Even the Darkest Stars

by Heather Fawcett

  Before I could even catch my breath, Dargye was on his feet again and sprinting back to the crevasse. “Aimo!” he shouted.

  But River had reached us, leaping across the crevasse. It was farther than I had thought, but he cleared it as easily as I had. Barely pausing, he grabbed Dargye by the shoulder and forced him back.

  “I tried to catch her,” Dargye stammered. “I don’t know how it happened; it just appeared—”

  “Stop, Dargye.” River wrenched the large man back again. “It won’t do any good.”

  “Are you all right?” Tem caught my hand and pulled me to face him. He was very pale.

  “I’m fine.” I kneaded my hand. It was red and tender from gripping my ax, but nothing seemed broken or pulled. “Tem, how did you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “You just appeared.” I touched his arm to reassure myself that he was there, that he was flesh and blood.

  His eyebrows knitted together. “I ran. As soon as I heard you shouting.”

  “But you were so far ahead.” I shook my head slowly. I knew what I had seen, and yet it was impossible—not even the most highly trained shamans could materialize out of thin air. “How could you—”

  “Let me go!” Dargye shouted. He had broken free of River’s grip. “Aimo’s down there!”

  Tem and I raced to his side, and between the three of us, we managed to wrestle Dargye to the ground. He was still holding the scrap of Aimo’s chuba.

  “She’s down there!” Dargye said again, but the fight had gone out of him. Moisture ran from his eyes and nose. He made no move to wipe it away.

  I whistled for the dragons. Two stirred from their napping perch on the yak’s rump and fluttered to my side.

  “Find her,” I ordered. The dragons hesitated only a moment before darting into the crevasse. Their little lights were soon swallowed up. The crevasse, though narrow, was even deeper than I had imagined—a darkness thick as ink lay just below the threshold. But there would be ledges, places where Aimo’s fall could have been arrested.

  “Tem,” I said. He nodded, understanding where my thoughts had gone, and extricated a length of rope from his pack. He made a loop on one end and began feeding it into the opening.

  “Aimo!” My voice echoed strangely over the shush-shush of subterranean waters. “Aimo, if you can hear me, grab the rope! We’ll pull you up.”

  River was still kneeling at Dargye’s side, a hand on his shoulder. The man was sobbing openly now, his shoulders heaving.

  “River, can you do something?” I said desperately. “A spell, anything that might—”

  “There are no spells for this, Kamzin.” His voice was quiet.

  The dragons fluttered back into view, emitting soft chirrups. I motioned them back into the crevasse, but they ignored me. The larger one landed on my shoulder, his tail coiling around my neck.

  River murmured something to Dargye. The man drew himself shakily to his feet and allowed River to lead him to the boulder where the yak had stopped, which formed a buttress against the rising wind. The fire demon, which had been dogging River’s steps all day, stayed where it was. It lowered its snout into the crevasse.

  I turned to Tem. “I can climb down, but I’ll need more light.”

  “I might be able to do something.” Tem took the dragon into his lap, stroking its head. “Give me a minute.”

  He took out the kinnika and bowed his head over the dragon, muttering an incantation. The dragon’s light flickered, and slowly, gradually, it began to brighten. I looked away, and my eyes met the fire demon’s.

  “Are you just going to sit there, staring at me?” I snapped. “You have the power to help us. I know you do.”

  No help for death, Azar-at said.

  “Aimo is not dead.” I shook my head. “It’s not possible. Not like this.”

  “Kamzin.” Tem held out the dragon. Its blue light shone like a tiny sun, so bright I could barely look at it. The dragon chirped and flapped its wings.

  “Let him go.”

  But when Tem released the dragon, it merely flew in a ragged circle before perching at the edge of the crevasse, next to its companion.

  I whistled to get their attention. “Go on, you two. Back to Aimo. Show me where she fell.”

  But the dragons merely sat there, chirruping softly.

  “What’s wrong with them?” I turned to Tem. “Why won’t they obey?”

  Tem’s expression was dark. He lowered his face onto his hand and did not reply.

