Mara entered a square of stone houses that seemed to have escaped the inferno. Two men and a girl of perhaps thirteen were lifting another body off a cart and placing it in a row with several others. The cloth that covered it slipped, revealing an arm blistered with burns.
Mara cast a cool look over the bodies. “I am sorry to interrupt your rites,” he said, keeping his voice calm but authoritative, “but I’m looking for your Elder. I was sent from the emperor’s court.”
“Really?” the girl said in what might have been a dry tone—Mara couldn’t read her. None of the others smiled. The girl stood, absently wiping bloody hands on her dress. “We’ve received more travelers from the Empire in a month than we normally do in a year. Are you from Kamzin’s expedition?”
Mara paused, surprised. “I— In a sense. She is—”
“This way.” The girl strode past him without a backward glance, stepping calmly over a body.
Mara followed her up a narrow lane, where there were several more intact dwellings. The witches had destroyed most, not all, of the village. He felt a stab of foreboding. If they had attacked Jangsa in revenge, they would have taken care to ensure that nothing—and no one—survived. No, their aim had been to burn the village quickly, sending smoke billowing into the sky like a beacon—a beacon to draw the Empire’s eye.
The elder was seated in a bed over which a healer leaned, murmuring. He was a stout man with a round face within which his small, dark eyes seemed almost lost. When he saw Mara, he dismissed the healer. He motioned the girl forward, and she whispered something in his ear. She bowed herself out.
“Welcome, explorer,” the elder said. “Atyu tells me you are with Kamzin’s expedition. Yet I don’t remember your face.”
“We traveled to Raksha in separate parties,” Mara said, still wondering at the appellation. It had been River Shara’s expedition that had stopped here—Kamzin had merely been his guide.
“I see.” The elder did not seem to require additional clarification. He regarded Mara for a long moment, taking in his ink-stained hands, his tahrskin chuba—worn by all the emperor’s explorers. Mara regarded him in turn. He didn’t see any obvious sign of injury. Then the man shifted position beneath his blanket, and Mara saw that his hands and arms were horribly burned. The skin was coated in a resinous salve that would numb the pain and prevent further damage, but the man would bear disfiguring scars for the rest of his life.
The elder noted Mara’s gaze. “There was a child trapped by one of the fires. I managed to extract her, though her parents were not so lucky. Is your friend recovered? The one caught in the storm.”
Mara’s thoughts darkened at the mention of Norbu. He had known the man for years—traveled with him, respected his vast knowledge of shamanic lore. He knew his wife too, a noblewoman of ancient lineage with a ready smile. Sarven.
The elder gave a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry. Our healer did her best. But I see we were too late.”
“Yes.” Mara doubted it had been too late—no doubt the healers of this isolated place had inferior skills. “I’m afraid I must share something with you. The witches have their powers back because of one man—the Royal Explorer. You gave him shelter here.”
The elder looked puzzled. “Ah,” he said, after a pause. “You mean the young prince? Yes, I’m not surprised he was responsible for this. He takes after his mother. I saw that the moment we met.”
Mara stared at him.
“You knew what he was,” he breathed. “How?”
The elder gave a quiet laugh. “I used my eyes.”
Mara thought about the stories he’d heard of Jangsa, the mysterious village at the edge of the Nightwood that refused to pay tribute to the emperor. It was said that many of the villagers had witch blood, and that some of their shamans could work spells without talismans. Mara looked into the man’s small black eyes and shivered.
“Why did you invite him into your village?” he said. “Because of him, Jangsa has been destroyed.”
“Jangsa will never be destroyed,” the man said in the patient voice one might use when teaching a child. “We will rebuild, as we have done before. You southerners don’t understand—you thought the war between the witches and the Empire was over. You grew too comfortable in your polished city guarded by the emperor’s useless shamans and well-fed soldiers. You came to regard the witches as little more than myths, monsters you hear about in fireside stories. In Jangsa, we know better.”
