The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,23

the others looked her way again. She hadn’t spotted even a single greyhead among the Broken. At perhaps thirty Arka looked as old as any of those Yaz had seen.

“There should be more of us,” Quina said. “I saw a dozen pushed and there were many still behind me.”

“Did the hetta eat them all?” Maya asked, round-eyed. Yaz guessed her to be the youngest of them, around thirteen. Quina might be fifteen. Kao her own age or a year younger. Despite the size of him his was a boy’s face.

“Where did you hear about Hetta?” Arka frowned at Maya and glanced toward Yaz.

“The boy said it.” Maya looked nervous. Yaz suddenly wondered why the girl was the youngest of them. Most got the push at their first gathering. There should be plenty of smaller ones. “Petrick. He said a hetta got someone . . .”

“Hetta is one of the Tainted. A wild one even for them. A rogue. She hunts alone,” Arka said, and beside her Thurin, dry and fully clothed, shivered despite the heat. “And to understand the Tainted you have to understand that the stories told to scare little children are true. The black ice is real.”

Kao snorted with laughter, Maya paled, Yaz quietly made the sign invoking the protection of both the Gods in the Sky and the Gods in the Sea. Quina, however, just nodded.

“The Ictha have never seen such a thing,” Yaz said.

“Nor have the Golin.” Kao leaned into the heat. “Because there is no such thing.”

“My people have seen it in the south. Far to the south. A grey scar in the ice, black at its heart.” Quina narrowed her eyes at Kao, daring him to dispute her.

“It is rare for black ice to reach the surface. But down here it exists.” Arka turned toward Thurin as if checking on him. His gaze had fallen to his hands and he made a slow study of his fingers, a twitch in his cheek giving the lie to this show of disinterest.

“They say if you walk on the black ice it fills you with terrors,” Quina said.

“And if a man touches it”—Maya’s voice trembled—“it can make him murder his children.”

“The Tainted are people who have touched the black ice?” Yaz asked, and once more she saw Jaysin’s head dangling by the hair from Hetta’s belt.

“Worse.” Arka looked grim. “They swim in the pools that form where it melts.”

Maya gasped. Yaz, an adult grown, allowed herself no expression of horror but drew her knees up under her chin, feeling even now the touch of Hetta’s vast hand as it had closed around her lower leg and begun to pull her toward those teeth.

Thurin had grown still and very pale. And he was pale enough to start with. “It takes more than a touch of the black ice to taint most people. There are spirits in the ice, looking for a way inside you, looking for cracks. Anger will let them in, cruelty, greed, any weakness, even fear will invite them in eventually.” He stood and turned to leave.

“Thurin. Sit.” Arka motioned for him to return.

“And the Tainted do worse than swim in the black pools.” Thurin had his back to the others now. “They drink from them.” And he walked away, with Arka’s demands that he stay ringing in his wake.

“What’s up with him?” Kao snorted.

Arka made no reply and they joined her in silence, soaking up the heat until at last a distant clanging reached the cave. Arka cocked her head to listen then relaxed. “It’s the signal for night. We keep our own cycle down here. I’ll take you to the settlement. You can collect your clothes here tomorrow.”

“What about Zeen?” Yaz was no longer sure why she had thrown herself down the pit. In the moment she did it, it had seemed that it was for her brother, though quite how it might have helped she couldn’t have said. But now, against all odds, she really did have a chance to help him and she was damned if she would just shut up about it and go to sleep.