The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,74

than her thumbnail buzzed lazily past. “I can’t stay.” She couldn’t explain it to him. It was more than Zeen. She had been a part of something her whole life and now she was a broken piece, unable to go back, unable to move on. She wanted to ask him why he had done this to her, offering her a happiness she didn’t deserve. She didn’t know how to dream on her own, she had never allowed herself to. Dreams were selfish, a luxury the Ictha couldn’t afford. And yet here she was, in the middle of one so golden she could never have imagined it. She would give it back if she could. It was too beautiful. A poison that would sit in her heart, aching through the years. “I have to go back.”

In the next moment Yaz’s hands were against dusty stone, the same stone that pressed against her knees. Her fingers remembered the grass. The green world still filled her mind. She lifted her head and stood. A chamber of the Missing, lit by a light that cast no shadows. Unlike the rooms Arka had led her through, this one was crowded with objects, all of them unfamiliar, all grey with dust. Scores of . . . things . . . some larger than the largest man, some smaller than a child, many of them complicated with dozens of parts, wheels, rope-like attachments, glassy panels . . . many of them looked broken, though quite what made her think that Yaz couldn’t say. She found herself standing in a clear area at the centre of the room with the chaos heaped toward the four corners. Set in one wall were three rectangular windows spaced evenly in a row between floor and ceiling, each giving a view into a blackness so complete that it seemed to suck at the light.

“Erris?”

Yaz. The word pulsed through the chamber.

“Erris?” She turned, trying to identify the source of the voice.

I’m here. In the void.

The answer emanated from all directions but something turned her around to face the three dark windows. “I never told you my name.”

I watched you with your friends.

“Where are you?”

In the void. Which is another way of saying that I don’t know. A sigh. This is why I wanted to talk to you where we were.

“I don’t understand. Why don’t you just come out?” Something about the darkness scared Yaz. The way it drew her eyes and made her forget about time. It shared a lot with the stars, which often seemed to be holes into a world of light. The windows seemed to be holes into a darkness that existed outside the world. “Are you trapped?”

The sigh came again and Yaz could picture the dark youth standing in grass, bathed in sunshine, a crooked smile on his lips.

I fell too, Yaz. A long time ago. I became lost beneath the city and it hardly knew I was here. I fell into the void. I think it was the city’s heart when the Missing were here. Now . . . it’s something different. I can make worlds in here. But I can’t leave. Sometimes . . . sometimes I think that I’m not really alive anymore, that I haven’t been alive since I fell, that I’m just a memory of me. A memory the city keeps.

Yaz stepped slowly toward the lowest window and crouched before it. The dark seemed like the surface of a pool. How deep it might be and what might reach out of it to seize her she couldn’t say. Gathering her courage she set her hands to the sill and leaned in toward the blackness. It had a song to it, like the stars in the ice and the script on the walls. A slower song, wordless and discordant. A song full of sorrow and loss. “What do you do in there, Erris?”

At first I did everything. I watched stars being born. I watched them die. I walked the world, but it was always an empty one. I saw the ice come . . . These days I sleep mainly. Just like the city does. I sleep and wait for something to happen. For there to be an end.

“Then I