Mark Lawrence - Holy Sister

‘Perhaps the people will not be so different either, for all that Sister Wheel calls them eaters of children and deviants.’ Zole veered up towards the crest of the valley.

‘Maybe.’ Nona felt it hard to shake off the expectations built by a hundred fireside tales so easily. She fixed her eyes on Zole’s back and forced unwilling legs to match the girl’s pace down the slope. Sherzal’s soldiers appeared to have given up the chase, not prepared to venture onto Scithrowl territory. Of the Noi-Guin there was no sign, but Nona doubted that they would relent so easily. Even if their shipheart weren’t at stake.

‘This devil of yours …’ Nona returned to the conversation abandoned on the rock-faces far above them.

‘A raulathu .’

‘It’s some part of you that the shipheart has … broken off?’

‘An impurity of the spirit. In this state it can be purged, leaving a person closer to the divine.’

‘And.’ Nona paused to clamber over a shoulder of rock. ‘And you’ve touched a shipheart before? On the ice?’

‘My tribe calls them klauklar affac , “the footsteps of the Missing”. Most on the ice know them more simply as “Old Stones”. And yes, I have touched such a thing before. Two such things, in fact. When the ice-speakers find a child that can approach the Old Stones they test them. Each new raulathu takes longer to split from a person than the one before and is more difficult to purge. I gave twelve to the fire. It was hard to do. Neither of the tribe’s stones could find more.’

‘How old were you?’ Nona knew that when Zole described a thing as ‘hard’ it meant that anyone else would have been killed by it.

‘Nine. The ice-speaker banished me to the Corridor. He did not say why. My uncle took me to the empire margins. I was sold to Sherzal’s agent in a village called Shard.’

‘Do you … do you think that’s why you have no threads?

Zole made no answer. She had reached the ridge from where she could look down into the next valley and away towards the fortress to the north, the closest in the chain. ‘It seems that the Battle-Queen has ears in Sherzal’s palace, and swift access to them.’

Nona scrambled up to join Zole on the ridge. She straightened, wiping the grit from her palms. ‘Oh.’

A column of riders was spilling down the far side of the valley, a skirmish band on the shaggy ponies that dwelt wild in the region and could run all day over such terrain.

‘Sixty.’ Zole turned and dropped back below the ridge.

‘We can’t outrun them.’ Nona wasn’t sure she could outrun a three-legged mule right then.

Zole narrowed her eyes. A momentary frown and she was moving, back down into the valley again, angling towards their original path tracking the stream. On this side of the Grampains the rivers ran their course a while before vanishing beneath the ice sheets. On Sister Rule’s globe you could reverse the glaciers’ advance and set your fingers to ancient oceans picked out in blue enamel. Nona imagined they still lay there under miles of ice and that the sun-warmed waters of the Corridor must eventually reach those hidden seas.

‘If we’re going to fight we should do it here,’ Nona called after Zole.

‘Sixty is too many,’ Zole called back. ‘And more will come. I would rather rest.’

Nona shrugged and followed. Sixty was too many, and rest sounded good.

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