Even the Darkest Stars

by Heather Fawcett

  I made a face. “My father was so disappointed in me for embarrassing myself in front of such a famous guest. For embarrassing Azmiri.”

  “I can’t imagine you disappoint him often. So what’s the harm?”

  I made a noise halfway between a laugh and a snort. “But I do. I’m a constant disappointment to my entire family. When they notice me at all.”

  “That is a sad story.” River nudged the bottle toward me again. I swatted his hand away, and he laughed. It echoed off the rocks, and if rocks could laugh, I couldn’t imagine a wilder, more suitable sound.

  “Let me tell you something.” He leaned toward me. “I’m the youngest of four brothers, so I have some expertise on this subject. I love my brothers very much, but I also hate them. Really, truly despise them. They’re much better than me at many things, and were forever winning my mother’s praise, and I hate them for that. But you know, in a way, it’s just as hard for them. They’re trying to live up to their own set of expectations, even if they are different from those I face.” He lowered his voice, as if speaking half to himself. “In some way, we’re all trying to prove ourselves to our families.”

  I gazed at him, surprised. Was that why he had become an explorer, rather than contenting himself with the lavish parties and grand palaces of the Three Cities? Because he wanted to please his family, to be a good son? It struck me again how young he was.

  “How old are you?”

  “Nineteen.” It had the air of an announcement. He held the bottle up as if toasting the darkness. “It’s my birthday.”

  “Today?” I felt inexplicably annoyed. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  He laughed. “I’m sorry. Were you planning on throwing me a party?”

  “That’s what the box of firecrackers is for,” I said. “And the drums, and the floating lanterns—just in case I needed to throw River Shara a birthday party. But now I guess it’s too late.”

  He laughed again, sagging forward slightly. Liquor splashed over the side of the ridge. I pried the bottle out of his hand.

  “There is one thing you could give me,” he said, when he had caught his breath.

  His tone made me suspicious. “No.”

  “You didn’t even—”

  “I don’t trust you,” I said sternly, moving the bottle out of his reach. He made a grab for it, and I snared his hand. “At least, everyone keeps telling me not to.”

  “Your shaman, you mean.” He was smiling at me. His teeth were very straight, except for one at the side, which tilted slightly.

  “Stop calling him ‘my shaman.’” I forced myself to look at his eyes rather than his mouth. “His name is Tem.”

  “Yes, yes, whatever. Tell me something. How does someone as clever and talented as you become best friends with someone that dull?”

  “Tem is not dull,” I said. “You just don’t know him.”

  “No, I don’t, because he barely says two words at a time.”

  “He doesn’t trust you. He’s like that when he doesn’t trust someone. I don’t know why you’re complaining—you talk enough for a dozen people. But I won’t have you insulting Tem.” I narrowed my eyes. “You should be glad he’s here, otherwise who would be setting the warding spells? Who would we turn to if some dark creature attacked us?”

  “Me.” River shrugged. “That’s the way it’s always worked. Every night, Norbu would set the warding spells, and then after he went to bed I would go around and set them properly.”

  With your invisible talismans, I thought but did not say. To my knowledge, River hadn’t used his magic again since he had fought the fiangul. Despite this, Tem remained convinced of what he had seen.

  “There was one time,” River went on, his gaze distant, “when Norbu and I were hiking along the Lake of Dumori in the Southern Aryas, and a water ghost sprang up and dragged me into the depths. Norbu stood on the shore, waving his beads around and yelling his useless head off, while I battled twenty of the wet, nasty things, all of them intent on draining the breath from my lungs and taking my place among the living. I had to freeze the lake just to immobilize them, and then hack my body free with my own ice ax. Norbu couldn’t even master a melting spell.”

  I shook my head. “Why bring Norbu at all?”

  “All explorers bring at least one trained shaman on their expeditions. It’s just the way it’s done.”

  “But why Norbu? Why not someone capable of casting a warding spell strong enough to repel more than a rabbit?”

  “I told you—I can trust Norbu.”

  I sighed, giving up. Perhaps River’s reasoning made sense to him, but it made little to me.

