The cradle of ice, p.36
The Cradle of Ice, page 36
part #2 of Moonfall Series
Shock threw him back into the tumult of history, until he dropped into another scene.
—he 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.
Time slipped, falling backward now. Daal sensed the passage of eons. A new image spun into focus.
—he sees his hands, tapping blood from a leathery wing.
Time snapped forward again.
—he stares down at a tentacled beast on a table, its arms writhing, suckers trying to grab at his fingers. He plunges blood through a sharp needle into the creature.
Daal fell briefly back into himself, as if allowed to come up for air. Though he didn’t understand fully, he knew he had been shown the birth of the Oshkapeers. The Dreamers had been forged in the past as surely as they had done to him—transformed by the potent blood of the raash’ke.
Then he was dragged back down into the roiling flood. He became a stone, skipping across water, traveling forward in time again.
—he lies on his back and lifts a broken hand, the same hand as before, only far older and covered in blood. He heaves through his last breaths. A shadow looms behind him. Terror etches through him.
The horror of that moment, of that death, shoved Daal away. The next images flashed through him quickly, only glimpses of a past, jumping ever forward.
—a clutch of raash’ke bursting away in a panic of wings.
—another fighting in the air, as if trapped by an unseen net.
—he’s a girl, fleeing down a street, a winged silhouette pursuing her.
—he’s a Reef Farer, wearing a heavy stone circlet, staring across the ruins of a village, his feet standing in a pool of blood.
Daal returned to his body again, his chest heaving, but only pumping water. He remembered flying atop a raash’ke, full of exhilaration and joy. His fingers curled in the water, as if still trying to reach for those ancient reins again.
With a jolt of recognition, he realized that Neffa’s saddle matched the one mounted atop the raash’ke.
Is that where the gear came from, adapted from a past when the raash’ke were our allies?
Even living through those brief moments, he had trouble imagining such a time. Still, it was clear something had corrupted the raash’ke, turning them into winged monsters. The Dreamers seemed to hint at the source. Throughout the last images, he had sensed a shadow looming over all those glimpses. It was the same shadow—underlaid by the same terror—from earlier, when a man had died on his back.
Daal cringed in the embrace of the tentacles.
Who or what cast that shadow?
The answer didn’t come from the Dreamers. Though Nyx couldn’t speak, he shared her memories. He flashed to when she had fought off the bat that had grabbed Henna. Through her senses, he felt the dark presence lurking behind the greater mind of the raash’ke horde. She had even given it a name.
The spider.
Nyx glowed brighter next to him, fury stoking her fire. Whoever or whatever that spider was, it had stolen Bashaliia from her.
She cast out a single word, a fiery demand.
Who?
The question seemed to quake through the Dreamers. The mesh of glowing threads shivered over his body. For a moment, it felt as if the tendrils were about to withdraw, that the Oshkapeers would refuse to answer.
But the threads settled again.
An image swirled and formed inside his skull. It was the same memory from before, as if the Dreamers were repeating themselves.
—Daal lies on his back again, lifting a bloody hand, knobbed and thinned by age. With his final gasps of life, he senses another’s approach. A shadow looms over him, sparking terror.
Only this time, Daal was not allowed to escape. He was held there for that last breath of the dying man.
—his arm drops as death envelops him. The world darkens to its end—then brightens for just a moment. A blurry torch of reflected light passes over his face, coming from the shadow behind him. It coalesces into five fingers and a hand.
Daal thrashed with recognition, tearing himself out of the past. Still, the last image persisted, burning across his brain, branding it there forever.
The hand was made of shining bronze.
54
WHILE THE WATERS remained warm, Nyx’s body had gone cold. The glow from her skin dimmed as she stared over at Shiya. Her bronze body was still wrapped in powerful tentacles.
Nyx knew it wasn’t Shiya’s hand that had formed over the dead man’s face. The palm had been far broader, the fingers more thickly knuckled. It was the hand of a man.
