fell to her knees amid the shimmering drifts. With the last of her strength she flung her arms out to her sides and drove the stars back. The drifts drew away toward the outskirts of the city, leaving a battlefield littered with bodies.
* * *
A SILENCE REIGNED and Yaz lay spent, unmoving, her gaze fixed. It seemed an age before anyone spoke and before they did, not a single thought passed across the clean white field of Yaz’s mind. At last the bodies began to move. Beside Yaz the girl Jerra, freed from possession, now rolled to her back, groaning. “What? What happened?”
38
YAZ HAD SAVED them. A smile found its way to her lips, even as she lay hollowed on the rock. If Yaz had achieved nothing else, if the last of her life’s energy trickled from her limbs as she lay on the cold stone, she had done this one good thing. She had driven the devils from those claimed by the taint. She had ended the battle that saw son turned against father, mother against daughter. She had reunited two great halves of the Broken, mended families torn apart by ancient evils.
In a fog of wonderment the newly cleansed Tainted began to gain their feet. Friends and family long-parted found themselves in each other’s arms once more.
“It’s started rising again!” Kao’s shout startled Yaz out of her daze. She turned as quickly as her fragile body would allow. She felt as though she were a collection of broken parts, her bones turned to brittle ash. The power that had flowed through her left a burned-out feeling. If all that energy hadn’t found an immediate exit she would have been blown apart by it. The stars had saved her.
“The cage . . .”
The cage hadn’t stopped. They were still hauling it back. Slowly but without pause.
“They’re not supposed to do that!” Thurin hobbled toward her, holding his arm.
“We should hurry then.” Erris had already collected several boards, still wired together at the edges. His white tunic, now smeared with dirt and blood, had been half torn from him, revealing the musculature of his chest and belly. He strode urgently toward the rising cage, now hip height above the ground.
Yaz’s sense of success turned to panic. Zeen was still out there! “You three do it. I’m going to look for—” Yaz broke off, remembering Quell. Somehow the vast energies she had employed had temporarily wiped from her memory the horror that had driven her through whatever barriers she had overcome in order to call on them. She spotted Quell as one of the Tainted who had been attacking him, the same child who drove the knife home, now moved aside from trying to tend his injuries.
“I’m so sorry.” Jerra wiped at her grimy tears.
Yaz shouldered her aside. It was as if the idea that Quell might die had been too big to fit in her head, blasted from it by the very plunge into the river that it had precipitated. The knife was still buried to the hilt in his side, no part of the blade showing. She took Quell’s hands, their eyes meeting again. There were no words to say. The Ictha had no healing save for minor cuts. To become injured on the ice was to die. Living without injury was struggle enough. It was the same hard fact and same cruel logic that saw children thrown into the Pit of the Missing.
Yaz reached to pull the knife out.
“Don’t.” Jerra caught her arm. Her hair was still dark with the flood and guilt haunted her eyes. “He’ll bleed to death.”
“Take it out.” Quell gasped through gritted teeth. “Going . . . to . . . die anyway.”
Another of the Tainted, blinking, still disoriented, reached to stay Yaz’s hand. “It’s a bad wound, but if we stitch it and bind it”—she tilted her head as if trying to judge what the knife might have reached—“and keep it clean . . . he stands a chance. A good chance maybe.”
A dark shape loomed over them. “She’s correct.” Erris knelt beside Yaz. “We don’t want to remove the blade until we are ready to deal with the wound. I