Mara felt uncomfortable beneath the elder’s gaze. It was as if the man were not merely looking at him, but inside him.
“Your people should leave this place and seek protection from the Empire,” he said. “Are you not afraid the witches will return?”
“Oh, no,” the man said. “They have what they came for.”
Mara waited, but the elder didn’t continue. The healer entered and busied herself with a jar of salve. Mara, relieved to have an excuse to leave, bowed himself out.
“I invited him in because that is what a host does,” the elder said. Mara turned, at the edge of the doorway. “There are some laws older than any conflict. Hospitality. Justice.” He paused. “Your emperor stole something that didn’t belong to him. Something he didn’t understand. Now we will all feel the consequences of his arrogance.”
The elder said it mildly, as if remarking on the weather. The healer handed him a glass of some dark liquid, and he smiled at her, his gaze leaving Mara at last. Shaken, the chronicler left the room.
Mara walked a short distance, finally pausing beside a shrine that leaned into a patch of singed hillside. One of the music bowls hummed gently in the wind.
Mara thought of the letter from Azmiri. The attack in the Southern Aryas, the emperor sending the Ninth Army to investigate. The Ninth Army was usually stationed close to the Three Cities.
You came to regard the witches as little more than myths, the elder had said. He had been right. Mara doubted that the emperor viewed the witches as creatures who could think and plan. Intelligent enough to lure his armies away, one by one, and leave his capital defenseless.
Mara’s fists tightened. It was up to him. He had to warn the emperor—not just of River’s betrayal, but of the witches’ plot. The Empire’s security rested on his shoulders. Mara turned, intending to seek out fresh provisions. He was unsurprised to see one of the Elder’s attendants hurrying down the hill toward him.
“He says to give this to Kamzin’s young friend,” the attendant said without preamble, shoving something into Mara’s hand. Then he kept walking, clearly on some business elsewhere in the village.
Mara stared. It was a talisman—a small bronze bell like the kinnika, engraved with an intricate pattern of flowing lines that reminded Mara of water. “Wait,” he called. “What is this?”
“A talisman,” the man replied, as if he genuinely believed Mara to need this clarification. “For the dark fire. It’s how we put it out.”
“Don’t you need it?”
“We have several. They’re very old. Be careful with it—Elder expects it to be returned one day.”
Mara shook the bell. It made no sound—none that he could hear. Giving Mara a patient look, the man took the bell. When he shook it, it sang out with a clear, high tone. He handed it back to Mara. The bell, vibrating with its own echoes, stilled instantly against his skin.
“It responds to blood,” the man said. “It won’t obey you. It’s for the boy—should he and Kamzin have need of it.”
This made little sense—how did Tem’s blood have any connection to the people of Jangsa? Mara tucked the bell into his pack, reddening at the realization that he was being asked to deliver a gift to a yak herder from a village most people in the Three Cities hadn’t even heard of.
“Very well,” he said. “If I survive the journey back to the emperor’s court, I will do my best to see that Tem gets it. There are no guarantees. The terrain between here and the Three Cities is treacherous.”
The man gave him a blank look.
“No guarantees,” he agreed politely. “The elder thinks it likely you will perish in Winding Pass. He hopes this is not the case, and wishes you luck on your journey.” Then, with the air of someone doing something he has never done before, but knows is expected, he clapped Mara on the shoulder and strode away.
Fourteen
I STABBED MY ax into the ice, reaching back with my other hand to help Tem up the slope. The narrow ridge fell away on either side, two clean sheets of snow that faded into shadowed valleys punctured by spurs of rock. It was a world of sharp peaks, deep caverns, and unnaturally long nights.
We had reached the Ashes.
After leaving our camp between the boulders, we had hiked all day—with Mingma’s unerring directions, we had quickly located the shortcut through the foothills. The valley had been blanketed with a dense snowpack that covered any treacherous scree, and we made rapid progress, despite our exhaustion. I felt, at times, like I was sleepwalking.
