“You didn’t think he would attack now,” I said, fury rising again. “You said—”
“I was wrong. I didn’t think he would be this reckless.”
Esha killed another guard, swathing his face in shadow and then running him through with his own sword.
“Hello, Esha,” River said.
He barely raised his voice, despite the chaos of the scene. Yet Esha’s shoulders tensed.
When he met River’s gaze, a smile flickered on his face. It was not a happy expression, but one of dark satisfaction. He held up a hand.
The witches stopped fighting. Shadows writhed and spun, and witches emerged from them. The nearest witch was no more than five paces from the guards’ shields. For a moment, neither side moved. There were perhaps two dozen guards in total—not including those who lay motionless on the marble floor—and as many witches.
River’s gaze held his brother’s. “I didn’t think banquets were to your taste.”
The guards gazed at River in astonishment. One seemed to be motioning him back—he was young, with a boyish face. I recognized him as one of those who had greeted River that morning. Scanning the hall, I reached into the pocket of my dress and withdrew the obsidian dagger River had given me. Where was Lusha?
Esha was smiling—or, rather, he was holding his mouth in a way that might have been a smile, on someone else’s face. “I was hoping we would find you here. Thorn discovered that your body was missing when he returned to the mountain to check. Now we won’t have to hunt you down—it makes things easier.”
“Oh, I’m afraid it doesn’t,” River said.
“It’s interesting, isn’t it?” Esha’s voice was strangely calm, given the blood spattering his face. “Obsidian doesn’t seem to have the same effect on you as it does the rest of us.”
“Would you care to test that theory yourself? I’d be happy to lend a hand.” River’s eyes drifted over the other witches, to a shadowy rampart suspended in midair. “What have you done, Esha?”
“I’ve done nothing,” Esha said. “You did.”
River gazed at him blankly. In the distance there were shouts and cries, the sound of glass breaking. But here, at the center of it all, nobody spoke. The air sang with tension. I could just make out a sliver of the emperor’s face through the ranks of his guards, contorted with fury and pain. The guards’ eyes flicked warily between Esha and River. The young guard watched him almost beseechingly. My grip on River’s arm tightened.
“Our ancestral home,” Esha murmured. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? It will be even more beautiful after we raze this palace to the ground. Can’t you see it? A city of darkness, perched in the Empire’s ruins.”
“I don’t see how I—” River began.
“You woke it,” Esha said. “Unintentionally, I’m sure. Our city isn’t a pile of stones and useless finery, like this place. It sensed the Empire was falling, and a new one rising to take its place. But it couldn’t truly reawaken on its own. Nor could those who once lived there, so many centuries ago, walk again. But with the star’s power . . .”
I shuddered as Esha’s words sunk in. I looked at the emperor. He gripped his side, blood spilling through his fingers. It didn’t look like a sword wound. His arm had been clawed too—one of the witches had attacked him in animal form.
River’s gaze had found the emperor too, and his expression was grim. Esha’s lip curled. “Do you truly care about the life of the man who sentenced us to exile and torment?” he said. “I was right about you—you are a traitor. Sky would be ashamed.”
At the mention of Sky, River’s expression grew so cold that I took a step back. The faces of the courtiers and guards, as their eyes moved from River to Esha, were uncomprehending.
“Ah, but I forgot,” Esha said, “you’re a traitor here too.” He gestured. “Bring her to me.”
A witch with long, lank hair came forward, a captive in tow. My heart stopped.
Lusha.
She didn’t struggle against the witch, though he dragged her roughly. Her golden dress rippled like fire. When the witch tossed her into Esha’s grasp, she barely stumbled, and gave the first witch a glare so fierce he actually flinched.
Esha took Lusha’s hand, as if he was going to escort her somewhere. As he looked her up and down, there was a quality in his gaze that disgusted me. “This is one of the shamans you helped in the Ashes, isn’t it? You allowed her to escape, to bring the star to the emperor, which no doubt was your plan all along.” His filthy nails dug into Lusha’s skin, hard enough to raise droplets of blood. Lusha didn’t flinch, merely stood there as Esha drew something from a fold in his ragged cloak—
The star. It was as lifeless as ever—a fragment of stone, gray and unremarkable.
