My frustration surged. It was impossible to know what the witches were planning, or if they planned at all. I felt a sense of dislocation at the idea of River taking part in an attack on Azmiri, as if I were trying to force a key into a lock it didn’t fit. I shoved that feeling away. River was a witch. He was capable of anything.
I pictured Father striding through the village on one of his nighttime rounds, the stars gleaming crisply, the houses dark save for the occasional flicker of dragonlight. I saw the shadows begin to stir, to coalesce, figures taking shape from the darkness, surrounding him.
I would use Azar-at’s magic to defend the village. No matter what it cost me.
“If the witches have truly regained their powers, all hope is lost,” Mara said. He was looking at Lusha. “We know they’ll take revenge on the Empire. There’s no reason to believe it won’t be brutal and swift.”
“So we should just abandon Azmiri?” I snapped. “Stay here with the ghosts?”
“I’m merely stating that—”
Lusha held up a hand, and we both fell silent—Mara, with an understanding nod; me, with a mutinous glare. “What do the bells say, Tem?”
Baffled, I watched Tem open his pack. He withdrew the kinnika.
“How did you—?” I took a step forward. “River threw them off the summit.”
“Biter,” Tem said. “He brought them to us an hour ago. They’re all right—only one broken.”
“The witch bell?”
“No.”
I couldn’t look away from the kinnika. I thought of the city on the summit, and the remains of the dead witch king. River, wreathed in shadows.
“That bell is the best weapon we have,” Lusha said.
“It’s the only weapon we have,” I said. “According to Chirri, the kinnika are one of a kind.”
“Tem thinks he can amplify the magic.”
I stared. “What?”
“It’s just something I was experimenting with,” Tem said, flushing.
“Not ‘just,’” Lusha said. “It’s brilliant.”
Tem, who was rarely on the receiving end of praise, least of all from Lusha, looked vaguely alarmed. He handed me one of the bells, a small, plain one with a notch in the rim.
“I’ve imbued it with the same power held by the witch bell,” he said. “Or rather, altered the magic it held before. It’s a form of transmutation—at least, I think it is. The Janyim scrolls describe it in detail. You remember—Chirri assigned you an essay on them.”
I gazed at him blankly. I vaguely recalled Chirri lecturing me on the Janyim scrolls, one of the ancient shamanic texts, but I must have discarded the information, like most of what she had taught me. Tem sighed.
“If we can create more of these talismans, we can protect the village,” Lusha said. “You said it yourself: River was overcome when you rang a single bell. Think what we could do with a dozen, or more.”
I turned back to Tem. “And you can do this?”
His face was pale. “I think so.”
“Then we take the kinnika back to the village,” I said. “Before the witches attack.”
Mara was shaking his head. “Given the distance, I’m not sure that’s possible.”
“We’ll make it possible,” I said. “I won’t let him—them—” I couldn’t finish. I didn’t have to. I could see my fears reflected on Lusha’s face.
“We’re at least two weeks from Azmiri,” Mara said. His voice was quiet and carefully steady, as if he thought to calm me. “That’s if the weather’s fair, and if we walk from dawn to dusk—”
“I’ll walk from dawn to dawn if I have to,” I said. “The rest of you can follow behind.”
“Kamzin—” Tem began.
“But first,” I interrupted, “we have to get off this mountain.”
I didn’t look at Tem. I looked at Lusha. I waited for her to argue with me, to call me impractical and headstrong.
But Lusha merely held my gaze. I thought I saw the barest hint of a smile cross her face. After a moment, she nodded and turned to gather her things.
Four
River
THE NIGHTWOOD WAS a labyrinth of smoke and shadow.
The trees were blackened, sharp-needled things, so dense the smallest animals could barely slip through—not that many did. The only living creatures who dared dwell among the twisted boughs were red-eyed mice and hooded crows, and the odd half-starved fox. The only way to move easily was to follow the mazelike passages—witch paths—that crisscrossed at sharp angles. Branches knitted together overhead, at times resembling a cage, at others melting into something as solid as a roof. Smoke rose from the ground, which was bog-like in places, and strangely hot. Ghosts flickered among the branches, darting away as soon as they drew your gaze.
