and Quell to rescue my brother.”

  “How will that help?” Thurin let out a frustrated breath.

  “Because once we’ve got the taint out of him we’re escaping. Going back to the ice.”

  A snort then a sigh. “Even if that were possible. Which it isn’t. And even if you stood a chance against the Tainted. Which you don’t. And even if you could get the taint out of your brother. Which you can’t. It would still be an insane plan because THE ICE WILL KILL YOU.”

  Yaz opened her mouth but found no reply on her tongue. Before she had worked her will to destroy the hunter a part of her could still believe that she might survive up there. Could believe that the claim that saw the regulator throw her brother into the Pit of the Missing was a lie. Though even before her change it was only a small part of her that had believed all this to be a lie. The idea that so many people would do such harm on the basis of an easily disproved untruth was a stretch. But she had needed very much to believe that she and Zeen could return.

  Now, however, with the cold nipping at her heels even here far from the wind’s teeth, she knew it for a cruel truth. None of them could live their old lives again.

  “I . . .” She felt the weight of their gaze upon her. Quina, Maya, and now Kao lurking at the doorway, they wanted her to have an answer. It came to her in a sudden vision, trees reaching for a warm sky. “We go south, always south, and find the gods’ belt.”

  “You said that was a myth,” Kao rumbled from the exit.

  “You’ll want us to search for Zin and Mokka next.” Maya squeaked a pained laugh. Even the youngest of them, a child, was no more able to believe in Yaz than in tales of the first man and first woman.

  “My clan journeyed north for a month to reach the pit,” Quina said. “The ice goes on forever and it is scarcely less cold where the Kac-Kantor roam.”

  Yaz grasped the offered straw. “But it is less cold! And a month further south, warmer still.”

  “But—”

  “Eular believes it.” Let them trust in Eular’s wisdom if not hers. “Eular told me there is a green place far to the south. He had heard stories. Stories! Not myth . . .” She looked around at the others, their faces held tight, closed against hope.

  Quina met her eyes. The girl held out her clenched hand between them, reluctant, a tremble in it. Slowly fingers unfolded to reveal a small brownish bead, polished by touch, swirled with lines of darker and lighter brown, beautiful in its way.

  “Our clan mother has a necklace of such beads,” Yaz said. Mother Mazai’s polished stones were an heirloom, as prized as iron. A reminder that there were things other than ice in the world. A reminder that under the ice there is sea or stone.

  “It isn’t stone.” With great reluctance Quina placed the bead in Yaz’s palm. “I stole it from our clan father. When I knew I wasn’t coming back from this journey to the pit. I wanted it so I took it.” Her cheek twitched, guilt warring with defiance.

  “It hardly weighs anything.” Yaz took her star and made more light, studying the swirls. “What kind of stone is it?”

  “Wood,” Quina said. “It floats on water.”

  “Wood?” Thurin frowned.

  “Is it a . . . gem?” Kao said the word as if dragging it from memory.

  “Wood. From a tre
e.” Yaz gave the bead back and folded Quina’s hand about it.

  “Once, very long ago, there was a winter that lasted a year and the Kac-Kantor fled further south than they had ever been. A traveller came to our tents, bitten by the frost and dying. He said he had been travelling northward in search of a witch known in his people’s legends. His food had run out. He had eaten his dogs. And still he travelled north. In all that time we were the first people he had seen. The bead was his gift for the witch. He hoped for wisdom in return. He said that in his southern rangings he had looked down upon the trees from the heights of the ice.

  “My clan father’s grandfather’s grandfather offered the traveller ten iron stakes for the bead but the stranger would not part with it. When the man died three days later the bead passed into the clan father’s line.” Quina looked down, voice trembling. “I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought . . . Maybe that if I took something valuable enough then my people would come and get it back . . . I don’t know.” She shook her head.

  “It’s wood. From a tree,” Yaz said with conviction. “A tree that stands in the green belt around the world.”

