The Cradle of Ice (Moonfall #2)

Chapter 77

77

E XHAUSTED AND ON her knees, Nyx stared out across the Mouth. She willed Bashaliia more speed. The small Myr bat fought through the hot air, his wings striking hard, his body pumping for every bit of swiftness. She knew how exhausted he must be.

Behind him, a roiling storm gave chase. Unlike the golden shine of pure bridle-song, the power that surged in that storm churned with darkness, jagged with green fire, boiling with the scorch of molten rock. It filled the breadth of the Mouth ahead of her.

Buried at the heart, seven great beasts—winged daemons—rode that storm, pursuing Bashaliia.

Beside her, Graylin lowered his farscope, no longer needing it. “We can’t fight those giants. And more raash’ke follow in their wake. Scores and scores.”

Nyx couldn’t see through the black storm to confirm his words.

“What’s that haze surrounding them?” Jace asked.

She glanced over, shocked—then back out again. Even Jace could vaguely perceive what was coming, some innate sense of the approaching danger. The beasts were that strong.

How can we hope to defeat them?

Even if she tapped Daal’s full strength, it would be like tossing a bucket of water at a raging forest fire. Worse, she had already depleted Daal to free Bashaliia. He was on his knees next to her. His face ran with sweat, his breath ragged. Still, he reached to her, offering his hand.

She took it, not to draw upon his fire, simply for his reassurance and comfort.

His fingers squeezed, igniting the fire between them, melding two into one for a few brief breaths. In that moment, she felt how much he also craved this union. But he meant more with this touch.

His voice was a hoarse whisper. “They’re not corrupt…”

She didn’t understand. She gaped out at the dark storm and the bright speck fleeing from it. Bashaliia was almost back, crossing over the insatiable maw of the river’s swirling vortex. The stormy manifestation of the horde-mind was as black and unappeasable as that watery maelstrom below it.

“Not corrupt, ” Daal repeated, insistent. “Corrupted.”

She shook her head, still not understanding.

He squeezed her fingers. “Remember.”

Locked with Daal, she felt his memories became hers. He showed her what had already been revealed to her before—by the Oshkapeers.

In a heartbeat, she fell into the past.

—she hikes toward a village. Overhead, more raash’ke ply the skies. Others hop along streets or perch on walls. Children play among them, especially with the smallest of the beasts.

Nyx dropped back to the present with her next breath, bringing with it an understanding. The raash’ke had once been as dear to the Pantheans as Neffa and Mattis were to Daal. He was right to remind her. The raash’ke had not always been corrupt.

“I remember now,” she whispered.

Daal let his arm drop. “Make them remember, too.”

“How?”

Daal pointed to the sky. “Show them.”

Close now, Bashaliia struggled over the last distance to reach her. His wings faltered, his movement frantic. Once near the boulder, he fell, more than dove, toward her. He didn’t have the strength to slow.

“Get out of the way!” Graylin lunged at her.

Never.

She held her ground and cast a silent thread to Shiya. The bronze woman stopped Graylin, grabbing Jace, too. Vikas retreated on her own.

Nyx stood up as Bashaliia struck the boulder, wings wide. His claws scraped across the rock, gouging deep tracks. She lifted her arms, trusting him, knowing his heart. He struck her, but she caught his neck and let herself be carried with him to a stop. He leaned his soft cheek to hers, velvet rubbing her ear. His wings wrapped around her. His body was a furnace, but she clung tightly, happy to burn there forever.

“I’ve got you,” she whispered.

He shivered and mewled, panicked and scared.

She sang to him, softly and calmly, both a lullaby and a promise. She heard her dah’s voice joining her in chorus, alive again in her memory, where death holds no sway. She let the old refrain repeat over and over again:

I am here, right beside you.

So, close your eyes and know it true.

I am here, right beside you…

Bashaliia’s breathing slowed and his shaking trembled away.

“I’ve got you always,” she promised aloud, while never losing her song.

With golden threads, she wrapped past and present. She folded in every moment of their lives together, from warm milk shared under safe wings to this reunion now. She spared nothing: the terror, the hardship, the sting of a merciful knife, the joy amidst the terror. Through it all, there was one constant.

There were no words for it, not in any tongue or gesture. Love was a pale utterance, a placeholder for something far grander. It could only be felt, experienced, endured, even lost. Though there was no true word for it, she placed all of her faith in it.

The closest way to express it was in the purity of song, starting with a chorus of two beating hearts, of breaths sighing in harmony. From there, it continued in a symphony of joys shared, of lives entwined, of sorrows endured, until two became one.

She let that all glow forth, wordless and bright, forming a corona around them.

She sang out to the storm as it descended upon them.

You once had this, shared this.

Still, she knew it wasn’t enough. She reached into her memories and stirred them brighter, bringing back to life a span of centuries, when the raash’ke had lived in harmony with the people of the Crèche. She added this chorus to her glow, filling it with thousands of memories, of generations sharing this indescribable feeling.

She cast that corona wider, turning this past into golden light.

Remember…

Most of the raash’ke were too young to have been alive back then—but these seven giants were not. They knew a time when the Crèche had lived in harmony. Somewhere in the shadows of the horde-mind that memory, that brightness, still existed.

