The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,96

wanted it to or not. “Is Thurin safe? Are the others safe?”

“Thurin?” Quell asked.

“The others,” Yaz said. “Are they all safe?”

“Nobody is safe!” Maya suddenly spun around, checking the entrances. “It’s too bright here. We have to go.”

Yaz dimmed the stardust, returning the chamber to its previous gloom, mottled with the faint, coloured glow of the dust bands. “Not until I know what’s happening. Where is everyone?”

Maya drew a deep breath. “It’s war. They’re fighting among themselves. Pome and his people are based around the forge pool. Arka and Eular are holding out against them at the ravine where the drying cave is.”

“That’s not very big! How many of them are there? And what about the settlement?”

“There’s about thirty of us. The settlement is empty except for maybe some old folk and sick. There was a lot of fighting there.”

Quell stepped up beside Yaz. “And what were you doing out here, child?” He frowned, studying Maya closely. “Clan Axit, aren’t you?”

The bands tattooed on the outer edge of her left ear gave it away. Yaz had always thought it funny that this timid girl belonged to the famously warlike Axit. Perhaps among their tents being kind and gentle was all it took to count as broken.

“I was spying,” Maya said. “Arka needs to know the disposition of the enemy.”

Quell blinked. “The what?”

“What Pome is up to,” Maya explained. It seemed that even the Axit children knew more of the language of war than Ictha men.

“We should go to Arka,” Yaz said. “Will you take us?”

“I know the way.” Quell gestured back the way they had come.

“But Maya knows the way and how to stop us getting filled with spears by some overexcited guards before we can explain ourselves.”

Maya seemed doubtful for a moment, looking Quell up and down with mistrustful eyes. She was still a few years shy of the time when she might be swayed by handsome young men.

“He’s my friend,” Yaz said. “He came down the pit on a rope. To save me.”

Maya’s doubt seemed to deepen still further, but at last she nodded. “Follow me then. But be quiet. I heard you two coming from a mile off.”

* * *

MAYA LED THEM through a series of narrow tunnels made by coal-worms and squeezed by glacial flow over the intervening years. No gerant could have used them. At several points Quell struggled to fit through. He made no complaint but Yaz could see her own fear echoed on his face. They had both lived a life on the vast open of the ice and tight confines held a horror all their own.

As she followed, Yaz found herself wondering about the time she had spent in the city. Days? How long had she been in the void, dreaming strange dreams? Erris had spent a hundred lifetimes and more in its dark heart. Just a little longer in his green world and Yaz might have woken like Jekka Ixo from the old tales, emerging from his nap in the witch’s cave to find the world had moved on without him, his people changed, his children forgotten, and like Jekka she would have walked the ice beneath a burden of years that had imparted only age and no wisdom.

Crossing a wider chamber Quell drew level with Yaz. “If these people are fighting a war among themselves they aren’t going to be interested in helping rescue your brother.”

Yaz had been thinking the same thing herself. “There are other kinds of help. We have no idea what we’re up against with the Tainted. Arka knows things we need to know. And Thurin was living among them until recently.”

“Thurin? You mentioned him before. He was tainted?”

“Yes.”

Quell shuddered. “I’ve seen them, you know. Not just the giant woman—”

“Gerant.”

“I’ve seen others wandering outside the changed ice. Especially by the big pool. I thought they were sick, or driven mad by being down here too long, but those must have been taints too. I knew there was something wrong as soon as I saw the first