  “No.” I turned to Azar-at, who was still watching me. “It can’t be true. Please, if you can help her—”

  No help for death. The creature’s eyes glowed with a hungry fire. I became aware, suddenly, of how ancient its gaze was, how unfathomable. Death hangs in the air, in the darkness. I can smell it, like crushed leaves. Would you bargain for her life, brave one?

  “Bargain?” I repeated. “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t listen to it, Kamzin.” Tem’s hand was on my arm. “Fire demons can’t bring back the dead. Whatever it’s proposing, it’s not life.”

  Fire demons couldn’t bring back the dead. Aimo was dead, then. I pictured her face, her kind smile. I would never see her again. I had brought her on this expedition, and now she was dead. And this had happened in a moment, a space of time smaller than a sentence. Smaller than a breath.

  I rose to my feet. Tem said my name, but I ignored him.

  I walked twenty or thirty paces from all of them, then sank to my knees on the snow. I kneaded my hand again, barely registering what I was doing.

  I should go back for my ax, I thought. If I lost it—not a difficult thing in this shifting, glacial terrain—it could be disastrous later. But I made no move to stand.

  I saw Aimo again, leaning against the tree, staring into the darkness. Waiting, expecting against all odds for her husband to step out of the shadows and join her.

  Aimo is dead. I saw the words in my mind, but that was all they were—words. Aimo is dead. I tried to grasp them, to absorb them into myself, but I could not. They hovered there, meaningless, empty.

  “Kamzin.”

  I jumped. River knelt beside me. His fingertips brushed my wrist, at the gap between glove and sleeve.

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “You can’t what?” River’s voice was quiet. I turned to look at him. His strange eyes held an unexpected kindness.

  “I can’t keep going.” My eyes wandered over his face, registering the now-familiar planes and angles as if from a great distance. “Not now. I can’t make it to Raksha.”

  River ran his thumb over my hand, back and forth. “Kamzin—you’re already here.”

  “What?” I looked up, taking in the enormous, curving crescent of the glacier. He was right. Only a short hike away, against the slope of Mount Chening, was a rubbly plateau sheltered from the wind—the very place River and I had planned, from consulting Mingma’s maps, to make our base camp.

  We were here. At the foot of Mount Raksha. The great mountain had been looming over us, ever closer, throughout the day. We were in its shadow now, and had been for some time. It had watched our approach, it had watched Aimo’s fall. I hadn’t expected good omens on an expedition to a mountain as haunted by myth and legend as Raksha. But this?

  I shuddered. It hardly boded well that our arrival had been greeted with death.

  The kinnika twitched, making me start. Tem knelt at my other side. He placed his hand against the chain to still the bells. It made no difference—the sound came again, muffled against his skin.

  “The storm,” Tem said.

  I became aware of the chill wind combing my hair, and the darkening sky. Lightning flashed behind the mountains. The storm would be upon us soon.

  “We have to set up camp.” River rose, his chuba billowing around him. “Quickly.”

  It was rough going, maneuvering the yak over up the rubbly slope. By the time we reached the plateau, snow was falling, and thunder rumbled overh
ead. We set up the tents as quickly as we could, pounding them into the hard earth with extra nails, weighting the bottoms with supplies. Then we dove inside.

  “We should be keeping Aimo’s ghost company,” I said. “That’s what we’d be doing if we were back home.”

  “If we were back home, Elder would be performing the death chant, and Chirri would meditate for three days by the body,” Tem said. “A lot of things would be different. We just have to accept that. Aimo would understand.”

  Aimo would understand.

  At those words, I felt something inside me break. The tears began to fall then, hot and fast. Tem wrapped his arms around me, and I buried my face into the soft fur of his hood. It hurt too much. I couldn’t speak.

  The storm raged on. An hour passed, perhaps two. Thunder echoed off the enormous mountains surrounding us, and lightning flashed, transforming the dark interior of the tent into a fleeting world of gray shadow. The dragons had all taken shelter in the other tents, and I cursed myself for not bringing one in with me. The wind was so loud, the flapping of the tent so violent, that they would never hear my whistle now.