As if sensing the danger of reviving a past long forgotten, the storm swirled. Seven shadows beat the air, holding the sky. Smaller raash’ke swirled farther out.

You must remember…

It wasn’t a demand, only a hope.

The stalemate held for several more breaths. Exhausted and drained, she felt her legs faltering. She hung from Bashaliia’s neck. Then a warm hand touched her shoulder, fire burning through to her skin.

Daal…

Next, fingers of cold bronze gripped her other shoulder.

Shiya…

Daal poured his last flames into her, allowing her song to shine brighter. With that energy came a flood of additional memories from the Oshkapeers, thousands that had faded from Nyx but that Daal had still retained. She fed those into the glow, too, making the past an inescapable trap.

You will remember.

This time, it came with a lilt of command.

On Nyx’s other side, Shiya added her voice, easily finding Nyx’s harmony. Like before, they stoked it into a storm and held it trapped, letting it build into a massive tide, damming it behind walls. Only this time, the dam didn’t have to be so tall. Their target was right here, all around them. So far, both storm and giant wings skirted the threat of those shining memories, as if wary of them.

Still, Nyx felt that impasse would not last.

A nidus of hard darkness lurked within the shadows.

The spider…

From its hiding place, it lashed out with whips of emerald fire and lances of jagged spears, demanding for the storm to crush them.

In that moment, she recognized that malevolence, that corrupting force.

Nyx flashed to six months ago, when she had knelt atop the Shrouds. Shrive Vythaas had wielded a small metal box that sparked and keened with this same malignant fire, coursing to copper needles driven into the skulls of Nyx’s two beloved brothers, Ablen and Bastan.

This was much the same, a corruption of control, only she sensed this spider was much farther away.

She had no more time to ponder it further. The massive golden tide could no longer be held back. Nyx opened her throat and broke the dam inside her with a single word.

Remember.

It was no request this time, but a demand.

The golden corona surrounding her burst into a sun, blasting upward in every direction. It struck the storm and the seven winged giants. The ancient darkness shattered wide for a few moments—but it quickly smothered down, trying to quash that fire, to erase a past.

Still, a few rays of that new sun broke through the shadows, reached the tiniest bits of brightness buried in the storm. With a touch, those beams ignited what had been protected and preserved long ago but nearly forgotten—the memory of harmony, when two lived as one, when hearts beat together.

That bit of brightness exploded, eclipsing even her sun.

Nyx gasped.

The storm broke around her.

As it did, she caught a glimpse of the spider.

A bronze figure stood within a crystalline vault, crouched in a web of copper tubing, glass pipes, and bubbling tanks of a golden elixir. A malignant green fire sizzled and sparked across this glistening web, reflecting off the spider’s bronze with a pestilent sheen.

The figure was clearly a man, but he carried none of Shiya’s majesty of form. He looked more toadish, his bronze a melted slag, as if denying any commonality with humanity.

His eyes stared out at her. The hatred and enmity shining there drove her back a step. Then that gaze shifted to Nyx’s left, to where Shiya stood, her bronze hand on Nyx’s shoulder.

The spider flinched away, his eyes flaring with shock. One word hissed out, reaching across that vast distance. “Axis.”

A bronze arm swept across the web, snuffing the emerald fire. Nyx sensed the permanence of that act. The spider was terrified of Shiya, relinquishing the battlefield, too fearful to ever return, recognizing the Crèche had a new bronze guardian.

The view into that crystalline vault vanished.

Still, before the connection severed, Nyx sensed a greater threat. It was unspoken, but the impression was conveyed through the momentary fusion of bridle-song and corruption. The spider had a way to thwart them, something that terrified even him. But the sight of Shiya had burned away any trepidation, leaving only necessity. He dared not hesitate.

As the view vanished, Nyx was left with a sense of urgency.

It could not be denied.

Time is running out.

“ W HAT IS HAPPE NING ? ” Jace asked.

The panic in his voice drew Nyx back to the boulder, to this moment. She shoved aside the terror and strangeness. She cast her gaze outward, both with her eyes and with her bridle senses.

The dark storm had broken, but now, stripped of that emerald hold, it had turned turbulent and chaotic. No longer anchored by that dark nidus, the horde-mind frayed, tearing itself apart. Its sense of self was lost between the shining golden past and the dark, savage centuries that followed.

The seven giants thrashed and writhed in the air, as if burning in that storm. Other raash’ke dashed in panicked flights in all directions. One great beast crinkled its huge wing, neck twisted, squeezing out a cry of anguish, of guilt, of horror—knowing all the misery the raash’ke had inflicted. It could not hold that much grief. It tumbled through the air, struck the churning lake, and was swept down into the maelstrom’s darkness.

“Help them,” Daal begged.

Nyx swallowed, at a loss. Bashaliia trembled before the desolation and panic raging above him.

Daal drew next to her. “They are rudderless and lost. I can feel it. Madness threatens.”

She nodded. “They need a new anchor.”

She stared up, knowing what she must do.

I must be their new spider.

At least for now.