  Thurin walked away. He paused by the door. “Even if a green belt was there it’s too far. A year of travel maybe. The cold would kill us in a night. We have no tents. Thirst would kill us in days. Our water would freeze. Hunger would kill us in a week. We don’t know where the seas are and we have no boats or nets.”

  This time when Yaz opened her mouth the answers came quickly. “We can line our furs with stardust for added warmth. We can tow boards from the settlement and make shelters each night. We can warm them with heat pots from the drying cave and the forge. We can make a sled and pile it with fungi from the groves. We can do all this. Or die trying. Either way it’s better to die trying for a life we can take for ourselves than to die fighting each other in the dark for an existence we were condemned to.”

  The others were filing out through the doorway now and Yaz followed. None of them spoke as they made their way up along the side of the ravine. Yaz had said her piece. Scattered her ideas on the water. Sometimes it took a while before something rose from the depths to bite. And sometimes such ideas just sank without trace.

  * * *

  MOST OF THE caverns had icicles and in most of them they were regularly knocked down by harvesters or by other Broken just passing to and fro. In the Icicle Cavern, however, some source of meltwater high above combined with the chamber’s coldness and lack of stars to generate them at such a rate that the Broken had long since abandoned the fight. The cavern was large enough to hold all the Broken even before bloodshed had reduced their numbers, and all but a central corridor was festooned with icicles, some hanging ceiling to floor, some scarcely longer than fingers, a myriad of them, some clear, some milky, curtains of them, veils, frozen torrents. They caught the light of the stars that Arka’s folk brought with them, glowing with it, casting strange shadows.

  Yaz had never imagined such places might exist. She had spent a lifetime on the surface of things, tramping the ice, and beneath her feet, miles deep, how many wonders had she passed over, places no one had ever seen, places no one would ever see. Kaylal, who saw the amazement on her face as she passed him, offered a grin that said he understood the feeling.

  Quell stood with her now, iron spear in hand, free at last of Jerrig’s blood. A single bruise covered much of the left side of his face, a memento from the hunter slamming him into the ground. For a moment he almost looked like one of the Tainted. Petrick stood to Quell’s right. Thurin stood on Yaz’s other side, Quina, Maya, and Kao to his left, the gerant boy showing nervous determination, eyes narrowed beneath the pale curls of his fringe. Eular had told Yaz that Kao was only twelve but those were just words standing in the shadow of his great size. Seeing him there among the gleaming icicles and alien shadows Yaz understood properly for the first time that Kao was the same age as Zeen, a child, lost, alone, and in a bad place. In fact, in the face of the events that had swept everyone up, all of them, young or old, might be considered lost children, helpless as any boat in a storm.

  Arka stood with her inner circle. There was no sign of Eular.

  Pome entered the Icicle Cavern from the other side, flanked by gerants bearing iron swords. Dozens of his followers came behind him, knocking aside the longer icicles to make room. Despite their numbers they looked nervous. A curious mix of nervous and excited.

  In one hand Pome carried an iron rod shorter and thicker than the one he used to carry, and in it a star larger than the one he had ceded to Yaz. The new star burned a deep crimson, not unlike the hunters’ stars, and filled the chamber with bloody light, making red and dripping spears of the icicles about him.

  A fault in the rock split the cavern floor, a gap of a yard or more yawning between the two factions, ice-clad on either side. It could be spanned easily enough but it stood as a barrier to keep them apart, a physical representation of the solemn oaths of truce sworn by Pome and Arka.

  Pome came forward. To either side of him a gerant with a great square shield stood ready to deflect possible spears, and crouched before him a hunska with shaved head and ugly scar, as if he thought he might knock aside any missile from the air. Yaz paid more attention to the star Pome held. Its heartbeat was much louder and deeper than she had expected it to be.

  “Does my word mean so little, Pome?” Arka approached the opposite edge of the chasm without any guards to hand.

  “We’ll see what it’s worth.” The crimson light of his star pinked Pome’s teeth as though he might have bitten his tongue.

