I gazed down at my hands. They were mine, familiar and stubby-fingered, but for a few moments, they had been someone else’s. I knew those hands well—the fingers long and aristocratic, except for two on the left hand—
Mara sat beside the fire, oiling one of the dragons, who crooned and preened in his lap. He glanced at me, his face illuminated by the flickering green light.
“Bad dream?” he said, in the sort of tone you would use with a tiresome child.
“River,” I murmured. “That was River.”
Mara’s expression changed. “River was here?”
I didn’t reply. I was still gazing at my hands, though I no longer saw them. How was this possible? Had River cast a spell on me? I thought back to the last time I had seen him, cloaked in magic on the summit of Raksha. Why would he do that?
“She said she saw River,” Mara said to Lusha, who had followed me out of the tent.
“Not here. He was in the Nightwood,” I said. “At least, I think so. He’s looking for something, something his brother thinks can destroy the Empire.” I thought back. Unlike a dream, the memories remained perfectly intact. “A fallen star.”
Lusha’s furrowed brow was almost a mirror image of Tem’s. “What in the name of the spirits—”
“I wasn’t dreaming,” I said, silencing her with a frustrated gesture. “I saw his thoughts. It’s like I was watching from—from behind his eyes. I can’t explain it, but it was real. I know what they want. The witches.” My mind raced frantically. My heart felt ready to burst through my chest. I felt terror, certainly—but with it came a dark excitement. Because I knew now what River wanted.
And that meant I could take it from him.
I saw River saving my life. I saw him laughing by the fire. I saw him abandoning me on the summit of Raksha. I could take the star and prevent him from hurting anyone. From hurting Azmiri. For a moment, I wasn’t certain what I wanted more: to take the star from River, or prevent the witches from using it. They were the same, and yet they weren’t.
“We have to head north,” I said. “We have to find the star before the witches do.”
They all stared at me. A long moment passed, during which the only sounds were the hiss and pop of the campfire.
Mara spoke first. “She’s lost her mind. That creature—it’s done something to her.”
“This has nothing to do with Azar-at,” I snapped.
The fire demon, perhaps responding to the sound of its name, appeared at the edge of my vision. It could have stepped out from behind the tent, or simply summoned its wolfish shape from the air. It settled on its haunches, tongue lolling, ember eyes taking us in.
“Go through it again,” Lusha said, “slowly. In your dream, you saw River’s thoughts?”
“It wasn’t a dream.” I had to restrain myself from shouting. “He’s looking for a fallen star in the Ash Mountains. I don’t know what it does, only that it’s powerful. I guess it can be used as some sort of weapon? His brother wants it—I think his brother is their emperor.” For as long as I had been alive, the witches’ ruler had been named in fireside tales as the shadow empress, a creature made of bones and darkness. But now, if my vision had been true, River’s brother had taken his mother’s place.
Lusha started. “The Ashes?”
“Yes.” I gazed at her. “What is it?”
For a moment, she didn’t reply. “There was a star that fell in the Ashes, during the shower. I tracked its trajectory—fallen stars are rare.”
“You see?” I turned to the others. Mara’s expression was skeptical, while Tem looked queasy, or perhaps he was still recovering from the kick I faintly recalled landing in his stomach. He hadn’t said a word during the entire argument. “I’m not delusional.”
“I’m not convinced of that,” Lusha said. “Do you really expect us to go chasing after a fallen star because you had an unusual dream?”
Mara made an irritated sound. “Do we even need to debate this? It’s nonsense.”
“Did River know?” Tem said quietly. “Did he sense you?”
Mara stared. “Don’t tell me you believe her.”
Tem ignored him. He kept his gaze on mine.
I thought back. “No. I don’t think so. I didn’t realize it myself until I woke up. It was like I was seeing everything from his eyes. Like I was gone.” A shiver traveled down my back, and I had that odd sensation again, of being not quite moored to my own body. Being inside River’s mind had been unsettling, to put it mildly. Not least because of the power I had felt at my command, like an untapped reservoir of unfathomable depths. I felt almost drunk from the memory alone. How did River focus on anything else, with that much magic at his disposal? Was he even fully conscious of it?
