Chapter 66
66
A S N YX GAPED at the wall of broken ice, she battled between fury and despair. They had risked so much to get here. She had argued so forcibly to rescue Bashaliia, only to be stopped by fate—and, if Jace and Frell were correct, by the damnable moon itself.
Maybe the world was never meant to be saved. Maybe my vision of defeat and failure was as prophetic as moonfall itself.
“What can we do?” Jace asked.
“We must go back,” Graylin stated firmly. “I’m sorry, Nyx. Once we return to Iskar, we can try reaching the Mouth once the Sparrowhawk is repaired. Darant is making swift progress. If Bashaliia can hold out until then—”
“He won’t,” she said darkly.
Shiya spoke from the stern. “The path you were shown,” she said with cold authority. “How much farther past this blockage does it continue? Can you see that far?”
Nyx let her eyelids drift closed, shoving aside her anger. The route through the Fangs glowed there. It laid a fiery line from their location all the way through to the Mouth. She could not tell how much of the tunnel had collapsed, but farther along it, she saw where the path widened into a huge void under the ice.
“There is a massive chasm,” she mumbled, still focusing, following that path. “Two, maybe three, leagues away. Even bigger than the one we sailed through before. The blocked tunnel leads there after several switchbacks and turns. Even if the tunnel has collapsed its entire length, that chasm must still be open. Even the quake couldn’t have closed it down.”
Daal nodded. “It’s huge.”
Nyx faced the others. “The mapped trail continues onward from there. If we could reach the chasm, we’d regain that path.”
“But how?” Jace asked. “How do we reach it? You said hundreds of explorers had died wandering blindly through the Fangs. If we leave the known path, we risk meeting the same end.”
Vikas shifted forward and waved at the other tunnels and fissures that remained open. She then gestured in Gynish: “Do you have any idea where these lead? Can you discern a path from here to the chasm?”
To try to answer her, Nyx closed her eyes. The Oshkapeers had burned the route into her skull, but they’d never given her a complete map of the Fangs’ surrounding landscape. They likely didn’t think it was necessary, as they had supplied her with a secure path, one that avoided the worst dangers.
Still, while communing with them, she had experienced the hundreds of tragic deaths of failed explorers. Those stories had faded in detail, but if she could conjure them up again, they might reveal a side route to resecure their path.
It’s our only hope.
She swallowed hard and gathered all the fading threads of those stories and concentrated on the fiery map. She tried to stoke those flames brighter, to push its shine farther to the left and right. She sought to illuminate all the side tunnels, fissures, cracks along the route’s edges, the parts of the maps where previous explorers had wandered to their deaths.
“Anything?” Jace whispered.
She sighed her exasperation. For just a breath, she managed to melt some of the gray ice that obscured the surrounding edges of the fiery path. “I can almost see it, but it’s like trying to grasp mist.”
Daal shifted to her side. “Take my hand.”
She knew what he was offering—not just his strength, but also the pieces of those tragic memories that he still retained.
She took a deep breath and accepted his help. As their palms locked, fire burst into her, more than she intended to take. But her frustration demanded it. Daal gasped next to her. As his fire flowed into her, so did he. She again felt that strange sensation of floating between two bodies, sharing senses and memories.
She tightened her fingers, feeling both his hand in hers and hers in his.
She closed her eyes again. She knew she would have only one chance to flame those fading memories back to life, to reveal more of the surrounding landscape.
She focused on the map, poured Daal’s fire into it. The path ignited blindingly bright. The gray ice to either side melted into mist, then it burned away, too. The tunnels and fissures, hidden before, appeared. She scanned through them as swiftly as she could, working through the many paths, searching for a route from their skiff to that chasm.
Her fingers clutched harder to Daal.
She could almost hear his voice.
I see it, too.
Unable to sustain it any longer, she let the fire collapse. The gray ice refroze along the path again. Breathless with relief, she let go of Daal’s hand, nearly throwing it down to force her grip to release.
She opened her eyes to find everyone staring at her expectantly.
“There’s a way through,” she confirmed, excited and hopeful again.
Daal added a measure of caution, dampening her enthusiasm. “But we don’t know if it’s safe. The path we were shown and conjured briefly to life came from old explorers who died. If we travel that way, we must proceed with great care.”
Graylin looked ready to argue against going.
Nyx cut him off. “We must attempt it.”
She stared the knight down until he finally gave a small sigh of defeat.
With the matter settled, they set off again.
