Chapter 74
RISE
It all happens so fast. Icecaller sees Belltoller go down, clipped and eaten by bolts of black fire.
Not a heartbeat to draw breath before her skin shivers with an arcane feeling she’s never felt before, like a plunge into an icy stream.
The whole battle slips slowly out of sync; the movement of bodies past her stilted as twigs against the sun.
Shouts of alarm and horror stretch across the sky, blurring like torn cloth.
At the heart of it, Shroudweaver is dancing.
At least, she thinks he’s dancing, his feet sketching loose circles across the stone, his shoulders dipping in fluid, brittle jerks, ribcage thrust out, arms pinned back like a bird’s wings.
His right hand is sheathed red, and his left shimmers with arctic light, pulling cold out into the world from …
somewhere, stretching it over the battle like a shroud. She gets the name now.
Icecaller watches him work, the breath hung in her lungs.
Out on the Barrowlands, something is forming.
Small at first. A pool of gold light that twitches and sings.
She imagines she can see faces inside it, bright eyes and wings.
A taste on her lips like honey. Shroudweaver’s fingers lift like rain, and the thing on the Barrowlands rises, sputtering white fire.
It stretches ten, twenty storeys high. Almost as tall as the Stump, as tall as the ledge where Icecaller watches wide-eyed, her heart giddy with terror.
The shape of the thing steadies, Shroudweaver’s hands seeming to sculpt its edges.
The briefest flicker of red thread catches the corner of her vision, but her eyes are held by the creature growing in front of her, individual faces and features sliding together in a flurry of golden light.
The sound that comes from the heart of it is like a song.
It turns its face towards Icecaller, and she staggers from the force of its gaze.
She touches her own wet face, and realises she is weeping.
The creature stretches the height of the mountain, the Barrowlands’ shadows cast into grey whispers by its light, the storm held for a moment behind the clouds.
She lists forwards against the battlements as the army below stops in its tracks. All around her she hears the crash of buckle and steel, as the soldiers surrounding her fall to their knees.
The strain of the summoning is wreaking a toll on Shroudweaver. Icecaller clocks Shipwright stepping up to hold him steady, and shakes her head. It’d be just the thing for that pale little ghost to get himself killed now.
There’s never bad luck thought as doesn’t make it true. She hears the gunshot a moment before she sees it, ripping across the sky like a torn hawk, dripping something thick and black.
She’s moving before she realises how stupid that is, throwing herself over Shroudweaver’s waggling legs and scrawny back and bearing him to the ground, shield raised.
The shot catches her shield on the crown and ricochets off, thundering into the mountain side, exploding rock and ice in hissing swirls.
Icecaller bites down a scream. Her arm aches like a dropped anvil but amazingly, it’s still there.
She mutters a quick blessing to Thell’s steelmakers, and smiles at the thought of Steelfinder’s smug face.
She stretches that smile out to encompass Shroudweaver’s terrified eyes under her, shoots him a wink, and leaps off.
Shipwright can take care of him. She seems used to it.
The marksman must have a perch up high. She skims the mountain’s ridges in panic.
It’s hard to see against the light being thrown off the creature growing down on the Barrowland.
Still, she sights something on the western ledge, among the eagle nests, shadow against the black rock, fluid and strange and racing towards the gate.
She tries to follow it but her gaze is taken by the sky.
A storm of crows peeling out of it, spiralling down to the ground, forming into a slight girl at the feet of the creature.
Crowkisser. It can’t be anyone but Crowkisser.
And above her, in front of her, all around her, the glowing, living song of glory Shroudweaver has brought forth.
A god. It must be a god. This must be what her father meant when he talked about them.
He hadn’t done it justice. Nothing could do it justice.
As Icecaller looks at it again, it feels like falling in love, like her first kiss with Steelfinder, quick and brave. Like holding Nigh for the first time, as she moved softly against her chest. Like falling into her father’s arms.
The Astic army staggers before the god. A few still list forwards, but wending, drunken, as if lost in a harsh storm. Only Crowkisser stands tall before it, her skin still crawling with feathers as the remnants of crows press themselves down into the bone.