Tem’s gaze turned inward. I recognized that look—he had worn it often enough in the elder’s library in Azmiri, poring over shamanic scrolls. Lusha glanced from me to Tem. She still didn’t believe me, I could tell, but Tem’s reaction had given her pause. Through my anger, I felt a flicker of surprise. Back in Azmiri, Lusha had barely spared Tem a glance. She had that in common with most of the villagers, who saw Tem as the shy sidekick of the elder’s daughter, if they noticed him at all. But the last few days had altered something in her perception of him—and Mara’s. The chronicler seemed to be waiting for Tem to speak.
“What?” Lusha prompted impatiently.
“I think Kamzin’s mistaken,” he said. My stomach dropped. “I think this has everything to do with Azar-at.”
I blinked. It was the last thing I had expected him to say. “What do you mean?”
“Well, Azar-at connects the two of you. River may have ended their contract, but Azar-at still has part of his soul—maybe the better part of it, for all we know. And now—”
“Now he has part of mine.” The world seemed to shift. I had thought I’d known what I was getting myself into when I agreed to Azar-at’s offer. But now it seemed there were entire worlds of consequences that I couldn’t have imagined.
The fire demon was silent throughout our exchange, its tail stroking the snow. The flickering orange glow of its wide eyes seemed to take us all in at once.
“What are you saying?” Lusha’s face was pale. “Have you heard of this sort of thing happening before?”
“No. It’s rare for shamans to bind themselves to a fire demon,” he said. “And for two people to bind themselves to the same one—I doubt it’s ever happened. But what Kamzin is describing is plausible, given the laws of shamanic magic, at least. When you give away a piece of your soul, it doesn’t die—a soul can’t die, even if it’s divided. It lives on in whatever vessel you choose to hold it. I suppose it’s possible for two souls, cut off like that, to jumble together, at least slightly.”
Mara was now looking at me as if I had contracted something horribly contagious. “Does that mean—could it work the other way? Could River be here now?”
I felt faint. I looked at Azar-at. “Is he here?”
River is gone, the fire demon said. He left.
“What does that mean?” I demanded. “Was he here?”
The creature shifted position, wavering in the breeze. River is gone. There was an odd note in its usually flat tone.
“How long did your vision last?” Tem said.
“A few moments.” My throat felt very dry.
“And can you see his thoughts now?”
“No.”
Tem nodded. “It’s probably the same for him. Or perhaps he can’t see into Kamzin’s mind at all, given that he’s no longer tied to Azar-at. Perhaps it only works one way.”
I felt faint. “I’d prefer that it didn’t work any way.”
“But if this is true, it could be useful.” Lusha seemed to be thinking out loud. “It could give us a window into what the witches are planning.”
I glared at her. I wasn’t sure I appreciated being referred to as a useful window.
“Well, you’re all right, aren’t you?” Lusha said defensively. “Now tha
t you’ve calmed down.”
“I’d like to see how calm you would be, in my shoes.”
“I will never be in your shoes, Kamzin.” Lusha’s voice was ice. “Because I would never be foolish enough to trust the word of a fire demon.”
“I’m still not convinced,” Mara said. “Dreams can be vivid—isn’t that the most likely explanation? Besides, I can’t imagine River would allow Kamzin to use Azar-at’s power, if this sort of thing was possible. I doubt he would be happy sharing his thoughts and plans.”
“River doesn’t know about my contract with Azar-at. He was long gone.” I was frustrated. “If I’m imagining this whole thing, if it was just a dream, how is it I know that River led an expedition to look for a fallen star before, and that you were with him?”
Mara’s expression grew scornful. “He could have told you that himself.”
“So now I’m delusional and a liar?” I narrowed my eyes. “Apparently it rained the whole time, but that wasn’t as bad as your complaining. And your scrolls weren’t carried off by the floods, you know. River threw them away when you weren’t looking.”
