The Cradle of Ice (Moonfall #2)

Chapter 2

2

I T DIDN’T TAKE long for Nyx’s fears to be confirmed.

She stood beside Jace in the crowded wheelhouse of the Sparrowhawk. Everyone gathered around a pock-faced crewman named Hyck. Time had weathered the old man down to tendon and gristle, but his eyes still shone with a sharp fervor. He was a former alchymist who had been defrocked ages ago and now served as the ship’s engineer.

He rubbed a rag between his hands, trying to erase a residue of greasy flashburn from his palms but only smearing it around instead. “Lucky it were only the starboard maneuvering forge that blew. If it were the stern engine, we’d never be able to limp our way back to the Crown.”

Nyx shared a concerned look with Jace. She knew the swyftship had three forges, a pair to either side and a huge one at the stern end of the keel.

“Have the fires been put out?” Darant asked.

“Aye,” Hyck answered. “First thing we did. Flames be the greater danger here than any blast. Your two daughters be surveying the rest of the damage, seeing if there’s anything to be salvaged.”

Darant paced the breadth of the wheelhouse. This was the brigand’s ship, and any damage it took was as if it were to his own body. His face remained a dark thundercloud. He kept a fist clenched on the hilt of one of his whipswords. A dark blue half-cloak flagged behind him, a match to his breeches and shirt, as he pounded across the planks.

Graylin lifted a hand. “Does this mean we’ll have to turn back, return to the Crown?”

Hyck opened his mouth, only to be cut off by Darant. “Sard we will!” the pirate exclaimed, half withdrawing the slim blade as if ready to attack anyone who challenged him. “This li’l hawk might have a damaged wing, but she can still fly true enough. We can compensate for the loss of the starboard forge. Like Hyck said, our stern engine is what matters most. We continue onward.”

Graylin turned to Nyx. Concern narrowed his eyes, allowing only a hint of silvery blue to show, like a vein of ice in his rocky features. There was little other color to be found in the man. It was as if the legend of the Forsworn Knight—a tale that wove Nyx and Graylin together in tragedy—had turned him into a book’s etching, a figure drawn in shades of black and gray. His dark hair and scruff of beard were salted with white. Some strands were weathered by age; others marked the sites of buried scars. Yet, not all of his old wounds were hidden, like the crook in his nose and a jagged weal under his left eye. They were all testaments to his punishment for falling in love and breaking an oath to the king of Hálendii.

A growl rose. While it didn’t flow from Graylin, it might as well have. It expressed a mix of frustration and anger. The knight’s shadow shifted farther into view. The vargr’s amber-gold eyes glowed out of coal-black fur. Muscular haunches bunched, ruffling the tawny stripes buried there, like sunlight dappling through a dark canopy. The vargr’s tufted ears stood tall, swiveling back and forth, seeking the source of the danger that had set everyone on edge.

Nyx hummed under her breath and wove over a calming thread of bridle-song. It wound into the rumble of that growl, tamping down the vargr’s guardedness.

Graylin tried his own method, resting a calloused palm on the beast’s shoulder. “Settle, Kalder.”

The vargr swished his tail twice more, then sank to a seat, but his ears remained tall and stiff.

During her brief connection with Kalder, Nyx had sensed the wildness constrained in that strong heart. Some mistook Kalder to be a mere hunting dog, one obedient to Graylin. Nyx knew their attachment ran deeper, a bond born not only of trust and respect, but also of shared pain and loss. The memory of Kalder’s brother, lost half a year ago, still echoed inside that stalwart chest. She heard whispers of chases through cold forests, of a warmth that only a brother curled at one’s side could bring.

Kalder’s edginess was also likely due to the months of confinement aboard the Sparrowhawk. Such magnificent beasts were never meant to be caged.

Graylin turned from the group and stared out the row of forward windows. “Darant, I trust your faith in your ship, but perhaps caution should outweigh conviction in this regard. If we lose the Sparrowhawk, then all is lost. Rather than rush headlong—”

“No!” Nyx blurted out.

As everyone turned her way, she refused to shrink under the combined weight of their gazes. She remembered the three turns of the moon it had taken them to get this far. To return to the Crown would take just as long. And they’d still have to make the crossing again to return to this spot.

“We’d lose half a year,” she said. “We can’t afford that. We must reach the site Shiya showed us on her globe.”