Still, there was no mistaking the truth.
The spider was another Sleeper.
She tried to fathom his existence, how he came to be in the Crèche. A thousand questions filled her. He clearly had arrived countless millennia ago and corrupted the raash’ke. But the ancient alchymist who had died had kept a secret, burying it deep under dark waters.
She stared through the mesh of glowing tendrils to the spread of reefs, to the teeming life, to the hundreds of Dreamers skimming these waters, creatures who shared a lineage with the raash’ke, but who diverged along a different path.
She pictured the blood being infused into the specimen on the table.
Was the alchymist’s creation of the Oshkapeers happenstance, or had he known what was coming?
She had no way of knowing. She doubted even the Dreamers could answer it—but there was one question they could. She gathered the last of Daal’s fire and cast it out in a fiery plea.
Where is he?
She waited, bracing herself for another rush of preserved memories. But nothing happened. She didn’t know if the Oshkapeers were holding back or if she was wrong about them knowing the answer. Trapped underwater, they were likely limited in their reach.
Finally, a memory formed, freshened by cold winds and lit by stars.
—atop a raash’ke, she flies high above an ice cliff. She follows her mate, who wings ahead of her. Below, sections of the cliff had calved away long ago, crashing down to a plain of cold and barren rock. In the distance, she spies a massive crack across that endless slab of stone, splitting and dividing as it spreads outward from the cliffs of ice. From its depths, a fiery glow lights the landscape, ruddy and threatening. She shies away.
Time flitted forward.
—she glides over a glittering desert of fallen stars.
—she fights winds that howl through peaks as jagged as shark’s teeth.
—she watches her mate head on foot across a shattered landscape, leaving a crumple of broken wings behind him. Her heart aches. Her mate waves for her to abandon him and return to the Crèche. She knows she must. As she turns away, far in the distance, something glitters under the icy shine of a full moon.
Before Nyx could spy more, she was jolted back into her body, but it was not of her own volition. Her return felt like dismissal. Or maybe prohibition. The underlying sentiment was one of warning, of overwhelming danger.
The message was clear.
Never go there.
For now, Nyx let this slip behind her. Instead, she focused on the worry closer at hand, one nearer to her heart. She pictured the massive fiery crack in the stony landscape. It had to be the Mouth of the World. According to Daal, it was where the raash’ke roosted.
And where Bashaliia must have been taken.
Her fear for him was bright enough that she needed no flames to convey her need to know more, to discover a way to reach him.
The Dreamers responded, pulling her into a flurry of memories, a cascade of horrific deaths. But they all started the same way, at the same spot:
—she stands at the prow of a skiff pulled by orksos. The green seas ahead crash against a wall of broken ice, marking the farthest western edge of the Ameryl Sea. The cliff is pocked with fissures and caves. She heads for the largest opening.
From there, time lines and lives diverged into a chaos of misadventures, tragedies, and death. They all marked hundreds of attempts to navigate beyond the Crèche, to travel under the ice to reach the Mouth. Explorers were boiled in water, frozen under a crush of ice, tumbled over bottomless falls, or sucked down endless chutes. Others drowned or starved or took their own lives while lost forever in the labyrinth of ice tunnels.
Nyx experienced them all.
Still, the multitude of deaths and stories blurred together, slowly forming a map, outlining a path through that maze, until finally …
—she rides an orkso down a tunnel whose walls are lit by a fiery light. She hangs over the saddle, barely able to lift her head. An arm drags through the water next to her, leaving a trail of blood. She is near to death. The faithful orkso under her struggles with a torn wing. She had lost her skiff, both brothers, and the other three orksos. With no other choice, no way back, she lets the orkso pull her the last of the way. The walls of ice fall to either side. The roof vanishes above. She glides out of the tunnel into a river that rides over rapids into a great ravine. She stares up as her life fades out. Far above, distant stars shine and glitter like ice. She finds little satisfaction, only tired relief as she dies.
