by Jamie Smith
She wormed back onto her front and squinted through the stinging haze of debris the blast had kicked up. There was a way out, or at least down—a thin hole, to be sure, but Sabira thanked the mountain for her luck all the same.
Heart pumping blood around her body so fast she thought her head might explode, Sabira scrambled in. There might be only a moment or two before everything collapsed.
The delicate-looking armor of her frostsliver caught and snagged as she pushed her way down, but soon the crack widened enough for her to walk. Ominous cracking noises from behind kept her moving, and the passage actually lurched farther apart, some stress on the rock pulling the fissure wider. Sabira had no way of knowing if there was anything at the end, or if this new passage would be her prison, sealed and filled in behind her with the remains of the caverns she had destroyed.
She was barely able to see which way was up until she saw something ahead in the dust and smoke, a thin band where the light was different. A wall, with a slice of space in it.
Coughing, Sabira stumbled toward it. It looked like there was a way through, but not one wide enough for a person. Her fingers could pry their way in, though not the rest of her. She pulled back, generating a new frostsliver blade, refusing to be denied.
One way or another, this was the end. The choking dust might suffocate her, or her frostsliver’s power might rip her heart open—or she might finally be free.
Sabira sliced at the rock again and again, and jagged stones were stripped away with every strike. Blood pulsed in her ears with the effort, but the threat of her body giving out did nothing to stop her. With every swing, her frostsliver pushed just as hard, its near-delight in the act keeping them both going.
When she couldn’t do anymore, when her head felt on the verge of bursting, Sabira pulled back and slammed into the crack in the wall, unwilling to stay in the half-collapsed tunnel a moment longer. She burst through the weakened stone in a plume of dust.
She let out a scream and skidded to a wobbling halt. Too much haste. After everything she had been through, that was what almost killed her. Pebbles and bits of broken rock tumbled away from the ledge Sabira found herself on, trailed by billowing dust.
It was a long way down.
She swayed, blinked, and balanced, every nerve on fire. It was hard to concentrate through her lack of breath. She had to force down the impulse to fight and run. The frostsliver began to pull back from her body, and finally Sabira’s pulse slowed a fraction, allowing her to focus on what was below.
For a dreadful moment, the world looked just as blank as it had a moment before. Could this be just another cave? No, there were pinpricks of light in the blackness above. It was no cave. It was nighttime, with stars welcoming her back to the world. Sabira had made it. She was free of the mountain.
That was Adranna down there, and the lights of the city were the most welcome sight of Sabira’s life. From what she could tell in the dark, its walls looked as if they had taken a beating, with great drifts of snow built up against them, but the gates had been mostly cleared.
Sabira saw the bright paints of the murals, lit by the lamps strung along the walls, and knew them for home. The fresh air hit her then, the sweetest, most vital thing Sabira had ever tasted.
It had been so long since she’d had this kind of relief. Her mind couldn’t take it in, and Sabira’s body suddenly refused to be pushed any further. She fell into a sitting position on the high ledge she found herself on, four or five stories up Adranna’s rear wall.
For days—or a lifetime—she had been pushed to her breaking point. Now it dropped upon her with a great weight. Like her frostsliver, Sabira was struck dumb. Her senses faded to dullness, but not before she felt her cheeks grow wet. Were they tears of happiness, or sorrow? She did not know.
A voice yelled up to her. A friendly one, full of concern. Was that a question on the wind?
She couldn’t reply. Could barely understand what was being asked. Sabira’s mind was a thick bank of fog, and nothing would penetrate it. Almost nothing. Something was moving below. People, maybe. Shouting. Meaningless words. Not quite. Through her stupor, Sabira managed to comprehend one thing that was enough to make her smile through her tears. Those people saw her and were coming.
They were coming to bring her home.
PEACE. THAT WAS all Sabira wanted. Was it so much to ask? She was in bed, resting in the temple with a beautiful greenhouse garden outside her window, for the mountain’s sake. Surely that should be sanctuary, if nowhere else was.
“All returning bonded usually face certain mental trials,” the red-robed man at the side of her bed told her. He was one of the many healers who had seen to her. What was his name? Harten? Hadaten? It didn’t matter.
“Oh, yes?” Sabira said icily. Her frostsliver dinged in righteous anger in her head, backing her up.
She had saved the city.
If only Sabira could end her tale with that thought, but there were too many loose ends—and too many regrets. The frost-clerics kept trying to make her face them. Now they were trying to get her to face these trials too.
“Yes, it’s been tradition to ensure that the bonding produced a stable pair, one able to take on the rigors that will be asked of them in life.”
Sabira politely told him where she was going to put her frostsliver if anyone asked again. She had already been through enough to prove herself.
“Perhaps … perhaps you have a point,” he admitted. “Though, if ever you change your mind, the temple will always be open to you.”
It had been a good place to recover, with the expert knowledge of the frost-clerics helping her heal and the stream of visitors coming to wish her well. Many of them she didn’t even know, and after a while it had become too much. Then her mother had kicked up a fuss, and the visits had been limited to family and healers only, to Sabira’s great relief.