  Tem and I didn’t talk. We simply sat together. I leaned against his chest, and he wrapped his arms around me. The storm, as frightening as it was, felt right somehow. It echoed what I felt at that moment, my desire to rage and shout.

  Something crashed outside the tent. I started.

  “What was that?”

  “I don’t know.” Tem was tensed too. “A rock falling?”

  “That’s not a comforting thought.”

  We sat there, unmoving, for a long moment. There came another crash, followed by a shout.

  I was on my feet in a flash. “That was River.”

  Our tent opened, admitting a swirl of icy wind and snow. Dargye staggered inside, clutching his arm. His face was ashen, and blood welled beneath his hand.

  “Dargye, what—?”

  “It’s Norbu,” he choked out. “He’s gone mad. He tore my tent apart with a dagger, and then came at me.”

  “What?”

  “He would have killed me, I think, if River hadn’t distracted him—”

  I shoved my way past Dargye, plunging headfirst into the storm. At first I could make out nothing amidst the chaos of snow and wind. Thunder boomed so loud I felt my bones tremble. Back in the tent, the black kinnika was no longer whispering, but ringing out loudly enough to cut through the storm.

  As soon as my eyes had adjusted, I realized the wrongness of what I was seeing. There should have been three tents huddled against the mountainside—instead there was only one, River’s. The sounds I had taken for the crash of falling rocks must in fact have been the tents being torn from their stakes and blown by the gale against the mountainside.

  Lightning flashed, illuminating River standing motionless at the crest of a rise, his hands raised. Norbu was just beyond him, swaying precariously. I couldn’t make out what was passing between them, but Dargye’s wound was reason enough for me to believe that River was in danger. I sprinted toward him, drawing my own dagger from my pocket.

  “What’s going on?” I panted when I reached his side.

  “Kamzin, stay back,” River said in a strange, commanding voice I had never heard before. It stopped me in my tracks, as if my feet had frozen to the ground.

  “I don’t—”

  Norbu let out a ghastly cry, harsh and guttural. And familiar.

  The sound came again, but not from Norbu. Somewhere in the distance, lost in the storm, the fiangul were calling.

  They were calling for Norbu.

  The shaman let out another terrible, birdlike scream and lunged toward us. His eyes were black, as black as the fiangul’s, and wide with madness. I raised my dagger and started forward, but River shoved me backward so hard that I tumbled down the rise. I heard him shouting at Norbu, then the sound of a scuffle. Seconds later, River sailed clear over my head, landing hard against a boulder with an oof of pain.

  “Dammit,” he said as he drew himself shakily to his feet. “I never should have cast that strengthening spell on him.”

  “What?” I almost screamed.

  River winced. “It really should have worn off by now. I didn’t see the harm in it at the time—I knew the fiangul had their talons in him, but it seemed as though the bond was weakening, that he was acting more like himself. I realize now that—”

  Norbu let out another cry, and surged forward. He moved with a speed so rapid, so unnatural, that I screamed again. He grabbed River by the shoulders and pulled him into the snow, his hands around his neck. Without pausing to think, I leaped onto Norbu’s back, putting him in a headlock with one arm and raising my dagger with the other. He reared up, flailing and screeching. Wings erupted from his back—black, curving, enormous wings—rending his chuba and flinging me into a snowbank. I pulled myself up onto my hands and knees, just in time to see him lean over River again.

  “Norbu!” I screamed over the raging wind. “Norbu, stop! You know River; you know all of us! Please don’t—”

  But another sound filled the air. The sound of heavy wingbeats, and distant screeching that filled the air like a smothering fog.

  The fiangul were here.

  “River!” I shouted. I ran forward, lowering my head like a bull. I plowed into Norbu, knocking the shaman to the ground. In the process, I knocked all the breath from my body.

  “Ohhh,” I breathed. River’s strengthening spell had made Norbu powerful in more than one way, it seemed. He had the density of a tree.

  Norbu was already on his feet, already reaching for me. But River was there, suddenly, grabbing the shaman by the hair and driving his fist into his face.

