He gazed up at Mount Karranak, its broad summit capped by three massive glaciers. He was well south of Azmiri now, and only a few days’ ride from the Three Cities. The soldiers who had greeted him at the outskirts of Lhotang village had been skittish, one nearly running him through with an obsidian dagger when he appeared in their midst. Mara, unaccustomed to disrespect from common soldiers, had given him a verbal thrashing. Their captain had apologized, though Mara was still in an ill humor over the incident. He had not traveled all this way, defying peril these soldiers could barely comprehend, to die in a clumsy accident.
In fact, Mara’s journey had been astonishingly uneventful. He had braced himself for an attack in Winding Pass—had even prepared for it, composing a lengthy farewell letter and leaving it in his pack so that if any traveler happened upon his abandoned supplies, they would know his fate. But the weather had remained fair. No storms threatened, supernatural or otherwise. He wondered if the Tem’s spell had driven the fiangul into hiding, at least temporarily.
The soldiers were impressed by him, though he gave them only hints of what he had been through, wanting to save the full story for the emperor and his court. One of them followed at a respectful distance as they entered the village, sweating a little under Mara’s pack. The man kept eyeing Mara’s tahrskin chuba, which wasn’t surprising. The emperor’s explorers were venerated by the common people, and welcomed into every village they visited. Mara nodded to two villagers who bowed low upon sighting him. After the unsettling reception he had received at Jangsa, such signs of normalcy were heartening.
Mara’s gaze swept the village. Lhotang was a picturesque place, straddling the banks of a roiling river, its stone bridges like stitches crisscrossing the misty rapids. Whitewashed houses and well-maintained spirit shrines dotted the rocky terrain. There were no roads—they were unnecessary; carts and yaks easily traversed the smooth rock. The river’s source was a waterfall that thundered down Mount Karranak, looming over the village—sheer, icicled falls alternating with vivid blue pools. But Mara recognized a change in the place that had nothing to do with the presence of so many soldiers. There was an uneasiness in the faces of the usually jovial villagers. Several of the shops Mara passed were shuttered.
“Mara,” the General of the Fourth Army said in greeting, bowing his head slightly. He stood at the edge of the village square, conferring with one of his soldiers. Mara bent his neck the same amount. Mara, as one of the emperor’s explorers, was equal in rank to any general save the woman who led the First Army.
“I understood you to be in the north, with River Shara,” the general continued.
“I wish I had time for pleasantries,” Mara said, “but I’m on urgent business for the emperor. What is the news here? This is not the customary deployment for the Fourth.”
“No.” The general’s eyes, heavily lined from decades of squinting against sun and weather, swept over the village. “The emperor recalled us from our campaign against the western barbarians after he received an urgent request from the Elder of Lhotang. It seems there have been sightings of witches.”
Mara could hear the man’s skepticism in his voice. “When?” he asked, as a chill settled in his chest.
“They come at night, they say.” The general paused as his captain came forward to murmur in his ear. She stepped back, clearly waiting for the general’s interview with Mara to end. “Some in shadow form. I haven’t seen them myself. The Elder’s house was swarmed by a flock of birds who pecked at her shutters all night and tore apart her dogs. Half the yaks in the village have gone missing, some found later, in pieces. No human deaths, however.” He scratched his side idly, under his armor. “The mountain villages tend toward superstition. Unusual occurrences are often attributed to spirits or witches.”
“You must believe it.” Mara’s voice was firm. “The witches’ powers are unbound. I must deliver the news to the emperor.”
The general stared at him. “Then you have seen them?”
Mara briefly considered telling this man the whole story, if for no other reason than to witness his amazement. But no—the emperor must hear it from him firsthand.
“I have seen them,” he said, though in truth, he had only seen one. “It is as I’ve said. The spell that contained the witches has broken, and they are preparing an attack on the Empire.”
“Then why bother with the villages?” the man demanded. Mara bristled at the doubt in his voice, and tried to remind himself that the man’s skepticism was natural—the witches had been a dormant threat for years, now primarily invoked to frighten naughty children. “Why not strike the Three Cities directly?”
Mara gave him a grim look. “Can you not think of a reason? Yours is not the only army to be drawn away from the Three Cities and stationed far away on the outskirts of the Empire. Is it?”
The general’s face paled. But he was a soldier well into his sixties, and had seen much, and he only took a moment to master himself. “Then you are saying—”
“Gather your soldiers,” Mara said. “Make for the Three Cities without delay.”
“I can’t. Not without the approval of Emperor Lozong.”
Mara bit back his frustration. Of course it was as the man said—the emperor had sent the Fourth Army here, and the general could not simply ignore his orders on the word of one man, even if that man was one of the emperor’s explorers. He thought of other villages even more remote than Lhotang, days from the Three Cities even if every soldier traveled on horseback. It took days, weeks even, to move an entire army from place to place. Mara doubted they had that long.
The general was gesturing to several of his soldiers. “I will assign you an escort to the Three Cities. You will have a fresh horse and depart without delay. The Fourth Army will remain here to await the emperor’s decision.”
Mara nodded, and the general strode away, speaking quickly with his captain.
