Kitabı oku: «The Girl and the Stars», sayfa 6

CHAPTER 8

‘How long do we have to stay here?’ Kao had been pacing for what seemed like hours. One pace, two pace, turn. One pace, two pace, turn.

‘I don’t know.’ Thurin had given the same reply the last several times and it didn’t seem to stick.

‘Try sitting,’ Yaz suggested from where she sat.

Kao made no reply. He seemed more scared of the narrowness of the space confining him than of the hunter outside. And he had been pretty scared of that. Yaz didn’t blame him there. No amount of muscle is going to make a difference against a creature of iron with knives for claws. But fear of enclosed spaces was not something the Ictha knew. Anyone who couldn’t spend three months inside a tent would not last long among her people.

Outside, the grinding continued as it had continued the whole time.

‘Will it dig its way to us?’ Maya asked, eyes wide in the darkness.

Yaz would have said no, nothing could, but the sounds did seem to have grown louder, as if the beast were actually making progress. Certainly when it reached in every so often its claws seemed to scrape the rock much closer to their hiding place each time. Either it was burrowing through ice at a remarkable rate or its limbs were growing longer!

‘The others will come,’ Yaz said. ‘Quina will have told them.’

‘Unless that thing got her,’ Kao said.

Yaz shook her head. ‘Then Arka would have sent someone to check on us already. Arka said we should hurry.’

‘They’ll all know by now,’ Thurin agreed. ‘One way or the other.’

‘So they come and find us and …’ Yaz still marvelled that they were being attacked by a mass of iron that would outweigh all the metal owned by even the largest of clans. Her life could soon be ended by a sharp-edged heap of treasure of incalculable value. ‘How do you beat these things?’

‘We don’t. We hide and eventually they go away.’

‘And if they don’t?’

‘Then someone draws them off. But they always go away in the end, and if you can make it to the long slope they hardly ever follow you past the gateposts.’

‘So … why hasn’t someone drawn it off?’ Maya asked. Now that they were in real trouble she sounded perfectly calm, no sign of the wide-eyed nervous girl from before.

Thurin didn’t speak for a moment, and then, as if deciding on honesty, ‘I guess they’ve tried to draw it off but it just wants us more than it wants them. Sometimes that happens. It’s one of the reasons you won’t see many grey hairs among the Broken.’

Kao stopped pacing. ‘I’ve got to get out,’ he muttered to himself as if it were a sudden realization. ‘Got to get out.’ He fell to his hands and knees and began to crawl to the gap.

‘Don’t be stupid.’ Thurin grabbed the boy’s shoulder and tried to haul him back. He made almost no difference against Kao’s strength but the boy lashed out anyway, sending Thurin flying back into the wall of the chamber.

Yaz stepped between Kao and the gap just before he could enter it. ‘That thing out there will tear you apart!’

Kao showed no signs of having heard her. Somehow his fear of being trapped in such close confines had overwhelmed his fear of the hunter. He jumped to his feet with a strangled cry and reached to grab Yaz as though intending to toss her aside too. Bracing herself against the wall she caught both his wrists. The boy growled and tried to fasten his hands on her shoulders. He stood well over six feet, his arms heaped with muscle, and his strength was frightening.

‘What?’ Kao grunted with effort and pressed down even more forcefully.

Yaz ground her teeth, breathing heavily and held him where he was, hands just inches from closing on her. In the main chamber a great crash rang out.

‘How … are … you … doing … this?’ He eased the pressure, amazed.

A pained laugh rang out behind them, Thurin back on his feet, clutching his side. ‘She’s of the Ictha. The northmen are a different breed.’

‘Listen!’ Yaz let go of Kao’s wrists. A second great crash sounded outside along with an unearthly howl more chilling than any the wind ever made. The light dimmed, nothing but the faint glow of the surrounding ice reaching them.

‘It’s not normally like this.’ Thurin’s voice sounded beside her, closer than she had thought he was. ‘Even when hunters do leave the city they stick to the fringes. I’ve never heard of one this far in. We’re practically at the settlement.’

Yaz shrugged, trying to offset his worry. ‘This sort of thing has been pretty normal for me lately.’ The hunter scared her less than Hetta had, though it looked even harder to overcome. Somehow it was Hetta’s hunger that terrified her more than iron claws and spikes.

‘Ha.’ Thurin snorted. They faced each other, just two handwidths between them but still not close enough to make out each other’s expression.