“We understand,” Graylin said. “But Shiya also told us we had at least three years, maybe five, before moonfall became inevitable. We have some latitude for cautiousness.”

“No. No, we don’t.”

“Nyx…”

She shook her head, knowing a good portion of Graylin’s restraint was born of concern for her. Pain shone in his eyes. While she might not be his daughter, she was still the child of the woman he had once loved. Graylin had long believed Nyx had died in the Myr swamps, only to have her miraculously resurrected and returned to him. He clearly did not intend to lose her again.

But she dismissed his concerns. They did not matter.

Instead, Nyx pictured the shimmering mirage of their world cast forth by Shiya’s crystal cube. An emerald marker had glowed deep in the Frozen Wastes. That was their destination, though little was known about it. Not even Shiya could guess what lay out there, only that the site was important. For any hope of stopping the moon from crashing into the Urth, they had to set their world to turning again, as it had countless millennia ago. Somehow that glowing marker was vital to accomplishing that seemingly impossible task.

“We don’t know what we’ll find out there,” Nyx warned. “Or how long it will take to pry answers from that mystery. We can’t risk any further delays. For as much as we know, we may already be too late.”

She kept her face fixed, both to show her determination and to hide the deeper part of her that hoped they were too late. If they set the Urth to spinning again—something that still seemed incomprehensible to her—it would herald its own catastrophe. The world would be ravaged in that turning tide. Shiya had shown them this, too. The massive floods, the quakes, the storms that would rip around the planet. Millions upon millions would die.

Nyx understood this fate was far better than the eradication of all life should moonfall occur. Yet, in her heart, she could not dismiss the untold suffering that would result if they were successful. She knew it was necessary, but she kept a secret hope guarded close to her heart.

Let those deaths not be by my own hand.

“The lass is right,” Darant said. “If we turn around, we may never make it back out here again. War is brewing across the Crown. Back when we left, the skirmishes between Hálendii and the Southern Klashe had been worsening. Coastal villages raided and burned. Sabotage and assassinations. On both sides of the Breath. Who knows what we’ll discover if we return? We could become trapped and embroiled by the fighting. And don’t forget your old friend King Toranth, and his Iflelen dogs. They’re still hunting us. Best not we give them another chance to close that noose.”

“Still, those arguments don’t take into account what lies ahead of us.” Graylin pointed at Darant. “Even before the explosion, you had me summon everyone to the wheelhouse because you were already worried about the path of our flight from here.”

Nyx glanced to Jace. She had forgotten how Graylin had ordered everyone to gather here. The explosion and mayhem had diverted all attention.

“What’s wrong?” Nyx asked. “What lies ahead?”

“See for yourself.” Graylin led them toward the arc of windows fronting the wheelhouse. The view looked out across the moonlit fields of broken ice. “The navigator, Fenn, spotted the danger earlier through the ship’s farscopes. But you can see it plainly enough now that we’ve sailed closer.”

The group spread out across the bay of windows. Nyx searched below the ship, but the view looked the same as it had for months. The full moon’s brightness reflected off the ice, casting the world in shades of silver and blue. Huge swaths of is’veppir moss, aglow in hues of crimson and emerald, etched the frozen landscape. As she squinted, she made out swaths of darker dots. Martoks, she realized. They gathered into vast herds, sharing warmth, moving slowly.

Nyx frowned. “I don’t see what—”

Jace gasped next to her. “Look to the horizon.”

She shifted her gaze out farther. The ice spread all the way to the night sky, dappled in bright stars. She shook her head, still not seeing anything. Then she realized that the stars did not reach the ice. They vanished high above the horizon line. Her vision shifted, or maybe a drift of cloud cleared the moon. Then she saw it, too. The world ended at a line of jagged peaks, blocking the stars and their path ahead. The range of mountains, all black and sharp-edged, thrust high out of the ice, forming a shattered rampart.

“That must be Dragoncryst,” Jace said. “The peaks were named by Rega sy Noor in his Kronicles. During his first overland expedition two centuries ago, the explorer sighted them from a distance but couldn’t reach them. He named the range because the mountains looked like the crested back of a great sea creature bursting through the ice.”

“He’s not wrong about that,” Darant grumbled. “But this beast may prove more troublesome.”

“Why?” Nyx asked.

