The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,106

cavern.

“Bring her!” Pome roared, extending the star toward the hunter as it teetered on the fissure’s edge.

But Yaz had hushed the voice of Pome’s star and instead the monster painted him with the fierce glow of its eyes as if considering him prey. And in that moment, with the light of Pome’s star no longer streaming between his fingers, Yaz noticed it. Two stains retreating to regain the shelter of the sleeve that had been pulled back when Pome reached his star toward the hunter. A black stain and a scarlet one, both moving like oil on water. Evidence that the star he now struggled to hold had already broken free parts of his mind.

“Pome’s tainted!” Yaz shouted, pointing. “Look! Devils under his skin!”

As she shouted her accusation the hunter seized Pome in its oversized metal hand and at the same time jabbed its killing-spike at his closest guard, Bexen. The gerant, with his unsettling stare, one eye savage, the other milky, looked small for once. The spike’s tip punctured the great shield he was holding and tore it from his grasp, sending him sliding perilously close to the fissure.

On all sides the Broken began to run. Nerves, already stretched to breaking point, now snapped. The instinct to run from hunters was strong, and they ran. Yaz ran too, straight for Quell. “This is it. We need to leave now. We get Zeen and then get out of here.”

They sprinted from the cavern with the last of the stragglers, the floor behind them thick with broken icicles. Turning the corner into the next smaller cavern Yaz found Thurin waiting for them. Quina had stayed with him, Kao hulking at the back. Petrick hung uncertainly at the opposite exit.

“Where’s Maya?” Yaz looked around, half expecting to find the girl stepping from a cloak of shadows.

The rest shook their heads.

“She’s good at hiding, that one. She’ll be with Arka or the others.” Thurin looked worried despite his easy words.

Quell shrugged. “If we’re going to get Zeen then let’s do it.”

“And after that?” Quina asked. “All those things you said, Yaz? Do you think we really can escape?” Screams came from the Icicle Cavern.

“I think we should try.” Yaz didn’t want to lie to them. “I think the dangers won’t be worse than what we have to deal with down here. Just different.”

“Is it true though?” Quina asked. “About the green place? Somewhere we can live?”

“I just want to go back,” Kao rumbled from behind Thurin, his voice a man’s, his tone a child’s. A great crash made them all glance toward the tunnel they’d fled down.

“I can’t go back. I’ve never been.” Thurin pressed his lips into a worried line. “All my life is here. My ancestors. Leaving it would . . .”

“Would be like being thrown down the pit,” Yaz said. “You’ll survive it and find a new world. Just like we all did. But we need you, Thurin. I need you. Without your understanding of the Tainted and this Theus who leads them I don’t know if we can find Zeen, let alone save him.”

Thurin’s dark eyes found hers. He took her hands as if there were no one watching. “The surface sounds terrifying but I would rather go there naked than return to the black ice. We will all die there. Those they can’t inhabit become their sport. They torture them to death. Think on it again, Yaz. Think again.”

“Did your mother think again when she came after you?” Yaz squeezed his hands and felt the fear there, trembling in his bones.

Thurin hung his head and for a time he said nothing. The sounds reaching them down the tunnel sounded like the hunter’s iron footsteps. Still, no one spoke.

“You’ll go whether I come or not,” Thurin muttered. He met her gaze briefly. “I can’t let you do that.”

“You’ve said yourself that the Tainted will come for the survivors when this war is over,” Yaz said. “In days they’ll wash over the Broken and the nightmare won’t just be lurking in the black ice, it will be everywhere. Face it now and we can still escape.”