‘It’s stopped.’ Maya crouched low and peered through the gap. ‘It’s gone!’

Kao bent to join the girl but Yaz turned from Thurin and shoved him back with a grunt. ‘It could be a trick. We wait!’

Kao straightened but thought better of testing his strength against hers again. Yaz was glad of that. Her arms hurt. She had always been told the Ictha were stronger than the southern tribes but had thought it meant only that they could endure the cold better. However strong the Ictha might be, though, Yaz knew that a couple years more growing would see Kao able to brush her aside without effort.

‘What’s going on out there?’ She directed the question at Maya, still on her belly looking out.

‘I can only see ice. The way out’s blocked. But I hear digging.’

‘The monster?’

‘I don’t think so …’

The four of them waited, crouched and ready, listening to the crunch of ice, quieter and less violent than it had been before.

‘Halooo?’ A woman’s voice from outside.

This time nobody stood in Kao’s way as he threw himself at the gap and began to wriggle out beneath the ice.

The rest of them followed, Thurin bringing up the rear. Many hands reached to help them from the mass of crushed ice mounded around the base of the wall. Yaz rose to find herself surrounded by the Broken, scores of them, hulking gerants making their neighbours look like children. Arka led her from the debris as others helped Thurin out. Quina was among them and had taken charge of Maya, brushing fragments from her long brown hair. Pome was there with his star-on-a-stick, others also bearing lights, some holding smaller stars in glass bowls on the end of long poles. Their leader, Tarko, stood among them in hurried conference with a series of his people who took off running once they had their orders.

‘This!’ Pome stepped forward as Thurin stood dusting sparkling fragments from his skins. ‘This is what comes of toying with the Taints! Theus will come for us all. His numbers are growing and we sit back and let him plan our destruction! We leave him to choose when to lead the Tainted against us.’ Pome singled Thurin out, pointing in accusation. ‘Instead of a war to eradicate their kind and take back the drop pools, we capture one of their number and try to cleanse him. Wasting months’ worth of stones and losing a good warrior in the process.’

‘That good warrior was my mother!’ Thurin roared, and about him the crushed ice writhed as though some great serpent were moving just beneath its surface. ‘I don’t need some surface walker one drop from his fall to tell me—’

‘Peace!’ Tarko boomed. His voice rolled out deep as glaciers groaning. ‘The Tainted did not bring a hunter to our caves. Tainted do not go to the city.’

‘And hunters don’t come this far into our territory!’ Pome shouted to mutters of agreement from behind him. ‘But still we have a hunter on our doorstep hard on the heels of Thurin’s restoration. We have challenged the order of things, against the will of many here, and now we see the price. The Tainted are lost to us and a quick death is all the mercy we can afford them.’

Tarko rubbed both hands across the back of his neck as if seeking to ease some tension. He looked tired – close to exhaustion even – but when he answered it was with a measured tone. ‘And what would you have me do, Pome? Return Thurin to the Tainted? Leave him to the hunter? I thought you were eager to fight. Today we have driven off a hunter. When have the Broken known such a victory?’

This time the mutters were for Tarko and they were louder. He continued, ‘I’ve set a watch on the long slope so we will know if a hunter comes our way again. But we’ve shown that here at least we have some defence against them.’ He nodded to himself and looked out across his people, waving them on. ‘Now, each to their task. The ice does not mine itself.’

The gathering appeared to be over. Slowly the crowd began to break up, moving off in threes and fours, some deep in their silence, others talking animatedly among themselves to the accompaniment of the drip drip drip from above and the distant groan of moving ice.

‘What happened?’ Thurin asked Arka, amazed. ‘How did you drive off a hunter?’

‘Tarko worked the ice,’ Arka said.

‘Tarko has marjal blood, like Thurin?’ Maya asked.

‘Someone’s been paying attention. Tarko is the strongest ice-worker among us.’ Arka gave the girl an approving look and Maya beamed up at her. ‘He broke a block from the ceiling bigger than Hetta and let it drop on the hunter. That got its attention. The second one seemed to hurt it. Anyway, it retreated after that.’ She pointed to the far end of the cavern where more caves opened out. ‘Let’s go.’

