“I WON’T FORGET that any time soon,” Tem said.
We were setting up our tent for the night, having traveled through the day after leaving Jangsa at first light. Norbu seemed stronger for the healer’s ministrations, and barely lagged at all, though I noticed he still glanced over his shoulder sometimes, a puzzled frown on his face. River, anxious to close the distance with Mara, stopped often to hurry us. The delay seemed to have put him on edge; he looked repeatedly at the sun as its movement counted down the hours of daylight.
But if River was eager to be moving again, so was I. We found no new evidence of Lusha and Mara—had they taken a different route, or were they now so far ahead that the elements had erased the telltale signs of their presence? I found myself stamping out my own frustration whenever Tem fell behind. After a punishing hike of fifty miles, we were all relieved to have stopped by a grove of chir trees as dusk neared. The light from the campfire and the gamboling dragons played against their trunks.
“Won’t forget what?” I said innocently. “Jangsa? Or dancing with that girl?”
Tem’s cheeks turned sunset pink. “I didn’t—I mean, that wasn’t my idea. I don’t know how River did it, but—”
“But you didn’t mind, did you?” I said as Tem flushed even deeper. “And neither did she, I bet. You probably had to tear yourself away from her at the end of the night. Or did you? Come to think of it, Tem, I didn’t hear you return to your room—”
“Stop it, Kamzin.”
I chortled to myself.
Later, though, as we both settled into our blankets, trying to get comfortable on the uneven ground, Tem said, “You really wouldn’t care?”
I dragged my eyes open. I was so tired I felt as if I were weighted to the earth. “What?”
He coughed. “If I was interested in someone. It wouldn’t bother you?”
I was quiet for a moment. “Are you?”
“No.”
I shifted restlessly. “Well, what does it matter, then?”
“You didn’t seem to mind dancing with River.”
“I don’t mind being able to walk today.”
“It was more than that, though,” Tem persisted. “The way you looked together—”
“Listening to you talk about dancing is like listening to a fish talk about fire-building.” I rolled onto my side. “It was just a dance. Can we drop it?”
“I just mean—”
“Tem, if you need me to say it, I’ll say it. I wouldn’t mind if you were interested in someone. The two of us haven’t been together that way in over a year. So I don’t mind. All right?”
Tem didn’t reply, for which I was grateful. I wasn’t entirely sure I had told the truth. The thought of Tem liking another girl made me feel strange. It wasn’t jealousy precisely. It was closer to loneliness than anything else. If I didn’t have Tem, who did I have?
Sleep did not come easily for me, despite my exhaustion. Though the sound of the waterfall and Tem’s quiet snores were soothing, I lapsed in and out of a doze. The music of the Ghost March threaded through my thoughts. Part of me felt as if I were still spinning in circles. As if River’s arms were still around me, his breath warm against my ear. Others circled us—the masked dancers, but interspersed among them were the fiangul. Their beaks snapped at me as I passed, catching at my hair, my chuba, my skin. River melted away, and suddenly, they were everywhere, reaching for my throat with taloned hands—
A noise startled me awake, my heart thundering. I listened, and it came again—a snuffling, scrabbling sound. The same sound I had heard before, at the edge of Bengarek Forest.
I lay very still. It was hard to pinpoint the direction of the noise over the splash of the water—but it seemed close. As quietly as I could, I pushed back my blankets and rose to a crouching position. Ragtooth, who had been sleeping by my head, gave a low hiss.
“Shut up,” I whispered. My hand moved to the tent flap. The creature was just outside. I could hear its snout huffing against the rocky bank. Taking a deep breath, I pulled on the flap.
Ragtooth bit my leg—hard.
“Ouch!” I cried. Tem gave a start and muttered something, but he was not truly awake. He rolled over onto his side with a mumbling groan.
Rubbing my calf, I listened. The sounds had stopped, and all was quiet. It was a different quiet from before, an honest, nighttime hush. I knew, somehow, that the creature was gone.
In the morning light, there was no evidence of a trail. The earth was hard-packed, almost frozen. Not even Dargye’s footsteps left a trace.
“I know it was out here!” I said. “It was the same creature I heard before. Whatever it was, it’s been following us.”