  River glanced at me, a faint smile on his face. He turned back to the dark valley and made a small motion with his hand. Out of the night rose a single flower, plucked from the valley floor far below. It was a lily, its pale petals brushed with moonlight. River gestured again, and more flowers drifted up, like ghosts rising out of a primordial void. Roses and orchids and heartleaf—they hovered there, as if rooted in the darkness. A shadow meadow, teeming with flowers.

  “Oh,” I murmured. I had never seen a summoning spell used this way before. As I was staring, River reached around me and grabbed the bottle.

  “Hey!” I tried to wrestle it away from him. “You—you sneak!”

  “Sneak?” He began laughing again. “That’s insubordination.”

  “What are you going to do about it?” I was laughing too, in spite of myself. “Send me back to Azmiri? Let Dargye guide your expedition?”

  “Well, he’s not as pretty as you, granted, but he’s more tractable. Wait, don’t—”

  As we were tussling, the bottle, slippery with spilled liquor, slid from his hand. I batted it away before he could make a recovery, and it tumbled down into the darkness. We both froze. Seconds later, there was a distant, echoing smash.

  I turned to him, grinning triumphantly. “Serves you—”

  He kissed me.

  I let out a muffled noise. His mouth was warm and tasted slightly salty. Before I even knew what I was doing, I was kissing him back, pressing my face into his. A fierce desire rose inside me, hot and rippling like summer haze, startling in its intensity. I could not have said how long the kiss lasted—a second or a minute; I was oblivious to everything except his lips against mine and his hand as it threaded through my hair.

  Finally, we broke apart. River gazed at me for a moment, then he began to smile. My heart was pounding, and I felt light-headed, as if I had drunk as much as he had.

  “I told you there was something you could give me,” he said. He was still holding my arm. I yanked it away.

  “You’re drunk.”

  “Yes, I am.” He rose unsteadily to his feet. “But not enough, thanks to you. Good night, Kamzin.” Shoving his hands in his pockets, he staggered off, heading vaguely in the direction of his tent.

  I stayed where I was, waiting for my heart to stop pounding. It took a long time. Whenever I thought about the feeling of River’s mouth on mine, it would speed up again.

  The flowers were still floating in midair, only now they seemed adrift, like abandoned ships in a storm. The wind tossed them up and down, pushing them south along the ridge. One, a golden marigold, came within arm’s reach. I lunged out and grabbed it.

  What am I doing? I thought. I released the marigold, and it drifted away with the others. Suddenly, I wanted nothing to do with flowers, bobbing eerily on the wind. I stood so fast I had to steady myself against the rock until the spots cleared from my vision. I turned my back on the floating meadow and hurried back to my tent.

  FOURTEEN

  IT DIDN’T MEAN anything.

  I kept repeating that to myself as we hiked through the rubbly moraine that bracketed Raksha’s enormous glacier. Though we were still miles from the glacier itself, we were in another world. We had left trees behind—all that existed now were rocks so battered and broken they could have fallen from the stars, and reticent tufts of grass speckled with
tiny pink flowers. The sun beat down. It was too hot for walking and laboring under a heavy pack, and too chilly to rest for any length of time.

  It was nothing. It didn’t mean anything. Sometimes I muttered it out loud to myself. The yak grunted, as if agreeing with me. River was far behind, walking with Tem this time, gesticulating every few seconds at some feature of the landscape and talking his head off. I had to keep myself from sneaking glances behind me as their voices drifted on the wind. Occasionally, I caught my own name, but I couldn’t make out the thread of the conversation.

  He kissed you, but he was drunk. He probably doesn’t even remember.

  And indeed, River hadn’t seemed to remember. He had been his usual self in the morning, making strange comments about how the yak was glaring at him and declaring that he had finally decided, after much consideration, that Ragtooth was in fact a raccoon crossed with a monkey. His only reference to the previous night was to ask, when I passed him a bowl, whether I planned to throw his breakfast over the cliff—but even that seemed offhand. Did he truly not remember kissing me, or was it simply unimportant to him? It made me wonder if I should throw his breakfast over the cliff.