River leaned against a tree, his hands shoved in his pockets. He felt suffocated in that dense forest, as he always had, and wished himself elsewhere—anywhere. He stood in the Great Hall in the heart of the Nightwood, which was not a hall in the human sense, a place of carved stone and tapestries and dragon perches. It was merely a part of the forest—the deepest, darkest part—a cavernous place of column-like trees the width of several arm-spans. It was so dark that a human would have perceived only a shifting maze of shadow—there was no illumination in the Nightwood, save for the occasional shaft of sunlight that struggled through; witches needed neither dragons nor torches to see their way. When River had been a child, the Great Hall had been an empty, desolate place.
Today it held several hundred witches. All waiting for River’s brother Esha to be officially named emperor.
Some stood in the shadows, conversing in small groups, or hovered in anticipatory silence around the boulder that formed a rough dais in the middle of the hall. A few—those that had already mastered their powers—perched high in the boughs as birds or monkeys, virtually indistinguishable from the darkness. There were more witches than River had ever seen in one place, a crowd so large it was unnerving, even to him. He could only imagine what a human might feel, gazing at that sea of strange faces.
“River.” A white-haired witch appeared before him and clasped his hand. The man—who River thought was called Sonpa—said nothing beyond that, merely bowed his head before turning away. River, who had only experienced such displays of deference in the emperor’s court, briefly expected to hear himself addressed as dyonpo.
It wasn’t the first gesture of respect he had been paid since his return yesterday. But not everyone had welcomed him back. There were those who simply stared at him, distrust on their lean faces. They knew he’d broken the binding spell, but they also knew that he had been one of the emperor’s most trusted advisors, an instrument of the hated Empire.
Let them think what they wanted. River had long since discovered that was easier—and in some ways, more advantageous—than explaining himself to anyone.
A girl was watching him. Dawn, he recalled, one of Thorn’s friends. Growing up, River didn’t think she had ever even looked at him, but now she smiled when she caught his eye. Her face was soft and pretty, framed by a waterfall of dark hair. She reminded him of Kamzin.
River looked away, pushing Kamzin from his thoughts.
He summoned a yew tree’s shadow and pooled it in his palm, letting it spill through his fingers like water before catching it in his other hand. The branches stirred beside him, revealing his second-eldest brother, Thorn.
“Looking forward to this?” Thorn said in his cool voice, gesturing at the dais.
“Immensely.” River had spent more than enough time on stages in the emperor’s court, presiding over endlessly dreary royal ceremonies. “Will they cheer me or kill me?”
“Both appealing options.” Thorn was smiling slightly, but it wasn’t entirely clear that he was joking. Unlike most witches, Thorn always looked neat—he regularly stole clothes from human villages, or perhaps scavenged them from Esha’s victims. He collected other things too: human trinkets. Salt candles and spirit statues; jad
e earrings and panes of colored glass. It was unnatural—witches had no possessions; ownership was not part of their world. It had taken River time even to get used to carrying supplies on his expeditions. But Thorn had always had a fascination—if not obsession—with the human world.
Thorn ran a hand through his dark hair, an absent gesture that River recognized in himself. He was closest to River in age as well as appearance. They were like blurred mirror images: Thorn’s eyes were the same mismatched brown, a trait inherited from their mother, but Thorn was densely muscled where River was slim, his nose broken in some forgotten quarrel. Otherwise, they could have passed for twins—long a sore point for both of them.
“Esha says you’re leaving tomorrow,” he said.
“Yes.” River had promised Esha he would stay for the coronation. His thoughts flashed to open skies and crisp mountain air. He wished he were already gone.
Thorn cocked his head, amusement flickering in his eyes. “Always so impatient. Where will you go?”