Yaz ignored the woman and kept her gaze on Thurin. His mother had died in the effort to rescue him, perhaps on the same day Yaz fell. It explained the sadness in him. And he was tainted but was rescued from that too. She needed his help if she were to rescue Zeen. Guilt rose, the old Ictha guilt that always reached up to run its claws through her whenever she thought about herself rather than others. She’d been looking at Thurin as someone who might be a friend. Or even more than that. Those were the sorts of dreams that saw you die on the ice, the sort that hurt the clan. Thurin was her means to recover Zeen. That was her focus. Nobody would know the Tainted better than someone who lived among them. ‘I’m sorry about your mother.’

Thurin frowned, uncomfortable. ‘Nobody lasts long down here. But I will miss her. Very much.’ He paused and added, ‘I’m sorry about your brother.’

There seemed nothing else to say. Sometimes all your words are the wrong shape and none of them will fit into the silence left when the conversation pauses. Yaz looked away from Thurin, her stomach a cold knot. Zeen would be poisoned and insane when she found him. She would need to do whatever had been done for Thurin. The knowledge ate at her. Each new thing she learned only bound her tighter to the Broken. She needed them, and while every instinct told her to go out now and get her brother to safety, her head told her to stay, to listen, and to learn.

‘How—’ But already Arka was leading the others back towards the settlement. Yaz hurried to catch up with her. ‘How do you make someone who’s tainted better again? And what’s this city? And why can’t you just bring ice down on them there too?’

‘Because in the undercity the ceiling is made of stone,’ Arka said. ‘And the rest will have to wait until I’ve eaten. Maybe the Ictha don’t need food but I’m starving.’

‘Food!’ Kao said it as though remembering a lost love. ‘Hells yes.’

Arka led them to the settlement, past the barracks and further in amid a confusion of huts and larger buildings, all different both in design and orientation. They looked almost to have been made from discarded pieces of larger, more complex objects, like the child’s doll Yaz’s father had fashioned for her when she was little. The thought stung her and she wondered what her parents were doing now, what Quell was doing, and how far away they were from her now, up in the freshness of the wind.

She looked around and sniffed in distaste. The settlement lacked the order of an Ictha camp, it was dirty, and it smelled … it smelled delicious! Yaz sniffed again. Arka had led them to one of the largest halls and as she opened the door a wave of warmth rolled out along with the most wonderful aroma. All five of the drop-group suddenly found themselves as hungry as Kao had declared himself to be. They wasted no time installing themselves around a platform that Arka named a table on objects she named chairs, designed to allow them to sit while at the same time being raised to be on a level with the table. Yaz wondered what was wrong with the floor but she made no complaint.

An older woman with dark hair that fell in a strange curling way came in hefting a huge bowl that seemed to be made of iron, blackened with fire on the outside and steaming from within, the source of the wonderful aroma. Yaz was as amazed by the woman’s curls as she was by the fact that metal was so plentiful here that it could be used to make bowls to keep food in.

Arka held up her hand. ‘Two things. One: don’t touch the pot, it will burn you. We serve food hot here. Madeen will bring bowls. Two: this is Madeen. She cooks the meals. Never upset her or you might get something nasty in yours.’

Madeen gave the lie to these words with a motherly smile as she hefted the pot onto the table, then swung round suddenly to aim a narrow-eyed scowl at Maya who jumped and nearly fell from her chair. Laughing, Madeen went to fetch the bowls.

‘Oh, and three: these are spoons.’ Arka showed off a metal scoop.

The pot contained what Arka described as stew. Yaz stared at the steaming and complicated pile of … pieces … in the strange bowl before her. ‘But what is it?’

‘Stew. Eat it. It’s good.’ To prove her point Arka scooped up a lump and put it, still steaming, into her mouth.

‘But … won’t it burn me?’ Yaz could feel the heat rising off the stuff.

‘No.’ Kao spoke the word oddly, trying to fit it around a large mouthful while rapidly sucking and blowing air into and out of his lips. ‘Is good.’

Yaz, Maya, and Quina joined Thurin, Kao, and Arka and started to eat. Yaz had only ever eaten fish before, hot from the sea or cold on the journey from a closing sea to an opening one. The Ictha ate their travel rations frozen. As far as she knew all the other tribes did too.

The warmth was delicious on its own. Whether it made the slices of fungi taste so wonderful or whether they tasted that good cold Yaz couldn’t say, but she knew for a fact that a burned mouth was a small price to pay. She ate with a dedication that nearly matched Kao’s. She’d never tasted anything so full of flavour, so complicated, savoury with a slight saltiness to it.

Towards the bottom of the bowl, as Yaz mustered the strength of will to slow down, she discovered small chunks that seemed familiar, though far more tasty hot and soaked in the stew’s dark juice. ‘This is fish!’

