Smearing the Obsidian

A drop of moisture hits my knuckles and turns to white crust before I can wipe it away.

In the Star-Wound, grease freezes only when the sky decides to kill you in twenty breaths. The sulfur fog thickens from pale yellow to curdled gray, dragging the heat straight out of the earth. Forty paces ahead, Dirk van Houten’s migration sleds rattle over the basalt scree, their rawhide runners screeching on fresh frost.

Behind me, claws click against cold stone.

I do not turn around fast. Sudden movements invite a lunge. I slide my right hand under my heavy reindeer parka, pressing the curve of the bison horn tight to my ribs. The horn is warm. The bone vent quill hums with a faint pulse of live heat. If wet frost gets inside that quill, thirty people freeze to death before tomorrow’s dawn, and Dirk will blame my corpse for failing to blow on the ash.

I glance over my shoulder.

Three paces behind my boots, the fog tears open.

A tundra-wolf stands in the sulfur drift. It is long-legged, raw-boned, and starving. Its pelt is matted with frozen mud, ribs showing like basket slats under gray skin. A second beast slips from the basalt cleft to its left. Then a third, broader in the skull, with half an ear ripped away by frostbite.

They smell the frost-bison marrow.

I wiped my lips on my sleeve after devouring the fat, but the rich grease still coats my cuffs. To a winter pack that has tracked the herd through three dead planes, my cuffs smell like life.

\"Get moving, bitch,\" Dirk’s voice drifts back through the yellow gloom, thin and muffled by distance. \"You drop five paces more and I lock your rations in the meat-coffer!\"

Between Dirk threatening to harness me to a baggage sled and starving predators wanting my liver, the wolves are the most reasonable creatures I have met all morning. At least they are honest about wanting to tear my throat out.

I keep my feet moving. One boot in front of the other. Slow. Steady.

The lead wolf takes two steps forward. Its black gums pull back over yellow fangs. Saliva ropes from its jaw, freezing into stiff needles before it hits the shale.

Shouting for Roelof or the front scouts will buy me nothing. If the sled drivers see wolves at the rear, they will lash the dire-elk into a panic run. Sleds will overturn. The clan will scatter into the sulfur pits. Dirk will put an ash spear through my kidney for drawing scavengers to the trail.

I have to kill the interest here.

Sleet begins to tick against my hood. Tiny granules of ice, hard as river sand.

Ice is death to what I need to do.

I reach into the inner fold of my tunic. My fingers find the thick leather packet holding my secret store: tallow scrapings, dry birch punk, and the thumb-sized skin bladder of curdled dire-elk milk I've carried since the wintering caves. Next to it sits the razor flake of black volcanic glass I dug out of the split femur half an hour ago. The obsidian shard with the cat-eye scratch.

The old hearth-mothers taught me the lore when I was eight winters old: volcanic obsidian carries the dormant blood of the deep world. Smear it with the sour fat of dire-elk milk, and the rock remembers fire. But let a single snowflake touch the stone, and the magic dies cold.

The scarred wolf crouches. Its hindquarters bunch. It is going for my calf.

I drop to one knee, turning my back to the icy wind.

I pull the front flap of my heavy fur coat over my lap, creating a dry tent against the stinging sleet. Darkness wraps around my hands.

My knuckles are stiff with cold. I uncork the skin bladder with my teeth. A thick, rancid glob of elk curd squeezes onto my thumb. It smells like sour tallow and bitter musk.

I pull out the cat-eye obsidian shard. Holding it flat beneath the fur tent, I smear the thick white curd across both faces of the black stone.

The glass twitches against my skin.

It does not warm up slowly. It jerks like a dying heart. A greasy heat flares along the sharp edge, burning through the grease on my thumb. The occult stone drinks the curd, turning oily and slick with blue sheen.

Outside the coat flap, gravel crunches hard.

A snarl tears through the fog. The lead wolf launches.

I throw the coat flap open, lunging up from the crouch.

The wolf’s jaws snap shut two inches from my collar. I smell rotting carrion on its breath. Its yellow eyes widen in the gloom as I jam my flint against the curd-slick obsidian and strike downward with all the force in my shoulder.

Sparks bite the glass.

The world explodes in blinding white brilliance.

A sheet of volcanic flame roars outward from my palm. It is not gentle orange fire. It is a blinding fury of lightning-white heat and spitting sulfur sparks, hissing violently against the freezing air.

The blast hits the lead wolf full in the face.

The beast screams—a shrill, dog-like yelp of agony. Its whiskers vanish in smoke. The fur across its muzzle blackens to ash. The blinding glare scorches its eyes, knocking it backward into the shale, thrashing and clawing at its burnt face.

The heat washes across my skin, searing my eyebrows, but I keep my grip tight.

I thrust the spitting torch forward. \"Back, you mangy bastards!\"

The other two wolves skid on the basalt, hackles raised, tails tucked low. The blinding white light makes them hesitate, but their hollow ribs drive them forward. The one with the torn ear circles to my right, belly skimming the gravel, flanking wide behind the flare.

The obsidian shard is burning through the dire-elk curd too fast.

A fat drop of freezing sleet strikes the edge of the glass. A sharp pop echoes between my fingers. A hairline crack spiderwebs across the black surface. The flame gutters, shrinking from a blinding sun to a flickering blue torch.

The wolves watch the light fade.

Torn-ear crouches again. Muscles tense in its haunches. It is going to spring.

I brace my boots against the scree, shifting the bison horn behind my back. My skin prickles cold. The flare has three seconds left before the sleet drowns it.

Then the air stops moving.

A sound rolls down from the high rim of the fissure.

It is not a shout. It is not thunder.

It is a low, chest-crushing vibration that rattles the basalt beneath my boots. A guttural roar, wet and cavernous, dragging through the dead stone like boulders grinding in an abyss. The psychic weight of an ancient predator hits the back of my neck, raising every hair on my arms.

It does not sound like a man. It sounds like a monster whose jaw can crush an elk’s spine in a single bite.

The sound slams into the crater floor.

The two standing wolves do not snarl. They do not fight.

Torn-ear lets out a strangled shriek, its bladder voiding yellow water across the frozen stones. Both wolves spin on their hocks and bolt into the sulfur mist, kicking up sprays of gray shale in a desperate, blind scramble to escape. The blinded one crawls after them, whimpering like a pup, scraping its burnt nose against the rocks until the fog swallows its cries.

Silence drops over the fissure, heavy as lead.

The flare dies in my palm with a tiny wisp of black smoke. The obsidian flake lies cold and cracked in my hand, smeared with soot.

I stay frozen on the shale. My chest heaves. The air tastes of scorched wolf fur, burned milk, and sulfur.

Forty cubits above me, on the sharp rim of the basalt cliff, a shadow shifts against the gray sky.

He is standing on the ledge.

Eight feet of hulking muscle, wrapped in ragged frost-bear skins. The massive horned skull of the void-cat sits over his head, its hollow eye sockets staring straight down through the yellow vapor.

He does not move. He does not drop a rope. He just watches.

A jagged breath catches in my throat.

He did not let those wolves die to save the clan.

He drove them off because they tried to touch his food.

I close my coat flap tight over my chest, shove the cracked obsidian into my pocket, and turn back toward the distant clatter of Dirk’s sleds.

My boots crunch into the frost.

Above my head, the shadow on the ridge begins to move, pacing my exact speed along the rim.