“I don’t know.” In truth, he did know where he would go—everywhere. He just didn’t know where he would go first. He had spent his childhood fantasizing about escaping the smoke and strangled sky of the Nightwood, of traveling to distant and bizarre lands. He had had a taste of it after joining the emperor’s court, though there, he had gone where he was bid.
“You don’t know.” Thorn’s amusement seemed to grow. “You haven’t changed. You never think ahead, do you? I still find it hard to believe that you of all people were the one who broke the spell.”
Thorn’s voice had a lazy quality River distrusted, though his face gave nothing away. It rarely did. Thorn had always been the quietest of the four of them, his thoughts like a lightless pool at the heart of a mountain. River and Thorn had never been close. Thorn and Esha were a pair, just as River and Sky had been a pair. Esha had barely noticed his younger brother at all—when he had, it had been to torment him. He was the cause of most of the scars River bore, more than all the glaciers he had scaled and wild beasts he had faced combined.
“Is there any point to this?” River said. “Other than stroking Esha’s ego.”
“Inheriting the Crown is a great honor.”
“And you think Esha deserves it?” The Crown wasn’t a physical object—witches didn’t rely on human symbols to convey their standing. Centuries ago, before the emperor cast the binding spell, the Crown had been a magical gift, passed down from one ruler to the next. It marked them as separate from other witches. Some said it also instilled respect—and fear. Since the binding spell was cast, the Crown had lain dormant. Esha, the eldest descendant of the woman who had last held it, was naturally the one the Crown had chosen.
River didn’t say what he truly felt: that Esha shouldn’t be the one standing there. It should have been his mother, or Sky. Something sharp rose inside him. He had never been good at naming his emotions, and it had only grown more difficult since he had met Azar-at.
Thorn gave him a strange look. “I suppose so. Though I wouldn’t have minded being chosen myself.”
“Esha’s next in line.”
“That doesn’t always matter.”
River rolled his eyes. Thorn was dreaming. The Crown was almost always inherited by the eldest child. Sometimes, there were exceptions. If the emperor was murdered—which had happened—it sometimes passed to the assassin.
The Crown can be fickle, his mother had once said. It doesn’t like weakness, and it will seize any chance to escape a weak ruler.
But Esha was the eldest. And while he was many things, he wasn’t weak.
Something rustled the leaves. River started as a small, pointed face thrust through the branches behind Thorn’s feet. The creature bared its teeth at the sight of him.
It was, unmistakably this time, Kamzin’s fox.
River barely had time to process this before the creature slid back into the forest, pausing only to snap at Thorn’s heel. His brother shifted position slightly, frowning.
River’s hands clenched into fists. What was the fox doing, trailing after him like a bedraggled shadow? Was it spying on him? He had always thought there was something strange about it, though Kamzin had never seemed troubled by its odd behavior.
Murmuring swept through the forest. River turned to the boulder, where his eldest brother had emerged from the shadows, eyes blazing. Esha’s eyes were always bloodshot, irritated by the smoke and haze of the Nightwood. His hair was an unkempt scraggle, and he was painfully thin, but not in a way that suggested frailty—his every movement hummed with a fierce vitality, as if some dark flame burned at the heart of him.
River’s gaze drifted to the boulder beneath Esha’s feet. His thoughts flashed to the times Sky had raced him to that boulder, a convenient landmark for games. River had won every time, drawing even with Sky at the last moment, then surging past his eldest brother’s wide-eyed amazement. He had thought himself the fastest runner in the Nightwood. It wasn’t until he was older that he realized Sky had been letting him win.
“River.” Esha’s voice was calm and carrying.
River’s fists, he realized, were still clenched in his pockets—with an effort, he loosened them. He didn’t bother to wait for the crowd to part, merely strode forward, requiring everyone to get out of his way. They did. Murmuring swelled through the hall as he strode to the dais and, uninvited, stepped onto it. Irritation flickered in Esha’s eyes.
“Welcome home, brother,” he said.
