Page 133 of The Cradle of Ice

Daal …

In that moment, misery weakened her. Too weak and despondent, she could no longer hold the sea at bay. The last of her breath burst from her lips. Salty water flooded into her mouth, down her throat, into her lungs. She gasped, her chest heaving, instinctively still searching for air. Her vision constricted toward a point. Her body grew heavier and lighter at the same time.

Next came the pain.

She writhed in that embrace, still unable to move. Where suckers strangled her neck and latched on to her wrist, something pierced her flesh. The same stabbed her inner thighs, gouging through clothes and skin. From those wounds, something pushed into her. She felt them. Tendrils far smaller than the tentacles. They wormed through her veins, rooting deep and everywhere, until she was as much part of the beast riding her as she was her own self.

As this happened, a strange sense of tranquility swelled, slowly dampening the pain in her limbs and throat until she felt only numbness. Even her chest stopped fighting the seas, the water weighing heavily in her lungs. She expected death to come, but it was held at bay. Her vision cleared—though there was little to see but the zip and spin of those strange blinking lights. Her head also lightened as a slow realization grew.

I’m not drowning.

Whatever had writhed through her body was sharing its air. She had been taught that sea creatures could draw life from the waters around them—through gills or thin skin. The beast that held her must be doing the same, only passing some of that sustaining life into her.

Amazement and terror warred within her.

She remembered seeing the scars on Daal’s neck and wrists.

This is what caused them.

She stopped her fighting as she was drawn ever deeper. The pressure pained her ears, coursing down the back of her throat. As if sensing this, suckers shifted to the sides of her head and cupped over her ears. They sealed tight and pinched back, withdrawing the pressure from her ears. The pain faded quickly.

As she fell downward, she felt as if she were floating in the dark depths of the void between stars. Blackness surrounded her. Lights burst and dashed all about, marking the passage of these strange creatures.

Are these the Oshkapeers?

She remembered Daal declaring as much when he was yanked from the skiff.

After an interminable time, light bloomed under her, vague and illusory at first, then clearer, illuminating a seabed. The glow etched a convoluted labyrinth across the sandy bottom. Past it, the waters boiled fiercely. It steamed from tall rocky cylinders, casting up black smoke, as if the Urth were burning below in an unending furnace.

As she was towed to the bottom, her toes were left hovering above the sand. The source of the glow became clear. It rose from a maze of tall reefs, climbing in rocky ramparts four times her height. The ridges were phosphorescent and luminous, like the icy roof of the Crèche, only shining in hues innumerable and unnameable.

Strewn across it all, large skeletal growths sprouted everywhere, forming fantastical horns and branching fans. Softer creatures—blurring the line between plant and animal—waved bulbous limbs or shivered with delicate fronds. No matter where she turned, life stirred, swam, and flickered.

But most of what thrummed throughout the reefs were the glowing Oshkapeers, crowned by their whorled and spiked carapaces. There were hundreds scouring the reefs, dashing about or hovering in place, their tentacles stirring in the currents. They varied in size—from ones no bigger than a melon to giants that would dwarf a bullock.

Certainty grew in her.

These must be the Dreamers.

She barely had time to absorb all of this when another tentacle-shrouded figure dropped next to her. Daal lay cradled and trapped in another Oshkapeer’s embrace. Like her, he no longer fought, accepting his fate. But his expression was horrified.

She looked where he was staring, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. A dark leafy hump lay in the white sand. One of the Oshkapeers crawled over it, using its tentacles to gently pull aside those leaves. A pale arm fell loose, its length inscribed with tiny whorls of ink.

Nyx spasmed with recognition and shock.

One of the dead from Iskar.

The creature shifted over to the arm and lowered a beaklike mouth and began slashing through the tissue, stripping flesh from bone. The Oshkapeer sucked in great curls of meat, while inhaling the smoke of dark blood.

Nyx wanted to cover her mouth in horror, but her arms were trapped. Only now did she spot the other mounds scattered all around. More of the Oshkapeers feasted on the dead, ripping and tearing. As her eyes adjusted to this appalling reality, she recognized that the rocks and lumps in the sand were bones. Even the reefs, while mostly coral and rock, still showed layers of ancient skulls, crushed rib cages, and the knobbed ends of long femurs.

All around, the gorging continued, a macabre counterpoint to the tribute feast in Kefta. With that memory, she struggled to balance the gentle care of the loved ones above with the savagery below.

Nyx had to turn away.

As she did, a late arrival crashed into the reef. Bronze flashed and reflected the glow as Shiya tumbled down the side of a steep ridge, gouging a path of destruction in her wake. Nyx pictured the bronze woman diving from the skiff, coming to their rescue.

Shiya rolled off the reef’s bottom and skidded through sand and bones.