Mara opened and then closed his mouth. Any response he might have given, though, was forestalled by the sound of wingbeats.
“Biter!” Lusha called. The raven circled our campsite, then landed with a thud on Lusha’s shoulder. She winced, while the bird crouched low, clearly relieved to rest his wings. His feathers were in disarray, and he managed only a low crrk when Lusha stroked his beak.
“You made it,” she said, her voice gentle. Biter held out his foot, and she removed the scrap of parchment tied there. The bird burrowed into her hood.
“That’s not your note, is it?” I said.
“No. He reached Azmiri.”
“What does it say?” I crowded around her before she could respond. The note, once unrolled, was short. The sight of Father’s handwriting brought tears to my eyes. The paper smelled like home, of Aunt Behe’s cooking and Father’s incense. He would have written it at the table in his bedroom, his shoulders hunching to bring his eyes as close to the paper as possible—Father’s sight was terrible. I swallowed against the tightness in my throat.
The message was simple enough—there had been no sightings of witches in Azmiri, and as far as anyone could tell, the Nightwood was quiet. There had been an attack on one of the villages in the Southern Aryas—the signs suggested a barbarian force. The emperor had sent his Ninth Army to investigate, which would certainly get things under control. Father would have guards stationed around the village, and any animals or birds who strayed within its boundaries would be shot on sight with obsidian arrows. Chirri would cast all the warding spells she knew, and he would send a messenger to the emperor to request an army to protect Azmiri. In short, he wrote, we were not to worry about the village, but were to return home as quickly as possible, where he would expect a full account.
“I didn’t give him many details,” Lusha said. “About River, or what happened on Raksha. He would have blamed himself.”
She folded the note gently, careful not to tear it. River’s deception, and my own role in breaking the binding spell, loomed large in my thoughts. “We’ll have to explain it all eventually.”
“Eventually. After we get home and he sees that we’re safe.”
“Can I look at that?” Tem said. Lusha handed him the letter. He unfolded it, muttering something about the Ninth Army.
“Can’t we reply?” I said.
Lusha touched Biter’s beak. The raven barely stirred. “He wouldn’t make it. It will be days before he can fly again.”
My chest ached. I wanted nothing more than to follow through on our plan—to make for Azmiri as if the fiangul were chasing us. But—
“Lusha, we have to find the star,” I said. “I think the witches need it—why else would they hold off on attacking the Three Cities? They despise the emperor more than anything. If they could destroy him now, they wouldn’t hesitate.”
Lusha didn’t meet my eyes. Her gaze was fixed on the ground, but it seemed distant.
“If you truly saw a glimpse of River’s expedition to the southern rainforest, you should know how ridiculous your idea is,” Mara said. “Fallen stars are impossible to retrieve, because they don’t stay fallen—they return to the sky within days.”
“If you say so,” I said. “I don’t know anything about them, besides what River was thinking in that moment. I don’t even know what they do.”
“The ancient shamans used them,” Tem said, glancing up from the letter. “To what purpose, I don’t know. It’s not something Chirri ever asked you to study—probably because they’re so rare.”
We all looked expectantly at Lusha. Of all of us, she would know the most about fallen stars, having been apprenticed to Yonden, the village seer, for more than five years.
Yonden. I realized that Father likely wasn’t the only person on Lusha’s mind as she turned to gaze in the direction of Azmiri. I bit my lip and refrained from pressing her.
Finally, Lusha said, “Fallen stars convey power over death. The power to kill—and the power to raise the dead.”
“That’s impossible.” Even I knew that life and death were beyond magic. Shamans could wound, certainly, and they could speed healing, but they couldn’t stop someone’s heart or bring back the dead. There were resurrection spells that could, if wielded by a skilled shaman, rescue a life that hovered near death—Chirri used them on clutches of dragon eggs that had been abandoned by their mothers. But even those were useless past a certain point. Some things, Chirri had always said, were bigger than magic.