The unnamed peak we scaled jabbed out of the earth like a fang. Lusha was certain—she said she was certain—that the star had fallen here. But the moon was behind the mountains, and the shadows were thick.
“Kamzin!”
I looked up. Lusha perched on a fluted shelf tucked into the mountainside, only visible by the cobalt light of the dragon on her shoulder. We each had one, though mine kept trying to burrow into my chuba, rendering its light useless.
I gritted my teeth and urged my feet to move. It took an age to climb that short slope, as I had to pause to help Tem every few steps. He stopped to cough into his hood, and I gripped his shoulder until the fit subsided, afraid he would pitch over the side.
When we finally made it to the shelf, Lusha and Mingma had already set up the tent.
“I’ll keep watch,” the ghost said, and promptly disappeared. For a moment, I simply stared at the place where he had been. I didn’t think I would ever get used to him doing that. I supposed I should have been grateful for Mingma’s presence—without him, it would have been impossible to reach our destination so quickly, giving us a chance at beating the witches to the star—but I still felt uneasy around him.
Tem and I dove inside, and Lusha handed us a flask of water and some dried yak meat. We wouldn’t be making a fire tonight—the wind whipped violently over the mountainside, and it would be impossible to get anything burning. The walls of our tent flapped so loudly I had to shout into Tem’s ear.
We should have been on top of the star right now, if Lusha’s calculations were correct. But either Lusha’s calculations weren’t correct, or we had missed it in the darkness. Or, worse, the star had already returned to the sky.
Lusha’s head was bent over one of her star charts. Her dragon rested on her lap.
I raised my hood, trying unsuccessfully to block out the noise. I had no idea how Lusha could concentrate through that racket, but she gave no sign of being troubled by it. Tem said something in her ear, and she shook her head once, without taking her eyes from the chart.
The frown between Lusha’s eyes had deepened since yesterday. She had barely spoken in hours. I could tell that Tem was nervous and confused by her behavior. But I understood.
Lusha was doubting herself.
It was rare, but I’d witnessed it before—when Father fell ill three winters ago; when torrential rains hit Azmiri, drowning most of the crops. Each time, she had confined herself to the observatory, barely speaking to anyone, trying to glean the way forward from the stars.
Still, her obsessiveness now went beyond anything I recognized. Despite our grueling journey, Lusha insisted on staying up late into the night, poring over the charts and maps, checking and rechecking her calculations. The shadows under her eyes were so dark they looked like bruises. If anyone interrupted her with a question, she bit their head off—particularly if the interrupter was me. Her iciness toward me had not thawed—if anything, it had deepened.
I hunched into my chuba, frustrated. We needed to find the star soon—every hour we delayed was an hour that brought the witches closer to finding it themselves. Tem seemed occupied with thoughts of his own, absently running his thumb over the kinnika. I looked instinctively for Ragtooth, but he had vanished. I didn’t normally worry about Ragtooth’s whereabouts, but given the weather, it made me uneasy.
It was a bleak night. Despite my exhaustion, I could only doze, starting awake during the loudest gusts. My dreams were flashes haunted by fiangul. Judging by the absence of Tem’s snores, he was having the same difficulties I was. I distracted myself by examining the wear on my boots, running my hands over them in the darkness. In a place like this, even the smallest thing could make the difference between survival and death. The left heel was loosening, which would affect my balance in a minute but potentially dangerous way. I focused my thoughts, summoning Azar-at’s power, and the flaw vanished.
I let out a quiet gasp. The pain this time had felt like a paper cut—sharp and stinging. I felt a wave of unease—it had never felt like that.
About an hour before dawn, the winds died. I rose and left the tent.
Even with the cold stinging my face, I felt calmer outside—more at home among the elements than I had in the relative comfort of the tent. The sky was clear, the stars blazing. I lit a fire in a crevice in the rock, using only a few small pieces of wood. Tem had mastered a spell to make wood burn more slowly—the fire licked at it just as hungrily, but each piece took hours to turn to ash. I settled on the snow. We were partly protected here, tucked into an amphitheater in the mountainside.
