The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,70

she showed no signs of relaxing.

* * *

THE DEEPER ARKA led them the warmer it got. They encountered more symbols, glowing quietly through the stone in rooms bearded with so much lichen that the walls looked diseased. Most stood a couple of feet tall, some a little larger, some could be covered with a hand. All were varied, flowing, and complex. Even the smaller ones hinted at largeness, as though they might be the shadows cast by something infinitely more profound and dwelling in more dimensions than a human mind could fathom.

Most of the symbols offered Yaz no resistance, others she had to battle past, but all of them shone brighter as she drew near.

Some of the descents required the navigation of rocky slopes; elsewhere there were stairs. In two places they went down vertical shafts using ropes of an unknown material that had been left hanging there by scavengers. Cables, Arka called them. Kao slipped on the second climb, fell the last two yards, and hurt his ankle.

“When you can’t run it’s time to head back.” Arka looked up the long shaft above them, a hundred feet and more, vanishing into the gloom. “I’ll take us by a different route with more stairs and less climbing.”

Kao muttered that it was time to head back when the hunter first saw them. Arka stiffened but didn’t turn to rebuke him. Yaz felt a certain sympathy for Kao on this one. Whatever his size he remained a child in a maze full of horrors, and now he lacked even the option to run from them. On the other hand it seemed that nothing beneath the ice was safe, and perhaps harsh lessons were all that could be offered. They would learn to survive, or die trying. And much as Yaz wanted to leave this place, she had come here for stars large enough to give Zeen a chance of surviving the cleansing he needed. She hadn’t seen so much as stardust yet . . .

Arka led them through a series of long galleries, echoingly empty, burdened with a sadness that the rooms before held only whispers of. Yaz saw that this time the others felt it too. Maya had tears cutting tracks through the dirt on her cheeks.

“We call them the Crying Halls,” Arka said, her face held tight. “Parts of the city will play tricks on you like t—” She stopped dead, spreading her arms to keep the others from passing her.

“What is it?” Yaz tensed, ready to run from a hunter.

“Those were not there before.” Arka pointed at a string of symbols on the wall just ahead of them, smaller than those before and so faint they could be easily missed, almost hidden by the light of the star she held above her.

“Maybe Yaz is just making them brighter so you can see them, but they were always there,” Quina offered.

“Maybe.” Arka frowned but carried on. Behind her Yaz imagined the Missing who had walked the hallway before them in the long ago and wondered what sorrow might have happened here to linger so many centuries.

More strings of symbols came into view, some small enough to circle with a finger and thumb. Some more visible than the ones Arka had thought new but all seeming to alarm her. As Yaz passed by the lines a brighter pulse followed along them and a whispering filled her ears as if the text were being read aloud, the words just beyond hearing but laden with meaning.

Arka quickened her pace, bringing them into a vaulted chamber from which a broad flight of stairs led upwards. Four large symbols blazed on the floor and Arka came to another halt. “These are definitely new!”

“Does it matter?” Thurin asked, worry and confusion edging his voice.

“I’ve come back and forth through these halls for twenty years. I’ve never seen a new symbol appear or an old one change.” The fear in Arka’s voice infected the rest of them, the sorrow at their backs turning to foreboding. Even from the rear of the group Yaz could feel the pressure the symbols exerted, like a strong wind opposing her together with the promise of good things if she just turned aside.