The Cradle of Ice (Moonfall #2)

Chapter 75

75

F ROM HIS PERCH atop a boulder, Graylin clutched a farscope to his eye. The tool had been a gift from the Sparrowhawk ’s engineer, Hyck—one that proved constructively useful now.

If only to convince Nyx of the folly of this venture.

He scanned the distant cliffs. Most of them remained dark under the stars, unreadable, but several glowed with hidden molten fire. In his ears, the rumble of the nearby watery maelstrom echoed in his chest, full of warning and threat. With each breath, the burn of sulfur flamed his lungs and stoked his fears. They could not stay out here forever.

“Do you see anything?” Nyx asked. “Any sign of the raash’ke?”

“Not yet,” Graylin answered honestly. “But it is a labyrinth of broken rock, wide chasms, and narrow defiles. And much of it is too dark to discern any detail. But I’ll keep trying.”

He continued his search, being as meticulous as possible, while also anxious to give it up. Once he admitted defeat, they could head back to the Crèche.

“Where could they be?” Jace asked behind him.

Daal answered, “The Mouth spreads for great distances across this rock. Hundreds of leagues, it is said. The nest of the raash’ke could be anywhere.”

Jace didn’t agree. “They would need fresh water, and it looks like it gets hotter the farther out you go. For those reasons alone, they’d likely roost close to the Ice Shield.”

“I agree,” Nyx said.

Graylin suspected her reasoning had less to do with the beasts’ need for resources and more about her heart’s desire. Even Nyx knew that they could not search this blasted landscape on foot. She needed the raash’ke—and Bashaliia—to be close by.

He swept his view down another canyon. It barely glowed. Whatever fires lit it were far down its throat. With a twist of the farscope’s tube, he focused in and out. He almost missed it. A white gleam against the dark rock. It could easily be a vein of chalk or another bright mineral. He shifted and sharpened his view.

The mouth of a large cave cut into the rock. He had seen many like it. Only this one’s threshold and the cliff below it was caked with aggregations and streams of a white blemish. It was too messy and haphazard to be a mineral extrusion. He knew what it was.

“Guano,” he mumbled.

Nyx heard him. “What?”

“Hold,” he warned. “Don’t nudge me.”

Even speaking jostled his scope’s focus.

He scanned the rest of the gorge, shifting through it methodically, painstakingly. He spied other befouled holes and cracks. He cast his view lower. The bottom edges of those cliffs were piled with deadfalls of broken bones. He shifted higher again, searching the glow itself. He held there, letting his vision adjust to that suffusing haze.

Slowly, he was able to perceive tiny silhouettes dashing throughout, winging wildly. They looked like tiny sparrows, but considering the distance, they must be the size of winter geese. He kept watching, waiting, then finally lowered the scope.

Expectant faces stared his way.

Except for Shiya, who merely continued gazing across the broken lands.

Vikas signaled impatiently in Gynish: “Well, what do you see?”

Graylin read the anxiety and hope in Nyx’s face. “They’re out there.”

Nyx sagged with relief, clutching Jace’s shoulder.

“But not close,” Graylin warned. “They’re tens of leagues away. Impossible to cross on foot. And I didn’t spot any full-grown raash’ke. Only small ones.” He held forth a spread of his hands. “No bigger than when Bashaliia first revealed himself to you.”

As Nyx swallowed hard, he immediately regretted his choice of description, recognizing the pain that memory triggered.

“But where could the others be?” Jace asked again.

Graylin shrugged. “All I saw were young ones. Maybe the larger ones are resting somewhere within the rock.”

Daal offered a more ominous option. “Or they’re off hunting.”

“Could they have returned to the Crèche?” Nyx asked.

Daal stepped back, his eyes wider, looking worried.

“I’m sorry,” Nyx whispered, clearly regretting her words, too.

Graylin folded his scope and pocketed it. “If they did return to the Crèche, then it’s all the more reason to head back. If Bashaliia is here and not already bridled into submission, we can’t reach him. We can do no good here.”

“How do we get back?” Jace asked. He turned and stared at the rise of ice behind him.

