The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,76

. . littering the room, moving slowly from one to another. The Broken would consider it a treasure, a great weight of metal to be melted down and given to the priests of the Black Rock in return for the necessities of life. Fish, salt, hides. It seemed a poor trade knowing how the clans prized even the smallest iron tool, but when you’re in a miles-deep hole perhaps any trade is a good one.

“What is all this stuff? How did it get here?”

I brought it here. Saved it from the scavengers. Most of it is broken, but there are useful parts . . .

“But you said you’re stuck in there.” Yaz looked at the windows.

I have my ways.

“What’s this?” Yaz pulled aside some dusty boards made of nothing she recognised to reveal a black cube, its sides maybe eighteen inches. As she looked at it the black surfaces turned to white and then to a vibrant green.

A thing.

The green shaded into brown. The same dark shade that Erris’s skin held. A moment later Erris watched her from the cube as if each surface were a window onto the world of grass and trees and buzzing beasts that he had taken her to. “Hello, Yaz.”

Yaz found that she had taken several steps back. “Hello . . . How are you in that box? How are you so small? And what is that?”

“A butterfly.” Erris laughed and with a sweep of his hand the brilliant blue wings took flight from his shoulder. “The real question is how are we going to get you out of here?”

“We?” Yaz felt a moment of hope. “You’re going to help me?”

“Of course. I told you, I have a talent for getting into places, and out of them. Admittedly I’ve been stuck in the void for thousands of years, which may shed some doubt on my claim. But the void is something else again. Walking through walls, however, is mere child’s play!”

Yaz knelt and reached out to touch the green world she could see once again. But her hands met a barrier, as if the cube were still there, walling her off from the warm breeze and the softness of the grass. “How can you help me through the walls? Do you have a hammer?”

“I’m coming out to join you. Well . . . in a manner of speaking. Don’t be scared.”

Yaz gave the small Erris a sideways look that dared him to suggest one more time that she might be scared.

“Alright!” He held up his hands in a placatory gesture. “Then don’t laugh either.” The cube turned black again.

“Laugh?” Yaz glanced about, her gaze coming to rest on the windows to the void. Something moved behind her. A grating noise. A shifting among the heaped detritus that Erris had somehow gathered.

Yaz spun around. Pieces fell aside as the something rose, toppling cabinets, shedding layers of flexible sheeting, raising dust. The thing kept rising. A head? Some dark shape atop two shoulders . . . a metal arm reaching.

Yaz stepped back sharply. “What . . .”

A hunter was lifting itself from the chaos. Only it wasn’t quite a hunter. It had more of a man’s shape to it than those multilegged horrors, and although large, Yaz had seen bigger gerants.

“Hello, Yaz.” The voice buzzed around the edges but it sounded like Erris. In place of a head a black sphere returning no light, the body beneath gleaming steel with complex moving parts exposed, the arms mismatched, one of jointed steel tubes, the other a flexible set of overlapping rings like the armour of an eel-shark. Both ended in hands sporting blunt digits rather than a hunter’s claws.

Yaz gaped, openmouthed.

“Well . . . laughing would be better than whatever this is.”

Yaz realised she had backed against the wall and had a metal bar gripped in both hands, ready to swing. She didn’t even remember picking it up.

“Erris?” She peered at the thing before her.

“At your service.” Joints squealed and the not-Erris made a short bow. “This is how I escape the void.