Tem gave me a skeptical look. The others, preoccupied with breakfast, paid little attention to me.
“It could have been the wind,” he offered, releasing the dragon he was holding and reaching for a second. The chill air dried their scales, which needed oiling every few days to keep them in good condition. The dragon’s eyes half closed as Tem rubbed heartseed oil between its wings.
“It wasn’t the wind,” I said. “Please say you believe me. I wasn’t imagining it.”
“I believe you,” he said quickly. “But, Kamzin, I set the warding spells myself last night. If an animal had slipped through them, I would have felt it.”
I shook my head. “You don’t believe me at all. You could at least have the decency to say it.”
“Kamzin . . .”
I stomped over to the fire. Dargye handed me a bowl of sampa porridge, lumpy and slightly burned, which did not improve my mood. I stabbed at it with my spoon, trying to saw through the lumps.
“The wind can play strange tricks on your hearing,” he said, turning his attention to his own porridge—which, I couldn’t help noticing, had fewer blackened grains than mine.
“It wasn’t the wind,” I said through my teeth.
“Do you recall the storm we had last winter?” Dargye continued, as was his habit, as if I hadn’t spoken. “The sound it made against my hut—I thought the witches had come to carry me off. But it was only loose branches hitting the windows.”
I mashed the lumps with the back of my spoon. “Shame.”
“We should choose our camps more carefully,” he said. “We’re too exposed. I’ve said as much to River, but he doesn’t listen.”
“I can’t imagine why not.”
Aimo brought a bowl of porridge to Norbu, who sat hunched over his butter tea, rubbing his eyes.
“How is he?” I asked.
Aimo made a so-so gesture. Norbu was wearing his heavy fur chuba, as opposed to his lightweight traveling one, but still he was shivering. He seemed stronger, but there was a lingering weariness in his movements. I eyed him warily. It wasn’t just that I was concerned for his health; I was calculating how much he would slow us down. An ill traveling companion was a danger not just to himself, but to the entire group. Our supplies would run low if we were delayed, and Norbu would be unable to handle difficult terrain, forcing us to take roundabout routes that would use additional resources and expose us to unexpected dangers.
Ragtooth nosed up to me, sniffing at my bowl. I fed him a few porridge lumps and let him stick his snout in my tea.
“At least you believe me,” I murmured, scratching his ear. He regarded me silently and allowed me to pet him for several seconds before trying to bite my fingers off.
Despite my worries, we reached the edge of Garamai Forest—the day’s goal—by sundown. Sleet fell during the night, pummeling the tents and making sleep difficult, but by the next morning the skies were clear of all but a few skinny clouds, which trailed at the edge of the retreating storm like frayed threads.
Ragtooth stayed with us most of the time, trotting along at my side or even running ahead of us, as if scouting out the path. I was nervous here—we all were—expecting at any moment that a witch would rise up out of the shadows and pounce. But the sight of the fox’s tawny tail bobbing up and down brought me back to myself. If Ragtooth, with his fox senses, was not troubled by anything, why should I be?
The forest at this elevation was a scattering of trees that only occasionally thickened into groves. These we had to pick our way through single file. The ground was a soft carpet of pine needles. There were patches of melting snow here and there, and the ground was muddy. The long, fluted peak of Mount Chening loomed over us, and beyond that, glimpsed only occasionally in the distance, was the peak of Raksha.
Clouds wrapped around it like many-layered shawls, but I knew it was there. I had never seen anything so enormous—it seemed higher than the stars themselves. Even a glimpse took my breath away—and terrified me to the core.
What have I done? Yet with the terror, there was excitement, which turned the fear into something almost pleasurable. It was a strange emotion that filled me with jangly energy, and I sometimes jogged ahead of the others, delighting in the simple pleasure of movement. Some of the darkness that had plagued my dreams since our battle with the fiangul seemed to lift, and I marveled at how far I had come. Few humans had laid eyes on the landscape before us. I spun around, taking in every angle, feeling every inch a daring explorer.
This is it, I thought. This is all I want.