Mara gazed over the village, its small homes nestled in the chilly embrace of the glacial river. Smoke wound from several chimneys, mingling with the mist off the water. Mara breathed it in—a clean, honest smell, unlike the smoke that had hovered over Jangsa. A knot of villagers stood at the edge of the square, watching him, and he wondered whether they had overheard his conversation. Mara thought of shadows moving in the night, of dogs torn apart by unseen claws.
His mind turned to Lusha, as it often had during his journey south, and the fallen star. Mara didn’t doubt Lusha’s abilities, but their mission was near impossible. It was his view that the only hope of saving the Empire lay with him—if he could reach the Three Cities in time, and convince the emperor to recall his armies. . . . Now, though, he found himself wondering whether Lusha could succeed, against all odds. For if she didn’t, if the witches found the star and gained the power to smash the Three Cities with one blow—
Mara swallowed. River and the other witches had laid a perfect trap, which was now beginning to close. It was possible that their only hope now rested on Lusha’s shoulders, and the impossible mission she had undertaken in the Ashes. Shaking his head, Mara strode off, snapping instructions at the soldiers hurrying after him.
Sixteen
“YOU’RE SURE ABOUT this?”
“Positive.”
“But I don’t see anything.”
I handed Lusha the coil of rope. “It’s there.”
She gave me a suspicious look. She’d been giving me suspicious looks since I had shaken her awake that morning, after returning to the tent with news that Tem and I had located the star. Now, after hours of hard climbing and a risky traverse, we stood at the base of an icy crag on a precarious outcropping of rock, gazing up at the ledge I had memorized. I wished that Mingma was with us—the ghost could have reached the ledge in a heartbeat—but he hadn’t shown himself since last night.
The light from the star seemed even fainter in the early twilight than it had at dawn, and I wasn’t sure if I could see it at all, or if the light on the snow was playing tricks on my eye
s. I hid my doubts from Lusha—not that it did any good.
“According to my calculations,” she said, as the wind whistled around us, “we’re too far west. There’s a reason we didn’t search this area.”
“Lusha.” I clasped her arms and spoke slowly. “Your calculations are probably correct. I may have imagined what I saw, and right now, I’m wasting time. I’m good at that. But there’s a chance the star is up there. And I find it hard to believe that you wouldn’t want to eliminate every possibility.”
Tem glanced up from the kinnika. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come?”
I was sure that I didn’t want to worry about Tem while climbing up the icy rock. “Yes. You can keep an eye on us from down here.”
“My calculations are correct,” Lusha said, but she was already tethering us together. “I’ve gone over them a hundred times.”
“Then you must be dying to prove me wrong.” Without waiting for a reply, I turned to the crag and began to climb.
I set an easy pace, making sure to keep enough slack in the rope for comfort. The mountainside wasn’t perfectly sheer but leaned into a series of terraces, each set farther back from the next.
Lusha climbed well, though more slowly than me—she was overly methodical, in my opinion, thinking through every step three times before making it. And her late-night obsessiveness had left her even more tired than Tem, though she hid it well. I paused on the first shelf until she caught up with me, rising to her feet in one smooth motion, not even a hair out of place. She had ignored the hand I offered her.
“Go slow,” she said. “We don’t want to frighten it.”
“Can a star be frightened?” I kept my tone light, though I felt a shiver. When I had faced River at the summit of Raksha, I had been alone. There had been something appealingly simple about that. Now, with Lusha climbing behind me, and Tem waiting below, there were more variables.
I’ve never had much use for variables. River’s words came back to me, his voice pitched low for the intimate space of the cave. It was as if he was speaking in my ear.
I froze, terrified that the memory would herald another descent into River’s mind. But I remained myself.
As I climbed, I tried not to think of what had happened early that morning, after I returned to the tent. Tem and I had fallen onto our blankets, intending to rest only a few moments before planning our route to the star. Something had altered in me since discovering it—I felt tired and faint, as if whatever barrier had been holding me back from sleep before was gone. I slept without meaning to, deeply, waking an hour later with a start, a dream lingering. In it, I had been searching for Azar-at, intending to offer the rest of my soul in exchange for the star. But he was nowhere to be found, no matter where I searched, and I was frustrated and frightened. Somewhere between sleep and waking, I looked up and found a girl leaning over me.
A scream strangled in my throat. The girl was stout and not overly tall, though with the suggestion of strength in the set of her shoulders. Her long hair was loose, framing large eyes and high cheekbones. On her face was a look of confusion, and she reached toward my face with familiar hands—frighteningly familiar. I met her eyes.
The girl was me. I started fully awake, surging upright, convinced someone was truly there. But the tent was empty and still, save for Lusha’s quiet breathing.
“How does this work?” I said as Lusha and I came to the second ledge. “Will it try to attack us?”
Lusha paused. She was breathing heavily now, her face red. Lusha didn’t redden in blotches as I did—her cheeks flushed a rosy pink that emphasized the luminous dark of her eyes. “Of course not,” she said coldly, as if it was obvious. As if anything about what we were doing was obvious. “We have to catch it. Once caught, the star will bend to our will.”