Nyx returned to her body. A map—the only path through the labyrinth—burned in her mind. Its route seared into place, never to be forgotten. Still, she wanted to know more. She struggled to impassion her need, her plea.
But it did no good.
The lattice of glowing tendrils withdrew from her skin, her body. They wound back to the reef, reeling back into the heart of it. As much as she wanted to continue the communion, she knew why it had abruptly ended. The Dreamers had instilled one last sense. It burned inside her: an urgency, a heavy press of time, underpinned by a well of grief, of love lost.
She understood the Oshkapeers’ last warning.
I must hurry or lose Bashaliia forever.
She turned to the side. The shroud of tendrils had shed from Daal, too. He stared over at her. She swore that she could feel the pound of his heart in her own chest. He had also sensed that urgency.
We must go.
The Dreamers gleaned her desire. Tentacles tightened around her, and with a strung pulse of its body, her Oshkapeer surged upward. She tilted her chin down, searching below. Daal followed, safely ensconced in tentacles.
Still, she looked until she spotted Shiya. She worried the Dreamers—considering their animosity toward figures of bronze—might drag her to a molten death. But the giant Oshkapeer swirled up after them, hauling Shiya’s heavy body in their wake.
Relieved, Nyx turned away—until movement along the seafloor drew her eye back again. From this height, the full expanse of the reef glowed below. As she watched, the entire labyrinth lifted and shifted huge branches across the sand. The largest mass of reef rolled enough to expose a huge black eye, staring up at her, shining with silvery fire, watching her depart.
Then the eye sank away under a brow of rock and bone. The rest of its limbs, covered in coral, settled back to the sand.
She gaped at the vast spread of the reef, recognizing it now for what it really was: one ancient and massive Oshkapeer. The queen of them all. Maybe the very first. She pictured the ancient alchymist infusing raash’ke blood into a small tentacled beast.
Was this that same creature?
Either way, she understood why this Oshkapeer had been forged.
To be an undying sentinel against the darkness.
Nyx warmed her body and cast down one last message, imbuing it with all her gratitude, knowing the long vigil that this Dreamer had kept for ages on end.
Thank you …
55
DAAL KNEW SOMETHING was wrong when they reached the brighter water. Rather than being drawn to the surface and returned to the skiff, he and the others continued coursing through the seas, staying deep. The Dreamer that gripped Daal spun as it traveled, twirling all its black eyes, likely searching for threats.
Daal’s head swirled dizzily.
Still, he appreciated such caution when he caught a glimpse of a pod of pickkyns sweeping below him, undulating their long bodies. Thankfully, the large shadows vanished away.
The three of them sped onward, clutched by their caretakers.
Daal searched around.
Where are they taking us?
He imagined Graylin must be panicked, certain they were dead. But there was nothing Daal could do to rectify the matter. They were all at the mercy of the Oshkapeers.
Daal could not even fathom how long he and Nyx had been down here. It felt like a thousand lifetimes. He expected to find Iskar fallen into dusty ruins by the time they surfaced.
As they traveled, his head still throbbed, blurring all that had been shown him. So much history, so many lives. Most of it was already fading, like waking from a dream. He would try to grasp a piece only to have it dissolve away.
Maybe that’s for the best.
He could not possibly hold that entire history in his head without going mad. Still, the most important stories remained, etched deep into his bones. He knew the raash’ke had once been companions, working in harmony with the people of the Crèche. Until they were corrupted by a figure of bronze.
He twisted enough to see Shiya being hauled by a giant Oshkapeer.
Can she truly be trusted?
With no way of knowing, he turned back to the sweep of the seas. He caught sight of Nyx coursing on his left. He knew what preoccupied her mind and heart. While much had faded, he could still touch the love she felt for Bashaliia. It ached through him. He knew where she intended to go next.