“Doesn’t look like much, does it?” Esha said. “Shall we test its power?”
The star began to glow against his palm, burning with the dark orange hue of witch fire. Then—
Light flooded the hall. I forced myself not to look away, but to squint through the brightness. Esha drew a shadow over the star, muting but not extinguishing its glow.
A murmur rose through the hall. The guards stared at each other. Shadowy figures wove their way between them, while a dark wall reared up out of nothingness, momentarily separating us from the emperor. One of the figures flitted into the shadow-tower that leaned at the edge of the hall, which seemed to be growing more solid by the minute.
“Esha—” River began.
“The Three Cities will burn.” Esha smiled. “And a new city will rise from the ashes. The sky city is coming back to life. And so are the people who lived there.”
I stared at the shadow-figures in horror. It was difficult to guess their number; they flickered in and out of existence like the towers and doors of the sky city. But more kept appearing as the star pulsed in Esha’s hand.
One of the shadows paused at Esha’s side. It had solidified enough for me to tell that it was a woman, her hair undulating around her face. But the way she stood was strange, puppet-like, and her proportions were all wrong. How long had she been dead? I felt a wave of nausea.
Esha’s mouth curved. “Let’s see what they can do.”
The shadow surged forward, moving with a jerky, insect-like grace. I leaped back instinctively, but another witch was there. He shoved me forward, laughing, but River caught me in his arms before I fell.
I screamed as darkness engulfed us, darkness that warped and stretched, forming a curving wall with the texture of stone. We were trapped within a round tower that had simply appeared in the banquet hall, as suddenly as the other apparitions. Terrified, I pounded my fists against the shadow-wall, but it barely wavered. Lusha was on the other side of that wall.
River cursed. He was looking up, having heard something I had not. I followed his gaze—two more dead were thundering down shadow-steps that wound up the tower. They made a noise that was like boots against stone, and yet oddly echoing, as if the sound were carried across a distance that did not exist.
“Go!” River shouted.
“Go?” Where could I go? There was solid shadow all around us. And yet, as I watched, the marble floor of the banquet hall seemed to shimmer like heat haze. More steps appeared, descending through the floor itself, coiling into what I assumed was the hillside below the palace. I stared, unable to comprehend it.
River had no such hesitation. He leaped past me, through the floor, which was suddenly as immaterial as cloud, dragging me behind him. The shadow-steps bore our weight, though I had the sense that they were resisting me. They felt sticky, somehow, as if reluctant to allow me passage.
I let River drag me to the bottom of the mad staircase. There we reached a long, low corridor—such as none that I had seen in the palace. It was shadow; everything was shadow, featureless and undulating.
“Where are we?” I yelled, shaking off River’s hand.
“Somewhere that shouldn’t exist,” River said. “The sky city is taking over the palace.” River
, infuriating River, wasn’t panicking at all. He gazed around as if we had just stepped into a gallery lined with unusual paintings.
My head spun. I thought of Lusha, standing at Esha’s side, and Tem, who had been in the libraries when the witches attacked, and could be in as much danger. “How do we get out?” I was still yelling. And shaking. I had just descended a staircase made of shadow, in a tower that had formed out of thin air.
River placed his hand over my mouth and shoved me into a bracket in the wall.
I was so angry I contemplated biting him, but at that moment, the dead creatures reached the base of the staircase and thundered past us. River waited until they were gone—to my eyes, they were simply swallowed by the darkness—then he grabbed my hand again. When he pulled, however, I didn’t move.
I cried out. I was stuck—the shadow-wall clung to me, drawing me back into itself.
“Kamzin!” River looked alarmed at last. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me free. The shadows fell back like obedient dogs, but River didn’t let me go. He took my face in his hands and kissed me.
