Two
River
HE SOARED ABOVE the earth, an owl silhouetted against the stars as they arched and burned. He tried to race them, and when he tired of that he flew to the ground, owl dissolving into leopard. He tried on a dozen different animals in quick succession—hawk, dragon, tahr—reveling in the magic. The binding spell had been cast long before he was born, and his powers were new—everything felt new. He tried transforming into shadow, folding himself into the darkness as witches were said to do in stories, but either the stories were exaggerated or it was a skill that required practice. He eventually gave up the effort.
As the night deepened, River assumed his familiar, human form at the edge of a stream shining with ice and crowded with glacial boulders. He threw himself onto the ground, exhausted but jubilant. The emperor’s spell was broken, and he had the powers that should have been his from birth. He no longer had to rely on secondhand magic from Azar-at. As he gazed into the sky, he felt that even it was too small to contain him.
As if echoing his mood, shooting stars painted the night with fire. The sky was so bright it could have been lit by three moons. No doubt there was some mystical reason for it—something dull and prophetic, as those things often were.
He had descended the tallest mountain in the world, then covered fifty miles of ground in a single day. The Arya Mountains were still visible to the west, their sharp, snowy peaks faded to dusky gray. Raksha loomed over the rest like a dark threat. As he traveled, he had the sense that the mountain was watching with an odd combination of menace and regret. He shrugged off the feeling.
While witches could assume the shape of almost any animal they chose, the stories said that most used only one regularly: their secondskin. Changing shape was tiring, particularly when it involved taking the form of an animal you felt no affinity with. Yet he didn’t feel tired, and all the shapes he tried felt easy and natural, though he perhaps preferred the leopard he had first chosen, with its sleek grace and deathly silent paws.
The land before him was familiar, though the trees were sparse, nothing like the heart of the Nightwood, the witches’ forest. A hint of smoke hung in the air, another taste of home. At his current pace, he would be there within a day.
He held out a hand and let the shadows play over the water, creating ripples and waves. For more than three years, home had been a patch of grass in the wilderness, the oilcloth of a tent flapping in the wind, the howl of wolves. Or it had been the ridiculous spectacle of the emperor’s court, where even the spoons were inlaid with jade and you could die of boredom were it not such a commonplace sensation that one grew inoculated. There had been no River Shara—he had invented him. But there was something appealing in that—in becoming a person he had created, rather than one constrained by things he had never chosen.
Now that their powers were restored, he supposed that the witches would attack the Empire. Or would Esha, his brother, wait for a more opportune moment, perhaps when the emperor was distracted by a barbarian invasion?
It doesn’t matter.
River didn’t care about the Empire. He didn’t care about revenge, which had always struck him as a wasteful concept. His years as an explorer had taught him how fine the line was between life and death, for the powerful and powerless alike, and he had no intention of wasting time constructing elaborate plots to wreck the Empire. His thoughts had been occupied by one thing: breaking the spell. Now it was done, he would not stay in the Nightwood for long—he would not stay in any place for long. He would leave the Empire behind, and go wherever he liked.
He had always wondered what strange lands lay east of the Nightwood. Or perhaps he would travel south, all the way to the great lake that the stories said was made of liquid salt and stretched to the edge of the world.
The shadows had begun to drift. He lifted his hand, and they darted back to him. It was surprising how easily the darkness responded to his command. He focused, and the shadows swirled together, spinning like a dancer over the water. Shapes rose from the darkness. A fish. A rhododendron bloom. A palace on a hilltop. His eldest brother, Sky, his grim face caught in one of his rare smiles.
The shadows spun faster. Sky, Esha, and Thorn—each of his older brothers was ruthlessness personified, a knife edge in the night. He had only missed one—Sky, the eldest, quieter and more deliberate than the others. To most, that deliberation only added to his fearsomeness, for he had been a large, imposing man, given to deadly flashes of temper. There had only been one person who was spared that temper, and that was his youngest brother. But Sky was dead—he had taken his own life soon after their mother had.
