The Cradle of Ice (Moonfall #2)

Chapter 63

63

N YX STOOD AGAINST the gale and bluster of those packed inside the Sparrowhawk ’s wheelhouse. Her concentration was thrown off by the muffled shouting from outside and the loud hammering in the ship’s hold. It all sharpened the ache behind her eyes. She squinted against it, determined not to relent.

“Your plan is pure madness,” Graylin insisted as he paced in front of the ship’s maesterwheel.

Others murmured or grunted their agreement. To the side, Darant leaned on a console, shaking his head. His two daughters looked dour. Jace hugged his chest, his eyes huge. Krysh crouched over a map table, tacked with a hand-drawn chart of the Ameryl Sea. Fenn leaned near the alchymist, peering over Krysh’s shoulder.

Nyx ignored them all. “I’m going. Nothing will stop me.”

She pictured her destination. Across the inside of her skull, a map blazed, fiery and insistent. Urgency pounded in her heart, fueled both by her own fear and by what the Dreamers had instilled in her.

She voiced it now. “I will lose Bashaliia if I wait even another day,” she pressed. “I know it. I must go now.”

Krysh glanced over his shoulder at her. “Nyx, why must you risk so much for the Myr bat? I know he’s your bonded brother and you bear great affection, but there are far higher stakes, as you know, as you’ve seen in your vision.”

Nyx had difficulty putting into words what burned in her heart. She had already explained in private what had befallen her and Daal, about their communing with the Dreamers, what they shared, even about the threat of another like Shiya.

Nyx looked at the bronze woman, who stood next to Rhaif. Even now, Nyx could stir up the Oshkapeers ’ terror of such inhuman figures. Yet, she also sensed the Dreamers’ compulsion for Nyx to rescue Bashaliia. Daal had described the Oshkapeers as unmoored by time, with the ability to ride the tides forward. Had they foreseen a time when Bashaliia would be needed, for him to be at her side?

Or is what I’m sensing just a reflection of my own heart’s desire?

She could not discount that possibility.

Still, she continued. “Krysh, you mentioned my vision from last summer. Mind you all, Bashaliia was in that dream of mine.”

She could easily dredge up that nightmare. It had become ingrained in her as firmly as the Dreamers’ fiery map. She pictured it now.

—she flees up a shadowy mountain and skids to a stop at its summit. She is older, scarred, missing a finger on her left hand. Ahead, a cluster of figures in blood-soaked robes circle an altar where a huge shadow-creature thrashes and bucks, its wings nailed to the stone with iron.

—she swings her arms high and claps her palms together as words, foreign to her, burst from her lips, ending in a name. “Bashaliia!”

—her skull releases the fiery storm held inside. It blasts outward with enough force to shatter the altar stone. Iron stakes break from black granite. The shadow-beast leaps free.

—one figure runs toward her, a blade held high, a curse on his lips. Wasted and empty, she can only fall to her knees and lift her face to the smoke-shrouded skies, to the full face of the moon.

—as she watches, time both slows and stretches. The moon grows ever larger. The ground quakes under her knees. And still the moon fills more and more of the sky, its edges on fire now, darkening all the world around it.

—she knows what’s coming: moonfall.

—then a dagger plunges into her chest—piercing her heart with the awful truth: I’ve failed… I’ve failed us all.

Nyx found herself trembling as she returned to the present. Though shaken, she clung to the memory of this vision to firm her resolve.

“If Bashaliia was there on that fiery mountaintop,” she insisted, “then I’m destined to rescue him. Is that not so?”

A heavy silence fell over the room—until a dissent rose from where she least expected it.

“That’s not necessarily true,” Jace said, stepping closer, his eyes pained. “Your vision… you can’t place such weight on every detail of it.”

Wounded by his words and doubts, she stared over at her friend. Over the past half year, everyone had pored over every snippet of her vision, seeking additional insight.

Jace held up his hand and splayed it wide. “For instance, you still have all your fingers. In your dream, your left hand was maimed.”

“But I was also older,” she reminded him. “That fate may yet befall me.”

He sighed and looked to Graylin for help, but the knight nodded for Jace to continue, likely happy to let another take the reins in this attempt to draw her from the plan to cross under the ice to reach the fiery Mouth.

“But, Nyx…” Jace’s voice fell to an apologetic whisper. “The end of that dream. You died. And so did the world. By your own words, you failed. ”

Nyx felt punched in the chest, bruising her heart.

Jace did not let up. “If every detail of your vision was true, then we might as well all go home and live our best lives until the end, especially if we’re destined to fail.” He waved across the room. “But we’re here, supporting you.”

She struggled to speak but managed to get out one word that contained many questions. “Why?”

Why do you have such faith in me? Why is Bashaliia in my vision? Why does this all fall on my shoulders—to end the world in order to save it?

Jace answered them all. “Nyx, you were born with an innate gift for bridle-song, but for the first six months of your life, you were raised in the fold of the Myr colony. Back then, your mind was soft clay, still pliable, far from fully formed. Your brain grew while under a constant barrage of the bats’ silent cries. Under such persistent exposure, your mind and gift may have been forever altered by their keening, as a tree is gnarled by winds. It changed you.”