“And how will we do that?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, after a slight pause. Her tone was stiff, as it always was when she felt backed into a corner.
“Seers are so helpful,” I muttered.
Lusha shot me a look, then turned back to the climb. Her hands, I noticed, trembled ever so slightly. Despite her calm demeanor, Lusha was nervous. I should have recognized the signs before—the slight tension in her shoulders, the inward-focused gaze. Lusha disliked situations she couldn’t control, things that couldn’t be planned or foreseen, and this went beyond that. Yet, in spite of this, she turned her steely gaze back to the rock face, put one hand in front of the other, and kept going.
I thought about Lusha setting out for Raksha to stop River from finding the witches’ talisman. She and Mara had snuck away during the night, gathering what they needed for a long journey and attempting to sabotage River’s own expedition all within a few short hours. That too had been a journey into the unknown, fraught with danger and the likelihood of failure. Few people, I knew, would have taken it upon themselves to attempt what Lusha had attempted. Yet Lusha hadn’t balked, hadn’t assumed that the Royal Explorer’s dark plans were someone else’s responsibility, though she was merely the Elder-in-waiting of a small village with little contact with the royal court. She had seen danger written in the stars, decided that something needed to be done, and then she had done it. Was that an admirable display of courage, or astonishing arrogance?
I gazed at the back of her head as she climbed steadily up the mountain, neither hurrying nor delaying. Her determination had an inexorable quality that put me in mind of a force of nature. I shook my head, shoving away the grudging admiration that stirred inside me. Perhaps for some people, words like “courage” and “arrogance” simply didn’t make sense—any more than trying to assign a color to the wind.
We reached the ledge some minutes later, both red-faced and out of breath. Lusha sat for a moment, her legs dangling over the cliff we had just scaled, her head bent over her knees. I forced myself to my feet.
The ledge was narrow—perhaps half a dozen paces at its widest point—and roughly triangular, nestled between two perpendicular planes of the mountainside. I stood slowly, testing the grip of my boots.
“Look,” I said, grasping Lusha’s arm so firmly she made a small noise of protest.
Behind us, the snow and rock split apart like a sword slash, little furrows on either side. And beyond that was a dark stain.
Lusha moved forward, shaking off my arm. The stain was roughly circular, and revealed itself, on closer inspection, to be a gash in the mountainside. Bits of rubble were strewn about, stark against the snow. Judging by their position, the mountain hadn’t merely crumbled here—it had exploded.
I knelt next to Lusha, who seemed to be hesitating. This was no time for caution, in my opinion, so I set my jaw and reached into the gash. I dug out several broken shards of the mountain, which Lusha examined closely, as if they held vital information. I reached inside again, and my fingers closed on something rounded and smooth. But when I drew it out, it was only a gray rock.
I expected Lusha to toss this aside too, but she didn’t. She rose to her feet, staring at the bit of rubble as if lost in thought.
“Nothing.” I brushed my hands against my chuba. “But this is where the star landed.”
“So it seems.” Her voice was strange.
I looked at the gash in the mountainside, where there was certainly no glittering star, or even a fragment of it. “We must be too late. I don’t understand—it was here only a few hours ago.” I turned to Lusha, expecting to see my own disappointment magnified in her expression. But her face was pale, blank.
“Lusha?”
She held the rock out to me. “We’re not too late.”
“What?”
“Take it.”
I did, still confused. “I don’t—”
“Look at it.”
I looked from her to the rock, nonplussed. What I held was a lump of stone about twice the size of my fist. It was no shape in particular, a nonshape, rounded on one side and squarish on the other, with haphazard lumps in between, and its texture was a ta
ngle of smooth planes and rough angles. It was, in short, the most ordinary rock I had ever seen, as cold as the mountain from which it had been drawn, and gray as gray could be, lifeless, dead.
“Be careful,” Lusha snapped as I transferred the rock to my other hand. She took it back, holding the thing as if it were a precious gem, and stuffed it into her satchel.
“Um, Lusha—”
“Let’s go.” She was already turning, already walking away.
With one last glance at the broken part of the mountain, where perhaps a fallen star had lain, I followed. Lusha moved like someone possessed, lowering herself back down the mountain without even waiting to see if I was keeping up—which, given that we were tied together, was inconvenient. I hurried after her, trying to match her pace before she dragged me over the edge on my back. I alternated between terror that Lusha would put a foot wrong and pitch down the slope, and a grim satisfaction at the prospect of her own arrogance being the cause of another broken ankle.
“Slow down,” I admonished, as a careless step caused her to lose her footing. I wrapped my hand around the rope and hauled her back against the mountainside just in time.
She gave me a fierce look. “I will not slow down. We have to get this to Tem.”
I wanted to ask what she expected Tem to do with a lump of rock, but kept quiet. Lusha was already behaving recklessly enough, and I didn’t want to distract her further with an argument. We continued in silence, barely any slack in the rope between us. When we reached the bottom of the face, Lusha stumbled. Mingma appeared out of nowhere, steadying her, Tem close behind.
Lusha handed Tem the satchel. “Seal this.”
“Seal it?”
“Yes. Cast a spell to contain its power.”
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