Eular smiled. “But I don’t know what green is. Still, I should like to touch it.”
Yaz hid a smirk before realising she didn’t have to hide it. For one so old to believe cradle tales amused her. “We can touch the rocks here. I’m not sure what would be gained to touch them and see the sky at the same time . . . or why they would be green.” Green was a colour she had seen only on the bellies of rainbow fish and the fins of emeraldine. It never lasted long after the fish were taken from the sea but it was pretty enough.
“And the last of them, the boy?”
“Kao,” Yaz said. “He’s bigger than any man among the Ictha but there’s no strength inside him.”
Eular pursed his lips. “Give him time. I’m told he has seen only twelve winters.”
“He’s twelve?” Yaz found her mouth still open and closed it. “That would explain a lot. I thought . . .”
“Eyes are all well and good.” Eular nodded. “But it never pays to put too much faith in what they tell us. Listen too. Form slower judgments.” He nodded again, perhaps to her, perhaps to himself. “I will speak with Thurin next.”
“Wait! I need to know how to save Zeen. Arka says the cleansing hardly ever works.”
Eular nodded. “That is true, it often fails, and the tainted one is killed. Burned inside by the star-stones.”
“So—”
“I don’t know. But I do know that a quick, strong exposure leaving nowhere for the devils to hide works best. The process is most successful when the largest stones are used. The dust never works. For Thurin his mother managed to get five stones the size of the one Pome dropped just now. Those are rare. As is the influence to get the Broken to agree on their possible destruction in such a ceremony.”
“And where could I find the biggest stars?”
“The city or the ice. Though a month hunting the deep places of the city will sometimes yield as much as ten years mining the ice. And of course . . . each hunter has a star-stone at its heart, some so big you could hardly get both hands to meet around them.”
Yaz stood slowly, trying to assemble the many pieces of information into some coherent structure in her mind. She had questions, most half-formed, and no idea if she would be allowed to return to ask them. Instead she asked an entirely new one. “You said the quantals see the . . . Path . . . was it?”
“I did.”
“But I see a river . . .”
“You’ve lived your whole life in a place without rivers or paths. The mind imposes its own will on such things. But if it is a river, then my advice is not to let it carry you away. The quantal magics are not gentle and many with such power are consumed by it before they learn their own limits.”
Yaz nodded then realised the gesture would go unseen. “Yes.” She bent to pick up Pome’s fallen star and the rod that had held it, seeing now the thin strands that had held the star in place. Metal wires rather than the sinew that the Ictha would use. “Thank you.”
Yaz left the chamber, ducking beneath the icicles and entering the tunnel. The star blazed in her hand, too bright, glaring from the curving surfaces of the ice. She felt its rapid pulsing in her fingers, beating behind the star’s wordless, ethereal song. Blinking, Yaz raised the star to her mouth and whispered to it so that the light retreated, leaving a blue glow. The stone became a ball in which bright shades of sky marbled shades of sea, all in slow and rolling motion. Still blinking away afterimages she emerged into the chamber where the others waited.
Pome stood closest at hand, watching Quina with predatory eyes. His look made Yaz remember what Arka thought of the disappearances of those that opposed the man. Yaz could believe it. She could see him trailing someone into the less walked caverns, knifing them in the back, pitching the corpse into a ravine, or leaving it