The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(53)

“Something bad is here,” Nassun says, her skin prickling. Abruptly she stops sessing. She does not want to sess what’s ahead, for some reason.

“Nassun?”



“Something is eating this place.” She blurts the words, then wonders why she’s said them. But now that she’s said it, she feels like it was the right thing to say. “That’s why nothing grows. Something is taking all the magic away. Without that, everything’s dead.”



Schaffa regards her for a long moment. One of his hands, Nassun sees, is on the hilt of his black glass poniard, where it’s strapped against his thigh. She wants to laugh at this. What’s ahead isn’t something he can stab. She doesn’t laugh because it’s cruel, and because she’s suddenly so scared that if she starts laughing, she might not stop.

“We don’t have to go forward,” Schaffa suggests. It is gentle, and badly needed reassurance that he will not lose respect for her if she abandons her mission out of fear.

It bothers Nassun, though. She has her pride. “N-no. Let’s keep going.” She swallows hard. “Please.”



“Very well, then.”



They proceed. Someone or something has dug a channel through the dust, beneath and around the impossible stair. As they continue to descend, they pass mountains of the stuff. Presently, though, Nassun sees another tunnel looming ahead. This one is set against the floor of the cavern – at last – and its mouth is immense. Concentric arches, each carved from marble in different shades, loom high overhead as the stairway finally reaches the ground and flattens into the surrounding stones. The tunnel narrows further in; there’s only darkness beyond. The floor of the entryway is something that looks like lacquer, tiled in gradient shades of blue and black and dark red. It is rich and lovely color, a relief to the eyes after so much white and gray, and yet it, too, is impossibly strange. Somehow, none of the city’s dust has blown or subsided into this entryway.

Dozens of people could pass through that archway. Hundreds in a minute. Now, however, only one stands here, watching them from under a band of rose marble that contrasts sharply against his paler, colorless lines. Steel.

He doesn’t move as Nassun walks over to him. (Schaffa comes over, too, but he is slower, tense.) Steel’s gray gaze is fixed on an object beside him that is not familiar to Nassun but which would be to her mother: a hexagonal plinth rising from the floor, like a smoky quartz crystal shaft that has been sheared off halfway. Its topmost surface is at a slight angle. Steel’s hand is held toward it in a gesture of presentation. For you.

So Nassun focuses on the plinth. She reaches toward it and jerks back as something lights up around its rim before her fingers can touch the slanted surface. Bright red marks float in the air above the crystal, etching symbols into empty space. She cannot fathom their meaning, but the color unnerves her. She looks up at Steel, who has not moved and looks as if he’s been in the same position since this place was built. “What does it say?”



“That the transport vehicle I told you about is currently nonfunctional,” says the voice from within Steel’s chest. “You’ll need to power and reboot the system before we can use this station.”



“‘R-re… boot?’” She tries to figure out what putting on boots has to do with ancient ruins, then decides to run with the part she understands. “How do I give it power?”



Abruptly, Steel is in a different position, facing the archway that leads deeper into the station. “Go inside and provide power at the root. I’ll stay here and key in the start-up sequence once there’s enough power.”



“What? I don’t —”



His gray-on-gray eyes shift over to her. “You’ll see what to do inside.”



Nassun chews on the inside of her cheek, looking into the archway. It’s really dark in there.

Schaffa’s hand touches her shoulder. “I’ll go with you, of course.”



Of course. Nassun swallows and nods, grateful. Then she and Schaffa walk into the dark.

It doesn’t stay dark for long. Like on the white stair, small panels of light begin glowing along the sides of the tunnel as they progress. The lights are dim, and yellowy in a way that suggests age, weathering, or… well, or weariness. That’s the word that pops into Nassun’s head for some reason. The light is enough to glimmer off the edges of the tiles beneath their feet. There are doors and alcoves along the tunnel walls, and at one point Nassun spots a strange contraption jutting out about ten feet up. It looks like… a wagon bed? Without wheels or a yoke, and as if that wagon bed was made of the same smooth material as the stair, and as if that wagon bed ran along some kind of track set into the wall. It seems obviously made to transport people; maybe it’s how people who couldn’t or wouldn’t walk got around? Now it is still and dark, locked to the wall forever where its last driver left it.

They notice the peculiar bluish light illuminating the tunnel up ahead, but that still isn’t adequate warning enough to prepare them for when the path suddenly curves left, and they find themselves in a new cavern. This much smaller cavern isn’t full of dust, or at least not much of it. What it does contain, instead, is a titanic column of solid blue-black volcanic glass.