The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,90

some semblance of life. It weighed twenty times what Pome’s did. Calmed by her will the hunter’s star glowed a sullen red with patches of darkness moving slowly across its surface.

“I don’t understand how you can touch that thing . . .” Quell winced and returned to the side of the hole. “I get the horrors if I go anywhere near it. Like my thoughts are breaking.”

“I don’t know.” She did know. It was in her blood. If she cupped the star in both hands she could almost completely surround it. Its song filled her then, clearer than ever before, as if there might be words to it, as though if she only took the time they might reveal their meaning. She felt its fire burning at the edge of her mind, giving whispering voice to parts of her that normally held their tongue. But even touching this star was nothing like as bad as being however many tens of yards she’d been from the void star. “I don’t know how I can stand it. I just can.”

Yaz huddled, clutching the star to her in both hands. It had a warmth to it and she was colder now than she had ever been save in the long night.

“It seems a shame to leave all that.” Quell was peering down at the scattered ruins of the hunter. To the Broken it was a scavenger’s dream but to the Ictha it was a greater wealth in metal than the entire clan owned. More than they could trade for over three generations.

“You’ll find they value things down here differently. A lot of things. Not just iron.” Yaz set the hunter’s star down in a hollow in the rock and came to stand beside Quell where he crouched at the edge. “Mother Mazai says we’re never free until we can walk away from what we want carrying only what we need.”

“That old woman is too wise for her own good.” Quell looked up with a forced grin. “Perhaps we could just take a—”

“Quell! What are you even doing here? I mean how did—”

“I told you.” He got to his feet, half a head taller than her, wider. He smelled good. Like home. “I came to save you.”

“You didn’t jump into the Pit of the Missing? Not for me. That’s madness.”

“Of course not. Jumping in would be crazy!” He offered her a wry smile. “I stole just about every rope the Ictha have. And a dozen sets of dog harnesses from the Quinx and the Axit.”

“Quell!” The Ictha never stole.

“Well, I borrowed them. Quietly. While everyone was sleeping after the final night of the gathering, drunk on ferment. They can have them back. Well . . . most of them can, I expect.” Quell pursed his lips. “I tied them all into one long rope. You should have seen it, Yaz. It would have reached from the top of the ice cliffs to the bottom of the sea!”

“You climbed down the pit?”

“It started that way, yes.” A frown. “I tied the rope to an iron stake and let it down, then started climbing. And climbing. And climbing. That is one deep hole! So, about three days later I’m hanging there in total darkness, my arms are half-dead, everything is soaking wet . . . And suddenly one of my knots gives way and I’m falling.”

“Splash.” Yaz remembered the shock of it.

“Exactly. And it seemed like I was falling, or sliding, forever. I don’t think that rope would have reached anywhere near the bottom even if it hadn’t come apart.”

“And nobody found you?” Yaz imagined that so long after the regulator stopped his cull the pools would not be well guarded.

“I decided to watch and wait. I’ve seen others in the caves, but they didn’t see me. Everyone seems very busy down here, like something important is going on.”

Yaz stepped back to take Quell in. So familiar and yet so out of place. It seemed extraordinary. All of it. Not least that he would be so reckless, and for her.

“Why would—” But she didn’t want to ask that question. Not now. She wasn’t sure that she