“Two deaths on my conscience,” he said curtly, then picked up the bag, checked the lock and carried it around the corner to where he was working.
It did not help her state of mind.
Tali did not use heatstone again, and kept as far away from it as possible, and gradually the headache went away.
The day passed, then the next, and the one after. Holm was increasingly taciturn. He spent his time either fishing, sleeping, or enlarging the cave with heatstone. After creating two rooms around the corner, he had chipped a number of shards off one of the heatstones to make carving tools, and was carving intricate patterns into the ice around the doorways. The work seemed pointless to Tali, but if it kept him happy, what did it matter?
The fog did not lift, so there was no way of knowing where the iceberg was taking them. They took it in turns climbing to the top of the peak, which they were using as a lookout, but the only thing they could see was the fuzzy disc of the sun, rising and setting. There was little wind now, and no sense of movement. They might have been trapped in an endless sea and the rest of the world vanished.
It rained heavily that night, and after it stopped, everything froze. In the morning Tali climbed up to the lookout and, in a few steps, broke out of thick fog into clear air. It was a bright sunny day and she could see over the roiling fog banks to the horizon — north to the green landscape and snowy mountains of Hightspall, south to ice-capped Suden, east -
The dome of the sky tilted, her throat closed over in panic and terror overwhelmed her. Her world had been closed in for so long that she had forgotten her own phobia. And she had no hat; she had nothing to cut off the terrifying, rocking sky.
Tali choked and stumbled backwards, desperately trying to reach the shelter of the fog, only a few feet down. She stepped onto a frozen rainwater puddle, moving too quickly, for the surface was as slippery as oiled glass.
Her feet went from under her, she fell forwards and struck a jagged edge of ice where part of the berg had broken away. The edge sliced deep into her left shoulder and she felt the blood flooding out.
“Holm?” she called weakly. “Holm?”
If he was working in the back of the cave, tapping away with hammer and chisel, he would never hear her. She yelled a couple more times, then began to make her way down backwards, terrified of falling again and rolling all the way down, into the sea.
But then she lost sight completely, and a blackness was growing inside her, a horribly familiar dark. She tried to fight it but did not have the strength.
CHAPTER 32
Someone had picked her up and was carrying her down a steep slope, then into a room out of the wind. It was warmer here, but she did not like it. A disgusting reek was growing with every step.
“Tali?” a man’s voice said. He sounded worried. “Tali, wake up.”
She could not wake up, and she had never heard of Tali.
“I’m Zenda!” she wailed. “I told you already; I’m not the one you’re looking for.”
“Sweet Zenda,” a man said silkily. “Gentle, stupid Zenda, trapped like a mouse. You’ve got no idea what to do, have you? Come here, Zenda.”
“Don’t want to,” she moaned. “Please don’t make me.”
“You don’t want to,” said the woman, “but you’re going to. You’re not a fighter like Mimula, nor a thinker like Sulien. You’re apathetic, Zenda; the perfect slave. Come here!”
Zenda knew what they were going to do, because they had told her what they had done to her mother twenty years ago. They had exulted in the savage tale, feasted on her terror, fed on the blood.
But they were right about her. Sweet little Zenda was the perfect slave. She had no idea what to do and did not even think about fighting for her life.
She stumbled forwards, whimpering, “No, no, no,” and put herself in their hands.
They cut the pearl out savagely, as though they blamed her for her fate. As only her agony could assuage their guilt.
Tali woke screaming, and it took ages to come down from the nightmare. No, the reliving.
The best part of an hour passed before she came back to who she was and where she was. Before the pain where the top of Zenda’s head had been gouged away shifted and blurred into the pain in Tali’s shoulder.
“It’s all right,” someone was saying, over and again. “You’re safe now. No one can hurt you.”
She forced her eyes open. Outside, the wind was howling again, but in the back of the cave, with Holm’s carved ice door closed and the heatstone stove open, it was almost warm.
Holm’s own eyes were closed. He was holding her in his arms, rocking her back and forth. Tali lay still, and gradually the nightmare of her reliving was replaced by a new fear — that she could have revealed her deepest secret to Holm, whom, after all this time, she knew little about.
“Stupid nightmares,” she said with a false laugh. “I’ve been having them for ages.”
“Right now, I’m more concerned about what happened up on the peak,” said Holm, setting her down on the floor. The ice was carpeted with their oilskins.
As she sat upright, pain speared through her left shoulder. He made her a cup of spiced tea. She clamped her cold hands around it.
“On the peak?” she said, struggling to dredge up the memory.
“You fell and gashed your shoulder badly. I had to sew the wound back together.”
Tali felt her shoulder, winced. Scraps of the moment came back.
“I reached the top and the fog lifted.” She frowned. “No, I broke through it. The top was a few yards below me. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was glorious; I could see in all directions for a hundred miles…”
“And then?”
She did not want to tell him. Why should she reveal her secrets when Holm kept his from her? Besides, it would make her seem weak.
“How come you fell?” he persisted. “You’re usually so sure-footed.”
She was being silly. He needed to know. And if she opened up, perhaps he would too.
“I had a panic attack. I’ve been having them ever since I got out of Cython. The world is too big, and sometimes, on bright clear days, it feels as though the sky is overturning on me. I need a hat,” she said plaintively. “Have you got a hat?”
“You can have my hat any time you want. And because of the panic attack, you fell.”
“The ice was like greasy glass. I just slipped, that’s all.”
“No harm done, then. It’s a nice clean wound. It’ll heal quickly.”
“I do heal quickly,” said Tali. On the outside, anyway.
“Lunch?” said Holm.
“As long as it’s not fish-head stew.”
“I caught some fresh fish last night, while you were asleep. You can have them grilled if you like.”
“I would like.” Anything to distract him from asking about the reliving, though she thought she had got away with it by passing it off as a recurring nightmare.
He grilled the fish in a pan on top of the heatstone stove, which only took a few minutes, and served it with pepper and salt. It was the best meal she had ever eaten.
She started to get up to clean the plates.
“I’ll do it,” said Holm. “I don’t want you moving that shoulder for a while.”
He returned, made more tea then lay back on his covers.
Tali closed her eyes and was drifting to sleep when he said suddenly, “What was all that about Zenda?”
She jumped, fighting to calm herself. She hadn’t got away with it at all. “Just a nightmare.”
“Like the other one you had a while back, about a woman called Sulien?”
“How did you hear about that?”
“The healer in Rutherin told me. She was worried.”
“Why did she tell you?” Tali said hotly. “She had no right. What’s it got to do with you?”