‘It is.’ Arka nodded. ‘You can’t live on the fungi alone, not for too long. Without fish and salt you fall sick and die. Fish livers hold most of what you need to live.’

‘And where do you get fish? Where do you get salt down here?’

Arka met her gaze with serious eyes. ‘Where do you get iron up there?’

‘I … The priests trade it with us.’

‘And we trade it with the priests.’ Arka had all their attention now, though Kao still pushed in another mouthful as he stared at her. ‘Some say it’s the only reason they put us down here.’

‘But …’ Yaz ran out of words.

‘Broken children die if they stay on the ice. A slow, cruel death,’ Quina said. ‘That’s what the pit is for, to keep the bloodlines pure.’

Arka shrugged. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. Have any of you ever seen a gerant, hunska, or marjal child given the chance to try?’

Nobody answered.

‘They throw us down here,’ Yaz said slowly, ‘and we search for metal from this city, and in return they give us some salt and fish? We work for the priests. Slaves in a hole?’

‘Stars too,’ Arka said.

‘What?’

‘We mine the ice for stars too, and trade them for the food we need, and sometimes skins. Though mostly we use rats for that.’

‘Rats?’

‘Like tiny bears … only different.’ Arka waved the question off. ‘But yes, you’re right. We’re slaves working for the priests of the Black Rock.’ She pursed her lips. ‘I’m impressed. It normally takes several days for wets to figure it out, and you’ve just dug most of the answer out with a spoon from a bowl of stew!’

They finished eating without further talk, each held by their own thoughts.

‘Is there more?’ Kao was the first to speak again.

Arka snorted. ‘Gerants! Three times as strong, five times as hungry.’ She shook her head. ‘You got the largest bowl. There’s more later. We eat when we rise and again just before we sleep.’

‘How do we know when that is?’ Maya asked. ‘The light never changes here.’

Thurin frowned. ‘You just know.’

‘You’ll learn to “just know”.’ Arka walked to the door, beckoning for them to follow. ‘It can take a while, but you have the rest of your lives to learn.’

CHAPTER 9

In the story days the first of men, Zin, who climbed from the sea to Mokka’s tent, rose from his sleeping hides and found himself old. He saw in his hands the lines that told a lifetime. With a sigh he set down his dagger-tooth beside the many kettan he had carved in the long night. Zin left his shelter and saw a brittle dawn in the east. The cold had bound itself tight across the ice. A knowing came then into the first of men, a shout and a whisper, carried by the cruelty of the wind, borne by the strangeness of the sea. This would be his last day. And so Zin walked into the whiteness that was the world seeking to know what had become of his many sons and daughters.

Though he had grown old Zin bore the wind and the miles upon his shoulders and in the morning of his last day he found three of the four tribes that had sprung from his seed. In the west the Axit had grown broad, their eyes dark, their hearts fierce, and they knew him not. They followed the seas and their fine nets caught small fish in great number and variety. With octar ink his Axit sons tattooed the flames of dragons’ tails across their necks, licking up over their cheeks. Their threats cracked the ice. His daughters wore bones through their eyebrows and came running before their men with spears in hand.

In the east the Quinx had found a dog and it had become many, as dogs will when fed. Zin’s Quinx sons were tall and wore their hair in warrior braids. His daughters there drove dog-sleds and with their teams hauled even the green whale from the sea. No memory of Zin remained in all of the Quinx. They prized stone beads from such rocks as the Gods in the Sky sometimes cast upon the ice, and because he wore none they counted Zin as lesser, despite his age and the whiteness of his beard.

Far to the south Zin’s Joccan sons walked beneath strange stars in such heat that sometimes molten ice would run and flow even outside a tent and delight the children before it froze again. Joccan wives painted their eyelids black and their hair grew in many shades. The Joccan had forgotten the face of their father and replaced the stories of their mother with lies of the green world that only the gods know.

At last, growing weary, with the sun falling, Zin turned north and walked to the lands where the cold is born and where it hunts. Here the ice grew hard, the landscape fractured, the voice of the glaciers sharper, louder, more fierce. Zin’s Ictha sons turned their pale eyes towards his approach and were amazed for the first of men came among them bare-chested and they knew him for their father and wept. And as the sun descended on the last day of the first man his children of the north feasted him with harp-fish and tuark and the eggs of the great loach, and sang the oldest songs that told of his love for Mokka and the days of his youth when Zin had taught his offspring what secrets of the sea the gods had given into his care.

