The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,154

below them in the darkness, Zeen was rising. He fought it, twisting and spitting with fury, but foot by inexorable foot he was rising from the chasm. Suddenly Yaz understood. Thurin had hold of him. Thurin had reached out with his ice-work as Zeen fell and had taken hold of the water that makes up most of any person. What it had cost him Yaz couldn’t know but she did know better than to break his concentration. Instead she turned her focus to the star and flared its light back at those Tainted just gaining the bridge. Erris, lacking any space to get past her and Thurin, waited with Kao, all of them exposed to the next spear to come hissing from the dark.

Fortunately weapons of any kind were rare among the Tainted and if there were spears being held back in the gloom then the owners proved loath to throw them out over the chasm. In battle with the Broken it seemed that the Tainted must rely on the reluctance of former friends and family to skewer loved ones. That and the fact that they knew no one would follow them into the black ice.

To a rising chorus of howls Zeen came level with the bridge. Yaz knelt and hauled him up, getting a tight grip on his shoulder despite his clawing hands. A moment later he had his teeth in the meat of her forearm. She yelled in surprise. The pain was astonishing, and the fear that he would actually tear free and devour a chunk of her flesh overwhelmed her. She struck out in panic, pounding his head. Teeth slipped from blood-slick flesh and Zeen went limp, sliding soundlessly from the icy bridge.

“No!” But somehow Thurin had the boy’s wrist and was dragging him onwards.

Quickly they followed Thurin across and within twenty paces were back in the cavern where they had questioned Etrix seemingly an age ago but in reality less than a day earlier.

“Is he alright?” Yaz hurried to Thurin’s side to inspect Zeen. He hung bonelessly in Thurin’s grasp with blood running from his nose. A deep pang of guilt skewered her but as she reached toward him his eyes flickered open, showing not the near-white irises of the Ictha but crimson discs, and he lunged for her, jaw snapping shut just shy of her fingertips.

Yaz pulled her arm back, seeing for the first time the dark blood welling from the set of tooth-shaped holes Zeen had put there.

“If you can drive the demons out then do it quickly.” Thurin spoke with a rusty voice as if words had become strangers to him in just the short while since his capture. “They’re both dangerous until you do it.”

Yaz nodded. This was the part she had been dreading. If she failed here what would she do with them? Could she leave, and abandon her brother to the hell he had been enduring since his drop? Would death be cleaner? Or would she die trying and still leave him demon-ridden?

Thurin pinned Zeen to the rock while Yaz approached with her star in hand. The orb had grown noticeably smaller, her fist almost encompassing it. “How did they cure you?” Yaz asked Thurin, hesitating over “cure,” since they had left Theus wrapped around his bones.

“They staked me out on a bed of stardust and showered more on me. I felt the demons burn and die inside me. But it took days. We need something quicker if Pome and his hunter are still after us. Is Arka still fighting them?”

“I don’t know.” Yaz shook her head, shamed that she had given Arka no thought in an age. “How can I do it faster?”

“My mother said the demons could be driven into an extremity and cut out . . . or off.”

“Cut off?” Yaz’s blood ran cold.

“A finger . . . or a hand.” Thurin didn’t meet her gaze. Held in his grip Zeen stirred and started to howl while Kao began to roar and to struggle against Erris once more.

“Here.” Erris tossed something down beside her. “Tie them.”

Yaz picked up the rope. A cable of some kind, smooth and shiny like old leather, something from the city. She bound Kao’s hands