THE GIRL AND THE STARS Book One of The Book of the Ice Mark Lawrence HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020 Copyright © Mark Lawrence 2020 Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2020 Cover illustration © Jason Chan Mark Lawrence asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Source ISBN: 9780008284756 Ebook Edition © April 2020 ISBN: 9780008284770 Version: 2020-05-21 Contents Copyright Dedication Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Acknowledgements
Also by Mark Lawrence
About the Publisher
To the succession of English teachers who kept
this scientist from forgetting that there was more to learn at school
Many babies have killed, but it is very rare that the victim is not their mother. When the father handed his infant to the priestess to speak its fortune the child stopped screaming and in its place she began to howl, filling the silence left behind. Omens are difficult and open to interpretation but if the oracle that touches your newborn dies moments later, frothing at the mouth, it is hard even with a mother’s love to think it a good sign. In such cases a second opinion is often sought. On the diamond ice out past the northern ridges is an empty place where the wind laments and no one listens. Alone in all those miles is a cave where a witch lives. Or rather where she exists, for little about her might be called living. Agatta waits, nothing more. With the blood frozen in her veins she waits, moving only to crack the ice that forms around her and to let it fall. The father and the mother came wrapped in sealskins and the furs of hoola, so bulky that they might be great bears roaming from the south. They set the salt price before the witch, and then the baby, swaddled in skins. ‘Go.’ Agatta creaked when she moved. She sniffed the air, and scowled, her face cracking. ‘The present.’ She looked down at the baby through frozen eyes. ‘This smells like the present to me. Such a thin slice between what was and what will be, and yet always so much going on in it …’ The witch waited for the parents to retreat from view. She watched the silent baby, aware of its pinkness. Her hand, in contrast, was the white of early frostbite. ‘What have we here? A little drop of warmth in a cold world.’ Agatta reached for the child, stretching her senses into the future and the past as she did, seeking out the roots leading to the seed and following the shoot across the years, branching into possible tomorrows. ‘Let me see …’ Icy hand touched warm skin. Instantly there was fire. A fierce bright fire consuming frozen flesh. The parents returned, cautious, summoned less by the single piercing scream than by the silence that followed. They entered the cave, blinking at the gloom and wrinkling their noses against the stink of burned meat. Agatta stood where they had left her, one hand pointing at their infant, the other behind her back,