It burned in his mind, a fiery map of a labyrinth that led to the Mouth of the World. That path was scorched in place, never to be forgotten. It felt so branded into him that he suspected even his children would know it.
This last thought crinkled his brow.
He wondered if that was what had happened to the first Nyssian—when Nys Pephia communed with the Dreamers centuries ago. While Daal felt all that history slipping away, perhaps Pephia was able to retain it. He didn’t know how that could be. Perhaps she was uniquely talented. Or maybe the Dreamers had changed her, like they had him, sculpting Pephia’s mind to be able to hold the entire history of the Crèche, to even pass it to future generations. The Nyssians certainly had the innate ability to sense those men who had the proper seed for their future daughters.
Daal shook his head, resigned that he would never know. It was all beyond him. Besides, he had enough to worry about. Most importantly—
Where are we being taken?
The answer came as they reached shallower water. The sandy seabed rose under them, forcing them to the surface.
Daal broke through the waves. Though blinded by the spray, he caught glimpses of high red cliffs and a white stretch of beach. Through his waterlogged ears, he heard distant music, even fainter laughter.
It was the island of Kefta.
The Oshkapeer did not slow, riding the surf, jetting him toward the shore. Its spiked shell led the way, like the prow of a sea god’s boat. Once the Oshkapeer was close enough, Daal was whipped around and tossed toward the beach. He rolled and tumbled out of the water and across the sand.
He lay stunned for a moment on his back.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Nyx discharged just as roughly.
Then his body spasmed violently. He remembered this from his first communing with the Dreamers. He rolled onto his side—and just in time. His body wracked hard, gushing seawater out of his mouth. Still unable to breathe, he got on his hands and knees and continued to heave, pouring a river from his lips and nostrils. His lungs and throat were on fire, scoured by the salt, by the violence of the expulsion. He kept gagging and hacking until finally he was able to catch a clean breath.
He wanted to remain where he was, but he crawled over to Nyx, who was similarly afflicted. She was hunched over her knees. Her spine was an arch of agony. Water streamed and coughed and choked out of her. Tears washed the salt from her eyes. Eventually she sagged, gasping, able to breathe. But she trembled all over.
He drew her into his arms and pulled her onto his lap. She stiffened, possibly fearing his touch. He gathered her closer, passing some of his fire into her, letting it warm through her.
“Wait it out,” Daal said. “It’ll end.”
She hung in his arms, still occasionally coughing, spilling more seawater. He rocked her gently, like he did with Henna whenever she was overwrought or scared.
Splashing drew his attention to the sea. Shiya waded out. Clearly her Oshkapeer was too large to get close to the beach and had dumped her farther out to sea. Not that it mattered to the bronze woman. She did not need to breathe, nor did she have lungs to clear.
She strode over to them. Her glassy eyes shone with concern. Her words were tender and quiet. “Will she be all right?”
He nodded. “Give her a few more breaths.”
Daal forced his arms to relax, realizing they had tightened at Shiya’s approach. The Dreamers’ terror of such figures still echoed inside him.
Nyx finally sat up on her own. She stared down at her wrists. The bleeding had already stopped, as he knew it would. Some property of the Oshkapeers’ sting encouraged clotting and healing.
He fingered the soft scabs on his neck, knowing he would need to hide them, like he had before. Not that such marks had any meaning, as no one living had communed with the Dreamers since Nys Pephia. Still, their matching wounds would be hard to explain.
He glanced down the empty beach. A shoulder of the headlands separated them from Kefta’s bay. They would have to hike and circle around it to reach town. But at least they were alone for now, able to collect themselves.
After a time, as they rested, the mists overhead bloomed from pale blue to bright spatters of crimson, yellows, and greens, marking the start of a new day.
Daal stirred. “We should get going.”
Nyx nodded. “I must find Graylin. I don’t know if he’s still out at sea or if he gave up and returned to town.”
Shiya stood nearby, a bronze sentinel in the sand. She frowned at them, tilting her head slightly.