I drew back, my heart pounding. “I don’t think that’s helpful right now!”
“Oh,” he said, as if this was actually news to him. “Sorry. Are you all right?”
“Of course I’m not all right! I didn’t particularly like your ancestral home the last time I visited. It isn’t growing on me.”
He gripped my hand. “Stay close.”
We were running again, into pitch darkness. I couldn’t see a thing. River, though, pulled me along without pausing—clearly, I was supposed to trust that he wouldn’t slam us into a wall. I was beginning to feel like a doll dragged along by an absentminded child.
“River,” I gasped as I stumbled over my own feet again. Light flickered—River cupped a small, dusky flame in his palm, not as bright as ordinary fire, but enough to illuminate my way. We came to the bottom of another tower that curved upward into gray light. The banquet hall? Did it even exist anymore, or had the shadow city replaced it? This tower had no stairs, unlike the first—there was no way up.
I brushed the wall. It seemed more solid now, clearly stone, though it was a strange, black stone like nothing I’d ever seen. It reminded me of witch fire, which was both like and unlike ordinary flame, a thing of nature subtly twisted, wrong.
“I hear fighting,” River said, gazing up at the light. “The emperor’s reinforcements must have arrived.” He turned to me. “I can—”
He got no further, as one of the dead witches lunged out of the wall.
Twenty-Nine
I SCREAMED. THE witch was part darkness, like the dead who had chased us, but more defined—were the creatures gaining substance? Her hair floated, as if she stood underwater, and her feet didn’t quite touch the ground. I couldn’t make out any features in her face, apart from the hint of a mouth, stretched in a grimace or scream.
She went straight for me, but River raised a hand and blasted her back.
Other figures leaped out of the darkness, faster than River could react. One grabbed at my hair and wrenched me so hard I fell to the floor with a cry of pain. Another was on me in a heartbeat, grasping at my neck. Its hands were the texture of dried flowers, light and brittle.
“Kamzin!” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw River make a sweeping gesture. The shadow-figures began to whirl and spin together, as if caught in a fierce wind. They tried to struggle, but it was no use. River sent them soaring back down the passage, where they were swallowed by the darkness.
I stood up, rubbing my head. Apart from a scratch on my neck from the shadow-creatures’ hands, I wasn’t hurt. River, though, was leaning back against the wall, breathing hard.
“Are you all right?” I asked nervously. The last time I had seen River look like this, it had been in the Aryas, after he had used Azar-at to cast the spell that rescued us from the avalanche.
River gazed down at his hands. He let out an incredulous laugh.
“I think Esha was right,” he said.
“That is the least comforting thing you could say right now,” I said. “Right about what?”
“The Crown.”
“What’s that?” I said. “You mentioned it before. Or Esha did, in the Ashes.” I couldn’t remember, precisely, how I had learned of the Crown. A thread of memory stirred from the moments I had spent in River’s mind. He had thought about it, at least briefly. “It’s not an actual crown, is it?”
“No. It’s a sort of magical gift. Passed down from one ruler to the next.” He brushed his hand against the black stone. “I wonder . . .”
“Ruler?” I froze. I yanked him around to face me. “Ruler. You? Are you—are you the shadow emperor?”
“Esha thought that the Crown had passed to me. It’s why he wanted me dead.” He seemed to think. “I should have died in the Ashes. The dagger was obsidian. But somehow . . .”
“So what does this mean?” I felt cold. River’s mother was a monstrous figure from dark stories that had terrified me as a child. It should have made me want to draw away from River—instead, I drew closer, more frightened of the spectral figure of my imaginings, which my mind couldn’t match up with him.
“I don’t know.” River smiled, an unexpected flash in the darkness. “But I know Esha will be furious.”
“Can you order him to stop?” I said. “Or, I don’t know, stand in front of an obsidian arrow?”
“I can’t order anyone to do anything. That’s not how the Crown works. You can’t compell a witch—it goes against our nature.”