“It’ll be hard,” Graylin admitted. “We’ll have to strip the skiff down to the barest bones. Carry it back up these cataracts with Shiya’s help.” He turned to Daal. “Once near the tunnel into the Fangs, can your orksos drag us against that current until we can reach calmer waters? Shiya could cross along the riverbed to lighten our load. Can they handle that?”

“Neffa and Mattis. Together. Yes. They will not fail us.”

Graylin nodded, appreciating Daal’s firm confidence. “Then we should set off.”

Nyx had kept next to Shiya, both staring out into the Mouth.

“Not yet,” Nyx warned.

P LEA SE LET THIS work…

Nyx nodded to Shiya. The bronze woman bowed her head, then lifted her face to the sky. A hum flowed from her throat, warming her bronze. Shiya sustained that note and layered others on top, building toward a chorus. Still, she kept it bottled tight inside her, refusing to release it.

Not yet, Nyx willed to her.

Shiya had done something similar to this back in Kefta, when she had cast out a golden surge that swept in all directions, searching for any hidden threats in the surrounding streets. Nyx intended to attempt the same here. But the distances before them were far too great for Shiya alone.

Nyx let her eyelids close, shutting off the world. She added her voice to Shiya’s, humming along with her. She sensed the glow of bronze next to her, a ghostly companion. Together, they built that song toward a crescendo but still kept it trapped.

Not yet…

Nyx blindly reached out an arm—not toward the glowing phantom next to her, but to another.

Daal took her hand. As their palms touched, fire ignited between them, but it was not the explosive force to break a grip. It was the flame of a forge, melding two metals into one. She flowed into Daal and he into her.

They grasped each other tightly.

She drew upon the font of his fuel, struggling to control that flow. Her anxiety and fear demanded more, but she tamped it down. She took Daal’s flame and stoked her song, burning it brighter. Through the air, wafting on golden threads of power, she shared the power with Shiya. Together, they let that song grow, stoking its fire to a blaze.

Daal gasped next to her. For a breath, she saw through his eyes. Shiya glowed like a torch next to her, nearly blinding to the eye. Nyx shone nearly as bright. Then the vision quashed out. Still, the sight remained burned into the backs of her eyes.

She continued to let the fire pass through all three of them.

From Daal, to Nyx, to Shiya.

Like the bellows of a forge, each breath blew it brighter. Each heartbeat pumped more power. She waited until she could hold it in no longer. She let Shiya and Daal know.

Now.

The command’s strength startled her, but she did not relent or falter. She opened her throat and heart and cast out a golden wave. Shiya did the same.

As their waves undulated across the Mouth, rising and falling, the two found their rhythm together. Shiya filled Nyx’s valley with her song; Nyx did the same to hers. The ripples of their casting flattened into a tremendous golden tide, a merging of both their songs into a single unbreachable harmony.

Nyx was swept with the surge, riding along within it, spread throughout all of it.

She aimed for the section of chasms that Graylin had pointed out. The wave struck there, washing down the canyons, spreading through other tributaries, flooding down cave mouths.

As it did, nothing was hidden from her.

Those ghostly trees she had spotted earlier were life, blurring the line between stone and flesh, not unlike coral. She sensed the colonies of tiny, frilled animals encased in rocky skeletons, fed by molten minerals and the sulfur in the air.

Then she was swept into the skies, into the flurry of tiny bats. They were indeed reminiscent of a young Bashaliia, as Graylin had said. Nyx studied them, allowing her energies to penetrate past fur. As she did, she perceived their hollow bones, their tiny panicked hearts. She read the map of their veins, the billows of their lungs.

Being creatures of bridle-song themselves, they fled from the flood, sensing the surge of power. They dashed and cartwheeled away. They sped into shadows that could not hide them. They dove down holes that she could easily follow. She flowed everywhere in all directions.

Still, her drive was singular.

To search for one.

She poured herself into every cranny, surged into every vast space hidden in the canyon walls. She made herself into a torrent.

Then at last…

A lone heart thumped out in the darkness, pained and struggling.

