Holy Sister (Book of the Ancestor 3)

‘Working air and water is not so different from working rock.’ Zole helped Nona to her feet. ‘There are chambers in the ice that fill with meltwater until they reach a certain level then empty rapidly. The sudden changes in air pressure can be extreme.’

Zole called several halts as they went on, waiting for vents to blow. Each time they paused the ice’s blackness faded to grey around the shipheart. In one long gallery they passed the gauntlet of a dozen vents, each blowing to their own rhythm. Zole explained that the previous night’s surge of meltwater must be passing around them on its way to the hidden seas. The most powerful of the vents was fringed with icicles and blasted with regular ferocity. Nona learned the tempo of it before she crossed and was still almost driven from her feet by the tail end of the previous gust.

Nona marvelled at the volume of water that must have flowed through the gallery but it opened onto a chamber that dwarfed it. Nona could see no further than the shipheart’s glow but Zole described the space beyond as if a vast bubble had been trapped beneath the ice.

‘There are several exits we—’ Zole fell silent.

‘We what?’

‘Yisht is there.’

Nona heard a tremor in Zole’s voice for the first time and found it mirrored in her own. ‘Yisht? You said the Noi-Guin wouldn’t come near the black ice!’ She strained to see further into the darkness ahead. ‘You can’t get much more susceptible to devils than Yisht, right?’

‘Maybe, maybe not. Her mind is far from weak.’ Zole lifted the shipheart. ‘But Yisht no longer has need to fear the klaulathu.’

‘She doesn’t?’ Nona drew her sword.

‘No.’ Zole sat at the lip of the tunnel, setting her empty hand to the ice, ready to slide into the great chamber. ‘She is full.’

Yisht stood waiting for them close to the great drain at the lowest point of the bubble chamber, a yawning mouth into which thin cataracts of black water cascaded on all sides. Nona knew that nobody who fell down there would be coming out again. The hole seemed to exert a pull all its own, above and beyond that of gravity on a slope of slick, wet ice.

‘Why here?’ Nona hissed. She released a dagger, slid a foot down the ice, anchored the dagger, pulled the other clear. ‘Why wasn’t she waiting at the entrance?’

‘We might have run away,’ Zole replied, sliding lower. ‘Here she believes she has us trapped.’

Yisht had found, or cut a niche where she could stand. Zole and Nona remained on their sides, Nona anchored by her knife hand, Zole somehow finding purchase with her fingers.

Their enemy stood impassive, watching, her stocky figure statue-still. The shipheart’s violet light picked out edges, coaxing a detail here and there, the dark glimmer of an eye, the angular planes of her face, the razored length of her tular. Nona had already felt the kiss of a tular in Yisht’s hands. Her thigh still bore the scar. Her thighbone too had been notched by the jagged end of the ice-triber’s broken sword. The leg ached now as if the cold had entered her through the old wound.

It seemed somehow that through all Nona’s dreams of vengeance Yisht might have been waiting for her here within the cathedral vastness of this lightless cavern, black waters rushing past her, the meltwater rain falling endlessly around her.

Yisht saw the short game with unequalled clarity just as Abbess Glass saw the long game. Nona had difficulty seeing either, but somehow she knew this would end here. One way or the other.

Nona hung soaked and freezing, enveloped in the wrongness of devil-laden water, strange urges and alien thoughts trying to ease beneath her skin. The voices competed with those from within her skull as the shipheart gripped her mind, trying to squeeze out devils of her own. She shivered uncontrollably, though whether more from terror or the cold she couldn’t tell.

Above all these multiple sources of distress she felt stupid. She didn’t dare stand up or see how they could possibly make progress other than on hands and knees. Would they have to crawl to Yisht?

‘It would be a sorry place for you to die, child.’ Yisht watched Zole with blood-filled eyes. ‘Give me the shipheart and I will let you pass. The other,’ she turned her gaze on Nona, ‘I mean to hurt. The best that she can hope for is that she can throw herself into the depths before I get to her.’

Under Yisht’s stare Nona found her old anger rising. She’d almost forgotten it in the freezing night of the under-ice but now, with the ice-triber’s attention upon her, the old images that had haunted so many dreams rose again, filling her mind with Hessa’s death. She sheathed her sword and fumbled a throwing star numb-fingered from the bandolier around her chest. ‘The Ancestor cautions us against becoming a slave to revenge, Yisht. And although I want to hurt you I will be satisfied just to see you die.’ She lifted her arm to throw. ‘How well can you dodge down here?’

Yisht opened her mouth wide, her expression savage, the snarl of a fever-sick beast. The teeth she bared at Nona were as black as the ice.

‘She’s been drinking the water!’ Nona shuddered at the thought then drew back her arm.

‘Wait.’ Zole held out a hand to forestall her then curled the fingers into a fist. ‘Hang on.’ All around them the ice began to fracture, black plates carving away and sliding towards the gullet. Ice began to explode upwards and outwards as if some creature were burrowing beneath it. The air filled with fragments.

When the frost cleared from the air a different topology lay revealed in the shipheart’s glow.

‘How?’ Nona gasped.

‘Water-work is not so different from rock-work,’ Zole said. ‘Especially when it is ice.’

Zole had carved them a stepped path to Yisht two yards wide with a broader ledge immediately in front of her. She reached out and sank the shipheart into the ice before them, so deep that only the top half remained in view.

‘Why didn’t you just tip her down the hole?’ Nona asked.

Zole glanced her way. ‘She is a warrior of the ice.’ She stood and drew her sword. ‘Besides, the klaulathu would not let her fall. Violence is sweet to them.’

Nona got to her feet, still wary of her balance, her borrowed coat hanging wet around her, dripping. She returned the throwing star to its place among the others and drew her sword.

‘Together?’ Nona gritted her teeth against their chattering.

‘She would use us against each other,’ Zole said. ‘There is too little room.’

Nona sighed and stepped forward.

‘No.’ Zole put a hand out to stop her. ‘I will go.’

‘I’m your Shield.’ Nona’s anger faltered under a sudden wave of relief. She wanted to end Yisht but no part of her truly believed herself capable of the feat. She saw Hessa’s face again, felt her last moments, and the anger surged back. ‘She’s mine.’

‘No.’ Zole spoke the word with that buzzing resonance that had stopped a Scithrowl rider seeing what lay right before him. And while Nona struggled with the compulsion the ice-triber advanced on Yisht along the ledge she had fashioned.

Yisht stepped forward, tular in hand, ready to meet her former pupil. The first clash of steel broke Nona free of Zole’s command and immediately she started to follow her friend.