Frostfire by Jamie Smith

Author:Jamie Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

THE MORNING BROKE with a nasty crack.

For a frightening moment, Sabira thought that the monster had returned to devour her and begun by breaking her bones. Then she saw the fallen piece of ice nearby, broken off under the heat of the morning light. She relaxed slightly and climbed carefully down from her hiding place. As she went to collect her things back at the camp, the frostsliver demanded, ARE YOU STILL DETERMINED TO GO INSIDE THE MOUNTAIN?

“How else are we going to get home?” Sabira retorted. “Mihnir needs us to do this.”

The frostsliver made a noise like breath over a glass—a huff of displeasure, Sabira thought. She ignored it and moved on, mentally cataloging her remaining supplies as she headed toward the mountain face. She knew she had enough food for a few days at least, but there were other worries too.

How long could her water reserves last down in the darkness? There is always the glacier, she thought wryly as she walked beside it. However, not only would that be wrong, but it also seemed pretty unwise. Who knew what that notice would do to her insides?

I COULD SHOW YOU.

“Show me?” she asked dubiously. The frostsliver shifted its position slightly, indicating a move toward Sabira’s face—and her mouth.

“What would happen?”

TO ME? NOTHING MUCH. I AM IMMUNE TO A LITTLE STOMACH ACID.

Sabira let the obvious question spin around her head for the frostsliver to hear.

YOU WOULD BE ALL RIGHT. FOR A WHILE. I THINK.

She was starting to think that comments like that were the frostsliver’s idea of a joke. An almost inaudible tinkle in her mind seemed to confirm it, and Sabira smiled in response.

The rubble of the main monastery squatted over the glacier, which still flowed from the bowels of the mountain, unimpeded by the tons of stone that had come down on it.

In bright daylight, Sabira could see that the destruction had not been total. The great entrance was not intact, but a dark crack was visible in the debris: a way in. Whatever had destroyed the ancient structure had started inside, for that was where the collapse was most severe.

Sabira hesitated before entering. She knew that this might be the last time she saw the sky.

She took one long look back to the rest of the Aderasti mountain range spiking up into the distance and to where, far away, the ash clouds of the huge Ignatian geysers rose, looking like the smoke of campfires from this distance.

There was more out there too. There were the plains nations, and other mountain ranges beyond them. Fanciful stories from Ignata said that, farther away, there was a great sea that no one dared try to cross—but who knew for sure? The world was vast, and—she realized with regret—she would never see it all.

EVEN TSERAH DIDN’T SEE IT ALL.

That thought brought Sabira down. It was the shadow of her fears, her worry that she might never return to the surface.

YOU HAVE OPTIONS. YOU COULD STAY HERE, AS PACKMAN MIHNIR SUGGESTED. BUILD A FIRE, SIGNAL FOR RESCUE.

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