River pictured his brother’s brow furrowing as he recounted the story of his years at the emperor’s court, Sky balancing his chin on his hand as he did when lost in thought. River would have told him about the banquets, the impossible luxury juxtaposed with the harrowing expeditions to distant lands. His mood darkened.
He glanced over his shoulder. “What do you think . . .”
No fire demon gazed back at him. The place where Azar-at would have sat, tongue lolling and coal eyes glittering, was empty. He had left Azar-at behind, as he had left Kamzin and the rest of his expedition.
He was suddenly very aware of the expanse of land around him, the whisper of the icy stream. River dashed his hand through the shadow, shattering the shapes he had summoned. He lay down, expecting sleep to find him quickly.
A steep, snowy slope, and the pull of the earth far below. His hand clenched on his ax as it bit into the mountain, his fingers aching with cold. Before him loomed the col that joined Raksha to its neighboring peak, sharp against the starry sky. He took a deep breath and raised the ax again—
He bolted upright.
He glanced down at his hands, half-convinced he would find his ax. But they were empty, and he had abandoned the ax, along with most of his other possessions, in the cave below the summit of Raksha.
He was uneasy. The dream had been strangely vivid—so vivid he could still feel the chill wind against his face. He had left Raksha behind. But Kamzin hadn’t. Was that why his thoughts had strayed there?
When he had reached the summit of Raksha, he could taste the magic in the air. He had known he was close to breaking the binding spell that had weighed on him like a chain of iron since the day of his birth.
He felt a stab of something like anger, but colder, more fundamental. Kamzin had nearly succeeded in stopping him. A human girl with no magic whatsoever, just an impossible stubbornness. He wouldn’t have harmed her, yet she had looked him in the eye, her gaze cold as an avenging spirit, and sent him to what should have been his death.
Through the anger came a strange pang of longing. He pushed Kamzin from his mind. Thinking of her brought about an uncomfortable tangle of emotion, and he didn’t have the patience to sort through it.
A flash of motion from the corner of his eye. A fox scuttled out from beneath a boulder and paused in the starlight. Green eyes gleamed as the creature turned to look at him, head cocked playfully.
River froze.
Every sense told him that the fox was Kamzin’s familiar. But it was impossible. There was no way it could have followed him from Raksha. He dashed the sleep from his eyes, and when he opened them, the fox was gone.
First he was imagining himself back on Raksha, and now he was seeing Kamzin’s fox. Next he would be imagining Kamzin herself lurking in the shadows, her large eyes, framed by their dark lashes, narrowed with fury—the way she had looked when she tried to kill him.
His urge to linger on that quiet bank had vanished. Now he wanted to move, to watch the miles dissolve beneath him. He changed back into an owl and launched himself into the air, silent as a ghost.
Three
THE CAVE WAS quiet and still, shadowed in the early morning light. Nothing stirred on the snowy plain, and I saw no footprints. Given the wind last night, I told myself, that wasn’t unexpected.
“Stay back,” I ordered Azar-at. “Remember—
”
You wish to keep secrets from friends, the creature said. I remember.
I stopped short. “That’s not—”
I understand secrets, Kamzin.
“I bet you do,” I muttered. Azar-at crouched behind a drift of snow, tail wagging. I left it there and headed for the cave. Ragtooth trotted at my side, light enough to tread atop the snow. I wished that Biter was still with me, but the raven had soared off somewhere as soon as the winds had died, and hadn’t returned.
No smoke rose from the cave. Surely that was to be expected too, given their low supply of firewood.
“Lusha?” I called. “Tem?”
Silence.
My pace quickened. Despite my weariness, I was almost running. Ragtooth reached the cave first, peering inside with a plaintive sound. I was right behind him.
The cave was empty.
Strewn across the floor were the ashes of the fire, scattered by the wind. An empty satchel lay on its side, dusted with a fine layer of snow. The cave looked as if it had been abandoned months ago.
I backed out, panic rising in my throat. The blushing sky, still streaked with shooting stars, seemed oppressive, as did the mountain. It was all too vast, too silent.