“In fact, you must be thinking about what comes next for you,” the frost-cleric said. “You could always join our number. Of course, that would prevent you from joining the council at some later date, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. A life of devotion can be just as rewarding as a life of influence.”
Sabira looked up at the ceiling of her room, hoping to escape into it. They had given her a very nice room, with only one other bed, and that one had been kept free of other patients for her comfort. The frost-cleric wasn’t going away.
“I’m not sure that I want to join any group of people that kept so many secrets from the rest of us,” said Sabira, hoping that he might take the hint. They must have known. All those frost-clerics studying the glacier, taking people to bond to it. Some hint of what it could do must have slipped free. Why else would they test people?
“Well,” he said, “we only had suspicions about the yeti, never confirmation. However, now the word is out. Everyone’s heard your tale, though not everyone believes it. It would perhaps have been better to have kept that part private. Still, we must make the best of things.”
That knowledge was going to be hard for Adranna to take in. Sabira suspected that opinions in the city would be sharply divided as to what to do about it. She was still conflicted. Kyran. His name kept running through her thoughts like lightning, hurting every time it came to her.
“Well, maybe if you’d told people your suspicions, it wouldn’t have been such a shock,” she said more strongly than she really meant it. She understood why they hadn’t. People might have begun to fear the glacier—or even frostslivers, and that wouldn’t be right.
“Perhaps I should leave you,” the frost-cleric suggested. “Your leg is doing well, and the rest of you will be fighting fit sooner than you could believe. I’ll see you again at your next checkup.”
He rose and patted down his red robes.
THE MOUNTAIN IS IN YOUR DEBT.
The tinkling at his neckline was a little deeper than Sabira’s frostsliver. She mustered a weak smile but no more. Both man and frostsliver exited and shut the door behind them
.
Once they were gone, Sabira relaxed back and opened herself to the bond. Her frostsliver still didn’t use words, but its feelings were easy to lean on. They mirrored hers, filled her in where she needed it, and let her lose herself in the flow.
Feeling slightly better, Sabira flexed her leg, sending a twinge through her body. Painful, but maybe she ought to thank the mountain that she had not lost more. After all, she had been luckier than Tserah—and Uncle Mihnir too.
At her insistence, a party of Aderasti, including her father, had made the climb up the bonding path to assess the damage to the mountain stairs and, though it was not said so starkly, to recover Tserah and Mihnir’s corpses. She would have gone too, if not for her enforced period of recovery. They should be back soon, she thought, and her stomach knotted again.
She was distracted by the opening of her chamber’s door. If that frost-cleric was back to try to ask more foolish questions, she didn’t know what she would do. He wasn’t. It was Danlin, wearing light Aderasti clothes instead of the tar-smelling uniform of the Ignatian army.
Though he was covered in cuts and bruises, they had healed a little since Sabira had last seen him. Danlin had crawled out of the mountain half a day after Sabira, leading a small group of like-minded conscripts who had also managed to survive the disaster she’d inflicted on them.
“Hey,” he said, taking the stool the frost-cleric had vacated.
“Hey,” said Sabira. “How’s it going?”
“Can’t complain. They’ve treated me well here. Everyone else too, and they didn’t have to. Even helped some people who don’t really deserve it.”
“They’re frost-clerics. They’d say that everyone deserves help. Even your officers,” Sabira suggested.
“Well, in that case, I’m just glad that the officers are probably all dead—though a few are apparently still missing. Lots of other conscripts too, but I bet those left are more interested in deserting than in forming up to fight.”
Sabira nodded. It would be weeks before the last of them were winkled out of the mountain, but they had been coming in dribs and drabs, most surrendering to the mass of Aderasti who now guarded the tiny entrance to the tunnel system from hastily constructed platforms. Those who didn’t found that even superior weapons were no use when they could only fight one against many.
“I won’t cry over that,” said Sabira.
She had no desire to go near that crack in the mountain—she had too many bad memories. She had been having nightmares, in fact, and it didn’t seem like they were going away. There was hope, though, and days ago Sabira had not had any. Her daylight hours were much improved, and the shaking and confusion that had accompanied the end of her ordeal had mostly abated.
“You feeling any better?” Danlin asked, as if reading her mind. Sabira made a noncommittal noise. She didn’t want to lie, but she wasn’t ready to speak her mind yet either. He didn’t push the issue, instead adding, “I’m getting out of here today. City council says I and those I vouch for can go free.”
“Quite the responsibility,” said Sabira.
“Ha, it’s obvious that they don’t know me at all.”
She laughed, with more humor than he seemed to find in it, and said, “I think they might have got the measure of you better than you think.”
Danlin cocked his head in confusion. Sabira let her words hang on their own. She’d seen enough of him now to know that there’d be no living with him if she started giving him actual compliments. Seeing that she wasn’t going to explain, he said, “It’s funny—now I’ve got my freedom, I don’t quite know where to go with it.”
No smile accompanied the words. He must be serious, and Sabira could see why. His kind weren’t exactly trusted in the city. Sabira’s good words had gone a long way, and they had been given better options than other soldiers who had once been their fellows, but that only went so far. They couldn’t go back to Ignata either—they would be shot as deserters—and those like Danlin who came from the colonies had no home to return to there anyway.
