Gazes swung to the short form of a leathery-faced man of swarthy complexion and flat black hair. His eyes were squinted by epicanthic folds, as if the man had been staring too long at the midnight sun of the polar north.
“Omryn Akkay,” Kelly introduced. “One of the ship’s engineers. He hails from this region, so I asked him to join us. We hired him last year for his knowledge of these waters.”
“I am of theLygoravetlanpeople. OrChukchi, as the Russians call us.Most of my people live inland and are nomadic reindeer herders, but my family has always lived along these coasts. We were theAnkalit, the Sea People.”
Gray gave a slight bow of his head in greeting. “And why do you disagree with your ship’s navigator about there being no islands to the north?”
“Our stories tell of a place, a warm and misty land where undying gods dwell—along withkelet,evil spirits that kill any trespassers who approach the gods without proper sacrifices.”
Anna spoke up. “That sounds very much like the Greek description of Hyperborea.”
“Andthe warnings written about the place,” Jason added.
“Have you ever been there?” Gray asked the engineer.
“It is forbidden... even to look. But my grandfather, in his youth, was hunting walruses, spent an entire season on the pack ice. He says one morning the low fogs lifted, and far in the distance, he spotted black cliffs rising out of the frozen sea. It so frightened him that he fled home, where he sacrificed many deer to the sea gods to ask forgiveness for his trespass.”
Gray remembered the stories of Peary and others spotting distant Arctic lands.
Is this just a similarly wild claim?
To the side, Anna whispered a name to Jason, one inscribed in Latin on Mercator’s map, marking a magnetic mountain. “Rupus Nigra et Altissima.”
Or in English... “Very High Black Cliff.”
Like Omryn’s father had described.
Maybe it’s not so wild a claim after all.
Gray turned to Kelly.
The captain ignored Gray’s inquiring look and faced his navigator. “How long would it take to forge a path to the location marked on the map?”
“To its edge?” Byron shrugged. “With a full head of steam, five or six hours. But as I warned, there’s a lot of frozen sea to search after that.”
“Understood.” Kelly faced Gray. He was silent for a long stretch, then came to a decision. “We’ll give it a go. But we’ll stay no longer than a day.”
Gray didn’t object to the time limit. He feared they might not even have a day before the Russians intervened. He stared out the windows, at the swirling Borealis, whipped by a gale of solar winds.
He sensed the truth of this moment.
That’s not the only storm that lies ahead of us.
33
May 13, 6:22P.M. MSK
Severodvinsk, Arkhangelsk Oblast
Elle dozed on her bed, lingering in the shadowlands between slumber and wakefulness. Nightmares haunted any deeper sleep.
A loudboomjerked her up onto an elbow.
“What was that?” she asked blearily.
Tucker stood at the back of their cell, on the tips of his toes, peering out the thin barred window. The view opened into a window well, a space excavated to let a little light flow down here, but it offered only a narrow peek at the sky.
“Thunder,” he said. “I think.”
