Page 12 of All the Wandering Light

When River had last seen her, she had been on that throne. It had been one of her rare moments of clarity, and she had known who he was and that he was leaving. She had touched his chin, as she had when he was a boy, and wished him luck in an oddly wistful voice. Had she known it would be the last time they would see each other?

His thoughts darkened. He might not care about revenge, but that didn’t mean he didn’t hate the Empire. If Esha wanted River to bring him a fallen star, he would do it. He could disappear afterward.

“Tell me where it fell,” he said.

Five

THE SUN HAD set by the time we finally reached base camp, a small, elevated plateau nestled in the lower slopes of Mount Ngadi. We had descended Raksha in a day, painstakingly lowering ourselves down the treacherous ice wall as the sun and wind chapped our skin, then traversing the icefall of towering, groaning seracs. Though I was exhausted, I felt little relief as we stumbled toward the tents. I wouldn’t feel entirely free of the mountain until we left its shadow.

The yak grunted excitedly as we approached. She was huddled behind a rock, head lowered in a morose posture. I held out a hand and she nosed up to me, pressing her forelock into my neck with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. She was untethered, which surprised me. But then, she would know better than to stray too far from her only food source in miles. The dragons we had left behind lay in a tangled heap by the tent. They murmured sleepily at our approach, too cold to stir.

“It’s been out for a while,” Tem said, examining the small firepit. A layer of snow covered it. Wordlessly, Mara began assembling kindling.

“Dargye?” Lusha called, approaching the tent. The flap, which Dargye had failed to secure, rustled in the breeze with a gentle shhh, shhh.

I collapsed on the ground, too tired to care that Dargye had fallen asleep when he should have been watching for our return. Tem might have healed my ankle, but the rest of me was spent. I let my pack slide down my shoulders with a sigh of relief.

“Tem,” I said, “do you know a spell to make our dinner prepare itself?”

He chuckled, the smile breaking through the weariness on his face. “No. But I can help Mara start the fire.” He pulled out the kinnika, which gleamed in the dying light.

Something nagged at me as I watched Tem caress the bells almost lovingly. Stolen magic, River had called them. Imbued with witch magic, like every talisman used by the emperor’s shamans. “Has their power weakened?”

Tem looked thoughtful. He lifted one of the bells, muttering something. I jumped as one of the scraps of kindling in the firepit exploded into flame.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“I can’t understand it,” I murmured. “If the talismans are stolen magic—magic that returned to the witches after the binding spell broke—shouldn’t they be powerless now? River said—”

“Clearly, River isn’t right about everything.” There was an odd note in his voice. I bit my lip and made no further argument.

Lusha strode back to us. “Dargye isn’t here.”

“What?”

“Tent’s empty. His pack’s gone.” She began setting up her telescope. “I’ll see if I can find any evidence of his trail.”

“Where could he be?”

“Hunting, I assume. He took the bow.”

Mara eyed the sky. “Light’s long gone. He should have returned by now.”

“We should go after him,” I said. Despite my exhaustion, I moved to retrieve my pack from where I had dropped it.

“No,” Lusha said. Just that word.

I felt a prickle of irritation. “Lusha—”

“This terrain is too dangerous to navigate in the dark,” she said. “We should all stay close to camp tonight.”

Mara was nodding. “That’s certainly the safest course.”

I fell mutinously silent. I had been the leader of River’s expedition, and I still saw myself in that role, broken and diminished as our group was. At the same time, it was abundantly clear that Lusha viewed herself in the same light. It was unlikely that the idea of a different hierarchy would even occur to her, or to Mara. Even Tem watched Lusha expectantly as she bent over her telescope.

I gazed into the gathering dark. Nervousness twisted in my stomach. The thought flitted through my mind: Azar-at could find Dargye. I shoved it away, but not before I imagined I saw the fire demon’s eyes gleam in the shadows. The Aryas pressed into our backs, while before us lay the enormous glacier that flowed down from Raksha, riven with cracks and ripples that gleamed a ghostly blue in the dying light. To the south, the ground fell away—a constant decline covered in mountain rubble and patchy snow. Far in the distance was a landscape of low hills, crowned with black trees that marked the edge of the Nightwood—the witches’ lands.

After a moment, Lusha looked up and shook her head. Shhh, shhh, went the tent flap.