The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,63

came into a wider chamber and crossed it that Yaz turned back, asking her star to shine once more, shaping its light into a beam that reached out to where they had entered. Three figures became visible and immediately drew back. Two with spears and behind them someone huge. They lacked the ragged twitchiness of the Tainted.

Arka turned just in time to catch a glimpse. Her face tightened in shock. She spoke quickly and quietly as the others stared at the dark mouth of the tunnel into which the trio had retreated. “That was Pome, I’m sure of it. Was there a gerant? Yes? That would be Bexen, his enforcer. The other one was probably Jalla, a hunska warrior in his faction.”

“What are they doing?” Yaz asked. “Why would they follow us?”

“Quickly!” Arka was already moving. “If they’re following us, way out here near the city, then whatever they want is nothing good. They’re not here to protect us from the Tainted. That’s for damn sure!” Arka had them jogging now. “Pome has always had a brittle pride. You were wrong to push him, Yaz. He knows how to talk, that one. He has many who listen, and he wants Tarko’s position. If you make him look weak then he has to do something to take that strength back again.” She hurried them through a narrow, twisted tunnel, the close confines carrying her voice back to Yaz. “The day he makes his move there will be blood. Pome’s the sort who would rather break something and own the pieces than see another hold it whole. And I don’t mean to let him start with us!”

Yaz hurried on with only Petrick between her and any pursuit. At every moment she expected a spear to come winging out of the darkness. She had seen something in Pome’s eyes, an emptiness that reminded her of the wind and that made her think him capable of anything if he thought he held the upper hand. She hoped that Zeen would keep clear of him. Something told her Pome might not be much of a warrior but she was certain he enjoyed killing when the odds were heavily enough in his favour.

Arka led them at a stiff pace, all of them watchful, no longer trusting the ice, until at last they came to the long slope.

“Here,” Arka said. “The taint can never come here. That at least is for certain. And this is scavenger ground. No warrior would choose to face us here. Warriors they might be but they still fear the hunters.” Even so, she glanced back to where Pome and the others might appear.

“What is it?” Maya seemed more awed by the slope than scared of pursuit.

Arka smiled and gestured ahead of them. “You’re looking at something the Missing walked on.”

It was obvious that the slope couldn’t be the work of nature, but how men or any other could have made so long, broad, and even a surface Yaz couldn’t say. Neither could she explain why the ice hadn’t simply scoured it away.

The ice-free slope led down across a rocky hillside at an even gradient, sometimes cutting into the bedrock, sometimes rising above it on a different kind of stone. About halfway down, two black pillars flanked the rampway, each taller than a man. Yaz could only imagine they held their own heat and that the advancing ice that had erased the city simply melted around them, leaving them unscathed in their own bubbles.

To either side of the descent ice walls glittered, glowing with stardust, the occasional brighter star twinkling amid the constellations. The cavern that the slope led down into was vast, a hundred times larger than the largest Arka had yet shown them. The glow came most strongly on the west side where the walls stood shining with the spoils of the ice’s theft, the glittering remnants of a city full of stars. Clearly the ice had once ground its way across the city of the Missing, which had been standing here long before the original four tribes of man beached their ships on this world. All that remained now was scraped rock and strange scars.

“It’s beautiful,” Maya breathed beside Yaz.

“It is.” The ice glowed in a million shades. The air was