The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,73

no such thing as magic. If a thing is part of the world, part of how it works, then it’s real and obeys laws just like gravity and electricity do.”

“I . . . don’t know these words.” Yaz shook her head. “And magic is real!”

Erris held up his hands, a placatory gesture. “You win.” He looked around, a sadness entering his eyes. “I loved it here. Out in the countryside. I never knew it at the time. It was the kind of love that you grow into, familiar, taken for granted. Like a mother’s love. You feel it most when it’s gone.”

“But it’s not gone.” Yaz saw something white and yellow among the green at her feet and crouched, fascinated, finding more of the small wonders. “What are these?”

“The grass? Oh, you mean the daisies. They’re flowers. A type of plant. Have you really not seen . . . No, well, I suppose it’s all ice and snow now.”

From the treeline black dots rose, a swirling cluster of them. “Gulls?” Yaz ventured.

“Birds. Gulls are a type of bird. Those are starlings, I think.”

The starlings swooped over, shoaling like fish, sharp calls piercing the air. In their wake Yaz became aware of a world of other sounds that her overwhelmed mind had paid no attention to. A myriad of birdsong, some raucous, some lilting, some rising in breathtaking complexity, the notes a shower of liquid joy.

The beauty and strangeness of the place reached into Yaz and twisted something deep within her chest. She found her eyes misting, ridiculously close to tears. She gritted her teeth against it. “I don’t understand. How can this be here?”

“It’s not.” Erris walked past her to stare at the distant ruins. “I made it for you.”

“I was falling!” The assault on her senses had somehow driven that fact to the back of her mind. She got hurriedly to her feet.

“Would you like to go back?” Erris asked. “It’s nicer here. We could stay. I could show you the world that was. It’s as missing now as the ones who built those towers over there.”

“I want to stay.” Something fluttered past her, like a bird that was all wings, no bigger than her palm, bright and filled with colours. “But I need to go. My brother is in danger—”

“Those others are safe enough. It was only you the city took against.”

“Zeen wasn’t with them. He’s somewhere else. Somewhere worse.” Yaz frowned. “And why me? Why did those symbols come? What did I do that was so wrong?”

“The city is very old, very damaged. It mostly sleeps. When it acts it’s instinctual more than anything. The script is its voice. Once it was enough to keep away anything—people, rats, even flies and ants and things too small to see. But all that’s faded away, gone by the by. Just the headlines remain, the most important directives, and those were always to keep away whatever was most like the Missing, whatever might be capable of following them.”

“I’m like the Missing?” Yaz looked down at herself just to check she hadn’t changed in this strange place. “And why would they want to keep themselves away?”

“The ones most like them have the most potential to abuse the power left in the cities. For humanity that means quantals. The city tried to keep you out because you’re a quantal. It should have worked too. The real question is, why didn’t it?”

“I want to go back now.” Yaz was far from sure that she did, but duty led her tongue. She knelt again, running her fingers through the grass, touching the complexity of the daisies, pressing the warm soil beneath. Now that her eyes had begun to accept the sights, and her ears the strangeness of the sounds, her nose started to register the scents of Erris’s world, rich and varied, a melody in themselves, as varied as the birdsong. “I have to go back.”

Erris turned to look at her, lips pressed against regret. “I don’t know if I will ever be able to bring you here again.”

Yaz bowed her head. The sun warmed her neck. Something black and orange and no bigger