Nyx glanced back to Vikas and pressed two fingers under her chin and swiped it down, silently thanking the quartermaster for this suggestion. Vikas nodded back.
Nyx settled back to the bench next to Daal. It wasn’t just Vikas who helped guide them past this obstruction. She stared up as Daal guided them onward.
Without you, we would’ve had no hope.
D AAL FOLLOWED ALONG the darker path, one that didn’t burn as bright in his head. He had done his best to memorize the route to the chasm, but his insecurity mounted. He checked often with Nyx to confirm each new turn or tunnel to take.
His heart thudded in his ears, drumming with warning. He had to keep wiping sweat from his eyes. The tension only further confounded the passage of time. Memories blurred, especially along this new route. The ghostly screams of dead explorers grew louder, more insistent.
“It can’t be much farther,” Nyx whispered.
He sensed the same, but he didn’t know for sure.
All around them, the ice creaked and groaned, stressed by the recent quake, trying to resettle after the jolt. Occasional distant booms made him wince.
Behind him, Graylin cursed under his breath.
Jace’s knee kept bobbing up and down.
Vikas breathed hard through her nose.
Only Shiya remained quiet and unmoving, a statue of bronze at the stern.
“There’s a light up ahead,” Jace said, his voice wavering between hope and terror.
Daal saw he was correct. The flame from his firepot had masked the glow from the next passageway. Seated farther back, Jace had spotted it first.
“What is it?” Nyx asked.
Daal shook his head, not so much to indicate his ignorance, but to shake the ghostly cry of agony that filled his left ear. He glanced to Nyx, but she didn’t seem to hear it.
“Something’s there,” Daal said. “Something we need to be wary of.”
“How do you know?” Graylin asked.
“I just do.”
The scream slowly faded, but not his trepidation. Still, he urged Neffa and Mattis ahead.
As the skiff glided forward, the glow revealed a cavernous grotto ahead, a wide swelling of the tunnel walls. The roof twinkled and shone with an ameryl gleam, iridescent and radiant. The flat waters beneath mirrored that starry roof, creating a shimmering oasis.
“It’s beautiful,” Jace said.
Graylin lifted out of his seat to search ahead. “But what’s giving off that glow?”
As the prow of the boat pushed into the grotto, Daal felt something sticky swipe his cheek, accompanied by a tiny ping. Then another struck on his bare arm, snapping away. He ducked and waved a hand ahead of him. He saw nothing, but his fingers and palms broke through more strands.
The others suffered the same, jerking and wiping as they were equally assaulted.
“It’s webbing,” Graylin said.
With a shudder, Daal remembered the rampage of spiders in that other tunnel. He searched up at the glow. It took him an extra breath to recognize what hid up there, what was stirred and alerted by their passage through its web.
Overhead, radiantly glowing worms writhed on thin, jeweled threads. They descended swiftly along those cords or simply dropped headlong.
One struck his upturned face. His cheek ignited with fire, as if lanced by a flaming brand. He hollered and picked the burning worm off his blistered skin and tossed it into the water. The splash rippled away the mirrored illusion. The offending worm still shone as it wriggled into the depths. Bones lay strewn along the bottom. A hollow-eyed skull stared up at him, its jaw forever open.
His left ear again erupted with that agonized scream.
He now knew where that cry had risen from.
In less than a breath, a furious cascade of the worms fell upon the boat, squirming through the air or swinging on those sticky, dew-dropped threads. Screams and bellows erupted from the others. He tried to protect Nyx with his own body. But the worms were everywhere, an inescapable storm of fire.
Even the water offered no refuge.
Neffa and Mattis dove deep with the first stinging burn, but the worms pursued them even in the depths, their touch still as agonizing. Maddened by the pain, the orksos fled in different directions. Neffa tried to retreat to the safety behind them. Mattis fought to drive ahead. The skiff spun in the middle of this tussle, keeping everyone trapped under the fiery assault.
Shiya boomed, “Overboard! In the water!”
Daal didn’t understand, knowing there was no escape that way. Still, as others rolled over the rails, he followed, hoping the water would cool his score of burns.
It did not—if anything, it inflamed those spots.
“Stay together!” Shiya yelled as she splashed in with them.
As she did, she sank quickly until her feet struck bones. Only her forearms and hands were above water. She crossed to the skiff and lifted it higher, demonstrating her considerable strength. As she did, she kept it balanced evenly.
