32

Running out onto the open ice felt as if it offered no protection. Instinct drew them all to the city, hoping to lose themselves among the towering structures. It hurt to leave the boat-sled but Yaz hoped the eidolon would follow them rather than vent its rage on their gear.

Quina led the way, Thurin and Yaz close behind. Erris ran as if wading through deep snow, with even Maya outpacing him. And behind Erris, Zox seemed almost to plod, though even he seemed to inject as much urgency into the process as his dwindling energy reserves allowed. He might have an iron hide but he appeared to share their desire to get away from the eidolon.

Behind them came the noise of cracking and then falling ice. And, worse, the first sound to leave the eidolon’s lipless mouth pursued them, a narrow howling, a thin, sharp noise carried to them on the wind, as if hunger had been given its own voice.

Panic drove them deep into the city before they stopped to check for pursuit.

“We left the sled!” Quina came to a dismayed halt.

“I don’t think that thing is after our fish,” Yaz panted.

“Is it coming?” Thurin leaned around the corner of a tower that stretched so far above them it seemed impossible, ridiculous, and meaningless all at the same time.

“It’s coming,” Yaz said. “But I can’t see it.” She didn’t want to see what kind of body had emerged from the broken ice.

“We should go back . . . to the sled,” Erris said.

“No way!” Thurin shook his head. “That’s what it will expect. If it’s not here, then that’s where it will be.”

“So we carry on . . . and find Taproot.” Erris was pausing when he spoke now, almost panting. He didn’t look tired but he moved as if he were walking towards his own grave.

“Can we hide in one of these?” Quina scraped at the frosted ice wall of the tower rising beside them.

Thurin shook his head. “It’s ice all the way through. It shouldn’t be able to hold itself up like this.”

They hurried on, lost within the forest of structures. The wind snaked in with them, its fury diminished as if it too were daunted by the work of the Missing. Yaz’s eyes kept straying to the heights, so far above her that she could hardly see. She marvelled once again that this place in which they were so thoroughly lost, reduced to specks, was in turn dwarfed by the ice and so lost in its vastness that it had no place in the tales told by any tribe she had heard of.

Fear stalked them through gloom-filled passages between the impossibly tall towers. The eidolon had somehow found them in an ocean of ice. Surely it could hunt them through this maze. Yaz found herself haunted by the image of those dogs sloughing off their hides and joining their flesh to that of the eidolon. Whatever horror it had fashioned itself into was even now following their scent, bent close to the ice. Or perhaps waiting for them around the next corner, its mouth distended into some ghastly maw.

Erris and especially Zox, who had both so often been their strength in times of need, now moved with maddening slowness, unable to react to the urgency of their situation. The Ictha code that Yaz had been bound to since birth demanded that they be left behind, sacrificed to their weakness, and that the rest of them should run.

“No.” Yaz forced herself to wait, yet again, while first Erris and then Zox caught up with them. While the others kept watch she took advantage of the delay to consult the needle that Taproot had given her. The direction, which had been constant for so long, changed now as their destination grew closer and the ice city channelled them this way then that. The pathways between the towers and the walls that often joined their bases together had been in shadow when they first arrived. Now the gloom was thickening, seeming to climb the towers as the sun, long since hidden from sight, began to sink behind the lost horizon.

“Can you sense that thing?” Maya asked Thurin. “Sense its water like you did with the guards at the Black Rock, so we know where it is?”

Thurin shook his head without pausing his study of the darkening entrances to the road they were on. “That place was made of rock. This is all ice. You’re asking me to notice a single drop in a sea.”

They moved on in silence, covering a mile, then another. The city seemed impossibly large. Despite the variety of the spires, from ground level it all started to look very similar. More miles passed and they became more lost, more drowned in shadows.

“Where in all the hells is this Taproot?” Quina was unable to keep still, hopping from one foot to the other as if trying to hurry Zox along as he plodded towards them. “You think he’ll be inside one of these?” She waved at the structures looming to either side.

“He’s not really someone who needs anywhere to be . . .” Yaz had never quite managed to explain Taproot to the others. Maya seemed to think that Yaz had only seen him in dreams.

“He’s a god then.” Quina had put forward her theory before. Taproot, she said, was one of the lesser Gods in the Sky, a wind god without form or place.

Erris caught up with them. He shook his head but held his peace. He’d told Yaz that he saw no harm in the others thinking Taproot and Seus to be gods. As long as they didn’t extend the same logic to him as well. And as long as Yaz never believed it.

The needle, in the sheltering hollow of Yaz’s hand, swung sharply. “We need to turn left at the next chance. Come on.” Zox was only yards behind them now.

A short distance on they reached a gap in the ice walls, allowing them to pass between the bases of the spires.

The sight that greeted them stopped Yaz in her tracks.

“That,” Thurin said, “is not what I was expecting.”