Once, twice, and again.

She knew the song of that heartbeat as surely as her own. She swept upon it, coming from everywhere, closing in all directions. That song was a beacon of hope, of love, of need.

She reached a chamber deep in the rock.

Bashaliia huddled on the floor, head tucked low, wings wrapped tight. He glowed in the darkness with the purest golden light. She saw him in his entirety. His thrumming blood, his panting lungs. The fiery contours of his brain glowed with bridle-song, fighting the assault.

Around him, five raash’ke lurked in lairs up the walls, hunched with concentration, their eyes shining with sickly fire. All focused on Bashaliia. Their coppery threads of power—tarnished with an emerald corruption—lashed at him, seeking a way through his purity.

Bashaliia was clearly exhausted, nearly spent. Several of those malignant strands had found purchase, worming deep and spreading smaller tendrils, like the roots of a cancerous tree.

She swept to him.

I am here.

He sensed her, his wings stirring. He keened tentative notes, hopeful but still wary. Distracted, he lost some of his focus, his fighting wavered. The raash’ke saw this and attacked more furiously. The chamber filled with a storm of their emerald malignancy.

No.

Bashaliia’s glow collapsed under the assault.

Leagues away, she tightened her hand, as if trying to break bones. But that was not her desire. She extracted what she needed. She felt Daal fall to his knees, then to one hand.

Flames coursed through her body, through the tide. When it struck her out in the canyon, she repeated her repudiation, only with far more force.

No.

She dove down to Bashaliia, into his fading glow. Once there, she opened her heart and let her fury explode. The emerald threads imbedded in Bashaliia were burned away. The malignant storm in the cavern got crushed against the rock wall.

Still, she was not sated.

She followed those threads to their sources, to the five raash’ke. She did not stop there. She traced those tendrils even deeper. She burned her way through fur, skin, bone. She reached stony hearts and fiery skulls.

She repeated her command again, scolding and warning.

No.

She branded that threat in place, burning five hearts, five skulls, upon the pyre of her being. Only then did she relinquish the fire inside her.

Far away, her knees struck stone.

The tide receded, taking her with it.

Before it did, she called to Bashaliia, clawing to hold her place.

Run, Bashaliia. Fly. With me.

He heard her and scrabbed up to his legs. His wings spread wide.

Forever with me, she sang to him, urging him to follow.

She flowed backward with the ebbing surge, out tunnels, through a cavern mouth, and into the open air. As the tide receded across the Mouth, she stared back, anxious.

Then Bashaliia burst out of a cave and swept high.

Always and forever, she promised him.

He chased her across the sky as she flew backward, guiding him home.

Unfortunately, that was not all that she had drawn out of the fiery Mouth.

Behind Bashaliia, rising from chasms all around, great wings unfolded, spreading wider and wider with each terrified breath. Seven in all. The monstrous bats dwarfed Bashaliia. He was a gnat before eagles.

Nyx flashed to the Oshkapeer queen stirring an entire reef, a creature of untold age and power. Here was the same, only sevenfold. Each must be centuries, if not millennia, in age. She knew what came, what she had stirred forth by her trespass. Here was the horde-mind of the raash’ke, manifested in ancient flesh and bone. They were the seven massive roots from which the entire colony grew.

With each beat of those mighty wings, a dark storm of power grew around them. With every league crossed, the thunderhead stacked higher. Energy built in the air, burning the sulfur brighter. Crackles of energy—shining a malignant emerald—speared jagged bolts through those black clouds.

Storm and beast rolled toward them.

All lured by the tiny flight of a determined bat.

Hurry, Nyx urged Bashaliia.

Once her essence reached the boulder, she crashed back into her own body. Already on her knees, she fell to her hands. She pushed higher, staring across the Mouth.

Bashaliia struggled to reach her, his small wings beating hard.

Behind him, a dark wave crested, climbing higher and higher, propelled by the tempest of those massive wings. As she stared into the abyss of dark power and green fire, she felt another’s gaze staring out, through seven pairs of eyes.

But only one source.

The spider in the shadows.