  “You requested this meeting . . .” Arka spread her hands as if granting the man permission to speak.

  “I demanded it.” Pome’s smile was a savage thing. “This farce is coming to an end, Arka. I have all the forge, the settlement, most of the groves. And you have . . . a huddle of caves. Tarko is gone. The Tainted are coming—they must know of our weakness. Who will lead us against them? You, Arka? If you were fit for such duty then you would be winning. You wouldn’t be hiding in the drying cave with a handful of children and dreamers.”

  Yaz felt his voice pull at her even as the words themselves grated across her. If Pome had ever mastered wisdom or kindness, or even some semblance of the two, then he would have been unstoppable. Fortunately his unpleasant nature shone through sufficiently to weaken the glamour of his voice.

  “What do you want, Pome?” Arka sounded weary. “If all it took to make you king were talking then you would have been on your throne long ago.”

  “The Tainted will attack. You know this. Theus has waited years for this moment. Decades.”

  “And you have given it to him, Pome. Should we praise you for that? Are you proud?

  “Are you so proud, Arka, that rather than standing with me, united with the Broken, you would keep up this resistance against a thing that has already happened and let the Tainted claim us all?”

  Arka shook her head, striding along her side of the divide. “How then would King Pome defend us? He has killed our best ice-worker, left some of our finest warriors dead or injured. All for what? So we can engage in open warfare with the Tainted when we stand at our weakest.”

  Pome looked past Arka to those who stood behind her. “I’m told that the girl you thought you’d lost in the city has returned . . .” His eyes hunted Yaz in the gloom.

  “Yaz?” Arka’s voice betrayed surprise. Pome had a spy in her camp. “What does this—”

  “Give her to me. Give her to me and return to the fold. Those above have demanded her!”

  Arka barked a laugh. “You don’t talk to the priests, Pome! And what would they want with Yaz?”

  “The regulator demands her. And in exchange he has worked a miracle that will see the Tainted laid in ruin!” Pome’s grin was a huge and bloody thing now.

  Somewhere behind him came a rumbling, a grinding of metal and stone. Icicle
s began to fall in droves, tinkling as they broke against each other, crashing on the floor below. A shape larger than any gerant hulked into view behind Pome’s followers and they parted before it, more scared than exultant. The heartbeat that Yaz had thought to be from Pome’s new star grew louder still.

  “Pome . . .” Arka stepped back, horrified. All around her the Broken retreated, weapons raised.

  As the hunter stepped into clear view Yaz’s friends drew back, only Quell and Thurin standing their ground beside her. The thing stood taller than the one she had destroyed, its iron-scaled head scraping the ice ceiling, broader too, its limbs an irregular array of steel and iron, some ending in serrated blades, one with a sharp spike longer than her arm, yet another with an articulated hand that looked disturbingly human though far larger. Yaz understood now. She had been listening to the heartbeat of the star within the hunter, fierce and strong and deep. If she could rediscover the strength she had used in the city she might stun the monster but there would be no ripping this one apart, it was just too powerful. Her mind ached already just at the thought of reaching into it.

  The hunter took another step, a clawed foot striking sparks from the stone.

  “Stop!” Pome held up his arm and the hunter halted a yard from him, red starlight glowing from its joints.

  Arka rallied herself, the scars on her face deathly pale. “You can’t trust in that thing! We’ve spent our lives running from them. How many of us have they killed? I don’t know how the regulator has bound that monstrosity to his will but even if it serves him now I still don’t trust it because I don’t trust that old man, not one jot. He personally threw all of us down here, for gods’ sake!”

  “I don’t trust anyone, Arka.” Pome brought his new star closer to him on its iron rod and, to gasps from the opposite side of the fissure, he reached out, closing his other hand about it. His face twisted as if he were holding his palm above a lamp flame but with a snarl he pulled the shining red stone free of the clasps holding it. His fingers couldn’t quite meet his thumb around the surface and the crimson light turned his whole hand bloody. “I trust this!”