Mingma sat across from me, making me jump a foot in the air. He had a habit of doing that, merely appearing in your field of view with none of the customary warnings, such as footsteps or rustling clothes. “Sorry,” he said.
I tried to calm my breathing. “Where do you go, when you disappear like that?”
“Somewhere . . . else,” he said. “I can’t always be with you. It’s too tiring. But I try not to stay away for long.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t realized that the expedition had been difficult for Mingma too. He hadn’t spoken one word of complaint.
“This was always my favorite time,” he said. “The moment before dawn.”
I gazed at the eastern horizon. A star clung to it, twinkling defiantly against the gathering light. “I always preferred the opposite. Just after sunset, when everything is violet and black, and the stars are just starting to show.”
He smiled. He was handsome when he smiled—it lightened the brooding set of his eyebrows and gave his eyes a teasing light. “That’s not surprising.”
“Why?”
“Night is when wild animals prowl the shadows,” he said. “When criminals go about their work, and dark creatures stir. Night is danger. That suits you.”
I shivered. I heard the Elder of Jangsa’s voice in my mind again—he had said something similar. It felt like a very long time ago now—a different time. Or had I been different? I added another scrap of wood to the fire, wondering absently if Mingma could feel its warmth.
“I don’t think it does,” I said. “I’m just as frightened as anyone else. If we can’t find the star before the witches do, my village could be destroyed. I don’t relish the thought of the people I love being in danger.”
“I’m not saying you do. But it does seem that, wherever danger happens to be, you’re always there with it.” He turned back to the horizon. “I led three expeditions to these lands. The twilight mountains, they’re called. I call them a great bother. Never could work out a way through. That’s the most frustrating thing an explorer can encounter.”
“What?”
He looked at me. “Walls.”
I tugged absently at a pebble poking up through the snow. “I used to think that. I used to think that if I could just get away from Azmiri, if the emperor would hire me as an explorer, I would be happy. That it would be all I needed. But I don’t believe that anymore.”
“Why?”
I swallowed. I saw Aimo’s face. Norbu�
��s. Dargye’s. I felt the pain of River’s betrayal. I had helped the witches achieve their goal, and Azmiri could be destroyed because of it.
“Because it’s all gone wrong,” I said. “All I’ve found out here is death.”
“Well, death is a given,” Mingma said in a conversational tone. “It’s everywhere, in so many varieties. My mother was killed on a hunting expedition—a friend put an arrow in her back while aiming for a pheasant. Unfortunate business. My father used to say that if she had stayed home that day, she would still be alive. But my mother loved hunting. Choosing to lock yourself up in a life that doesn’t suit you is its own sort of death, wouldn’t you say?”
I tossed the pebble away. “But what if the choices you make hurt others?”
Mingma shook his head. He stretched his hands out to the flames, answering my earlier, unspoken question. “I asked myself the same thing. Up on that mountain. I led fourteen men and women to Raksha, didn’t I?”
I gazed at him. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like, trapped in a forsaken place like that, along with all those he’d led to their deaths. It was too ghastly to consider—and yet it had been Mingma’s lot for fifty years.
“What answer did you find?” I asked.
“I stopped looking. Some truths aren’t meant to be found, even by the most determined explorers. I know one thing, though—your coming to Raksha freed me and my companions. Perhaps terrible things will result from the choices you made—perhaps good. You can’t know for certain before all’s said and settled. And you certainly can’t blame yourself for the paths that branch off from the one you’ve beaten, even if they lead others to dark places.”
I drew my legs up, hooking my arms around them. Even now, after all that had happened, I felt a familiar shiver of anticipation as I gazed at the unexplored landscape stretched out before me.
I wished that I believed what Mingma was saying. But I didn’t know if I could.
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