Everyone came to a halt, save Erris, who had already fallen behind again, and Zox, who had never caught up. Ahead of them as they turned was a wide plaza almost filled by a black dome. Perhaps black glass, perhaps just darkness. It had to be a thousand yards in diameter and at least three hundred yards high.

“What is it?” Thurin stood frowning at the thing as if his extra sense told him no more about it than the five he shared with the others.

“I have no idea.” Yaz began walking directly towards it.

“Wait!” Thurin called after her.

“What for? We’ve come here for this. If Taproot meant us harm he could have just led us to . . . literally anywhere else.”

Thurin shrugged and gave chase. She had a point.

They arrived together, breathless, stopping where the black wall met the ice. Even when almost touching the dome Yaz still couldn’t tell whether it was solid or not.

“What is it?” Quina joined them, repeating Thurin’s question.

“It’s not ice,” Thurin said.

“It’s not shadow.” Maya arrived.

“Someone should touch it,” Quina said.

But Yaz already had. She took off her glove and laid her hand flat against the darkness. The surface beneath her fingers was hard, smooth, and almost warm. She rapped her knuckles against it but made no sound. “How do we get in?”

Erris crossed the plaza, straining for speed but going slower than walking pace. It looked as if he were fighting through some thick, invisible fluid. Back at the feet of the nearest towers Zox emerged from the shadows, lumbering forward as though dragging ten laden sleds up a pressure ridge. It seemed unlikely he would ever find the energy to leave the city again. But at least, Yaz thought, he would take his final rest in a place where the works of his vanished masters survived, rather than some nameless patch of ice.

“This Taproot led us here,” Thurin said as Erris arrived. “Shouldn’t he open the door?”

Erris laid his palm on the lightless surface. “Taproot is scattered.” He paused as if gathering breath to speak again. “The Taproot that gave Yaz her needle and . . . sent her here can’t communicate with the Taproot . . . inside this dome. If they could then they would integrate and . . . become the same and there would be no point sending us here.”

Yaz frowned. “But if the Taproot who sent us could watch us from the skies and guide us to that sea . . .”

“Then maybe the Taproot here can’t speak to the heavens. Maybe this black wall is too strong and this dome is a fortress,” Thurin said.

“Or a prison.” Maya tried to stick her knife into the wall but the point just slid across it. “Come on, Zox!” she shouted at the dog, still two hundred yards off.

Yaz sensed Maya’s urgency and shared it. The eidolon could emerge from between the buildings at any moment. “If Taproot sent us here knowing that we would have to get inside by ourselves, then he must have known we would be able to do it.”

It was Erris’s turn to look dubious. “You last spoke to him in Vesta. Before you even left the ice and got taken to the Black Rock. I think you’re crediting him with too much foresight. The Taproot you spoke with was a fragment, desperate and under siege by Seus. He may have hoped that you would be able to contact a more intact version of himself here, but as I have said before, he is not a god. He didn’t know who or what you would bring with you or whether you would succeed.”

“Let’s succeed.” Quina hugged herself. Despite the better meals of late she looked too thin for the ice, and painfully aware of just how far they were from any kind of help.

A narrow cry echoed across the plaza. The eidolon, somewhere near. Quina flinched. Suddenly the buildings on all sides felt that much closer, as if the whole plaza were contracting to one dangerous point.

“Where is it?” Thurin spun around, his wild gaze sliding over the many entrances.

“Can’t tell,” Maya said. “Too many echoes. Sounds travel differently here.”

Yaz bit down on her fear and focused on the task in hand. She traced the wall down to the ice. “Thurin, get hold of yourself! Can you tell how far down it goes?” For all she knew, the dome was the tip of a miles-high tower that stood with its feet on the bedrock, somehow withstanding the flow of the ice. Or part of an immense black sphere that just nudged above the surface.

Thurin turned back to face her, chastened, though her admonishment had been aimed at herself as much as at him. His face tightened in concentration as he stared at the ice between him and the wall, then slackened in surprise. “It doesn’t go down at all. It’s just sitting on the ice.”

“Is there a base to it? Or could we . . . dig our way in?” Erris asked.

Another moment’s concentration. “There’s a base.”

“We could hit it really hard with an ice pick,” Quina blurted out.

Yaz bit her lip. It didn’t look or feel like the sort of wall that would give in to violence. Certainly not the sort of violence a swinging arm could deliver. On the other hand, if the eidolon caught them while they were trying more subtle means and they were all slaughtered without knowing that they could have just knocked a hole in it within moments of their arrival—that would be bad.

Even so, she decided to ask first. “Let us in!”

The shout echoed off the surrounding towers and died away. The square was silent, deep in shadow, hardly touched by the wind. Soon it would be night.

“Alright then, hit it.”

Erris took the ice axe from his belt and drew back for a swing. He gathered himself then struck a solid underarm blow. It made no sound and left no mark that could be seen or felt.

“I think I could hit it harder but the haft of the axe would probably break.” He drew his arm back again, looking at Yaz questioningly.

