The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,92

rolled his eyes upwards as if about to appeal to the Gods in the Sky, but finding only ice above him he sighed. “Kazik rejected him. There’s no life for him with the Ictha, Yaz. The wind—”

“The wind might kill him, yes. But do you think the priests don’t lie? They certainly keep some pretty big secrets!” She swung an arm to encompass the chamber and the scars of the Missing city all around them. “Zeen needs to be given the choice. He might choose to stay or to come with us and see whether the wind really will kill him.”

Quell shook his head. “Fine . . . But I’m going to advise him to stay here. And it ends with Zeen. I’ve seen you with your friends. We can’t bring them all back. They’ll probably try to stop the whole thing anyway.”

“Oh.” Yaz hadn’t realised that Quell had already watched her. Something in the way he said friends hinted at a jealousy she wouldn’t have suspected he had in him. She appreciated his reluctance to approach them though. The gerants especially looked very intimidating. Yaz’s first encounter with Hetta wasn’t something that would ever fade from her memory.

“So, where is he?” Quell asked.

“With the Tainted.”

“The who?” A raised eyebrow.

“The Tainted. They live in the black ice. It drives them mad.” Said out loud it sounded as impossible as reaching the surface.

“And they’ve taken Zeen?”

“He’s one of them, probably.” Yaz walked back to the hunter’s star. “If we get him back then this will drive the taint out of him. But we’re going to need help.”

Quell blinked. He drew a deep breath, and then gave a nod that made Yaz wonder if there had to be a storm or if sometimes love just stole up on you. “Alright. Let’s do it.”

* * *

YAZ HID THE hunter’s star in an ice-filled hollow close to the cavern wall. They watched as its warmth began to melt a path down. The water would refreeze above it, and with the glow dimmed by Yaz’s will, there would be nothing to betray it save the aura. According to Quell, at its edges that aura felt more like a suggestion to keep away. The sort of feeling that might unconsciously slip into a man’s mind and turn him along a different path.

Quell led the way back up the long slope, past the gateposts, which remained silent, and into the chamber beyond. Yaz took out Pome’s star for additional light. She paused and raised it level with her head. The blue of it reminded her of the brittle blue of Pome’s eyes and it struck her that despite his slight build and relative youth he was perhaps the most dangerous of those beneath the ice with her. Even the largest of the gerants presented a knowable threat but Pome, with his faction and politics and ambition, could be capable of anything. She hardly knew him but it was clear he had generous measures of both pride and cruelty, a dangerous combination. He clearly had the skill to sway others with his words. A power that was both small and large at the same time. But what other magic he might hold from the corruption of blood that had seen him thrown down eight years before she didn’t know. Shadow-weaving? Ice-working? Or something more deadly and held secret?

“You made that star roll to your hand,” Quell said. “Back in the city, when I was failing to keep you quiet.”

“I was going to brain you with it.” Yaz exerted a little pressure and the star’s song changed ever so slightly. She held the star between thumb and finger. Stay. She lifted the finger, lowered the thumb, withdrew her hand. And the star remained, though it started to rotate slowly.

Quell’s eyebrows rose. “They do that?”

“Apparently.”

Yaz took a step back and the star followed, as if its instruction were relative to her rather than the world. She laughed. Slowly the star began to move around her on an orbit she could almost see, as if it were following a thread so fine that it dwelt just beyond the edge of vision. Yaz pursed her lips then shrugged. It would keep