The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,103

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,