Two things were clear: one, he had been enspelled. And two, he couldn’t reveal it to anyone. It was a clear sign of weakness.
“Don’t look so concerned, Esha,” River said. “I just climbed the highest mountain in the Empire. If you want me to stay awake, don’t drag me to tedious ceremonies.”
Esha’s scornful look returned. “I apologize for expecting you to take this seriously. I should have known I’m still dealing with a child.”
The two witches had reappeared, each dragging a captive. The captives were clothed in finely made chubas, light in color, and they stood out against the surrounding shadow. River started.
The chubas were made of tahrskin.
The explorers—one man and one woman—were led to the front of the dais. Horror dawned on their faces as they beheld Esha looking down at them. River felt a stirring of unease. He didn’t recognize the man, but the woman he had met before. Her name was Malay, a member of the nobility and one of the emperor’s favorites. River had once sat beside her at a banquet, where they had traded jokes and stories about their separate travails in the Drakkar Mountains.
Malay’s gaze drifted from Esha to River. She seemed to freeze, her face whitening. River, unconsciously, had taken a step forward. Esha was already speaking.
“These two were found in the Amarin Valley,” Esha said. His voice remained low, but it carried across the Hall, which was eerily silent, despite the number of witches present. “Empire spies.”
That raised a low hiss from the gathering. Malay looked over her shoulder, as if startled by the number of voices she heard. In such darkness, she would be barely able to see.
“It’s said that, in ancient times, every coronation ran red,” Esha said. “The stories say the Crown is strengthened by blood.”
The murmurs were approving. A enormous hawk alighted on a lower branch closer to the dais, as if to seek a better view. A bear growled from the trees.
Esha raised his hands, and the darkness began to stir. It snaked over the two explorers. The man struggled before growing still, his mouth round with horror. The shadows twined about his wrists and ankles, lifting him into the air.
Malay did not move—her gaze was fixated on River, her graying hair stirred by the shadows. Her eyes had a glassy quality, as if she was too shocked to comprehend what she saw. Even as the man began to scream, as the shadows pierced his skin, she stared at him.
After a moment, the man fell silent. River didn’t even glance at him. The shadows moved to Malay, sliding over her body and lifting her into the air. She jerked in alarm, breaking eye contact with River at last.
He was moving before he knew what he was doing, leaping off the dais, summoning the shadows that wrapped around Malay. To his surprise, they obeyed him without hesitation, spooling at his feet like thread. The explorer hit the ground hard, and River crouched beside her. She was unconscious, though her eyelids fluttered as he touched her face. Her mouth was still open, as if she had carried her terror with her into sleep.
River was so relieved to find his friend still alive, still breathing, that he didn’t immediately notice how quiet the hall had become. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
He looked up. Esha’s jaw was slack with shock. Thorn’s eyes were narrowed, absent their characteristic amusement. And hundreds of witches stared at him with a hungry fury in their eyes.
“I take it back,” Thorn said. “Everyone definitely wants to kill you.”
River ignored him. He threw himself down on the throne, folding his ankle over his knee. The great rock, situated in a clearing on the brow of a hill some distance from the Great Hall, was stained with blood at the base, evidence of innumerable battles and assassinations. River’s thoughts flashed to the emperor’s immaculate, gilded throne. How many times had he seen Lozong seated there in precisely the same posture?
Esha was pacing. He hadn’t spoken a word to River since the scene in the hall an hour ago, when he had ordered the witches to disperse, barely a heartbeat before they tore River to pieces.
“What’s wrong with you?” There was no anger in Thorn’s question, only bafflement. He stared at River as if he were a stranger.
“I know her.” River heard the strangeness of his own words. He felt a sense of futility, as if he were trying to communicate with his brothers in a language they didn’t speak. Malay was part of the Empire—she had, in all likelihood, come to the Nightwood to spy on them. But still . . . she was his friend. He wasn’t going to watch Esha harm her.
“Is that sentiment?” Esha turned to face him. “For one of the emperor’s slaves?”