Graylin answered, not turning from the window, “The peaks don’t just breach the ice, but also block both sky-rivers.”

Nyx pictured the high warm winds driving them westward and the colder flow running eastward, hugging closer to the ice.

Darant turned to the ship’s navigator, who was bent over the eyepiece of the Sparrowhawk ’s farscope. “How’s it look, Fenn?”

The navigator straightened and turned to face them. He was young, likely only seven or eight years older than Nyx. He was lithe of limb, with white-blond locks and green eyes that suggested he might have some Bhestyan blood, a people who dwelled on the far side of the Crown—though he refused to talk about his past. Still, he was also the least dire of the crew. He always had a ready smile and a boundless well of jokes.

That smile was gone now. “It’s worse than I thought,” Fenn said. “The skies are roiled into a huge storm that sits atop those peaks. I wager that tempest never subsides, forever powered by the war of those contrary winds.”

“Can we cross through it?” Graylin asked. “Especially with one of our maneuvering forges gone?”

Fenn glanced at Darant, who nodded for the navigator to speak his mind. Fenn sighed and shrugged. “Only one way to find out. No one’s ever sailed over those peaks. We’ll be the first.”

“That’s not necessarily true,” Jace corrected.

Everybody turned to him.

Jace explained, “Rega—the explorer knight who named those mountains—set off on a second expedition, intent to cross the Dragoncryst, only this time he traveled by air, in a ship called the Fyredragon, named after those peaks.”

Fenn’s eyes twinkled, showing a gleam of his usual amusement. “Aye, but as I understand it, he never returned from that second trek.”

“True,” Jace admitted dourly.

Nyx nudged him. “You should tell them what you told me outside on the middeck.”

Graylin stiffened with shock. “The middeck? Nyx, what were you doing outside?”

She ignored him. “Tell them, Jace.”

Her friend nodded and faced the others. “I’ve had plenty of time to read through most of the historicals that relate to the Wastes, recorded by those rare few who dared travel into the ice. One claims that there are clans of people who live beyond the Dragoncryst.”

Darant grunted sourly. “Who? Who could live out here?”

Jace’s brows pinched with concern. “According to The Annals of Skree, a book secured from the Gjoan Arkives, they’re a chary tribe of daungrous peple who abide amidst dedly beasts and gret monsters. ”

“They sound delightful,” Fenn mumbled.

Jace turned toward the storm-riven horizon. “It is said Rega read the same tome and set off to search for those tribes during his second expedition.”

“From which he never returned,” Fenn reminded them again.

Before anyone could respond, a clatter of boots and raised voices erupted from the other side of the wheelhouse. The door to the main passageway burst open, and a flurry of figures rushed inside. They were led by the bronze figure of Shiya. Though sculpted of hard metal, she moved with grace. The shining glass of her eyes took in those gathered in the wheelhouse. From the dark stains marring her modest shift, she had accompanied the others to survey the ruins of the flashburn forge. They had likely leaned upon her considerable strength to help search the wreckage. As she entered, the lamplight reflected off the contours of her face, but her expression remained unreadable.

Those who came with her were far less stoic. The stocky form of Rhaif hy Albar—the Guld’guhlian thief who had rescued the bronze woman from the depths of the mines of Chalk—came around Shiya’s left side. A litany of curses flowed from his lips.

“What’s wrong?” Darant asked, stepping closer.

Rhaif stemmed his tide of profanities and waved to Shiya’s other side. “Best your daughter tell you.”

Glace crossed around the bronze woman to meet her father. Her almond complexion was flushed darker. She shoved a braided blond tail behind her shoulder with one hand and held forth her other palm.

“We found this buried amidst the ruins of the forge’s fuel assembly.”

They all gathered closer. A knot of dark iron lay twisted in Glace’s white-knuckled grip. It looked like a black egg that had burst open. A bitter smell of burnt alchymicals accompanied it.

“What is it?” Nyx asked.

Graylin scowled. “A stykler.”

Nyx gave a small shake of her head.

Jace explained. “A shell packed full of iron filings and glass that turns molten.”

Glace kept her eyes upon her father. “Brayl and Krysh are already examining the other two forges, to make sure there are no more bombs hidden there, too.”

Nyx stared down at the blasted object. “A bomb?”

“Not just a bomb,” Darant growled, and glared around the room. “It’s sabotage.”