At Icecaller’s back, she hears her people crying, singing. She’s humming something under her breath herself. A song her mother used to know.
Days of fear and panic, all that dying and killing – none of it matters now. They’ve won. For all his strangeness, Shroudweaver’s lived up to his reputation. Crowkisser’s finished. Icecaller allows herself a little smile at that.
Below, the composite turns towards the slight girl, and she steps backwards. For a moment, it looks like she might run, but then Icecaller realises she’s reaching for something. A scrap too small to make out, hurled overarm into the body of the god, arcing against the seared sky.
A moment later, the world detonates. Icecaller screws her eyes shut against a wash of light.
Screams at her back. Wailing. She forces herself to count to five, marking the beats of her hammering heart, despite the feeling that something is very wrong.
When she opens them, her vision dances purple.
Loss howls in her veins. Something beautiful is gone, the icy calm of Shroudweaver’s magic vanished.
Below her, the god he made is dead, scattered.
The people of Astic shaking off its spell, swarm forwards.
And then, as if in counterpoint, the mountain underneath her shakes, shuddering like a wounded thing.
Some kind of detonation from the gate, now weeping black smoke, rock.
And between the smoke, in breaths and blood and raindrops, come the dead, blossoming from the corpse of the god, tearing themselves free from its ruined scraps and rushing towards the mountain.
They’re joined by something older; spirits pulling themselves from the deep barrows, spectral hands breaking the split earth of the mounds.
Ephemeral mouths howl in rage and hunger.
Ghostly forms move in strands of gossamer light to join the throng flying towards Thell.
All her childhood nightmares finally become real.
For a minute she’s five again, wide-eyed on her father’s knee, listening to his tales of the dead, to his stern warning never to dig on green mounds, never to drink ice water, never to let her tattoos be broken.
Or maybe she’s nine, sparring with Skinpainter, watching their hands as they spin histories of the Empire, of bones, and of slavery only barely escaped.
A cold sweat rides her skin, and her stomach twists with fear.
Her eyes linger on the bright lines of the dead arcing towards the smoking ruin of the gate.
Beneath them, Astic’s army harries the last few soldiers retreating towards the mountain.
She shakes herself. She’s needed. She’s grown and she’s needed.
At her back, Shipwright and Fallon’s pup disappear into the depths with Belltoller’s ragged remains flopping between their panicked hands.
Icecaller lets them go, looking for Shroudweaver.
The sight of his shocked face and his pale fingers lights a fire of anger in her that burns out the fear.
In seconds, her fingers are around his throat, her breath hot and wet against his cheek.
His pulse is thready. His skin slick beneath her hands. A stink of saltpetre and sulphur.
She slams him against the rock until his teeth rattle. ‘What did you do?’
He struggles for breath, kicks.
She slams again, enjoying the wet sound his skull makes. ‘What?’
He winces, then his hands are a blur, tapping on her ribs, her arms. She feels herself go weak, something in those strikes turning her grip to water. He’s quicker than she realised. Colder. She staggers back, and he looks at her with twisted lips. ‘Not me. Her.’
He starts to refasten the red bindings around his wrists as he talks. Runs fingers over the sticky patch on his skull, grimaces. Soldiers rush by. He sways like a reed. Distantly, there are more explosions, the roar of the storm, screams.
Icecaller shakes the numbness out of her arms, levels her spear shakily. ‘You’re not going anywhere until I get some answers.’
Shroudweaver gazes down the shaft, and his face softens a little.
‘My daughter’s done something terrible. I think I can fix this, but I can’t do it if you won’t let me.
’ His fingers linger on the engraved tip.
Push it gently aside. She lets him. He offers her a small nod, readjusting pouches and belt, as he reapplies black powder to his temples.
As he starts towards the tunnels down, he stops and turns.
His face is old, and uncertain. ‘If I can’t fix it, get them out.
As many as you can.’ He seems about to add something else, but turns and joins the mass of bodies piling into the broken heart of the mountain.
For a heartbeat, Icecaller doesn’t know what to do. Then she sees her father, broad shouldered in the storm, slick with the driving rain, barking orders. He smiles at her, backlit by thunder. Even here, amid the rain, the smoke and the dying, he smiles at her.