“No.” Waste of any kind hurt her on some deep emotional level, just as it did all of the Ictha. “If that blow didn’t scratch it, then it’s not going to break before your pick does. There must be another way.”

“Well. I’ve already shown you how to walk through walls,” Erris said. “Maybe there are paths like that here.”

“Of course!” Yaz shook her head as if to get the stupid out of it. She defocused her eyes to see the threadscape, the world of connections woven from impossibly fine strands of the Path. Here, as on almost all of the ice, the threads lay relatively few and ordered, disturbed only by the greater infinities that came bound around each of the travellers, joining them to each other, to their possessions, trailing back into their pasts and questing forward to their futures. The dome itself seemed almost devoid of threads, as if it had sat here for a great length of time and as if in all that time almost nothing had ever happened to it. Certainly there were no obvious disturbances that spoke of hidden entrances or places where the Missing had left secret tides that might draw a person into the space beyond.

Yaz began a slow circuit of the dome. Erris followed. Thurin started to join them but Erris held up a hand. “Best you stay here so we know when we’ve got back to where we started.”

Again the eidolon’s cry rang out, seeming even closer. Thurin pressed his lips into a narrow line and with a low creaking a single finger of ice rose between them, reaching chest height. “Now we’ll know when we’ve done a circuit.”

Yaz glanced back. “Come on then. All of you. We should stick together.”

Erris raised a hand. “Zox. Stay here.”

Yaz hesitated but then went on. Zox would slow them down. Also, she wasn’t sure that even an eidolon could damage him.

---

It took all of Yaz’s resolve to keep her sight on the threadscape, studying the wall while she made her slow advance. Somewhere close, the eidolon, an untold number of the worst evils clothed in corrupt flesh, was stalking the streets of the ice city. Looking for someone to work its malice on. The eidolon held enough devils to taint a whole clan by itself, and Yaz desperately wanted to be far, far away from it. But she kept to her task and relied on the others to watch her back.

Yard by yard they advanced. The circuit showed nothing, and by the time they returned to the marker Thurin had raised it was dark enough for Yaz to draw out her smaller stars for light. These had come from breaking another of the Watcher’s eyes into fragments a few days back to use in the heat pot.

“Ideas?” Erris asked as they drew level with Zox. The dog raised its head slowly and favoured them with one of his unreadable looks.

“I thought this was your thing,” Thurin said. “You know all there is to know about the Missing.”

“Ha!” Erris shook his head ruefully. “I don’t even know what they looked like.”

“You know a thousand times more about them than we do.” Thurin stuck to his point.

“Well.” Erris folded his arms. “As the group’s expert on the Missing . . . when it comes to getting into this dome . . . I have no idea. None at all.”

“And isn’t getting into and out of places supposed to be some kind of special marjal talent of yours?” Thurin persisted.

“I’m sure I could find my way in,” Erris said, a little more sharply than he normally spoke. “Eventually. But it might take a while. How long do you have?” He raised a brow in question.

The group exchanged glances and shuffled around in their icy furs. Maya walked off a little way; Thurin leaned his weight against the dome as if hoping to fall through; Quina paced. All of them kept looking to the perimeter, where many dark streets opened onto the square.

“When I was in the city under the Black Rock,” Thurin said, “there was a gate. The one those three mad old women led me to. I opened it with a star.”

Yaz slapped herself. She snatched one of the small stars from its slow orbit around her head and brought it to the dome. As it came close she saw for the first time a glimmer of reflection from the surface that had hitherto drunk in all light, and when she tried to touch it against the wall, there was a small dimple, as if the wall were a stretched hide and the star a heavy weight resting on it. In fact the wall retreated from the star, refusing to allow contact, the black stuff eaten away, only to re-form as she withdrew her hand. Relief flooded her. “We just need a bigger star to get in!”

“They’re on the sled,” Thurin said in a sinking voice.

“We have to go back?” Quina groaned. “Through that?” She pointed to the street that had brought them here. Yaz couldn’t even remember the path they’d taken.

“Couldn’t you . . .” Thurin reached out his hand like Yaz did when she pulled a star towards her.

Yaz closed her eyes, trying to sense the stars she’d left behind. They couldn’t be less than two or three miles away, more probably. She felt nothing, not even a hint of them, let alone what she needed to take hold of one and bring it to her. “I can’t.”

“I’ll go,” Maya said.

“What?” Quina looked horrified. “Out there? Alone?”

“I’m good at hiding.” Maya looked grim.

“You couldn’t pick any of those stars up,” Yaz said, glad of a reason the girl couldn’t go. “You can’t even get close to them.”

“I could do it . . .” Thurin said unwillingly. “I can use the ice to move them.”

“Nobody’s going alone,” Yaz said. “We’ll go together.”

None of them spoke. The eidolon would find them in the dark out there and they would all die.

“Oh shit.” Erris pointed. “It’s here.”