She turned to Daal and Shiya. “I will need everything.”

Daal held out a hand, so did Shiya.

Nyx took them both.

“We will need to create a beacon of pure bridle-song,” she said. “One strong enough to draw the tattering flock and its shredded mind together, to anchor them until they can find their center again.”

Daal gripped her hand. “Take what you need.”

She nodded and drew his fire. She knew if she took too much it would kill him—and he did not have much left. He was still weak, his flames more smoldering than blazing.

With the two merged together, she let Daal see her fear, his danger.

He stared into her eyes, his words filling her without speaking.

Take all of it.

She knew there was no other choice. She opened herself fully, no longer denying the dark well at her core. She used its hunger as a force, pulling everything from Daal.

He cried out.

With the two of them merged together, it felt as if she weren’t just sucking the marrow out of him, but his bones, too. He slumped to his knees, but he still gripped her hand. She felt the pound of his heartbeat as if it were her own. Its rhythm grew erratic, his energy too weak to work that fist of muscle in his chest.

I can’t do this to you.

His answer was weak, one word, shining with the hope for that harmony to be restored—between his people and the panicked and grief-stricken above.

Must.

His grip slipped from hers. She tightened her fingers to hold him, while knowing it would kill him. The last of his energy swept into her, swirling down the dark well inside her, joining all the fire she had already drawn.

She pictured the watery churn of the nearby lake—and despaired.

I am that maelstrom.

Shiya shifted in her other grip. “Share this burden.”

Nyx knew, to create a strong enough beacon, the bronze woman would need Daal’s fire, too. She passed a stream of power through her palm to Shiya.

As Nyx gazed into that well inside her, watching the swirl of flames—spinning around and around—she realized a new truth, a possible hope.

For all of them.

We don’t need a beacon in the sky—we need a maelstrom .

And she knew how to create it.

Shiya’s earlier words inspired it.

Share this burden.

Nyx pulled the bronze woman closer. “Grab Daal’s hand, too. Like you’re holding mine.”

Shiya cocked a brow, curious, but she reached down to Daal’s slack arm and took his hand. He did not respond. His head hung low. His breathing was spasms.

With them all linked together, Nyx turned the sucking force of her dark well into an untapped power source. As Daal’s flame spun inside that vortex, she used that speed to cast fire into Shiya. Still, Nyx refused to let it linger there. She forced the fire through all that bronze and back to Daal’s other hand, returning it to him, enough to sustain him.

Around and around, Nyx flung that fire, whipping it faster, creating a maelstrom. She added her voice, humming it all stronger. Shiya carried it higher, stoking it with each pass. All their lifeforces and bridling energy swirled through all three of them.

Daal lifted his face, breathing stronger, his heart finding its rhythm again.

Still, Nyx drove that song, that energy, that force, until it could no longer be contained. She thrust it high, her voice sending it up, bolstered by Shiya. The golden, fiery maelstrom whipped into the sky. The strength of its pull was undeniable, powered by the gravity of that dark well inside her.

From across the skies, the insatiable pull of the maelstrom drew the shreds of the dark storm, gathering them back into some semblance of a whole. The maelstrom’s golden brilliance shed light into those desolate shadows.

Below, Nyx sang a promise to the sky—that grief could be healed, that horrors could be forgiven, that blame was not theirs.

She repeated Daal’s earlier words.

You are not corrupt.

She filled the skies with the memories of a harmonious past, showing them again, over and over, whipping it through the maelstrom, refusing to let them look away.

Throughout it all, she made another promise, knowing that the raash’ke would need more than memories of the past. They needed an anchor, some thing to hold them together long enough for that healing to happen. She sang that assurance into the sky, merging her voice with her dah’s once again.

I am here, right beside you.

So, close your eyes and know it true.

I am here, right beside you…

She let them know that they were not alone. She did not intend to control them, to wield them, only to be there for them.

Overhead, the dark storm calmed, clearing somewhat, revealing the spatter of stars, twinkling bright. Still, the view was marred by shreds of tortured clouds. It was not over. True healing, true forgiveness, would take time.

This was only the start.

Six giant wings circled high, silhouetted against the spangle of stars. Smaller raash’ke made wider orbits.

Nyx cast herself into the fiery maelstrom and spread herself out to them, offering herself, singing softly of harmony. As she did, her view splintered, seeing the landscape below through scores of eyes. She remembered this from before, back with the Myr bats of Bashaliia’s colony.

In turn, she was watched. She felt the weight and ancientness of that horde-mind staring at her, wary, suspicious, wounded—but also hopeful.

For a moment, her gaze flickered, catching fractured glimpses through eyes far off. She saw the Crèche. Iskar glowed fiery through smoke. A wreckage of a large ship burned on the water. Another sat in the shallows of the village. Other pyres lit the beach. And bodies. So many bodies.

Panic jarred her. She dropped swiftly, shedding free of those eyes, and fell back into her body.

She gasped as she did so.

Daal was still on his knees, but he stared up at her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked hoarsely.

“The Crèche… it’s under attack.”

She turned to Graylin, knowing where those ships must have come from.

She told him, told them all.

“The kingdom has found us.”