“Well, what’s the point of it, then?” I felt increasingly desperate. Lusha was in danger, and I was trapped down here in some impossible shadow dungeon, unable to reach her.
“I suppose we’ll see.” River drew me forward, and then we were rising—a cloud of shadow formed beneath our feet, lifting us. I gripped River’s hand so tightly it turned white. I didn’t trust the shadows of the sky city, which clung to me like spiderwebs. But the shadows River had summoned didn’t seem inclined to ensnare me—they were as soft as spring grass, and cool against my bare calves.
We rose higher. If we were still somehow beneath the palace, we should have struck the floor. But the floor was gone, and we rose through the shadow tower until the light of the banquet hall flickered through its walls. River placed a hand on one of the shadowy stones, murmuring something, and they parted, forming an uneven doorway. I stepped through onto the polished marble of the emperor’s palace, my legs trembling.
There was no one near. We were at the far end of the banquet hall, close to the corridor that led to the libraries. My thoughts flashed to Tem.
“Kamzin.” River’s voice was low. I turned.
Shadow staircases hung suspended in midair. A pagoda of darkness reared up before us, its door half-buried in the marble floor, as if the palace were a tide in which it was sinking. There was also the edge of what looked like a wall, tall and crenellated, jutting at a haphazard angle from the outer wall of the palace. It seemed to continue on the other side.
A scream rang out, and I was running. I didn’t know who had screamed—it didn’t matter. I dodged an empty door frame that hovered at head level and seemed to lead to nothing but more shadow and the hint of something vast, a room larger than the banquet hall.
“Lusha!” I yelled. I circled around a strange half tower, and suddenly there was a knot of a dozen soldiers firing arrows into a sea of armor and shadow.
It was chaos. I couldn’t make out the emperor—perhaps his guards had managed to ferry him from the hall. I couldn’t see Lusha or Esha. Scarcely a yard from where I stood, a witch fell writhing to the floor, an arrow in her back.
“What are you doing?” A guard seized my arm, and I recognized River’s friend. “I thought you left with the emperor. Get back!”
He would have dragged me bodily from the hall, but River had caught up to us. The young man dropped my arm. “Dyonpo Shara, I meant no—”
“Where is the emp
eror?” River interrupted.
“He’s been escorted to safety while we deal with these creatures.”
My gaze swept the hall. It was clear that the soldiers were not “dealing” with anyone—their numbers had swelled, but so had their dead. And more shadow-figures had joined the witches.
River seemed to be eyeing a tower that loomed over the rest—it went right through the ceiling of the hall. I wondered briefly what the palace must look like from outside, with strange shadowy architecture jutting out like appendages.
River raised his hand. There was a sound like the crack of thunder, and the tower split in two. The upper half toppled toward the crowd of witches and guards, who scattered, shouting. When the tower struck the floor, it exploded into tiny shadows like shards of glass, which then dissolved into nothing.
There was an eerie silence.
Everyone was staring at River now. The guards, including his friend, had fallen back, an uncomfortable echo of his earlier reception at the banquet. But it wasn’t respect in their faces now. It was fear. River didn’t look any different—not to my eyes, at least. But it was clear, from the expressions on the guards’ faces, that they were no longer oblivious to the magic radiating from him.
Esha stepped out of the crowd. In one hand, he held the star, and with the other, he held on to Lusha, who, to my infinite relief, seemed unharmed. Her eyes fixed on mine, and I saw my own relief reflected there.
Lusha gave Esha’s hand a gentle tug. He glanced at her, triumph still glowing in his red-rimmed eyes. She gave him a steady look, then swung one of the guards’ obsidian daggers toward his heart.
Her aim was good, but Lusha was not left-handed, and when Esha dodged with a hiss she couldn’t recover quickly enough. She fell back, dagger raised.
“Kamzin,” she said, her voice clear and carrying, “command it to stop.”
I could only stare. “What?”
“The star. It will listen to you. You found it, and that’s—”
All the Wandering Light Page 28