darkened towards the base, becoming jet black right at the bottom to give the impression of a yawning cave mouth. Judging size was difficult but Nona thought the black region could be no more than a hundred yards wide and perhaps thirty yards high, the corruption leaching up through fathoms of ice so that even the tops of the cliffs a thousand yards and more above were grey with it, as if rotten.
In the margins great blocks as yet unmelted by the intensity of the focus moon or the duration of the day lay scattered for a mile before the actual cliffs. The ice boulders ranged in size from lumps no larger than a fist to chunks that would conceal a house. All around them streams of meltwater cut through dead earth to expose bedrock beneath. The whole place gurgled with running water, in places swallowed away through rocky fissures, in others trapped within stinking bogs, swamps of black mud that might suck a person down and not return them before the Corridor closed.
The blocks themselves radiated not only cold but something like malice. Nona found herself staring at them, trying to fathom their translucent greyness. Zole took care to stick to the ridges and the firm ground. Where they had to descend to cross a rill or stream she took trouble not to get her feet wet.
Before long they stood amid ice boulders so thickly clustered that the only open space to be found was in twisting ravines that snaked between them. The black ice yawned ahead, the darkest part proving to cover a significantly larger area than Nona had imagined. The shape was still that of a cave mouth but several hundred yards wide and a hundred tall.
‘What do the ice-tribes say the black ice is?’ Nona asked. She realized it to be a question she should have asked earlier.
‘They do not say,’ Zole replied. ‘They know, but these are not truths to be shared.’
‘Well, perhaps you could make an exception this once? I am your Shield after all. And we’ll be in there very soon …’ Nona moved her head from side to side, trying to make the black wall yield some definition, ‘… if there’s any way in.’ It looked like a yawning mouth filled with midnight but behind the illusion was a solid wall of black ice. Nona’s conviction that there was some kind of tunnel running through it all was based purely on Zole’s assurance and Kettle’s reluctant admission that she had ventured into chambers within the black. Kettle had been following the Scithrowl queen, and faced with the malice radiating from the darkness before her Nona had to agree that anyone who claimed their power from such a place should be feared.
Zole answered Nona’s question after a pause so long that Nona had given up waiting on a reply. ‘The Missing purged their klaulathu … their sins, if you like, in temples built for the purpose. The klaulathu are parts of an individual, not properly alive nor properly dead, and they dwell around the margins of the Path. But places such as the temples, in which so many were purged, remain weak spots where klaulathu can leak back into the world.’
‘And the black ice?’ Nona had an uneasy feeling that she knew the answer.
‘Is where the klaulathu have polluted the ice as it moves across the place where such a temple was sited. The corruption, the evil of an entire race tainting this world again.’
‘And this is the best way to get up onto the backs of the glaciers?’ Nona couldn’t imagine that it was.
‘It is the best way to avoid the Noi-Guin. They lack purity of heart and are susceptible to the klaulathu. They will not dare to guard this path.’
Nona eyed the sucking blackness ahead of them. ‘I’m not sure I dare to walk it. I’m susceptible too, remember?’
13
Present
Holy Class
‘We’ve got to steal the book today?’ Ara looked shocked. ‘We need at least until the seven-day to plan.’
‘Today! Now!’ Nona ducked out of Ara’s study room. ‘I’m going to grab Jula.’
‘Wait! Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?’ Ara’s protest followed her down the stairs.
Images of Sister Apple’s face filled Nona’s mind, just as she must have looked when she discovered the ruin of her stores chamber. Nona was sure she’d left the eye drop flask out. That must have been what told Joeli she was in there. Hopefully it was lost in the mess now rather than standing incriminatingly on