The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,171

What happened next occupied only a frozen fraction of a heartbeat, making no sense until her mind unfolded it in the next breath. A dark line passed over her head. An iron spear flung at Thurin’s back. The horror wouldn’t hit Yaz until after the spear had struck its mark. The force behind such a missile was enough to punch a hole through a man whatever bone or flesh might get in the way. Thurin’s first understanding would come after the crimson spear emerged from his ribs, flying away from him, leaving a trail of his own blood hanging momentarily in the air.

But somehow a figure managed to rise beneath the spear in the same instant it flew above them and to press upon it in such a way that it deflected upwards by just a few degrees. Zeen!

The skins over Thurin’s left shoulder danced as the spear sliced through them. The wind of the shaft’s passing fluttered the dark hair around his ear.

Yaz’s handful of stars rose in an accelerating spiral, travelling faster than she had ever made them fly before. She pictured the fire sigil in her mind and, as the stars broke from the top of the flames, the gyre they made carried the fire with them, a twisting vortex extending the tongue of flame to lick against the ceiling itself.

“Now!” she shouted.

Thurin’s release of pent-up potential, though not directed her way, shuddered through Yaz like something primal, both shocking and thrilling, filling her with want. Above them the ice lit with an orange glow as his flame-work, unused for all the years of his life, launched those long-banked energies into the column of coal. Like Thurin the coal was itself a store of energy held inert for its whole existence and now able to release that heat in one glorious burst. Driven by Thurin’s talent the fire exploded up the column far faster than any natural spread.

“Run!” Yaz shouted before the first drop of water had even hit the ground. “Secure the supplies!”

The first instruction was for everyone. The second was for Thurin. Only someone with power over water could hope to stop their food and shelter washing away in the coming flood.

Even as she shouted, though, she could see Thurin drop, as if the release of his flame-work had hollowed him, leaving an empty skin to flop to the ground. It likely saved his life as a second spear scythed past him and another skewered the empty space where his head would have otherwise been.

The flood came so swiftly that few there would have had time to take hold of something fixed, let alone to start running. Yaz found herself swept along by a white wave of water, tumbling over and over, swiftly losing all sense of direction. She knew enough from fishing the Hot Sea not to scream or to try to draw breath.

Where the rolling beneath wild water turned into rolling to lift her face from cold wet stone she wasn’t sure. She was equally unsure how long had passed between that rapid, uncontrolled spinning and the effort-laden flop that brought her groaning to her side.

The flattened ruins of the city seemed unchanged save for the scores of pools and puddles reflecting the stars above them. A muted gurgling sounded from many quarters as the thirsty depths below drank down the deluge.

Everywhere the Broken lay scattered, Arka’s faction mixed with Pome’s, some beginning to lever themselves up onto their arms, others still lying dazed and sodden. The gerant ranks had been swept away, the individual warriors littered here and there. Pome’s hunter lay on its side, starting to scrabble for the purchase needed to right itself. Of its master there was no sign.

Water still torrented from the shaft but at a fraction of its original rate. The shaft’s mouth now gaped like a crater and chunks of ice lay all around, swept along with the meltwater as they broke from the ceiling.

Amid the crash of water hitting stone after its long drop, and the hunter’s clatter, and the groans of the Broken recovering themselves, there was another sound, more distant but chilling. A howling.

Yaz raised her head and without needing to gather her bearings let the