The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3)(68)

But if the mantle is Father Earth’s body, why is his silver getting brighter?

No. Oh no.

“Schaffa,” Nassun whispers. He grunts; he has sagged to one knee, gasping shallowly as he clutches at his head. She wants to go to him, comfort him, help him, but she stands where she is, her breath coming too fast from rising panic at what she suddenly knows is coming. She wants to deny it, though. “Schaffa, p-please, that thing in your head, the piece of iron, you called it a corestone, Schaffa —” Her voice is fluttery. She can’t catch her breath. Fear has nearly closed her throat. No. No. She did not understand, but now she does and she has no idea how to stop it. “Schaffa, where does it come from, that corestone thing in your head?”

The vehimal’s voice speaks again with that greeting language, and then it continues, obscene in its detached pleasantry. “— a marvel, only available —” Something. “— route. This vehimal —” Something. “— heart, illuminated —” Something. “— for your pleasure.”

Schaffa does not reply. But Nassun can sess the answer to her question now. She can feel it as the paltry thin silver that runs through her own body resonates – but that is a faint resonance, from her silver, generated by her own flesh. The silver in Schaffa, in all Guardians, is generated by the corestone that sits lodged in their sessapinae. She’s studied this stone sometimes, to the degree that she is able while Schaffa sleeps and she feeds him magic. It’s iron, but like no other iron she’s ever sessed. Oddly dense. Oddly energetic, though some of that is the magic that it channels into him from… somewhere. Oddly alive.

And when the whole right side of the vehimal dissolves to let its passengers glimpse the rarely seen wonder that is the world’s unfettered heart, it already blazes before her: a silver sun underground, so bright that she must squint, so heavy that perceiving it hurts her sessapinae, so powerful with magic that it makes the lingering connection of the sapphire feel tremulous and weak. It is the Earth’s core, the source of the corestones, and before her it is a world in itself, swallowing the viewscreen and growing further still as they hurtle closer.

It does not look like rock, Nassun thinks faintly, beneath the panic. Maybe that’s just the waver of molten metal and magic all round the vehimal, but the immensity before her seems to shimmer when she tries to focus on it. There’s some solidity to it; as they draw closer, Nassun can detect anomalies dotting the surface of the bright sphere, made tiny by contrast – even as she realizes they are obelisks. Several dozen of them, jammed into the heart of the world like needles in a pincushion. But these are nothing. Nothing.

And Nassun is nothing. Nothing before this.

It’s a mistake to bring him, Steel had said, of Schaffa.

Panic snaps. Nassun runs to Schaffa as he falls to the floor, thrashing. He does not scream, though his mouth is open and his icewhite eyes have gone wide and his every limb, when she wrestles him onto his back, is muscle-stiff. One flailing arm hits her collarbone, flinging her back, and there is a flash of terrible pain, but Nassun barely spares a thought for it before she scrambles back to him. She grabs his arm with both of her own and tries to hold on because he is reaching for his head and his hands are forming claws and his nails are raking at his scalp and face – “Schaffa, no!” she cries. But he cannot hear her.

And then the vehimal goes dark inside.

It’s still moving, though slower. They’ve actually passed into the semisolid stuff of the core, the vehimal’s route skimming its surface – because of course the people who built the obelisks would revel in their ability to casually pierce the planet for entertainment. She can feel the blaze of that silver, churning sun all around her. Behind her, however, the wall-window goes suddenly dim. There’s something just outside the vehimal, pressing against its sheath of magic.

Slowly, with Schaffa writhing in silent agony in her lap, Nassun turns to face the core of the Earth.

And here, within the sanctum of its heart, the Evil Earth notices her back.

When the Earth speaks, it does not do so in words, exactly. This is a thing you know already, but that Nassun only learns in this moment. She sesses the meanings, hears the vibrations with the bones of her ears, shudders them out through her skin, feels them pull tears from her eyes. It is like drowning in energy and sensation and emotion. It hurts. Remember: The Earth wants to kill her.

But remember, too: Nassun wants it just as dead.

So it says, in microshakes that will eventually stir a tsunami somewhere in the southern hemisphere, Hello, little enemy.

(This is an approximation, you realize. This is all her young mind can bear.)

And as Schaffa chokes and goes into convulsions, Nassun clutches at his pain-wracked form and stares at the wall of rusty darkness. She isn’t afraid anymore; fury has steeled her. She is so very much her mother’s daughter.

“You let him go,” she snarls. “You let him go right now.”

The core of the world is metal, molten and yet crushed into solidity. There is some malleability to it. The surface of the red darkness begins to ripple and change as Nassun watches. Something appears that for an instant she cannot parse. A pattern, familiar. A face. It is just a suggestion of a person, eyes and a mouth, shadow of a nose – but then for just an instant the eyes are distinct in shape, the lips lined and detailed, a mole appearing beneath the eyes, which open.