Staerstone, page 31
“So they shouldn’t have so many children.”
“Big families are needed to work in the fields,” Andalu said stiffly.
“Well, I’ve gone hungry, but you don’t see me starting a war,” Zericha said, poking the fire with a stick. “Times on this journey, even now, we’re on rations. I reckon I’ve been through—put myself through—more than most people ever will. So have you.” She sighed. “And I bet we have a hell of a lot more to go through, before this quest is over.” She threw her stick away, looked into the distance and sighed. “Besides, if the Scepter isn’t taken, Staercrags will destroy everything. After the Sodden rise and—”
“What?”
“Ah. None of the Seers knew the full story, but Catiallé told me before I lost her. It’s like…the Scepter is unstable. If we can’t work out how to bind it, we fail. We don’t deserve to continue. The unbound Scepter calls to Staercrags, so he returns and smashes it all to bits.”
“I didn’t… Isn’t that kind of violent? Isn’t there another way to stop it? What’s the point of that?”
She shrugged. “I guess if you’re made of rock, that’s how you roll. It spreads life, ideas, things, through the universe. That’s how Stellaeth became the way it is. Ideology and customs from a distant planet crashed down here. None of this helps us much.” She threw her stick into the fire. “But there was something else the Chronos said. The Scepter could be bound to its composites.”
He quizzed her with a raised eyebrow. “I think Kodjar mentioned that, too.”
“I have no idea what it means. At the time, I just figured I’d kill you to take the Scepter. It needs blood. I had to sacrifice a heart, in my dream. If it comes down to it, that’s still what we’ll have to do. Fight it out to see who wins and who…dies.”
Andalu looked into her eyes, aching. There was no way he could ever hurt her.
“Could you really do it?” he asked. “Kill me?”
She frowned at her hands, then looked at him, tears in her eyes. “If we have to choose between each other and saving the whole world of Stellaeth…” She shrugged and shook her head, showing her palms. “I really don’t know.”
Andalu packed his gear. Zericha led him through a narrow gap between to tall walls of ice. As they moved deeper into the corridor, the walls began to shimmer in shifting rainbows. Waves of pink, orange, yellow and blue rolled through the stone.
“What is this?” she asked, putting a hand to the glimmering ice.
“It’s beautiful,” Andalu said, then squinted, trying to understand what was happening within the ice. There was life, or movement. An image of a face seemed to haunt the depths. A face he recognized. A shiver crawled up his spine. Yes, it was a face, shadowy at first, shadows darkening to become eye-sockets and lips. The image rounded out to solidify, with bright cheeks and forehead; a familiar face etched in three-dimensional shadow, in black and white. Short black hair kicked back from her face…
“Hygera!” he cried, reaching up to touch her. She grimaced and mouthed words but made no sound. Was she trying to warn him?
Help me, she mouthed. Get me out. Pan rose next to her, beating the ice. Andalu couldn’t look away, but then Zericha cried out, and he turned. On the other wall, a little boy stared up at her, reached up to her. He seemed to be made of…charcoal.
“No,” Zericha whispered, stepping back.
Joädie
She watched, mesmerized, as the little boy reached a charcoal hand through the wall and grabbed her wrist. His grip burned. Strong hands closed around her biceps, from behind, pulling her backwards. The boy’s charcoal fingers were clamped around her wrist, and his hand broke off. She screamed and grabbed her arm with her other hand.
Images flickered on the wall of ice, as the scene played out in a room behind him—there she was, a little girl running after the little shadow child, chasing him as though her life depended on it. He was her only hope for survival, on the mountain. He’d waited for her, sometimes. Other times he’d run so fast she couldn’t keep up. He’d hidden and left her alone in the dark, scared and crying. The fear! He’d lunged out and terrified her, then laughed at her.
Anger!
He’d left her alone.
In the end, she’d caught him. Caught her brother. So angry!
At the peak of the mountain, she shoved him down. He smashed his head against the Staerstone Altar. She held a stone dagger against his throat, and hesitated for only a moment. Then she’d pressed down. Tugged the blade toward herself. Artery severed, his blood had flowed along the drains around the altar, into the mountain’s veins, quickening the growing Scepter. Staerstone’s fires hissed and sizzled.
The shadow child—Joädie. Her brother. She’d killed him.
He’d led her up the mountain. Staerstone had called them all the way, protected them, and finally…taken him as the sacrifice. He’d thought she would be the sacrifice. That was why he’d been hot and cold, cruel and kind. At times he’d tried to leave her behind. He’d gone half mad, talking to himself. But he’d given his blood, in the end. She’d been the killer.
Zericha stared at the charcoal hand clamped around her wrist. She smashed it against the ice, and it broke.
“No!” she cried, grappling with the revelation. Andalu held her shoulders, but it brought no comfort. She pressed her hands to her eyes, trying to unsee the murder. The mountain had taken her brother. The mountain had taken her sister. She’d killed her brother in cold blood.