“She’s no more his slave than I was,” River snapped.
“I think I know what this is about.” Thorn peered at River as if he were slowly coming into focus. “I told you he hadn’t changed, Esha.”
Thorn’s tone made his meaning clear. Scorn replaced the shock in Esha’s gaze. “Is that it? You had a relationship with a human?”
River almost laughed, and not because he saw any humor in the situation. There was no point in attempting to explain himself to his brothers. Let them think he had baser feelings for Malay. It was certainly simpler than explaining his true motivations, which he wasn’t sure he could even explain to himself.
“I thought that you might have matured in the years you spent in the Empire’s service,” Esha said. He clearly had taken River’s silence for an admission of guilt. “But I see now that you’re the same irresponsible child you were when you left.”
Esha came forward into the light, though he didn’t leave the shadows behind; they swirled at his back like a cloak. River suppressed the urge to lean away. Esha’s magic smelled of soot and things that grew in dank places.
“You’ve given the others a very good reason to distrust you,” Esha said. “As if they needed the encouragement. I don’t know if I’ll be able to protect you forever.”
Now it was River’s turn to stare at Esha. “Protect me?”
“As it turns out, I need you.” Esha turned away. “A star fell in the Ash Mountains two days ago. Several witnessed it.”
River watched him, perplexed. He couldn’t fathom why Esha was bringing this up now. “And?”
“I want you to retrieve it for me.”
For a moment, River was too surprised to reply. “You want me to—”
“Retrieve the star, yes.” Esha watched him. “You can do it? You are a celebrated explorer, after all.”
River looked from Esha to Thorn, whose expression showed no surprise whatsoever. He knew little about fallen stars—he knew that the emperor sought them, and that they possessed an ancient magic. He didn’t know what kind. The shamans of the Three Cities told stories about them, all fantastical and contradictory. Some said they killed any who touched them. Others that they could level cities.
“Why?” he said.
Esha began to pace again. “There are barely three hundred of us left alive. Do you know how many soldiers Lozong has at his command? How many shamans? Their numbers are in the thousands. We can’t destroy the Empire as we are. We need the star. They say there is nothing more powerful.”
River felt a surge of frustration. Esha would never be dissuaded from attacking the Empire. Like most witches, he had breathed fantasies of revenge his entire life. Yet River knew it went beyond that for his brother. Esha finally had what he had always dreamed of: authority. The chance to be a leader. He now needed to prove what he had always believed to be true: that he, not Sky, was the one who deserved the title of emperor.
“So that’s your plan?” River said. “Find the star, then attack the Empire? You don’t even know what powers it will give you.”
The corner of Esha’s mouth quirked in something that wasn’t a smile. Though he wasn’t afraid of Esha anymore, as he had been as a child, that look still gave River a chill. He had seen Esha wear it before he tore people apart. Literally. River had witnessed what he had done to a group of Empire traders who had strayed into the Amarin Valley.
“The attack has already begun,” Esha said. “I’ve sent raiding parties to the border villages of the Empire. We will lure the emperor’s armies away, spread them thin. Then, with the star, we’ll invade the Three Cities and reduce them to ash.”
River didn’t know why Esha’s words would fill him with an odd, cold feeling. Perhaps because it was such a brazen plan that it was difficult to imagine it actually working. He eyed Esha with distaste. It shouldn’t surprise him that his brother had already constructed an elaborate plot to destroy the Empire. Esha had always been the cleverest among them, and plotting was his specialty—one of his least appealing traits, in River’s opinion. He wondered what other plans Esha had laid, for surely there were others. Esha’s plots were like loose threads in a tapestry—pull at one, and three more tumbled free.
River flicked a speck off his chuba. “So you need me, do you? I thought I was just a child.”
Esha’s eyes narrowed. “We can reach the Ashes in three days. We’ll take a small party, to travel as quickly as possible.”
“My mistake,” River said. “An irresponsible child.”