“Tem! Lusha!” I yelled. My voice didn’t echo—the wind carried it off, dead, as soon as it left my mouth. I was almost too exhausted to shout. “Mara!”
Find Lusha and Tem. The words had been an endless refrain as I descended the mountain. They now took on a mocking quality. Find Lusha and Tem. Save Azmiri.
Ragtooth had his snout to the ground, sniffing around the mouth of the cave. I saw myself and River finding it, staggering inside after an exhausting day. We had talked for hours that night, until I drifted asleep, feeling warm and safe. And then, after Lusha’s expedition followed ours, and River abandoned us all, my sister and I had sat here holding a statue of our mother, an explorer many times braver than me.
That brought me back to my senses. If something terrible had happened to Lusha and Tem, why would they have taken the trouble to gather up their belongings?
“Kamzin?”
I whirled.
Behind me was a thin figure, his chuba torn and stained with blood, his normally smooth, chin-length hair a dark tangle. Yet he stood upright, and his cheeks were flushed from exercise. His eyes, as they met mine, were filled with an undiluted joy that almost stopped my heart.
I was in his arms before either of us could draw another breath. The dragon perched on Tem’s shoulder gave a chirrup of alarm and leaped into the air. Tem’s shoulders shook, and I realized he was laughing. I began to laugh too, a wild sound that took my breath away and made me fear I would never stop.
We drew apart. I could barely believe my own eyes. When I had last seen Tem, he couldn’t lift his head, let alone walk. Yet apart from the weight he’d lost and the shadows under his eyes, he seemed almost well.
“I thought—” we both began at the same instant. I laughed, but the humor had died from his eyes.
“You look . . .” He stopped, and I felt a shiver of alarm. Did he know about Azar-at? If so, how? Could he somehow see the missing piece of my soul, like a hole in a piece of cloth?
“You look like you’ve been through something,” he finished. He touched my face, and I was surprised by the whisper of pain it brought. Of course—the driving hail last night had cut me, and I was covered in bruises.
I eased back slightly. “Lusha?”
“She’s fine,” he assured me. “Mara too. We recovered the tent yesterday and pitched it on an outcrop nearby. Lusha wanted to be somewhere with an unobstructed view of the sky.”
The notion that Lusha was prioritizing astronomy over a warm place to sleep surprised me for about half a second. Tem’s brow furrowed. “Your ankle.”
“It’s nothing.” I tried to balance my weight more naturally, even as my ankle seethed.
“I doubt that. But it will be, after an incantation or two.” He coughed—a slight cough, far different from the frightening rattle that had plagued him throughout our journey to Raksha. “Mara wanted to go back down, but Lusha refused. We didn’t know what sort of shape you’d be in. We thought you might need our help to get off the mountain. Lusha was planning to go after you, if the weather held today.”
I shook my head. “Tem, I thought you’d need my help! When I left, you were—” Dying, I almost said.
He nodded. “I know. But a day’s rest made a big difference. I slept for hours, and when I woke yesterday morning, I felt better. Stronger. I tried using my magic again, and I was able to heal my broken leg. And my ribs.” He tapped his side, wincing slightly. “I’ll be sore for a few days. Then I got to work on Lusha’s ankle. She’s practically as good as new, or so she says. You know Lusha: she wouldn’t complain if she was being burned alive.”
I was astonished. “All that, from a day’s sleep?”
“Apparently.” I could see that it had surprised him too. “I was using my magic too much. Once I was forced to stop for a while, it just . . . came back.”
I had never heard of a shaman regaining their powers so readily—overusing magic to such an extent should take weeks to recover from. But then, Tem’s powers had never been ordinary, or predictable. “Well, thank the spirits for that. Now I won’t have to carry you down to base camp.” Or have Azar-at float you there.
Tem seemed to read something of my thoughts in my face, for his eyes grew solemn again. “Kamzin, what happened?”
I turned away, feeling a stab of guilt. “Let’s find Lusha. I’d rather not have to tell this story more than once.”