And come the night the Ictha gave back to the sea that had birthed him all of Zin save that which they held in their hearts.

Yaz stood with the others outside the food hall. She found her shoulders hunched and forced them to relax. It wasn’t cold. It was just the strangeness of the place, the twilight gloom, the glistening ice sky lit with its own stars, the constant dripping, and on all sides the shadow-wrapped buildings full of strange angles and built from gods knew what. Here and there the occasional star-stone hung, alive with light and whispers, drawing Yaz’s eye, reminding her of the star she’d held on the previous night, burning in her hand, its song pulsing through her.

Arka coughed for attention. ‘There are six main tasks we turn our hands to here. On the surface we all did everything. Here we choose a role and we stick to it. You can change, but not from one day to the next. We have …’ She raised her hand and spread the fingers, closing the first one as she began. ‘Harvesters, who seed, protect, and collect the fungi. Hunters, who catch rats for meat and skins, and blindfish from the rivers. Scavengers, who gather metal and building material from the city. Smiths, who melt down the metals and work them into new forms. Miners, who hack star-stones from the ice.’ With four fingers and a thumb closed in Arka now held a raised fist. She brought it smacking down into the palm of her other hand. ‘And warriors, who keep us safe from the Tainted.’

‘The warriors don’t have to do anything except fight?’ Kao asked.

‘They patrol and practise their weapon skills. Actual fighting is rare, thankfully, but still too frequent for us to replace our losses.’

‘I’m going to be a warrior!’ Kao nodded as if the matter were settled.

‘First we do the tour,’ Arka said. ‘Spend some time seeing what goes on here. Sometimes the dullest-sounding tasks are more interesting than the most exciting. Harvesters always have something to do, warriors can find themselves bored, then terrified, then bored.’

‘A warrior! Not grubbing around with those … plants,’ Kao said.

‘They do get to eat as many as they like … as long as no one sees them do it.’

Kao’s truculence weakened as opposing desires waged war. Arka allowed herself a small smile then led them on. ‘First we visit the foundry!’

‘The foundry is the closest area to the main pit shaft that we still hold.’ Arka had led them for what felt like an hour and couldn’t have been anything like that. ‘Can any of you guess why we keep such valuable industry out here where the Tainted contest us?’

‘To show them who’s boss,’ Kao grunted.

‘It’s too difficult to move?’ Maya asked.

Yaz frowned, puzzled.

‘The heat,’ said Quina. ‘It needs to escape without drowning you or bringing the roof down.’

‘Fast brain as well as fast feet,’ Arka said.

At the exit to the low cavern they had been traversing Arka led the drop-group past three gerants and a short dark man heading in the opposite direction. One of the gerants must have been close to nine feet in height and was built like a bear. All three of them wore metal plates linked together by iron rings, each plate no bigger than Yaz’s hand so that together they formed a flexible metal skin over the warriors’ chest, arms, and upper legs. Rust patterned them like frost rings on a closing sea.

The smaller man wore no armour. All four carried iron spears, not bone shafts tipped with an iron blade but iron throughout. And at their hips they bore huge knives with small arms spreading from the hilt.

‘Swords,’ Thurin said, seeing her surprise.

Arka led them on through a perfectly round tunnel that went up and later down, gently undulating through the ice. Broken rock had been scattered on the floor to give purchase in the steeper sections. There seemed no way to account for the conflicting gradients. Meltwater would only flow down.

Arka paused where one tunnel pierced another, listening.

‘How are these tunnels made?’ Yaz had seen similar ones before, shortly after crawling from her drop pool.

‘Coal-worms.’

‘What-worms?’ Yaz knew of worms that swam beneath the ice surrounding the Hot Sea but none of them were much longer than her arm and she didn’t think they burrowed.

‘Coal.’ Thurin waved his hands. ‘Black rock, but not like the mountain. Eular says it used to be forests … trees … and you can burn it just like whale oil.’

Thurin said whaleoil, as if it were one word and he had little idea of what a whale or oil were. Which Yaz supposed was true. ‘Good for burning but hard to light, Eular says …’ He looked at Arka for support.

‘Coal-worms eat coal. They generate heat and melt their way through the ice. Though mostly it’s the young ones who travel, looking for new deposits. The big ones only move on when they’ve exhausted the seams.’

‘Lucky for us a big one chose to head where we’re going then!’ Yaz said.

