Holy Sister (Book of the Ancestor 3)

The two ice-tribers fought within the level circle that Zole had formed, their footwork precise, hardly slipping despite the black slickness beneath them. Zole attacked with all of the swiftness and precision that Nona found so hard to counter, a relentless assault, free of flamboyance, efficient and focused on the kill. Yisht defended with unnerving skill, countering hunska speed with the ability to anticipate every attack.

The ringing of blades echoed around the vast, hidden chamber, returning in fractured peals. Once Yisht slipped and fell, but immediately Nona saw that she had allowed it to happen, dropping beneath Zole’s thrust to kick her shin, taking her down too. Both combatants found their feet together and rose with swords swinging.

While Yisht could mount an impenetrable defence she could find no way to pierce Zole’s guard: her attacks were too slow and she hardly tried, knowing such moves left her open. Instead she relied on her greater strength, knowing that Zole’s speed would fade, leaving her with the advantage. Somehow, even with Zole, Yisht was able to see all action and consequence with several seconds’ warning. Keot had told Nona that Yisht saw only what people would do. She read the future actions of her opponents. She would know if Nona was going to flip a coin, but not whether it would land head or tails. In such a fight though, knowing what her opponent would do seemed to be enough.

The din of sword on sword continued. Razored steel turned away from flesh again and again, sometimes with fractions of an inch to spare.

‘Draw back!’ Nona could see Zole beginning to slow. ‘I can take her!’ She felt ashamed, standing there while Zole fought her battle for her, ashamed of the relief she’d experienced when Zole stepped forward. ‘Retreat!’

Zole showed no signs of drawing back. She attacked, her swiftness almost that of her initial assault. For a moment Yisht was forced to retreat to the very edge of the platform. At that instant Zole stamped and the ice erupted beneath her opponent, a detonation every bit as violent as those that had created the platform in the first place.

Somehow Yisht contrived to have the force of it drive her at Zole. She deflected the novice’s sword thrust and grappled her. Zole slid back before the impact and drove her knife into Yisht’s side, but despite the wound the woman kept her feet. A moment later Yisht held Zole’s knife hand at the wrist, placed her other hand behind the girl’s elbow and spun her straight-armed, out over the slope. The force and timing of the move were sufficient to loft Zole above the ice and she fell into the gullet below them without touching the sides. Her scream hung in the air far longer than she did.

‘No!’ Nona stared in disbelief, first at the void into which Zole had fallen, then at the space where she had been standing.

‘Yes.’ Yisht pulled Zole’s knife from her side then reached around to remove a shard of black ice embedded in her back. Her blood should have run in rivers but somehow the devils inside her refused to let more than a trickle escape, the air around it steaming.

Terror and fury waged their old war through Nona. Yisht had killed another of her friends and now she would come for her.

Nona tried to see the Path but it was a distant thread even with the shipheart just a couple of yards away. She had walked the Path twice in Sherzal’s palace. The second time had nearly killed her. A third surely would, even if she could manage it. Half of her demanded that she run, half that she launch herself at Yisht and attack with every ounce of her passion.

Yisht picked up her tular and began to advance on her. The shipheart lay between them, the cleared ice all around it violet-lit. ‘I will enjoy killing you, little girl.’

Yisht barely seemed to notice her wounds. She walked with a hunter’s confidence. Nona sheathed her sword and drew a second knife from her belt. Clutching only the corner of a plan and a faint hope, she followed her fear and ran. Pursued by Yisht’s laughter she began to retreat towards the mouth of the tunnel she had entered by. She climbed the slope using the strength of her arms, stabbing her knives into the ice to advance, her goal lost in the darkness above her.

As the curve of the chamber steepened to near vertical, Nona paused to look back. She could see nothing of her surroundings, only Yisht below her approaching the island of greying, violet-lit ice around the shipheart. And just behind Yisht, defying all illumination, the black throat that had consumed Zole. The air still echoed with the memory of her despairing scream.

Yisht reached the shipheart and broke it from the ice, snarling as if it burned her hands. She stood, clutching the orb, then came after Nona, apparently unconcerned by the slickness of the chamber floor that curved steeply up to become the chamber wall. To Nona, hanging by her knives, the ice-triber’s advance seemed impossible. Maybe the shipheart was enhancing Yisht’s marjal talent, or the devils inside her were powering her on in their eagerness to see violence unfold.

Nona redoubled her efforts, reaching up to anchor a dagger, heaving herself up behind it, repeating the action with the other hand. She hauled herself over the tunnel’s lip, sobbing with exhaustion. All around her the shipheart’s light grew stronger as Yisht steadily narrowed the gap between them.

Nona got to her feet, slipping back to her knees immediately. No feeling remained in her extremities and she shuddered with the cold, her teeth chattering uncontrollably. She stood again, almost falling again, and staggered on, tearing off the bandolier of throwing stars. She could lie in wait for Yisht, try to behead her as she crested the tunnel mouth. But Yisht could see Nona’s actions in the near future. She could examine how each of her own actions and each of Nona’s actions would unfold and could choose the one that suited her. Whatever Nona chose to do, she would end up dead, or worse … captured. With only the thinnest sliver of hope, and pursued by fear, Nona fled into the dark.

Moving with reckless speed, Nona opened up a gap while Yisht was still climbing. She could hear blasts from the air vents in the gallery ahead, the irregular tattoo of their eruptions reverberating down the icy tunnel. Soon she could feel the edge of the explosions, the pulses of freezing mist and the wrongness as the black frost settled and melted on her skin.

Nona came blind into the gallery relying on memory, reaching for her clarity to separate and time the blasts. Numb-fingered and trembling, she pulled her throwing stars from the bandolier. If she cut herself she didn’t feel it. A blast roared out close at hand and as it died away Nona found the vent. She lifted her double handful of spiked steel to the icy maw and hurriedly jabbed as many of the stars as she could into the interior. Most of them spilled from her grasp and rattled away. In the distance the tunnel along which she had retreated lit with a violet light.

Nona drew her sword and stood her ground. She thought of Hessa and of Zole and let her anger warm her as the black figure approached.

‘Come on then.’ Nona spoke into the lull between a series of blasts further back along the gallery. Her sword hand trembled but her voice held steady.

Yisht dropped the shipheart at the entrance, her hands white to the wrists. By the time she had pulled her tular clear of its scabbard the stains of competing devils were already advancing from beneath the sleeves of her tunic. A scald spread across the back of her sword hand and Nona wondered if it might be Keot, eager to play his part in her demise.

Nona threw her knife with her off hand as Yisht closed on her. The ice-triber stepped aside, letting the blade cut her hair as it passed.