Page 158 of The Cradle of Ice

—An old Panthean adage, from the 22nd Nyssian Cycle

63

NYX STOOD AGAINST the gale and bluster of those packed inside the Sparrowhawk’s wheelhouse. Her concentration was thrown off by the muffled shouting from outside and the loud hammering in the ship’s hold. It all sharpened the ache behind her eyes. She squinted against it, determined not to relent.

“Your plan is pure madness,” Graylin insisted as he paced in front of the ship’s maesterwheel.

Others murmured or grunted their agreement. To the side, Darant leaned on a console, shaking his head. His two daughters looked dour. Jace hugged his chest, his eyes huge. Krysh crouched over a map table, tacked with a hand-drawn chart of the Ameryl Sea. Fenn leaned near the alchymist, peering over Krysh’s shoulder.

Nyx ignored them all. “I’m going. Nothing will stop me.”

She pictured her destination. Across the inside of her skull, a map blazed, fiery and insistent. Urgency pounded in her heart, fueled both by her own fear and by what the Dreamers had instilled in her.

She voiced it now. “I will lose Bashaliia if I wait even another day,” she pressed. “I know it. I must go now.”

Krysh glanced over his shoulder at her. “Nyx, why must you risk so much for the Mýr bat? I know he’s your bonded brother and you bear great affection, but there are far higher stakes, as you know, as you’ve seen in your vision.”

Nyx had difficulty putting into words what burned in her heart. She had already explained in private what had befallen her and Daal, about their communing with the Dreamers, what they shared, even about the threat of another like Shiya.

Nyx looked at the bronze woman, who stood next to Rhaif. Even now, Nyx could stir up the Oshkapeers’ terror of such inhuman figures. Yet, she also sensed the Dreamers’ compulsion for Nyx to rescue Bashaliia. Daal had described the Oshkapeers as unmoored by time, with the ability to ride the tides forward. Had they foreseen a time when Bashaliia would be needed, for him to be at her side?

Or is what I’m sensing just a reflection of my own heart’s desire?

She could not discount that possibility.

Still, she continued. “Krysh, you mentioned my vision from last summer. Mind you all, Bashaliia was in that dream of mine.”

She could easily dredge up that nightmare. It had become ingrained in her as firmly as the Dreamers’ fiery map. She pictured it now.

—she flees up a shadowy mountain and skids to a stop at its summit. She is older, scarred, missing a finger on her left hand. Ahead, a cluster of figures in blood-soaked robes circle an altar where a huge shadow-creature thrashes and bucks, its wings nailed to the stone with iron.

—she swings her arms high and claps her palms together as words, foreign to her, burst from her lips, ending in a name. “Bashaliia!”

—her skull releases the fiery storm held inside. It blasts outward with enough force to shatter the altar stone. Iron stakes break from black granite. The shadow-beast leaps free.

—one figure runs toward her, a blade held high, a curse on his lips. Wasted and empty, she can only fall to her knees and lift her face to the smoke-shrouded skies, to the full face of the moon.

—as she watches, time both slows and stretches. The moon grows ever larger. The ground quakes under her knees. And still the moon fills more and more of the sky, its edges on fire now, darkening all the world around it.

—she knows what’s coming: moonfall.

—then a dagger plunges into her chest—piercing her heart with the awful truth: I’ve failed … I’ve failed us all.

Nyx found herself trembling as she returned to the present. Though shaken, she clung to the memory of this vision to firm her resolve.

“If Bashaliia was there on that fiery mountaintop,” she insisted, “then I’m destined to rescue him. Is that not so?”

A heavy silence fell over the room—until a dissent rose from where she least expected it.

“That’s not necessarily true,” Jace said, stepping closer, his eyes pained. “Your vision … you can’t place such weight on every detail of it.”

Wounded by his words and doubts, she stared over at her friend. Over the past half year, everyone had pored over every snippet of her vision, seeking additional insight.

Jace held up his hand and splayed it wide. “For instance, you still have all your fingers. In your dream, your left hand was maimed.”

“But I was also older,” she reminded him. “That fate may yet befall me.”

He sighed and looked to Graylin for help, but the knight nodded for Jace to continue, likely happy to let another take the reins in this attempt to draw her from the plan to cross under the ice to reach the fiery Mouth.