Holy Sister (Book of the Ancestor 3)

All about them the ground lay scorched and smoking, the only green where Nona, armoured in her own Path-energies, had lain. She mourned the loss of the Path-mage’s robe. If he had worn it inside out the garment might have survived. With a groan she rolled off Kettle who in turn rolled off Bhenta. The Path’s energy still burned in her, demanding release.

They lay near the centre of a circle of destruction. Nona had never seen someone walk the Path and fail to own what they took. She never wanted to see it again.

She found her voice. ‘Get back to the others.’ The confusion would hide their escape.

Without giving either woman a chance to respond Nona jumped to her feet and took off at a flat sprint towards the Scithrowl assault massed at the base of Verity’s great wall. In the past three years of intensive training under Sister Pan’s direction Nona had grown into her heritage and learned all manner of ways to shape and master the power with which the Path filled her. She still couldn’t walk the Path twice in two days without enormous risk though, and so she aimed to put what she had now to good use.

The speed the Path gave her was like the swiftness a steep slope lends running legs. At first it was just that the running was effortless and far faster than anything you were capable of. And then it would almost be like flying and your feet would beat as rapid a tempo against the ground as your fingers could drum on a table. And almost immediately after that you would know that you had no control and that very soon you would fall and it was going to hurt. A lot.

Nona broke free of the waiting horde before any of them could tear their attention away from the carnage centred on the pavilion. She crossed half the open ground ahead of the walls before the first arrow zipped past her ear.

She crashed into the backs of the soldiers massed at the base of the closest siege tower and broke several of them before their bodies arrested her fearsome momentum. A dozen arrows hammered around her, taking down several more soldiers. She began to weave then, still clinging to the Path’s power, refusing its demands to be spent in one glorious act of ruination.

The troops before her had no idea an enemy was amongst them. Without exception their sole focus was to get into the siege tower before being found by an arrow or a rock from the great wall looming above them. Nona shouldered armoured men and women aside as if they were small children. The siege tower stank of the pine sap bleeding from its raw timbers, of the uncured hides nailed across its walls, and of the fear of those climbing it. The great wheels lay to either side now that the structure stood tight-pressed to Verity’s wall.

Nona barged inside and began to run up the ridged wooden ramp that formed a square spiral within the tower. Everywhere she stepped a glowing footprint remained to record her passage, scorched into the timber. Rather than fading, each footprint grew brighter and then more bright until on her sixth stride from the print it detonated, a blast powerful enough to blow out the sides of the tower in a cloud of splintered planking and torn hides. The chain of explosions chased Nona up the tower, tearing apart the soldiers she left tumbled behind her, and setting fire to the main beams.

The tower had begun to collapse by the time Nona burst through the curtain of chains screening the doorway just below its roof. She ran across the platform that bridged to the battlements and, with hunska speed, threw herself between the legs of the defending line. At the far edge she snagged the stonework and slid down the interior wall in a shower of sparks as she tamed her descent with her flaw-blades.

She found herself amid a crowd of startled defenders who a moment before had been racing around on various errands to fight fires, reinforce weak spots, or bring supplies like arrows or rocks to the wall.

‘I’m a Bride of the Ancestor!’ Two men levelled spears at Nona and she raised her arms. ‘I’m here to help.’

21

Three Years Earlier

The Escape

‘You’ve been spying on me?’

‘I have been spying on all of you. On the sister of the emperor, on the Red Sisters and the Grey, on the Church of the Ancestor.’ Zole looked as unapologetic as it was possible for a person to be.

‘Why?’ Nona could think of no other question.

Tarkax stepped forward. ‘The Corridor holds millions of people. What will happen when the moon falls?’

‘The Corridor will close and we’ll all die,’ Nona said.

‘Most will.’ Tarkax nodded. ‘But even if just one in every ten makes it to the ice, and if just one in every hundred of those makes it to the hot seas that are all that will be left to sustain us … they will outnumber the tribes.’

Nona blinked and discovered that frost had begun to form on her eyelashes. She had known the ice-tribes were few in number, especially those that spent their time in the deep ice rather than hunting the Corridor seas and the beasts that lived in the margins. It had never occurred to her quite how few they might be. ‘So what is it you plan to do?’

Tarkax shrugged. ‘Being prepared and forewarned is a plan in itself. But there are those among us who think that the Corridor can be saved, at least for a while longer. A few centuries perhaps. Zole has been gathering information. There’s no treachery intended. We want to help you and, by doing so, to help ourselves.’

‘How?’ Nona narrowed her eyes at the warrior. For years she’d imagined him to be some wandering mercenary. It took an effort of imagination to refashion him as Zole’s uncle, watching over his niece and hoping to save all the nations of Abeth.

‘Ah, well, that is the tricky part.’ He twisted a smile. ‘We didn’t send Zole just to watch you.’

‘You sent me because I needed to learn more than the ice-speakers could teach,’ Zole said.

‘We did.’ Tarkax nodded. ‘You may have noticed, Nona, that my brother’s daughter is an exceptional child. Our tribe has access to two Old Stones and no member of our people has ever held both and been fully purged. Not before Zole. And still she has not ascended. The ice-speakers now say that it will take four Old Stones, one attuned to each of the bloods, to forge her fully.’ He glanced at the hand Zole had just unwrapped. In the wind’s bite her flesh looked paler than Nona had ever seen it, but across her palm a scarlet stain spread like oil on water. ‘And now she has exposed herself to a third.’

Nona shuddered, and not just from the cold. ‘And if Zole does “ascend”, so what? Will it stop the ice from closing on us?’

‘We are also interested in your emperor’s Ark, Nona.’

‘Because it can control the moon?’ Nona shook her head. ‘You thought Zole could open it? But surely the Argatha prophecy was just nonsense, made up for local politics, to entertain the people.’

‘The Ark can guide the moon.’ Tarkax glanced around at his fellows as if they too might need convincing.

‘If that were really true, why would the emperor, and his father, and his father’s mother before him, all have banned the books that say it, and made criminals of anyone trying to find a way? If shiphearts were the key to the Ark why would they still lie scattered? Wouldn’t generations of emperors have been trying to bring them to Verity? I know Sherzal and Adoma seem to think it’s true, but that doesn’t mean it is. Or even that they really believe it.’