“Can you do it?” Thorn said, anger cutting through his customary coolness. Esha placed a hand on his shoulder, surprisingly gentle. But then, Esha had always been gentle with Thorn, as he was with all his hangers-on. It was all the more startling given the purity of his viciousness toward his enemies. Despite himself, River felt a twinge of jealousy.
He leaned back into the throne. “Fallen stars are almost impossible to catch. They don’t stay earthbound for long—a few days, at most. The emperor sent me after a star shortly after I was named Royal Explorer.” He recalled the long journey to the unexplored lands south of Dawa Lake, days tearing through hot, dense forest and nights of torrential rains that flooded his tent. Even Azar-at had seemed fed up. When they reached the place the royal seers had described, all they found was an empty crater. “It wasn’t my most successful expedition.”
“You have your powers now,” Esha said.
River pondered it. Absently, he twined one of the shadows about his fingers, pooling it in his palms as he had before. He had to admit, the idea intrigued him. It irritated him that he had never succeeded in catching a star, something other explorers deemed impossible. Wouldn’t it be enjoyable to test the limits of his powers, to watch the impossible shatter like ice beneath his boot?
“You helped Lozong,” Esha murmured. “Yet you won’t help us? The Empire killed Mother. They killed Sky. Have you forgotten?”
“No.” River’s anger flared. He saw his mother, hair tangled with dirt and twigs, raging. Sky had been the only person who could steady her, but there were times when even he couldn’t guide her through the wilderness of her imaginings. The binding spell had affected all witches differently—most felt it like a weight that accompanied their every movement. But for others, it was a mental, not a physical one. Some broke under that weight. His mother had been one of them.
When River had last seen her, she had been on that throne. It had been one of her rare moments of clarity, and she had known who he was and that he was leaving. She had touched his chin, as she had when he was a boy, and wished him luck in an oddly wistful voice. Had she known it would be the last time they would see each other?
His thoughts darkened. He might not care about revenge, but that didn’t mean he didn’t hate the Empire. If Esha wanted River to bring him a fallen star, he would do it. He could disappear afterward.
“Tell me where it fell,” he said.
Five
THE SUN HAD set by the time we finally reached base camp, a small, elevated plateau nestled in the lower slopes of Mount Ngadi. We had descended Raksha in a day, painstakingly lowering ourselves down the treacherous ice wall as the sun and wind chapped our skin, then traversing the icefall of towering, groaning seracs. Though I was exhausted, I felt little relief as we stumbled toward the tents. I wouldn’t feel entirely free of the mountain until we left its shadow.
The yak grunted excitedly as we approached. She was huddled behind a rock, head lowered in a morose posture. I held out a hand and she nosed up to me, pressing her forelock into my neck with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. She was untethered, which surprised me. But then, she would know better than to stray too far from her only food source in miles. The dragons we had left behind lay in a tangled heap by the tent. They murmured sleepily at our approach, too cold to stir.
“It’s been out for a while,” Tem said, examining the small firepit. A layer of snow covered it. Wordlessly, Mara began assembling kindling.
“Dargye?” Lusha called, approaching the tent. The flap, which Dargye had failed to secure, rustled in the breeze with a gentle shhh, shhh.
I collapsed on the ground, too tired to care that Dargye had fallen asleep when he should have been watching for our return. Tem might have healed my ankle, but the rest of me was spent. I let my pack slide down my shoulders with a sigh of relief.
“Tem,” I said, “do you know a spell to make our dinner prepare itself?”
He chuckled, the smile breaking through the weariness on his face. “No. But I can help Mara start the fire.” He pulled out the kinnika, which gleamed in the dying light.
Something nagged at me as I watched Tem caress the bells almost lovingly. Stolen magic, River had called them. Imbued with witch magic, like every talisman used by the emperor’s shamans. “Has their power weakened?”
Tem looked thoughtful. He lifted one of the bells, muttering something. I jumped as one of the scraps of kindling in the firepit exploded into flame.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“I can’t understand it,” I murmured. “If the talismans are stolen magic—magic that returned to the witches after the binding spell broke—shouldn’t they be powerless now? River said—”
“Clearly, River isn’t right about everything.” There was an odd note in his voice. I bit my lip and made no further argument.