River gazed into the sea of faces. He recognized a few, here and there—Rohna, his mother’s cousin, who stared at him with a hungry sort of pride; Kalden, an ancient witch who had often quarreled with Sky over raids on the Empire’s villages, his creased face filled with suspicion. Others he might never have seen before—Esha had summoned witches from even the farthest reaches of the Nightwood. Shadows swirled, and the air was electric with magic. He hadn’t meant his comment to Thorn as a joke—witches were unpredictable, and there were certainly those in the crowd who hated him for joining the Empire, even given what he had done for them. He kept his expression opaque.
“You’ve surprised us,” Esha said. “The spell was already failing, it’s true, but you hastened its demise. For that, we are grateful.”
River smothered a smile. It was clear that the effort of paying his youngest brother a compliment was, for Esha, near to torturous. He was beginning to enjoy himself.
Esha turned back to the crowd, and River wondered if he was about to dazzle everyone with a display of magic. The witches gazed at him worshipfully. River knew that few of them regretted Sky’s death. As a flame draws moths, Esha had always attracted admirers—he was like fire himself, enticing yet dangerous, warm with some and vicious with others. He was the opposite of quiet, brooding Sky, who had always been respected, but rarely liked. Any witch, if asked who they would have chosen to lead them, would have said Esha—and Esha knew it. He had spent his life hating Sky, never having forgiven him for the crime of being firstborn.
But rather than unleashing his powers, Esha merely gestured to two witches standing near the dais.
“Bring them,” he said. The witches slipped away through the trees.
Excited murmurs swept the hall like wind. No one knew what Esha had planned, and they were enjoying the mystery. Even River felt a stab of anticipation. Something rustled in the trees behind him. Probably a ghost—the forest was full of them. Any creature that died in the Nightwood tended to stay there—something about the forest was sticky, and held on to the spirits of the dying like spiderwebs. They were humans mostly—merchants, soldiers, village children. Esha was responsible for many of them. River’s brother had never discriminated between soldiers of the Empire and her children, something River found distasteful. There were also animal spirits, those of livestock stolen from the mountain villages. River had encountered more than one yak ghost, which was always unpleasant. Many animals mistrusted witches for their ability to assume their shapes, but yaks, for some reason, ha
d particularly disliked him. It was an antipathy they seemed to retain in spirit form.
There were no witch spirits. Witches didn’t become ghosts.
River felt something inside him go out, like a flame in a gust of wind. He would never see Sky again, in this world or any other.
The noise came again, louder this time. It wasn’t rustling—it was whispering. Sharp, staccato whispers that rose and fell, as if carried on a breeze—
The wind howled. The snow fell thick and fast, blotting out the landscape. Lusha’s hand held his arm. Tem, beside him, clutched at the kinnika, his head bent as he murmured an incantation. His shield was failing.
Lusha nocked an arrow, her eyes narrowed as she searched for a target through the raging snow. She turned to him.
“Kamzin—”
“What are you doing?”
River came back to himself with a start. He was in the Nightwood, beside Esha on the dais. Esha was staring at him—he had stumbled slightly, and now stood blinking in the darkness.
Kamzin. That was Kamzin’s mind. Kamzin’s thoughts.
His vision swam. For a moment, he thought he would be pulled back to that snowy world, where the cold burrowed beneath his skin in a way it never had before.
It wasn’t possible. It didn’t make sense.
And yet he couldn’t deny what had happened. It had been real, as real as the murmur of the nearby stream and the taste of smoke. He had been enspelled. But by who? Some small, detached part of him was impressed by the tidiness of the magic—most spells left traces, but he could sense nothing.
She had been frightened. River felt a brief urge to lash out—not at Kamzin, but at whatever it was that had been threatening her. He tried to probe the memory, but it was like pushing against a door that only swung one way. He couldn’t find his way back to Kamzin’s thoughts. What she had been thinking in that moment wasn’t enough to piece together an explanation.
All the Wandering Light Page 3