“You know,” Sabira said slowly, “you should go and find my mother. Tell her I said you need somewhere to live—until you know where you want to be, I mean.”
“She seems a bit … ah … scary?”
They’d seen each other during visits a couple of times.
“If she doesn’t react well,” Sabira said with a smile, “tell her I told you to say that her daughter wouldn’t be alive without you and maybe she ought to be grateful. I don’t think you’ll need to, though. She takes her responsibilities seriously—we Aderasti don’t refuse hospitality to people who need it.”
“A fact that a few of my friends are going to be very glad of,” Danlin said. “Though I don’t know how good a solution it’s going to be long term.”
“One more problem for the list, when news gets back to Ignata,” Sabira agreed. “I just hope the High Tribunal doesn’t side with that man’s ideas.”
“Doesn’t seem likely, with him murdering Judge Meihu,” said Danlin, not needing to be told who “that man” was.
“I guess we’ll have to wait and see,” Sabira replied.
“I guess.”
They sat quietly for a little while, slightly awkward but not so much that either of them chose to end it. It was ended for them when the door banged open, making both of them jump.
Through it came two men hauling a stretcher, and then, to Sabira’s delight, her father, wrapped up in heavy furs. He must have just gotten back from the climb, but that meant …
“Sabira,” the lump of furs on the stretcher groaned, to Sabira’s astonishment. “Knew they made the right choice with you.”
“Mihnir, you keep that mouth shut and rest!” said her father, and the man was hustled over to the room’s second bed to be relocated and made comfortable. As the stretcher bearers did so and made their way out, Sabira’s father came to her side, and said, “He’s lost four toes and two fingers to frostbite, half his muscle and fat to starvation. Had to operate up there in that cave of yours! He probably won’t be working as a packman again—frankly, it’s a miracle he made it at all.”
“Oh, leave off, Rabten,” Mihnir muttered to his brother.
“Hush. Sleep,” he was told. “I said it was a miracle. Don’t throw it away.”
Sabira had to agree as an unstoppable grin spread across her face. Apparently, nothing could kill that man.
“He’s going to be all right? After that?!” Danlin said, not being all that tactful, as Sabira was coming to expect from him.
Her father turned to the young Ignatian with the slightest hint of suspicion, saying, “And you are?”
“This is Danlin, Father,” Sabira had to explain. Her father’s face softened immediately, and he actually darted forward to envelop Danlin in a heartfelt hug, stunning the Ignatian into silence.
“Young man, I’m very glad to meet you. You must come and meet the rest of the family. A feast is the absolute least we can do for you.”
“Well, actually … ,” Danlin said, obviously thinking of the earlier conversation.
Sabira let him off the hook by saying diplomatically, “Shall we leave that for a bit, Father? I’d like to take a minute to enjoy Uncle Mihnir being alive!”
“Just about,” mumbled the other bed, with surprising good humor. They all laughed, though there was a little edge to it. This had been the closest of calls for Mihnir.
As the conversation deepened, with Danlin properly introducing himself to Sabira’s two relatives, she found herself thinking that this was what real sanctuary should be. People coming together, discovering the bridges between them that they didn’t know they had.
It put her in mind of a question she had been asking herself for what seemed like all of her years. What was she going to do with her life? Seeing these people together, Aderasti and Ignatian, Sabira found that her mind was starting to be made up.
TWO WEEKS LATER, Sabira finally walked out of the temple.
She had
n’t healed completely, but the rest of her injuries would not be helped by bed rest. Only her knee had been done permanent damage—she would have a small limp for the rest of her life without her frostsliver’s assistance. A small price to pay.
What happened inside Aderast still had its hooks in her. She was thinking of it as she descended the temple’s intricately carved steps, though her family was waiting for her at the bottom. Danlin stood self-consciously with them, as if wondering whether he was imposing.
How could the sight of them not make her think of the face that was missing, and forever would be? Both her parents wore another ribbon on their arms again, but blue instead of red, which was no tradition she had heard of. They hadn’t talked to Sabira about it, but she thought that it might be in remembrance of both their son and the frostsliver that had saved their daughter’s life.
Kyran was truly gone now. It was where he had been heading from the moment that he chose to ascend the bonding path alone. For her, it felt a little easier now that she knew. Sabira had seen what had befallen him, and had seen that her brother had loved her until the end. For him, though? She could not say.
Maybe becoming a yeti hadn’t been so bad—a simpler life for creatures that only just remembered their humanity. Then again, maybe that existence had been a curse he was glad to break. Sabira would never know. He was with the glacier now, and in a way, that had been what he always wanted.
Mihnir was missing too, back in the temple with a longer recovery ahead of him. He grumbled about it constantly, as her uncle always did when he was sick, but after what he’d been through it was better than anyone could have hoped for.
It was a clear day, clearer than most Sabira had known. She reached the bottom of the stairs under bright sun with not a hint of snow. Yet the embraces her family gave her, and the awkward handshake Danlin supplied, were far warmer than the mountain climate’s tepid sunlight.