Lusha strode back to us. “Dargye isn’t here.”
“What?”
“Tent’s empty. His pack’s gone.” She began setting up her telescope. “I’ll see if I can find any evidence of his trail.”
“Where could he be?”
“Hunting, I assume. He took the bow.”
Mara eyed the sky. “Light’s long gone. He should have returned by now.”
“We should go after him,” I said. Despite my exhaustion, I moved to retrieve my pack from where I had dropped it.
“No,” Lusha said. Just that word.
I felt a prickle of irritation. “Lusha—”
“This terrain is too dangerous to navigate in the dark,” she said. “We should all stay close to camp tonight.”
Mara was nodding. “That’s certainly the safest course.”
I fell mutinously silent. I had been the leader of River’s expedition, and I still saw myself in that role, broken and diminished as our group was. At the same time, it was abundantly clear that Lusha viewed herself in the same light. It was unlikely that the idea of a different hierarchy would even occur to her, or to Mara. Even Tem watched Lusha expectantly as she bent over her telescope.
I gazed into the gathering dark. Nervousness twisted in my stomach. The thought flitted through my mind: Azar-at could find Dargye. I shoved it away, but not before I imagined I saw the fire demon’s eyes gleam in the shadows. The Aryas pressed into our backs, while before us lay the enormous glacier that flowed down from Raksha, riven with cracks and ripples that gleamed a ghostly blue in the dying light. To the south, the ground fell away—a constant decline covered in mountain rubble and patchy snow. Far in the distance was a landscape of low hills, crowned with black trees that marked the edge of the Nightwood—the witches’ lands.
After a moment, Lusha looked up and shook her head. Shhh, shhh, went the tent flap.
There was nothing else to do but prepare for the night. Mara and Tem did the cooking, and within minutes, the smell of fried sampa filled the air, lifting everyo
ne’s spirits. It had been days since any of us had eaten a proper meal, and I had to stop myself from scooping the half-cooked porridge from the pot with my fingers. To distract myself, I set up the second tent and fed the dragons and the yak. Lusha didn’t stir—her face was buried in her telescope again, but the instrument was pointed at the sky now.
After eating, we took turns bathing in the stream that trickled down the mountainside a short walk from camp. The surface was crusted with ice, which had to be smashed to reach the frigid water below. I scrubbed myself quickly from head to toe, my teeth chattering. I dunked my head under and rose with shards of ice tangled in my hair. Finally, when I was unable to feel my hands or feet anymore, I dressed in the clean clothes I had left at base camp and staggered back to the fire.
“I could kiss you, Tem,” I groaned unthinkingly as he handed me a bowl of butter tea. He smiled, but a flush started on his cheeks. My thoughts flashed back to the last night we had spent here together, the feeling of his lips against my skin and the warmth in our small tent. I felt a prickle of guilt—I knew that Tem had feelings for me that I didn’t share. I had known then, and yet I had almost let us go down that road again, which wasn’t fair to him. I looked away, swallowing the tea so quickly I burned my throat.
The night was clear, and the stars blazed with their cold light. The yak was asleep, her rump turned toward the fire, the dragons burrowed contentedly in her fur.
“How are you feeling?” I asked Tem. As Mara had pointed out, we were at least two weeks from Azmiri, though I hoped to reduce that by setting a punishing pace. Tem was the one I was most concerned about—he had stumbled several times during the descent.
“I’m fine.” He wasn’t looking at me. “Don’t worry about me, Kamzin.”
Mara sat across from us beside the fire, head bowed over a map. He rubbed his nose absently, smudging it with charcoal. I craned my head, and found a painfully familiar rendering of our abandoned camp on Mount Raksha staring back at me. Mara was not mapmaking, but drawing, the image bordered by lines of dense characters. I would have thought it impossible that such a sensitive rendering could belong to someone as cold and high-handed as Mara, was I not seeing it pour from his hands.
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