Graylin was the first to understand the bronze woman’s intent. “Get under its keel!” he bellowed.
Daal kicked and paddled through the fire until he was able to duck beneath the makeshift shield. Everyone crowded close. Even Neffa and Mattis. Daal rubbed a palm along the orksos’ flanks and shifted their horns to keep them from impaling anyone.
Once everyone was sheltered, Shiya set off across the grotto. They followed with her, staying under that shield. Worms still struck the skiff, but they found no more flesh to burn.
After a time, the glowing lair faded behind them. Soon, the only light came from the firepot up top. In the dark, the worms abandoned the skiff in droves, rolling and squirming to escape. Once in the water, they wiggled a glowing path back toward their grotto.
Daal and the others waited until they were gone, then clambered back into the skiff. They were blistered and in agony, but before attending to their injuries, they shifted the skiff over to a shelf of ice that allowed Shiya to climb up and rejoin them.
“Thanks,” Graylin said to her as she settled into the stern.
Shiya simply nodded.
Vikas slipped out a healer’s satchel from her gear. She rummaged through it and removed a small jar. Her strong hands broke the wax seal and opened the lid. A sweet scent wafted off a thick ointment inside. She lifted it and motioned with flicks of her wrists and long fingers.
“Almskald,” Nyx said, interpreting the gestures for Daal. “It should cool the burn and settle the blistering.”
The jar was passed around. Daal dabbed the ointment on his fiery cheek. He exhaled as the balm doused the worst of the heat. He attended to his many other blistered spots, as did the others. He even called Neffa and Mattis closer and slathered the thick gel over their wounds. Neffa’s flanks shivered with relief. She tossed her horn high in gratitude and bumped her father, regaining some of her happy composure.
As Daal settled back, taking up the skiff’s reins, he saw Nyx staring at a deeply blistered spot on the back of her hand. It looked to be the worst of her wounds. Her expression was pensive and worried. And he knew why. He recognized the scar it would leave.
He had seen it already.
While communed together, he had shared her vision of moonfall in all its bloody terror. He could picture her hand lifted, missing a finger. She had carried many scars to that mountaintop; one of them lay at that exact same spot on her hand. It was as if her prophetic dream were slowly and inexorably coming to life, marking her body as it did so, bringing her a step closer to the doom forecast in that vision.
Once everyone had dealt with their burns, Graylin pointed ahead. “We should keep going.”
Nyx lowered her hand and nodded, as if acknowledging the necessity of this journey—and the greater one ahead of her.
Daal got the orksos situated in their harnesses and set off along the remainder of this side route. No one spoke, too daunted and tired. In the silence, a new noise slowly rose ahead of them. It started as a distant whistling, a haunting, continual note. Then as they swept forward, it grew into a perpetual howling.
“It sounds like the wind,” Graylin noted.
He was proven right a short time later when the skiff slid out of the tunnel and into a vast, empty void. The world vanished ahead of them. The tiny firepot revealed only a stretch of dark sea, spreading endlessly beyond the prow.
But this chasm wasn’t a cavern.
“I see stars,” Jace said.
Daal craned his neck. Far above, there was no roof. Winds whipped across a distant opening, creating that howl. They had sailed into another rift in the Ice Shield, like the giant fissure that opened into the Crèche.
Still, that’s not what drew a gasp from Daal.
Far above, bright gems twinkled.
Stars…
All his life, he had never been allowed to travel with the village men as they hauled carcasses to the top of the ice as an offering to the raash’ke. So, he’d never witnessed the open sky before. While some of Nyx’s memories had revealed such a glittering wonder, it was nothing like seeing it firsthand.
“They’re amazing,” he whispered.
The sight of that shining splendor stirred hope inside him.
If such beauty exists, anything is possible.
Still, he could not forget how a nest of worms had almost ended their journey. And far worse lay ahead of them.
Then, as if to further dim any optimism, a low roar cut through the wail of the winds. The seas shook again. Distant ice cracked.
Another quake.
Daal held his breath, but it ended quickly and with far less violence.
Just a warning from the gods to hurry.
As he exhaled his relief, he stared past the stern, praying that the path home would remain open long enough for them to return.
Next to him, Nyx stared forward, focused ahead, not behind.
Still, Daal pictured who lay behind them: his mother and father, his sister, Henna, even Nyx’s companions, who were closer to his heart after his sharing of Nyx’s life.
With all the quakes and terrors along this journey, he cast out a brief prayer back home.
Please be safe.