The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3) - N. K. Jemisin Page 0,130

forges swiftly upward: Hoa. He is moving oddly, however, periodically shifting to one side or another; that’s what you perceived before. Beside Hoa are faint shimmers, delicately etched. One has a palpable interruption in the silverflow of one arm; that has to be Tonkee. You cannot distinguish Hjarka from Danel because you can’t see hair or relative size or anything so detailed as teeth. Only knowing that Lerna is closer to you makes him distinct. And beyond Lerna—

Something flashes past, mountain-heavy and magic-bright, human shaped but not human. And not Hoa.

Another flash. Something streaks on a perpendicular trajectory, intercepting and driving it away, but there are more. Hoa lunges aside again, and a new flash misses. But it’s close. Lerna seems to twitch beside you. Can he see it, too?

You really hope not, because now you understand what’s happening. Hoa is dodging. And you can do nothing, nothing, but trust Hoa to keep you safe from the stone eaters who are trying to rip you away from him.

No. It’s hard to concentrate when you’re this afraid—when you’ve been merged into the high-pressure semisolid rock of the planet’s mantle, and when everyone you love will die in slow horror should you fail in your quest, and when you’re surrounded by currents of magic that are so much more powerful than anything you’ve ever seen, and when you’re under attack by murderous stone eaters. But. You did not spend your childhood learning to perform under the threat of death for nothing.

Mere threads of magic aren’t enough to stop stone eaters. The earth’s winding rivers of the stuff are all you have to hand. Reaching for one feels like plunging your awareness into a lava tube, and for an instant you’re distracted by wondering whether this is what it will feel like if Hoa lets go—a flash of terrible heat and pain, and then oblivion. You push that aside. A memory comes to you. Meov. Driving a wedge of ice into a cliff face, shearing it off at just the precise time to smash a ship full of Guardians—

You shape your will into a wedge and splint it into the nearest magic torrent, a great crackling, wending coil of a thing. It works, but your aim is wild; magic sprays everywhere, and Hoa must dodge again, this time from your efforts. Fuck! You try again, concentrating this time, letting your thoughts loosen. You’re already in the earth, red and hot instead of dark and warm, but how is this any different? You’re still in the crucible, just literally instead of a symbolic mosaic. You need to drive your wedge in here and aim it there as another flash of person-shaped mountain starts to pace you and darts in for the kill—

—just as you shunt a stream of purest, brightest silver directly into its path. It doesn’t hit. You’re still not good at aiming. You glimpse the stone eater stop short, however, as the magic all but blazes past its nose. Here in the deep red it is impossible to see expressions, but you imagine that the creature is surprised, maybe even alarmed. You hope it is.

“Next one’s for you, bastard cannibalson ruster!” you try to shout, but you are no longer in a purely physical space. Sound and air are extraneous. You imagine the words, then, and hope the ruster in question gets the gist.

You do not imagine, however, the fact that the flitting, fleeting glimpses of stone eaters stop. Hoa keeps going, but there are no more attacks. Well, then. It’s good to be of some use.

He’s rising faster now that he is unimpeded. Your sessapinae start to perceive depth as a rational, calculable thing again. The deep red turns deep brown, then cools to deep black. And then—

Air. Light. Solidity. You become real again, flesh and blood unadulterated by other matter, upon a road between strange, smooth buildings, tall as obelisks beneath a night sky. The return of sensation is stunning, profound—but nothing compared to the absolute shock you feel when you look up.

Because you have spent the past two years beneath a sky of variable ash, and until now you had no idea that the Moon had come.

It is an icewhite eye against the black, an ill omen writ vast and terrifying upon the tapestry of stars. You can see what it is, even without sessing it—a giant round rock. Deceptively small against the expanse of the sky; you think you’ll need the obelisks to sess it completely, but you