“No,” Lusha said, “it isn’t. Shamans have raised the dead before—Yonden has traced their stories. Such magics are dangerous and unstable. They were banned long ago, and in the early days of the Empire, it was against the law even to mention them. A fallen star can raise the dead, but they’re not—they’re not right. They’re different than they were in life.”
The hair on my neck stood up. “How?”
Lusha looked at me. “The few accounts I’ve read refer to the process as ‘unspeakable.’ The dead are enslaved by the shaman who raised them, twisted and corrupted. Shamans used them to evil ends, but it’s just as evil to inflict that sort of suffering on the dead.”
We were silent. The wind rustled over the snow—it sounded like distant footsteps. “What would the witches want with a resurrection spell?” Tem said finally.
Mara looked grim. “That’s not a difficult question. Their numbers are greatly diminished since the days before their powers were bound. The Empire has killed thousands of them.”
“Surely they couldn’t bring them all back.”
Lusha was shaking her head. “A fallen star isn’t like a talisman. Their power is difficult to exhaust. They could raise an army. They could destroy the Empire,” she finished, her voice tight, “with one strike.”
I felt frozen, shocked into silence by the horror of it.
“Then we need to do as Kamzin says,” Tem said. “We find the star. We take it to the emperor—perhaps his shamans know a way to destroy it, to prevent the witches from ever—”
Lusha let out her breath in a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “The emperor won’t destroy it.”
“Certainly not,” Mara agreed. “He has sent numerous explorers after fallen stars.”
“Why? Does he want to raise the dead?” I said. “Or does he seek the power to kill?”
“He already has that power,” Tem said. “He is emperor, after all.”
“Fallen stars can grant the power to kill without weapons,” Lusha said. “Without armies. A wave of your hand, and your enemy falls by the hundreds, while your forces remain intact. Imagine it.”
I didn’t want to imagine it. “But he’s never caught one?”
Mara shook his head. “Not for lack of trying.”
“But he did catch one,” Lusha said. “Once, over two centuries ago. I helped Yonden trace that story. The emperor used the sta
r against the witches.”
“How? By killing them?”
“He tried. But it didn’t work.” Lusha’s brow was furrowed, and she gazed at the stars clinging to the western horizon as if to center herself. “Something went wrong—as I said, these magics are often unpredictable. Using the star gave the witches a kind of living death—it didn’t kill them, but they were no longer fully alive. In the stories, witches carry magic in their bones, in their blood. That’s why they don’t need talismans—magic is part of them. The spell the emperor cast didn’t take the breath from their bodies—it took what they were.”
It took me a moment to work out what she was saying. Tem arrived there before me. “The binding spell.”
I drew in my breath. Mara looked as if he had been struck. “Then it wasn’t truly a binding spell. Was it?”
“It wasn’t meant to be.” Lusha’s expression was dark. “It was meant to destroy them. In a way, it did.”
A shudder ran through me. I had never thought much about the spell that had been cast on the witches long before I was born. It was simply a fact of life. Necessary, and right—a check on the witches’ dark powers. Yet in a way, the spell Lusha described was as terrible as raising the dead, even if the witches’ crimes had warranted the half-life the emperor had given them. Was that how the witches had felt—damaged, not quite alive? Was that how River had felt?
“Then the binding spell could be recast,” Tem said, “if we can find the star.”
“And Azmiri will be safe.” I set my jaw, forcing back my unease. “All the more reason to set out for the Ashes. Now.”
“I agree,” Mara said. “It will be a perilous journey. But surely in this case, risk is warranted.”
We were all staring at Lusha again. She turned to us finally, her face very pale.
“It’s wrong,” she said. “Trapping fallen stars is wrong. All seers understand this. The stars are apart from the human realm. Their power isn’t meant to be held in human hands—or, for that matter, in the hands of witches.”
I shook my head. “Lusha, we don’t have the luxury of worrying about some seers’ code. The witches will destroy the Empire, and Azmiri.”
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