Icebound

Chapter 31

Anyu couldn't breathe. Her thoughts were cloudy still, her vision dark, but even before her mind cleared her body registered its need for air. With a gasp, she sat up, coughing loudly and gasping for breath.

Everything that had happened suddenly returned to her. Siku and Sakari's onslaught, Kano and Tavra captured and Shesh nowhere to be seen.

Anyu's hand rose to grasp her tamga but only clawed at empty air. It was gone, back in the hands of Siku. So it really was over. All was lost.

The sudden urge to scream welled up in her chest, to somehow voice the utter despair in her heart. She had lost everything. Not only her new friends, but her family as well. There was no chance she'd ever see them again now. She'd never get to ask her grandmother for the truth, never again laugh together with Anik. It was agony, and she didn't know what to do with it.

"Who are you?"

However much overtaken by her emotions, Anyu's instincts never wavered. In the space of a second, she had slipped a dagger from her belt and lashed out at the speaker.

The dagger stabbed the figure in the side of his neck.

Anyu's eyes struck him only after her knife. It was clearly a man, although his face was completely covered by a large wooden mask. The mask was fearsome, a beautiful but horrid carving of a strange creature with large eyes and sharp teeth. Below it, the man was shirtless, chest only covered by numerous necklaces of beads, fur, and teeth. He wore simple deer hide trousers and moccasins. And Anyu's knife was still sticking out of his neck like an icicle.

He reached for the kife's hilt and swiftly pulled it from his neck. The wound left a mark but did not bleed. The man turned the blade over, as if examining the blood dripping from the edge. Then the mask turned up again.

"Who are you?" He repeated simply.

Anyu heard his question, but her attention was quickly drawn to more important things. The mist was clearing from her mind now, and the rest of her surroundings were coming into focus. Her eyes were everywhere, trying to take it all in.

Everything was dark and black and ashen. A constant rain of ash fell from the sky, so small and light as to be almost imperceptible. Smoke clogged the air, the reason for Anyu's feeling of suffocation. She coughed again, loudly, trying and failing to clear the stuff from her throat. The ground was made of the strangest material she'd ever seen, like black ice but with a shiny, lustrous quality to it. She took off one of her mittens and spread out her fingers on thesurface. Even stranger- it was as smooth as ice, but without any of the coldness. Anyu lifted her hand off of it, unsettled by the feeling.

But despite the darkness, there was a dim but constant light emanating throughout the wide cavern. This was provided by an even stranger phenomenon. Running through cracks in the hard black surface in small streams and pooling here and there into ponds, was liquid fire. That is the only way Anyu could comprehend the substance. It was the same bright orange red as a flame, but instead of spurting upward it oozed, forming waves and splashes like water. It sizzled and bubbled wherever it pooled, and sent up a constant stream of heavy smoke that permeated the entire place.

Anyu coughed again, the thick smoke filling her nostrils. She looked up. There, barely visible beyond the haze, she could just make out a small circle of light. They were all back up there, while she was down here... But what was down here with her?

The masked man still sat waiting for an answer. As Anyu spun around, squinting through the smoke and dim light, she saw that he was not alone. Dozens of others surrounded her and all looked like they'd walked out of either her dreams or nightmares. Some, like Denigi's antlers, had the features or body parts of animals. One woman's skin was entirely covered in shimmering blue fish scales. Another man looked completely normal in appearance, but after looking at him for more than a few moments, a forked tongue thrust out of his mouth with a hiss.

Some of them were far stranger. There was a young child with no eyes- not that her eyes had been plucked from their sockets. No, her entire face above her nose was smooth and blank. Anyu quickly looked away from her, shivers going down her back at the sight.

Anyu's fingers clenched tight enough to bleed as she resisted the urge to scream. The summer indwellers, she thought. They can't be anyone else.

She turned back to the monstrous wooden mask. Was the face hiding behind it even worse?

"I am Anyu," She said simply. There was nothing else she could think of to say. "Anyu of the Nenet."

"A human." He didn't sound happy about it.

The figures surrounding them began to murmur, and Anyu turned to look as one of the pools of liquid fire began to bubble loudly. Anyu tensed, half afraid it would erupt and kill them all. Instead a woman walked up from the pool as if it was a gentle hot spring. She was tall and dark, her skin almost the same color as the walls of the chasm, but her eyes blazed a glowing yellow as bright as the sun. Her hair was shaved close to her head, and she wore a simple skirt and wrappings in a rich red.

Anyu couldn't help but look at that red fabric wistfully. The tundra sucked away all colors until they became dull whites, browns, and grays. The only red Anyu had ever seen was the red of fresh blood, and even that soon turned to a rusty brown.

The woman walked towards her. The masked man bowed his head deferentially.

"Seqineq," He said. "She fell from the mountain. Siku must have done it."

The woman- Seqineq- looked at her. Her eyes were too bright- Anyu blinked and looked away.

"Why are you here?" She asked. Her voice was rough, ragged, but not unkind.

Anyu explained, as best she could, the circumstances that had led her to be imprisoned at the bottom of this chasm with these beings of strange and awe inspiring powers. She described her journey across the tundra with Kano and Tavra. She explained their hope of using her tamga to free the summer indwellers. And lastly, she told of their confrontation with Siku and Sakari, the discovery of her grandmother's origins.

It all took only a few minutes to explain. It frustrated her- the experiences seemed so much bigger to her than their brief retelling.

Seqineq listened attentively. When Anyu had finished, her face broke into a sad smile.

"You are truly a brave and just warrior to have gone through this to come free us. You have my thanks." She said. "But unfortunately, Siku has still won."

The masked man made a sound of anger, the beads around his neck shaking as he moved.

"We were so close to possessing the tamga!" He cried, the sound of despair stretching his voice. "So close to freedom!"

It all came back to the tamga somehow. Anyu looked up towards the circle of light far above them. The barrier of mist was the doorway, and the tamga the key; and the door could only be opened from the inside. Siku had designed her prison well.

Anyu tried to imagine how it had happened, when Siku had had the tamga ripped out of her. It must have been so painful. Was that the price for such power? It didn't seem like so much to ask, for something capable of such incredible magic. Yes, perhaps is was worth the price...

Anyu's fingers inched the seal-skin mitten from her left hand. She examined it, turning it over slowly and stretching her fingers. She remembered examining it like this once before, when she'd thrust her hand into the fire to test her abilities. That had been easy. This... This would be excruciating.

She recalled Kano's words: only a human could create a tamga. Her grandmother may have been the one to betray Siku, but it had to have been a human who'd actually ripped the bone from her body. The two requirements for the creation of a tamga: the body of an indweller and the sword of a human... Had anyone ever been in possession of both before?

"Seqineq," Anyu said. "The tamga is all you need?"

Seqineq frowned. "Yes. Why?"

Anyu couldn't bring herself to say anything more. She felt for her very last dagger, a simple knife tucked inside the fur of her right boot. She spread her left hand out onto the black rock ground. It looked very small.

Her hand did not shake. It did not waver. Anyu did not close her eyes, for fear of not striking true. With a steady hand and a focused gaze, Anyu brought the knife down.