  “What did River say to you, anyway?” Tem asked that night, as we set up our tent in the shadow of an enormous boulder.

  I started. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve been sniping at him all day. I saw you two talking last night as I was setting the wards. Did you have an argument?”

  “No,” I said, turning away. “It doesn’t matter.”

  We were quiet for a while, the rustle of oilcloth and the hammering of spikes into the rocky soil the only sounds. We were quick at making camp now—it all came together in a few minutes, which was a relief, because it allowed more time to rest. We were only a day or two from Raksha, and were all paying the price of our grueling pace. My blisters had blisters, and my shins were peppered with bruises and scrapes from clambering up hills and over boulders. I tried not to complain, because I knew Tem was worse off. His chest pained him—more, I suspected, than he would admit. He had thrown up after the last uphill hike. More worryingly, his cough was now a near-constant presence, forcing the entire group to stop and wait during the worst bouts. I urged him to increase the medicine he normally took, but he refused, saying it made him tired. As he already had difficulty keeping up with us, I couldn’t bring myself to insist.

  “I wanted to give you this,” Tem said after we had finished assembling the tent.

  He drew something from his pocket: a bunched-up piece of soiled wool. He shook it out, revealing—

  “A sock?” I said. “Thanks, Tem. You shouldn’t have.”

  “It’s not mine,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I found it this afternoon, when we passed through that boulder field.”

  My heart sped up. Gingerly, I took the sock, pinching as little of the fabric as possible between my thumb and forefinger. “Well, it isn’t Lusha’s, but—”

  “But it looks about the right size for Mara.” Tem was smiling. I felt myself smile back. I tossed the sock aside and wrapped Tem in a hug.

  “Thanks,” I whispered. I had been hunting almost constantly for signs of Lusha’s presence, with little success. River believed we were still on their trail, but I was beginning to panic. The terror that had accompanied our encounter with the fiangul had faded, but in its wake was a dark dread. I no longer fantasized about beating Lusha to Raksha—now, when I pictured her face, all I felt was fear.

  I had never considered—really considered—what would happen if I didn’t find Lusha before they reached the mountain. But that possibility had become more likely with each passing day. They could easily be there already—setting up their base camp, or perhaps even starting the ascent.

  Lusha can’t do this.

  My sister had a talent for many things, but climbing wasn’t one of them. That wasn’t what frightened me, though—not exactly. I knew Lusha, and I knew that “can’t” wasn’t a word she understood. It was a quality I found equally frustrating and enviable, and it would serve her well when she became Elder—it already did. Lusha thought nothing of inserting herself into heated disputes between villagers, leading hunting expeditions, or devising complex building projects. She never doubted herself, because she had never failed before. If she met an obstacle on Raksha that was beyond her, would she have the sense to turn back? If she came face-to-face with her own limitations for the first time in her life, would she even recognize them?

  Raksha wasn’t the real danger. Lusha was.

  I lay awake long after Tem fell asleep, tossing restlessly. A rock dug into my back, which already throbbed where the straps of my heavy pack had pressed against it. I had been fantasizing about sleep for much of the day, and yet now that it presented itself, I found myself completely unable to relax. There were no owls here, no frogs or crickets. The ordinary nighttime noises had been bleached to lifelessness, like the landscape. All that remained was the sound of the wind sweeping, sweeping. Unease plagued me, and not just because we were at the edge of the Nightwood. I brushed my hand against the kinnika draped over Tem’s pack, stroking the edge of a skinny one with a tiny, unreadable symbol scratched into the side. It shivered under my touch. The black bell was silent.

  That was when I heard it.

  A snuffling, scratching sound. Soft at first, then louder. Its owner crept along the side of the tent, pausing every few steps, as if to sniff its way.

  I sat up slowly. My heart was pounding, my throat tight. Tem, as usual, did not stir an inch, even as the noises grew closer. Ragtooth wasn’t there, having disappeared sometime after dinner, to hunt or prowl or whatever it was he did when he wasn’t at my side.