It took four days to cross the forest, as we were detoured around unexpected gullies and deep streams that the yak couldn’t ford (“tedious,” Mingma had written, in his usual dry tone). We tried to keep to our northward course as much as possible, but ended up backtracking repeatedly. Another day was spent traversing a field of towering boulders that had been deposited, long ago, by a retreating glacier. That night we pitched our tents at the edge of a pointed outcropping that overlooked Phaomzu Valley and the Nightwood beyond it. We were not two weeks out from Azmiri, and yet the village seemed a world away.
We made only a small fire. Our position was too exposed—there was no telling what could be watching us from the valley below. We crowded around the flames—apart from Norbu, who sat by his tent, hunched over his talismans, and River, who had wandered off somewhere. The sunlight drained from the sky, leaving a trail of orange and pink above the towering mountains. The few trees loomed out of the uneven ground, arms outstretched in what seemed like a sinister gesture of welcome.
I hunched as close to the fire as I could get, as if it could protect me against not only the cold, but my own fear. My gaze kept drifting up, up, to the snow-streaked heights. To Raksha. All but the very peak was hidden behind Mount Chening, but some of the clouds had cleared, revealing a snowy triangle that gleamed golden from the sunset.
We were almost there. Another three days, I estimated, and we would be setting up base camp. The thought made me want to whoop with excitement and sob with terror at the same time.
Tem sat beside me, treating his feet with salve. We were all blistered and bruised by now, some worse than others. Aimo needed daily healing charms for her swollen feet. Dargye’s toenails were blackened and loose, and when he removed his boots there was an awful squelching sound from the blood that pooled at his toes. Neither made any complaint, but I could see the pain written on their faces at the end of each day.
“It’s hard to imagine,” Tem said, gazing at the sky, “that there was ever a city up there.”
I rubbed my hands over the flames. “If it’s even true. How could people survive at that elevation?”
“Witches aren’t people,” Dargye said. Aimo, sitting beside him, seemed to flinch.
“Actually, according to the shamans, they’re half-human,” Tem said. “Descendants of an ancient nomadic tribe from beyond the Drakkar Mountains and elemental spirits—cousins of the fire demons. Only these elementals were not shaped from fire, but shadow.” He paused. “Darkness itself.”
Aimo shivered. I shook my head. Tem’s knowledge of shamanic lore far outweighed my own. Part of my apprenticeship to Chirri involved hours poring over the ancient shamanic scrolls held in my father’s library. The first time Tem accompanied me there, I had to drag him away. While I bored quickly of ancient history and magical theory, Tem drank it in like a sun-scorched forest does the first autumn rains. As I continued to struggle with magic, Tem took to reading over the passages Chirri assigned to me and relaying the important points in words that made sense. Chirri had seemed suspicious of my suddenly improved comprehension, though she made no comment.
Dargye shrugged. “What difference does it make? They’re monsters. They probably don’t need to breathe. Or eat, or sleep. Who knows?”
“That’s nonsense,” I scoffed. “Azmiri fought the witches when they set fire to the village. They can be harmed. They can be killed.”
“They can also transform into animals and fold themselves into shadow,” Dargye snapped. “How can we know what’s impossible for them?”
“I wish I knew more about this lost city,” Tem said, stirring the fire with a stick. Little sparks rose from the wood. “What are we going to find when we reach the summit? The scrolls aren’t specific.”
That Tem would know of the witch city didn’t surprise me. “What do they say?”
“That it exists”—he coughed—“though its location is unknown. The ancient shamans called it the ‘sky city’—they thought the witches built it in the clouds, far above the human realm, that it floated from place to place.”
I pictured a glittering city suspended in the sky. “Why did they abandon it?”
“No one knows. It was a very long time ago—centuries, long before the Empire had even begun to take shape. One scroll suggests that the witches grew interested in humans, and they came down from the sky to spy on us. Another claims that a power struggle between their rulers led to a bloody war, and the survivors fled back to Earth to escape the vengeful spirits who haunted them. Whatever the reason, they never returned to the sky city, choosing to dwell instead in the Nightwood—only it wasn’t called that back then.”