Arka frowned. ‘This was made by a baby. Pray you never meet a full-grown worm.’

‘What were you?’ Yaz kept close behind Thurin in the tunnels and asked her question quietly.

‘What was I?’

‘You know, hunter, harvester, warrior—’

‘I was a miner. Mostly.’ Thurin glanced back at her, his face curiously lit by bands of stardust in the ceiling just above them. ‘Ice-workers have to be. Well, they are “encouraged”. Miners produce most of the stars that we give to the priests. But the biggest stars are scavenger finds. Like the one we … the one that lights the settlement cavern. And those are dangerous.’ His voice carried the warning. ‘Not all the Tainted were stolen from us. Some went willingly. A star can do that to you. A big one. They break your mind up and fill you with demons.’

‘What sort of demons?’ little Maya asked from behind Yaz, proving to have sharper ears than expected. She was shy but curious, always watching. ‘What do they look like?’

‘Imagine all your hate broken away from you and given its own voice,’ Thurin said. ‘Living under your skin as a separate thing. Or all your greed, or lust. I’ve seen it happen, once. A demon made just of you. Crawling over your body like a stain. That’s what it looks like, just a stain, no bigger than your hand. A taint. So be careful around the stars. Even the smaller ones. They weren’t made for us. They aren’t good or evil. Just dangerous. Like fire.’

The coal-worm’s tunnel eventually descended to the bedrock again and connected with a melt chamber. The air was warmer than back at the settlement, the dripping faster, small streams wound their way across the rock, vanishing beneath the ice at the chamber walls. Yaz led them past more warriors into a cavern lit by half a dozen bright stars whose glow revealed a collection of sheds beside a lake, and above them a ceiling that funnelled up into a steep but slanting shaft vanishing into darkness.

‘This is where I fell,’ Quina said, her narrow face growing tight at the memory.

‘Me too. But I made a bigger splash!’ Kao slapped his belly and chest.

‘What’s that smell?’ Maya sniffed. Ever since coal-worms had been mentioned she’d been jumpy. It was hard to remember that the timid child came from the Axit. If she had not been dropped she would soon have worn their bone piercings through her eyebrows and allegedly, beneath her furs, blood tattoos recording the clan’s victories over past enemies. Walking close behind Maya it seemed to Yaz that something odd happened each time the girl flinched at a new sound. A subtle change, so slight it might just be imagination. The twilight seemed to flinch with her, as if just for a moment the shadows themselves drew in their breath. Maya sniffed again. ‘What is it?’

Yaz inhaled slowly through her nose. The air smelled of blood and fire and harsh, alien scents with sharp angles to them. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Metal, being melted down,’ Arka said.

‘Metal melts?’ Yaz blinked.

‘If you get it hot enough. A lot of things do. Even rock!’ Arka took them towards the huts.

As they drew closer a man in a thick hide apron emerged. The skin on his bare arms glistened with sweat and black smudges decorated bulging muscle. He grunted at Arka and took two handfuls of random metal pieces from the bin beside the hut. The mixture included toothed wheels of unblemished silvery metal, thin black wire in coils, and rusting iron rods with traces of some coating that had been stripped away.

‘That’s Ixen. He doesn’t say much.’ Arka caught the door before it closed and took them inside.

The heat hit Yaz like a blow and she staggered beneath it. The shed was a longish hall whose central feature was a large bowl of what looked like stone, supported on thick chains that ran to the ceiling. Ixen dumped his collection of metal pieces into the bowl, discarding one and adding some more iron rods from a nearby stack.

‘It’s like cooking,’ Arka said. ‘You have to get the mixture right.’

While Ixen added his finishing touches a bony woman, also in a scorched hide apron and little else, came from the rear of the shed to lower a heavy sigil-covered pot on another chain so that it nestled among the scrap.

‘That pot looks like it’s iron but it’s not. It can get hot enough to melt all the other metals in there without melting itself.’

‘So … how did you make it?’ Quina asked.

Arka frowned. ‘That happened before my time. But I guess we’d be in trouble if we lost it.’ She frowned again. ‘Though we do occasionally find metal it can’t melt.’

The woman with the skull-like face took a pole with a scoop on it and began to move stars from a box to one side, dropping them one by one into the grey pot. As she added them each ceased its shining and instead the sigils on the pot began to emit a redder glow along with a fierce heat. Yaz backed off, not wanting to cause the stars to burn too bright and drive the sigils to incinerate them all.