  “River, no,” I yelled the moment before his fist connected with a sickening crunch.

  River shouted in pain. Swearing, he reeled backward, clutching his injured hand. Norbu barely seemed affected. He spread his wings, and braced himself as if to leap at us.

  “That’s it.” River’s jaw was set, his face pinched with pain. “I’m sorry, my old friend, but I have to do this.”

  He made a sharp gesture, and the shaman sailed backward. He hit the mountainside and tumbled to the ground, where he lay without moving. At least for a moment. There came a flutter of motion, followed by another. Dark shapes descended on Norbu’s motionless body. Thin, spectral shapes borne upon wings of shadow.

  “They’re taking him!” I shouted.

  “He was lost already.” River grabbed my arm and pushed me behind him as more of the fiangul emerged from the storm. They glided toward us, their wings spread wide, their taloned feet barely caressing the snow.

  “Oh, Spirits,” I moaned. “They’re going to take us too! They’re going to make us like them!”

  River swore again. “Well, I suppose there’s no help for it. Azar-at?”

  The fire demon was suddenly at his side. Are you prepared? Its voice was low and silky in a way that made my skin crawl.

  “Would it matter if I weren’t?” River said. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  He raised his arms suddenly, spreading them wide over his head. Something descended from the clouds, a dark and churning column of darkness. It passed over us harmlessly, barely stirring my hair, but the fiangul were thrown into a frenzy. The funnel dragged them into its maw, devouring even those that tried to flee. It whipped back and forth over the plain, tearing long gashes in the new-fallen snow and tossing up the rocky earth beneath it. Once it had swallowed the fiangul in our vicinity, it raced after the retreating cloud the others had formed. I watched, frozen to the spot. As the fiangul fled, so did the storm that bore them. The blizzard softened to a light sleet, and a patch of blue sky pierced the clouds. Everything was quiet and very still.

  SIXTEEN

  RIVER FELL FORWARD. He pressed his hand against his chest, his expression contorted.

  I knelt at his side. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” He pressed his hand against his head, and then his che
st again, as if he was not quite certain of the origin of the pain. “Whenever I use Azar-at to anchor a spell, it takes something out of me. I’ll be fine in a moment.”

  I felt cold. “You mean you had to—”

  “I had to give him another piece of my soul, yes. But don’t trouble yourself, Kamzin. I barely feel it anymore.” He paused thoughtfully. “In fact, it’s sort of tingly.”

  “What happened?” Tem raced toward us. “Dargye collapsed, and by the time I had his wound bandaged you were—”

  “It’s all right.” I helped River to his feet. “We’re fine. Can you give me a hand?”

  Tem pulled River’s arm over his shoulder, and helped him walk back to the two remaining tents. “Where’s Norbu?”

  I couldn’t bring myself to recount what had happened. “The fiangul.”

  We settled River in our tent next to Dargye, who was still moaning and clutching his arm. Tem turned to me.

  “It’s deep, but I managed to stanch the bleeding with a healing charm,” he said, burying a cough in the sleeve of his chuba. “I didn’t have time to do anything for the pain, though. What happened to River?”

  “He’ll be all right,” I said. “I think. In any case, there’s nothing we can do for him. Help Dargye. I’m going to try to get a fire going.”

  What little wood we had gathered before was covered in snow, and damp. I piled it together nevertheless, hoping that I could put to use what rudimentary magic I had learned from Chirri. As I worked, the dragons fluttered one by one to my side. They had scattered during the fiangul attack, and now surrounded me, chirping worriedly. I excavated a few slices of dried apple from my pockets and sprinkled them on the snow. The dragons set to work immediately—they were not difficult creatures to distract. In that moment, I envied them.

  Where was the yak? I dimly recalled seeing her charge down the hillside toward the glacier as the storm intensified and the fiangul approached. What would we do if she was lost or injured?

  I set aside my troubling thoughts and tried to focus on the fire. I had taken one of Tem’s talismans, a circlet carved from beech bark that could be worn as a ring or pendant. But no matter how urgently I muttered the incantation Chirri had taught me, all I could summon was a tiny ember.