  The noises passed the front of the tent just as I drew myself to my feet. For a second, I hesitated.

  Then I reached into the pocket of my chuba, which lay across my blankets, and drew out my knife.

  The witches are not entirely powerless, the Elder of Jangsa had said. Nor are their memories short. Was that what was out there? Was that what had been stalking us? I glanced at Tem, thinking about waking him. But no—I didn’t want to scare the creature away. I wanted to catch it myself.

  Fingers tightening around the knife, I drew back the tent flap and stepped outside.

  At first, I saw nothing. The moon had not yet risen, and the rubbly landscape teemed with shadows. But then I saw it—something moved through the darkness.

  A loping, four-legged something, about the size of a dog. It crept from rock to rock, its nose to the ground. I snuck along behind it, my heart in my throat and my knife clenched tight in my hand. If I could only get close enough to see what it was—

  The beast paused. It had passed Dargye and Aimo’s tent, and was now just outside River’s. As it tilted its head back, sniffing the air, a shiver crawled down my back. It was a wolf, and yet not a wolf. It seemed ill-defined, as if made from shadow or smoke. Only its pointed snout was sharp, sharp as the tip of the crescent moon. It sniffed the air a moment longer, then trotted into River’s tent.

  River.

  I broke into a sprint, heedless of stealth now. The creature’s shaggy tail disappeared behind the tent flap. Any moment, I expected to hear shouting, or screaming, as River woke to discover a monster gnawing at his limbs.

  “River!” I yelled.

  I shoved back the tent flap and charged in, wielding my dagger. River’s tent was large enough for several people. Within, there was light—a single dragon crouched in the corner, worrying a piece of yak meat. River himself sat cross-legged, fully dressed, on his blankets in the other corner. Crouched at his feet was the wolf.

  Which was not a wolf at all, but a fire demon.

  I knew it was a fire demon the second I laid eyes on it. Its body was half substance and half smoke, like all of its kind, and its eyes were the color of fire, as if a furnace burned inside its skull. Though it was wolflike in shape, with a soft gray coat, a plump tail as long again as its body, and tufted paws, its gaze h
eld a strange, hungry intelligence.

  “Kamzin?” River rose to his feet, holding one hand out slightly as if I were a wary animal. “It’s all right. Azar-at doesn’t mean any harm.”

  Can I taste her, River? The fire demon’s voice was low as a whisper, and slithered in and out of my thoughts. Just one lick. I’ll be good.

  “Be quiet, you bag of fleas,” River hissed. “Do you think that’s helpful?”

  I staggered backward one step, then another, slowly emerging from the tent. I tripped over a rock and landed hard on my backside. It knocked the wind out of me, shocking me back to my senses.

  River emerged from the tent and reached down to help me. I shoved his hands away, pulling myself shakily to my feet.

  “What kind of game are you playing?” I was half shouting. “That was—that was a—”

  “Calm down, Kamzin.”

  “Calm down? It’s a fire demon!”

  “Well, I can explain that.” River looked vaguely uncomfortable. “It’s mine.”

  “Yours?”

  “What’s going on?” Tem emerged from our tent, his chuba draped over his shoulders and his hair sticking straight up. “I heard yelling.”

  “That’s just Kamzin, being dramatic.” River tapped a finger against his lips. “I’d rather not wake everybody else, so please keep it down—”

  “I’m not going to keep it down,” I bellowed. “There is a fire demon in our camp. In your tent!”

  Dargye leaned his head out. “Is everything all right, dyonpo?”

  River heaved a noisy sigh. The fire demon poked its snout through the flaps, and Dargye recoiled.

  “Spirits protect us!” He made a warding gesture.

  “Stop that,” River said. The fire demon slithered out of the tent and stood by his side. Its mouth was half-open, its tongue lolling out. “As I assured Kamzin, Azar-at is harmless.”

  “It’s been following us?” I said. I didn’t like looking at the creature. All I could think of was my dream. The witch. The forest. The hungry fire demon, creeping toward me, and no protection to be found anywhere.