The Girl and the Mountain (The Book of the Ice)

The Girl and the Mountain (The Book of the Ice)

The second novel in the thrilling and epic new fantasy series from the international bestselling author of Red Sister and Prince of Thorns . On the planet Abeth there is only the ice. And the Black Rock. For generations the priests of the Black Rock have reached out from their mountain to steer the fate of the ice tribes. With their Hidden God, their magic and their iron, the priests’ rule has never been questioned. But when ice triber Yaz challenged their authority, she was torn away from the only life she had ever known, and forced to find a new path for herself. Yaz has lost her friends and found her enemies. She has a mountain to climb, and even if she can break the Hidden God’s power, her dream of a green world lies impossibly far to the south, across a vast emptiness of ice. Before the journey can even start, she has to find out what happened to the ones she loves and save those that can be saved. Abeth holds its secrets close, but the stars shine brighter for Yaz and she means to unlock the truth. Praise for  The Girl and the Stars “Mark Lawrence has produced more than a dozen novels in a decade, and  The Girl and the Stars  is one of the best… not only a thrilling fight for survival…but a revelatory coming of age story.”– The Guardian “A crackling good adventure with a rich mythological background. Yaz, like Nona in the Ancestor series, is strong, vulnerable, and an excellent anchor for this new series.”-- Booklist “Exceptional, haunting, and claustrophobic...An incredible and emotionaladventure.”—Grimdark Magazine "Wondrous and chilling...Readers looking for an utterly fresh fantasy world would do well to give this one a try."–Bookpage Mark Lawrence was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, to British parents but moved to the UK at the age of one. After earning a PhD in mathematics at Imperial College London, he went back to the US to work on a variety of research projects, including the “Star Wars” missile-defense program. Since returning to the UK, he has worked mainly on image processing and decision/reasoning theory. He never had any ambition to be a writer, so he was very surprised when a half-hearted attempt to find an agent turned into a global publishing deal overnight. His first trilogy, The Broken Empire, has been universally acclaimed as a groundbreaking work of fantasy, and both Emperor of Thorns and The Liar’s Key have won the David Gemmell Legend Award for best fantasy novel. Mark is married, with four children, and lives in Bristol. 1   Thurin   There had been a great fire and there had been a great flood. Both are forces of nature that sweep clean, that wipe the slate and promise a new beginning. Thurin had been the cause of the fire and of the flood. And yet both had failed to wash away his desire to be with Yaz of the Ictha: the girl for whom the stars shone brighter.   Thurin stared up at the miles-long hole stretching vertically through the ice to a world that he had never seen. It seemed impossible that he had driven the fire that melted it. The release of his fire-talent, of energies that had built inside him for years and years, had hollowed him. The subsequent battle with the Tainted had left him bruised, bitten, and torn. And almost immediately after that he had used the full extent of his ice-work in a desperate attempt to ensure Yaz's brother joined her escape.   Even as he wondered what it was that still kept him upright, Thurin found himself collapsing to the floor. The last image to remain with him was of Yaz's impossibly white eyes locked on his as the cage rose ever further and vanished into darkness.     "Wake up!"   Thurin rolled to his side, groaning. A pleasant heat wrapped him and for a beautiful moment he thought himself at home in his mother's house within the settlement. He tried to cling to the illusion but it slid through his grasp, leaving only pieces of the darker dreams that had haunted his sleep, ones in which Theus stood above him pulling puppet strings to make him dance to a tune that was not his own.   "Still with us? Good."   Thurin cracked open an eye. A fierce glow, distorted by his blurry vision, stole detail from the scene but he saw enough to tell that he was lying in one of the forge sheds. Lengths of chain and a variety of tools hung from the support beams. "Kaylal? That you?"   "It is." The young smith clapped a hand to Thurin's shoulder. "Takes more than a hundred screaming Tainted to put me down."   Thurin struggled to sit. All of him hurt. Bites and scratches that he hadn't noticed before now cried for his attention. "You're alright?"   "Well, I lost both legs . . ."   Thurin smiled at the old joke. Kaylal looked as bad as Thurin felt, both eyes blackened and puffy, his ear torn and bleeding, bruising round his neck. Still, the greatest of his hurts was the loss of Exxar. The rest of his wounds would heal. "It's good to see you. How did I get here?"   "Arka had the wounded carried to shelter. The worst of them are at th