“I’m a monster,” she said, holding up her hand, stained black around her wrist. How could she have done it? Joädie. Her mother and father’s child, several years older than her. Dead. And they’d made her forget. Her hands shook, as she held them up to her face. They made her forget because she could neither speak nor eat. She’d only screamed, staring at the blood on her hands. Seeing them slick and dark red. She’d scrubbed them so hard they’d bled. The Chronos had bandaged them, but the blood soaked through.
“Zericha?” Andalu said.
“Did you see it?” she asked.
“What does it mean?”
“I killed my brother,” she said. “That’s him. The shadow child. He’s coming for me.”
The walls were closing in, reality warping. She wasn’t the person she’d thought. She’d thought she wasn’t a killer, but now—she’d been wrong. No wonder she’d raised her bow so easily and shot a bolt into Nef, and killed Wyldren to escape. No wonder she’d risked her sister’s life so carelessly.
Somewhere dark and distant, Joädie sniggered.
You say you’re not a killer, so why are you bringing a sacrifice? he whispered.
“He’s not a sacrifice,” she said, gulping over the last word.
“What?” Andalu said.
“Nothing.” Zericha bit her lip.
Just go away!
It’s been so long. I’ve missed you, sister. You understand. You know what it’s like to miss your sister…I’ll stay right here, to help you.
Zericha shook her head.
“Are you all right?” Andalu asked.
She rubbed the back of her neck. “No. Yes. I have to be. I don’t have any choice.”
She glanced around for Joädie. He’d disappeared. He was a creature of Staerstone Mountain. Did he serve the Sodden, too?
“Zericha, look!”
She followed the direction of Andalu’s finger, at pictures deep within the ice. Images of Yornan and several climbers weaving around icy boulders.
“It looks like they’ve crossed the IceLine,” he said.
A shiver ran over her shoulders. “He’s coming,” she said. “We have to go.”
Rappel into Darkness
Andalu looked down into the abyss they’d arrived at. It was just a few yards wide, with warm air flowing up, but the darkness below went deep. He glanced at Zericha. Her shoulders were hunched, and she seemed jumpy and distant. She hadn’t been right since her brother had grabbed her and she’d learned the truth about their past. He couldn’t blame her. The ghosts he’d seen had unsettled him, too. Hygera and Pan, begging him to set them free. Were they real, or was it an illusion? Could they be trapped somewhere?
All that, and Yornan’s klimb guard on their tail.
“I’m going down,” Zericha said, crouching to unpack the rope.
“Are you sure? We’ll be going backwards, in a sense.”
She looked upwards, past him. When he followed her gaze he too saw the sheer, smooth walls. Onyx. Unclimbable. Down was the only option.
He hated rappelling. Backing out over an abyss, not knowing what was below, what he would find. But Zericha was threading the rope around a boulder, so he’d better get used to the idea.
“It’s my turn to go first,” he said.
“You don’t have to.”
He wanted to, if it meant keeping her safe. “I want to descend…”
“Into deep unknown darkness?” She paused to look at him with raised eyebrows.
“Of course.” He grinned and hooked into the line with his belay device and a prusik for backup, then backed toward the edge, keeping his mind steady, although he didn’t know what would come next. Zericha’s gaze was fixed on him. It wasn’t fear in her eyes, more like an acknowledgement that they had no idea what they’d find below, or how they’d get up again. Still, he had to try. From somewhere, a warm feeling grew inside him.
“Feel that?” he asked.
“What?”
“I don’t know.” He didn’t know where the feeling was coming from, but it gave him the courage to back over the edge. Gravity pulled him downward, the rope creaked above him, and he hung in the air, lowering himself on the rope. Darkness rose, swallowing him.
He estimated how many feet he was descending through the pitch black.
Twenty…thirty…forty…
“Light!” he called out. “From below.” The darkness began to ease.
A red glow came from far below. Light and…heat.
He was nearing the end of the rope, but no ledge or new anchor point was in sight. It would be a long jug back up this rope, if that was what he had to do.
“Look!” he whispered. Nobody heard him say it. Zericha was too far away. He’d arrived at a hole in the wall. He could hardly believe what he saw. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. It was a cavern with a forest inside, daylight spilling down into it, and he reached the ground just as he hit the knots on the ends of the rope.
“It’s good. I’m off the rope,” he called up, walking into the warm cavern. He just had to hope there was a way back out.
Zericha’s mood blackened as she rappelled into the darkness.
She’d never find Catiallé.
Never make it to the Scepter.
Yornan was after them. He’d catch them soon. And her brother was out there, biding his time. Down and down… She almost gave in to despair, but the light grew around her, warm and orange, rising up from lava far below. What had Andalu found that had made him sound so happy? Then she saw it: a cave, where plants grew thick and plentiful.
She found her feet, rubbed her eyes. Was it real? A rainforêt steamed inside the open-roofed cave, orchids flowering on the walls, with hover flies flitting between them. Small birds chittered and fluttered between the trees. The delicate scent of blossom filled the air.
“What is this?” she asked. It felt like home! She cupped a handful of the water flowing in the stream and drank. It was tepid, and the walls felt warm. The heat had kept this high pocket of ancient forêt alive.
“How lucky are we?” Andalu said.
“This plant life is old. It mightn’t have changed in thousands of years. It’s like we’ve gone back in time,” she said. She sat down on the thick, soft moss. She was so tired now, but they must keep moving, forging onward.
