The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,78

among the Broken.” Yaz frowned.

“But they hunt the stars for quantals to use. They trade them, do they not?”

“That’s why they throw children down here,” Yaz breathed. “The priests of the Black Rock. They might want the stars even more than they want the iron.”

Erris shrugged, an odd thing to see. Metal grated on metal. “There may be other reasons. It doesn’t seem an . . . efficient . . . solution. But yes, those are reasons too. Any star should be worth a billion times its weight in metal, but I concede that the realities of life in a frozen wasteland might change that balance, especially if the ability to exploit them is rare.”

Yaz looked around. Her stomach growled, she licked dry lips with a dry tongue, her head ached, and her body felt sore. “How does this help me leave?”

“You should be dead, Yaz. Being this close to the void star would drive almost anyone else mad, their brain would bleed, they would die. Even most full-blood quantals couldn’t get within a hundred yards without their personality being torn apart. The human mind wasn’t built to withstand this power. It’s like fire. From a distance it lights the way. Closer up it warms us. Too close and we burn. With the stars it’s similar. At a distance there is light. Closer to us they open the Path to those who can find its power. Too close and they split our minds apart. The piece of you that longs to murder becomes its own creature. The part that is jealous, the part that lusts, your anger . . . all of them break away and find their own voice.”

Yaz nodded. “I can feel that. Voices in my head. A splitting pain.”

“It’s good you can feel something! I was starting to think you weren’t human at all.” Erris raised a metal hand. “Don’t be offended. It’s just that the city brought you here to die. It’s as if you had been thrown into a furnace and were standing there in the white heat and only now just beginning to sweat. It shouldn’t be. And yet it is.” He set his steel fingers to her shoulder and Yaz kept herself from flinching. “And I am glad of it. Truly.” He looked around and pointed at a section of the wall no different from any other. “That’s where we need to go. Look for the Path. This river of yours.”

Rather than argue that it was too soon Yaz let her eyes defocus, ignored the pain lancing through her skull, and looked beyond the world.

If the river were visible at all so close to her last touch then it should have been a gossamer thread far beyond reach. Instead the river roared all around her, a torrent rushing through the world’s impossible angles with a speed that might strip flesh from bone. The shock of it threw Yaz back against the wall and left her trembling.

“I saw it!”

“I noticed.” Erris bent his dark head.

“What do I do?”

Erris turned away and began clearing a path to the opposite wall, pushing aside heavy blocks from which black ropes emerged, metal casings, parts of . . . things. “You’re the expert, not me. But it shouldn’t be hard. Remember that the Missing have made this route for you. All you need to do is follow it. And take me with you.”

Yaz advanced along the cleared path toward the wall, kicking away small objects Erris had missed. One whirred alarmingly and scuttled away on pin-like legs to hide among the heaped debris to one side. She came to the wall as Erris hauled aside the last obstacle, metal squealing on stone.

“So, I just . . .” Yaz set her palms to the stone, finding it warm to the touch, warmer than ice anyhow. She gathered herself for the effort.

“You don’t need to pound your way through—use the Path to take us, let it show you the way.” He reached out to tap the stone with a steel finger. “We should probably hurry.” Another tap.

“Hurry?” Yaz looked back over her shoulder and favoured the impenetrable darkness where Erris’s face should be with her hardest stare. “Through a