We came upon them at the edge of the plateau, where they’d pitched the tent behind a boulder. The dragons spotted us first, and soon they were circling, chirruping their excitement at the arrival of a potential new food source. They were hungry, that was clear—their blue lights were barely visible, and flickered within their scaled bellies.
I paused. For a moment, the view struck me as strange: Mara and Lusha alone, framed against the sky. Part of me had expected more people to be there. But Dargye, one of our assistants, had been left at base camp to guard our supplies. And our other assistant, Aimo, as well as River’s personal shaman, Norbu, had died shortly before River and I set out for the summit.
Mara glanced up. When his eyes met mine, he reached out to grab Lusha’s shoulder. She was seated in the snow, bent forward as she peered through her small telescope. Of course she had brought the telescope, regardless of how much food she had to leave at base camp to compensate for the added weight. I wondered what she was looking at—it was too light to see any constellations, though the shooting stars were still visible, faintly.
Lusha blinked at me. She turned back to the pile of scrolls on her lap and calmly added a note. Then she stood.
“Lusha,” I began, alarmed by the look on her face as she approached, “I tried to stop River, I swear, but he—”
She wrapped me in a fierce hug, smothering my words against her shoulder. To my surprise, hot tears welled in my eyes. They flowed down my face, dampening the collar of her chuba. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding them back until now.
She stepped back and placed her hands on my shoulders. “So,” she said without preamble, “River broke the spell?”
I swallowed, brushing the tears away. I quickly recounted everything—leaving aside my contract with Azar-at. How I had followed River, and watched him shatter the spell. What I had found on the summit. The witches, who were not bound to human form, had lived there once, and built a city of shadow among the clouds. This sky city had been abandoned long ago, though some of the witches’ magic still lingered among the ruins. The place had had an uncanny, watchful quality about it.
I felt, again, the full weight of my failure. When I finished, there was a small silence.
“You were right,” I said. “I never should have trusted—”
She made a gesture, and the apology died on my lips. Lusha had always had that way about her—she
could silence the General of the First Army with a glance.
“Preventing River Shara from getting his way was always a long shot,” she said. “What’s done is done.”
“Azmiri . . .” I stopped. The village filled my thoughts—the neat stone houses, the slopes dotted with flowers and snow, the terraces cut into the mountain like a staircase to the sky. For the first time, I understood how fragile my home was, how small, tucked into a wilderness at the edge of the Empire with the witches’ forest at its back. “It’s so close to the Nightwood.”
She nodded, her expression grim but thoughtful. “We need to warn the village.”
“How?” Mara said. “It will take us days to reach Azmiri. Weeks.”
Lusha held out her arm. For a strange moment, I thought she was trying to cast a spell without a talisman, but then there came a fluttering sound, and Biter settled on her wrist, his enormous talons curling gently around her sleeve.
“Biter!” I said. “I thought I’d lost you.”
Lusha bent to retrieve a scrap of parchment and scrawled a message with a bit of charcoal. Then she furled the note and tied it to Biter’s leg. The raven kicked once, but Lusha murmured something I couldn’t catch, and he stilled. Once Lusha had the note secure, he took off. The beat of his wings lifted wisps of snow from the ground, and then he was gone.
“He should reach the village by tomorrow morning,” Lusha said. “At least—at least they’ll know what’s coming.”
Mara and Tem were staring at her. Even I felt a stab of disquiet, and I was long used to Lusha’s familiars, their uncanny ability to understand her every whim. I knew, on some level, that this was how most people must feel about Ragtooth, though it was impossible for me to experience any awe when I thought about the creature who had trailed after me like a small, scruffy shadow since I was a baby.
“It isn’t enough,” I said. “We have to get back to Azmiri before the witches attack. We have to help them.” My mind was on Azar-at’s magic. I wouldn’t use it unless absolutely necessary, and saving Azmiri fell into the category of absolutely necessary. Would the witches attack the village before striking the Three Cities, or would that come later, after the emperor’s armies had been defeated? Azmiri was next to the Amarin Valley, one of only two corridors between the emperor’s lands and the Nightwood.
All the Wandering Light Page 2