Yornan’s group would not be far behind them…but it was so beautiful here. She let the rope fall off her shoulders and took off her shoes to wash her feet. Andalu lay down, head resting on his bag.
The fresh water was delicious, and she washed her face, arms and legs. She felt cleaner, refreshed. She could almost convince herself she was at a creek outside the dimarcheio, that Catiallé would part the bushes and appear, smiling. But no, she would not. The light of her sister stone was so dim. Catiallé was far away, barely alive.
Nothing would be the same if she didn’t find her. If Catiallé was dead, she’d have to face their mother, who would blame her. Then there were her newly resurfaced memories of Joädie, and the realization that her parents had colluded with the Chronos to hide his existence. Nothing would be same at the dimarcheio ever again.
She dried her face and hands, and picked mushrooms and large, purple fruit. Trusting they were safe to eat, like almost all the fruit on Staerstone, she washed them in the stream, sorry she couldn’t make a fire to cook them. She didn’t dare, not in this ancient, sacred place.
“Wake up and eat,” she said, shaking Andalu gently.
He frowned and groaned as he rolled over and sat up.
Zericha savored the sweet tang of the fruit on her tongue. It reminded her of her mother and the pies she’d baked for Arkine’s altar. Had she been here and harvested this fruit?
She licked the last traces of juice from her fingertips and dragged herself up to standing. Time to move on.
Lava
Andalu found an easy scramble out of the forest pocket, over and up onto the top of the cave. The further they went, the hotter the stone grew underfoot. To the north, the peak of the mountain rose upward, only about a hundred feet away.
Zericha stood beside him, staring upwards. “We’re close.”
Andalu led the way across the expanse and into a bright tunnel of hot, white stone that burned his feet through his shoes. A sulfurous breath exhaled from the chamber within, baking hot, like a large oven. The short length of tunnel opened into a cavern and he sensed, before he saw the short drop to a stream of—
He took Zericha’s arm and she turned to him, brow creased, eyes wide in horror. Was this a nightmare?
“Lava,” he said, sweating. The orange glow reflected off her cheeks.
She grimaced. “Scorching hot.”
A lava stream ahead of them flowed in one end of cave and out the other. Most of it was black, but in places molten rock bubbled through. The surface cooled, darkened and cracked. Seams of fresh liquid rose up, spitting blobs of superheated rock. Hot air burned his face as he crept closer, driven by a wind flowing through the cave. His hair stuck to his face with sweat. It was hotter than a blacksmith’s furnace.
The rift that stretched from one side of the cave to the other was about ten feet across. There appeared be a stone ledge on the other side like the one they were standing on, and to the right was an opening which let in the wind, and daylight.
“How do we cross?” he asked. There was no way around it.
“Up there.” Zericha pointed to the roof of the cave, thirty feet up, highly textured and sooty.
“How about a run and jump to the far ledge?” he asked.
“Too far.”
“I think I could almost make it.”
“Almost won’t be good enough.”
“Hey,” he said, noticing that Zericha was tying into the rope. “I can do the climb, if we have to.” Could he, though? His palms were already running with sweat.
“You went first on the rappel,” she said, stiffly. “You don’t get to have all the fun.”
“It will be stinking hot.”
“Like a summer’s day in the Truachine Desert, where I first tried out my gear,” she said, forcing a grim smile. “I won’t stop moving. I’m good at it. Stinking hot cave climbing is my jam.”
“Really?”
She snorted.
Wait—was she serious? He didn’t like it but was too hot to argue. Slowly, he set up to belay her.
“If you’re sure,” he said. He didn’t need to tell her that a fall would be lethal, that a change in the wind or a large crack in the clinker could see her torched. It was the wind, he realized, that was making the heat bearable, carrying most of it away.
She didn’t meet his eye, but nodded. He reached for her arm. “Before you go, be safe, okay?” he said. “Because I love you.” She looked at him. “A kiss?” he asked. “For luck.”
She looked up at the roof. “No. It’ll be hard enough to climb in here. Don’t make it any hotter.”
He released his hold on her arm.
“Okay. You owe me one, later.”
Zericha spared him grin and then started to climb up the side of the cave.
“The holds are positive,” she said, sweat slick on her shoulders. It looked like easy going, but Andalu’s heart beat hard in his chest as she placed a hex into a crack. She made it higher easily, approaching the ceiling. If her hand slipped… Don’t even think about it. She’d only placed that one hex. Zericha reached out. Her back arched as she started the horizontal climb under the roof. The undulations were so large she kept her feet up, and cruised her hands across the roof, then held on and brought her feet around. It was true, she was great at this style.
When she reached the area over the stream of molten rock, she touched the ceiling. “Hot,” she said. “Not burning my skin off, though. Yet.”
She was scraping the bottom of the optimism barrel.
Zericha placed a knee-bar by tucking her left foot and knee into a large pocket in the rock. She slotted a heel hook in with her right. Holding on with one hand, she removed a sling from her harness and threaded it through a thick loop of rock right in the middle of the ceiling, then added a carabiner and clipped the rope in.
