The Sundered Sky
THE JOURNEY NORTH
The journey north took a month.
The landscape changed gradually — from green valleys to gray foothills to white tundra. The trees disappeared. The rivers froze. The wind grew cold and sharp, cutting through Lyra’s coats like a knife.
Davin walked beside her, his sword at his hip, his eyes scanning the horizon for danger. Wren had wanted to send soldiers with them, but Lyra had refused. This was not a battle. It was a pilgrimage. She needed to go alone.
Davin had refused to let her go alone.
“Someone has to carry you back when you freeze to death,” he said.
She had not argued.
They traveled during the day, sleeping in caves and hollows at night. The whisper grew louder as they went north, filling Lyra’s dreams, filling her waking thoughts. She could see the frozen city in her mind — towers of ice, streets of frost, a palace at the center where something ancient slept.
“What do you think it wants?” Davin asked one night.
“I don’t know. To talk. To listen. To remember.”
“Remember what?”
“The first song. The one the Choristers forgot. The one that created the world.”
Davin was silent.
Then he said, “You’re not going to sing it, are you? The Song of Ending?”
“No. Not unless I have to.”
“And if you have to?”
Lyra looked at the stone in her hand. It was still dark. But she could feel something in it. A spark. A flicker.
“Then I’ll sing.”
They reached the frozen city on the thirty-second day.
It rose from the ice like a fossil — towers of black stone, streets of frozen mud, gates that had not been opened in millennia. The wind howled through its arches, carrying whispers that might have been voices or might have been echoes.
Lyra walked through the gates.
The city was dead.
No. Not dead. Sleeping.
She could feel it in the stones, in the ice, in the air itself. The city was waiting. For her.
She walked to the center of the city, to the palace at its heart.
The doors were frozen shut.
She touched them.
They opened.