Nyx remembered Frell making a similar claim. She also pictured the glowing tendrils of the Oshkapeers manipulating and altering Daal’s gift.

Jace continued, plainly having pondered all of this, maybe with Frell’s and Krysh’s help. “Years later, it was that lingering change that made you susceptible to the warning of the Myr bats. As nocturnal sentinels from an ancient age, they must have sensed the changes in the moon. They were possibly engineered for that very purpose. Once alerted, they sought out the only one who could understand them, who could carry their warning to the world.”

“Me…”

Jace nodded and waved to Shiya. “And possibly those like her. Sleepers who needed to be woken by their keening. Those ageless beings who could stop moonfall if it ever threatened.”

“Unfortunately,” Krysh added, “while they are ageless, the ravages of time still destroyed many of the Sleepers and damaged others.”

Nyx glanced to Shiya. She pictured that spider hidden behind the shadowy wings of the raash’ke. There was clearly more to the story of these bronze figures, but it would have to wait.

Especially as Jace wasn’t done.

“I think the vision that the bats instilled in you—it was a general warning, a cry for help. They likely cobbled their own memories, along with your fears, and maybe some elements that were a mix of prophecy or simply extrapolations of what might happen next. The great mind of the Myr bats had lived for countless millennia at the fringes of man, watching kingdoms rise and fall. It would not be hard for them to calculate what a future might look like if moonfall should threaten.”

Jace ticked them off on his fingers. “A great war due to the ensuing panic. Dark forces trying to stop you. How the struggle could cost you greatly in mind and body. A promise from the Myr bats, in the form of those shadowy wings on the altar, to be your staunch ally during the strife to come. And ultimately at the end, a warning about what would happen if we all fail.”

Nyx’s eyes had grown wider with each statement. She sensed the truth behind this interpretation of her dream. Still…

“I accept what you’re saying, Jace. I do. But despite all you’ve argued, I know Bashaliia is supposed to be at my side. That he’s important to all of this. The Dreamers—like the great mind of the Myr bats—have hinted as much, instilling an inescapable drive in me to rescue Bashaliia. Trust me on this.”

Nyx kept her expression imperative, tamping down her doubts, knowing what she just said might not be entirely true. But one detail was:

“I must go,” she said. “Daal is already on his way to the western edge of this sea, waiting for me.”

She pictured him aboard his skiff, tethered to his two orksos, Neffa and Mattis. This morning, after overhearing Ularia speaking to a guard about watching them closely, the pair had decided that Daal should stay behind. He wasn’t allowed aboard the Reef Farer’s barge anyway, so no one would miss his lone skiff if it didn’t return with the other boats. Once everyone had left Kefta, Daal had headed out in the opposite direction.

“Daal’s probably already at the wall of ice that closes off the western side of the sea,” Nyx said.

“The Pantheans call those cliffs the Fangs,” Krysh noted, pointing to the map of the Ameryl Sea. “It’s a great icefall, pocked and riddled with caves and tunnels. According to a brief talk I had with Meryk, there is no way through there to reach the Mouth of the World.”

Nyx knew that wasn’t true. Still, she winced, but for another reason. She turned to the alchymist. “You didn’t tell Daal’s father or mother what we’re planning?”

“Of course not. I couched my inquiry as an interest in cartography, nothing more.”

Nyx relaxed.

Due to the prohibition against disturbing the Dreamers, they had kept Meryk and Floraan in the dark. Nyx had told them that Daal had remained behind at Kefta to do some fishing before returning. Guilt had panged her at this lie, especially with the way Nyx now felt about his mother and father. After she had shared Daal’s memories, her heart ached with the love he had for them.

While much of that commingling of their lives had faded, her edges still blurred with his. Her memories of him were more than just if Daal had sat down and told her his life’s story, but less than if she had lived all his days in his skin.

She could still remember what that intimacy had felt like. As that connection now waned, its absence only made her crave it more. She felt far emptier as Daal’s memories dissipated. She longed to return to Daal’s side, as if only his presence could fill that growing void in her.

And it wasn’t just the hole created by the loss of his memories.

There was a hungrier abyss, too.

She remembered a moment with the Dreamers—when she had grabbed Daal’s shoulder. She pictured his fire flowing into her, drawn into a bottomless black maelstrom at the core of her being.

She shuddered even now.

Graylin shifted toward the Sparrowhawk ’s portside window, staring across the sea to the west. “If we should head to the Fangs,” he said, “how do you propose to get there? Ularia has rallied the Reef Farer’s warriors to guard us close. They’re posted all over the beach. Any move and she’ll learn of your plan. I suspect she wouldn’t approve of this scheme any more than I do. If we do reach the Mouth, we risk stirring up the raash’ke into another attack on the Crèche. For that reason alone, she and the Reef Farer would prohibit us from going.”

“True. That’s why they must never know we left.”

Graylin frowned. “How are we accomplishing that?”

Nyx noted that Graylin had stopped fighting against her going and now struggled with the groundwork to make it happen.

Luckily, she and Daal had already discussed this hurdle, too.