I nodded. I knew that at one time, the great forest had stretched from the plains east of the Aryas—where it was now confined—all the way to the lands that now held the Three Cities. But the Empire had cleared great swaths of it, and today only a few stands of trees remained west of the mountains. It was said that the Nightwood had not always been a wasted, fearsome place, but the witches had imbued it with their dark magic in the centuries they dwelled there, and when the emperor bound their powers, some part of the Nightwood had sickened, twisting in on itself. Now it was a place even birds feared.
“The shamans believed the witches left something in the sky city,” Tem said. “Some ancient power. Perhaps a talisman.” He ran his thumb along his jaw, a gesture he made whenever he was lost in thought. “Did Chirri ever mention anything?”
I thought back. Chirri had spent hours, in the early days of my apprenticeship, instructing me on the history of the Empire and the surrounding lands, and of the creatures, both magical and nonmagical, who dwelled there. It was the role of the village shaman to know such things—they lived long lives and were often called upon to advise the elder. But as my ineptness at magic grew more apparent, Chirri abandoned these efforts, declaring that if I lacked the mental faculties to master spells even children could cast, I couldn’t be trusted to advise the elder on any subject. My face burned at the recollection.
“No,” I said quietly.
“How are we supposed to find something if we don’t know what it looks like?” Dargye said.
Tem began to reply, but Aimo stood suddenly and hurried away. We stared after her, startled.
“Is she all right?” I asked.
Dargye’s expression had clouded. Without looking at me, he replied, “She’ll be fine.”
“She shouldn’t go off by herself.”
Dargye opened his mouth to argue, but I was already on my feet. After the warmth of the fire, the twilight air was almost painfully cold. My eyes watered from the chill wind that stirred the sparse grasses. I found Aimo standing by a grove of dead trees, leaning against one of the trunks as if drawing support from it.
“Is everything all right?”
Aimo nodded, wiping her face quickly on the back of her hand. Her eyes shone faintly.
“It’s your family, isn’t it?” I had noticed that, whenever the witches were mentioned, Aimo stiffened, as if steeling herself against some invisible assault. The young woman glanced at me.
“Yesterday was my daughter’s birthday,” she said. “She would have been five.”
“I’m sorry.” I felt my own voice drop to match hers. “Is there anything I can do?”
She gazed into the distance. For a moment, I thought she wasn’t going to reply.
“You already have,” she said. “I feel closer to them here.”
“Closer?” I knew that the witches had taken Aimo’s husband and child. When it happened, no search parties were launched. No one waited to hold the funeral. I tried to read her shadowed face. “What do you mean? You can’t think they’re still out there?”
Aimo turned back to me. Her expression was serene. There was no trace of the tears I had seen earlier. “I’m sure of it.”
I stared at her. “That’s why you came, isn’t it?”
She smiled faintly. Her demeanor was unnerving—the calm certainty I had always admired, though not understood, seemed to possess a different quality now. She moved away without replying, following a narrow ridge between two boulders.
“Wait,” I called. It wasn’t safe to stray too far from the fire. Aside from witches, wild animals often came down from the mountains at night to hunt.
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Dargye said, appearing behind me. Barely sparing me a glance, he headed in the direction his sister had taken. The faint light gleamed off the dagger he had tucked into his belt.
“Does she really believe that?” I couldn’t help asking. “That her family is still alive, and they’re out here in the witch lands somewhere?”
Dargye paused, gazing at me from beneath his thicket of eyebrow. His expression was weary. “Is there a reason she shouldn’t?”
“It’s impossible,” I said. “The witches have no mercy. No one they’ve ever taken has been found again.”
“What would you have her believe instead?” Dargye folded his arms. “Aimo and Jai were friends from childhood. They did everything together, went everywhere together—not unlike you and Tem.”
A flush spread across my face. Few villagers, I knew, had been surprised when Aimo and Jai married. Surely people didn’t see Tem and me in that light.
“What would you have her believe, Kamzin?” Dargye repeated. “That the witches captured her family, tortured them, and killed them? That they took their souls and condemned them to slavery? Which of the stories is she supposed to accept? Is it any wonder she chooses to hold on to some small hope, however unlikely?”
I felt lost. “She isn’t going to find them.”
“Of course she isn’t,” Dargye said. “That doesn’t mean she has to believe it.”
With that, he turned, following his sister into the gathering darkness.