The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,11

down another hole, and that this time she would have to choose. More than this, the quick death she had imagined, smashed against an ice floor, might now be replaced with drowning in a flooded shaft, blind and struggling to keep afloat, until exhaustion claimed her and water filled her lungs.

She didn’t want to do it. Now that the moment of passion had left her she found that she lacked the courage to throw herself into one of these dark holes.

Alone and trembling in the black Pit of the Missing, Yaz began to weep for everything that she had lost, and from the fear at how her life would end.

* * *

YAZ GATHERED HERSELF. Time had passed, she wasn’t sure how long but the cold was starting to seep into her. A true Ictha would hardly have noticed but she had begun to shiver. She considered her options. Returning to the surface was not one of them. Even if there had been a flight of stairs carved into the ice she couldn’t return . . . What would the tribes think of that? They would push her back in or send her wet out into the wind to die. Yaz remembered the peculiar excitement in the regulator’s eye. He might welcome her. He might even keep the tribes from harming her . . . But there were no steps, just hundreds of yards of near-vertical ice running with meltwater.

“No.” Her options were to remain in the chamber and to see whether she froze before she starved, or to continue the pursuit of her brother, a pursuit that only chance had delayed.

Yaz peered at the hole before her. It seemed that the faint glow was coming from the ice itself. Her hand made a black shape before her eyes, too dim for definition. Fear returned as she inched toward the wet, yawning mouth. She didn’t want to die. It had been easy to throw herself after Zeen in the heat of the moment. In the cold of the cavern it was almost impossible to release the anchor provided by her knife and to let the drop take her.

“I can’t.” But she had no choice.

Yaz ground her teeth together and pulled the point of her blade from the ice. She returned it to its sheath as she started to slide feetfirst toward the hole. Even certain death couldn’t stop an Ictha caring for what little they owned.

A moment later she plunged once more into devouring night.

3

THE FALL WAS almost all vertical this time with only glancing blows from the walls to punctuate a terrifyingly long drop. The shock of impact was so violent that Yaz knew she had hit ice and was smashed beyond recovery. A moment later, though, she was thrashing in deep water, seeking the surface to replace the air that had been hammered from her lungs.

Yaz broke clear with a heaving gasp, both arms still churning the water about her. She gave a cry of frustration. Her worst fear had been realised. She would drown in the dark.

Yaz had learned to swim in the Hot Sea of the North. For much of the year hot upwelling from the ocean depths kept a circle of water open, nearly ten miles across. Like the three smaller seas to the south the Great Sea teemed with whales. Fish thronged there too, but it was the whales who had to return time and again for air after their long hunting trips beneath the ice.

Being able to swim was a curse. It offered hope. Yaz would still drown, but first she would struggle and suffer. The water she now swam in was only slightly colder than the Hot Sea. Not quite cold enough to freeze, but almost. She would be able to endure it for hours before exhaustion claimed her and the weight of her clothes dragged her under.

Yaz spluttered and reached for the wall of the shaft. If she stretched out her arms she should be able to touch both sides. Her fingers met no resistance and so she struck out in a random direction hunting the edge. Three or four strokes brought no contact. She stopped, spluttered for breath, and shook her head to try to get the water out of her eyes.