I WAS UP early the next morning, lighting the fire and starting breakfast. It wasn’t my turn, but I needed something to occupy my thoughts. My sleep had been poor—I kept starting awake, each time convinced I had heard the fire demon lurking outside my tent.
I put spices, momo, and dried vegetables into the pot of boiling water. I had seen Aunt Behe make mothuk soup often enough, though I’d rarely paid attention to the process. Still, after leaning over to inhale the smell, I thought I’d come close.
Dargye and Aimo rose soon after, their weariness evident in their slouched shoulders and shadowed eyes. As I stirred the soup, Aimo touched me on the shoulder and motioned me away with her kind smile. I grudgingly sat and watched Dargye tend to the yak. He brushed out her long hair with quick, sharp strokes, while the beast grunted with pleasure. A few minutes later, Aimo handed me my breakfast. It was not as good as Aunt Behe’s, and had an odd aftertaste resulting from a bad guess on the spices, but it wasn’t likely to turn anybody’s stomach. I wolfed down the meal in ten seconds. I hadn’t lost as much weight as Tem or Aimo, but my clothes were not as snug as they had been. At this rate, by the time I returned to Azmiri, I would be as thin as Lusha.
I squinted down at my broad thighs. Perhaps not quite that thin.
Tem sat beside me. “Looks like someone’s taken an interest in you,” he said, his voice low.
I turned. The fire demon, Azar-at, was crouched by River’s tent, tail thumping against the ground. In the morning light, it was barely visible, a plume of wolfish smoke. But its hot-coal eyes glittered like sequins stitched to the wind, and they were fixed on me.
“River isn’t asking it to hide anymore,” I noted. My voice was flat.
“No need, is there?”
River himself emerged soon after, rubbing his hand through his hair. He muttered something to Azar-at, and the fire demon finally turned its eyes away from me.
“Where’s Norbu?” River said. His expression was distracted, and he kept glancing at the horizon, where a line of clouds was massing.
Tem and I regarded him in stony silence. Dargye scurried to fetch his breakfast, moving so quickly he could have been treading on hot coals. Aimo, warming her hands by the fire, not-so-subtly maneuvered herself so she was standing as far from River as possible. River, as usual, seemed oblivious to the effect of his presence on others.
The kinnika around Tem’s neck gave a whisper. I stared. It was the black bell, I was certain of it—as well as the one closest to it, which was small and cracked with age. The metal was unevenly tarnished, as if by fire.
“What’s that?” I said.
“I don’t know.” Tem coughed, his forehead creasing with nervousness. “But it’s not the first time it’s sounded. Chirri said she didn’t know what it was for.”
The bells tinkled again. The fire demon sniffed the air, as if it could smell the notes.
“Music isn’t required right now, thank you,” River said.
Tem gave him a hard look. “They’re not meant for your entertainment. They’re meant to warn us of danger.”
“If that’s the case, they should have been ringing madly since the day we left Azmiri,” River said. “Put them away. The only purpose they serve right now is to give me a headache. Dargye, go check on our shaman.”
Dargye scurried to do as he said. Tem looked at me, and I gave him a slight nod. He sighed and left, and I was alone with River.
“Kamzin,” he said, kneeling before me, close enough for me to count the freckles on his nose. “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t look at him. “Why? You only lied to me, and put us all in danger.”
“I didn’t lie to you. I simply didn’t tell you everything.”
I gave him a stony look. If he was going to use logic like that, there was no way I was going to talk to him.
He let out a long sigh. There was a sadness in his gaze that I had never seen before, and which was startling, it was so foreign to his usual expression. It reminded me, strangely, of one of Yonden’s long-distance looks.
“Why did you do it?” I said quietly.
River’s eyes drifted away from mine. “It was necessary.”
“Necessary? You’re borrowing magic from a fire demon.”
“Not borrowing. That isn’t how it works. The power is Azar-at’s. But the magic is mine.”
“What does that mean?”
He leaned forward, taking my wrist before I could stop him. His fingers brushed the bracelet I always wore, which had been my mother’s. “Who made this cord? The worms that spun the silk?”
“No.” His fingers brushed my skin, and though I should have recoiled from his touch, I felt a tingling travel into my bones. “The weavers did.”
“Ah.” He smiled. “Well, think of me as a weaver. Azar-at provides the materials. But I shape them and stitch them together. In a way, the spells I cast are as much mine as they are his.”
I gazed at him. His eyes always seemed darkened around the rims, as if with charcoal, but I knew it was just his lashes. I had spent enough time sneaking glances at his face, as we bent our heads together over the maps, to know it well. He held my eyes, and despite my fury at him, I felt that traitorous thrum in the air between us.
“Dyonpo, the shaman won’t get up,” Dargye said, striding back from the tents. “I touched his forehead, and it was hot.”
River’s brow furrowed. He glanced at the sky again, his hand slipping from mine.
“He’ll get up,” he said, “if we have to drag him.” He followed Dargye to Norbu’s tent, watched by the fire demon at every step. I shivered and turned my back.
Within twenty minutes, the yak was loaded and we were ready to go. Tem had given Norbu a tea brewed with healing herbs, and spoken a chant to ward off fever. It seemed to have helped—the shaman was up, and moving around, but he still seemed pale, and there was a sheen of sweat on his brow. He seemed diminished, somehow—not just thinner but drained.
“What is it?” I said. “He was fine yesterday.”
“I don’t know,” Tem said. “The healer in Jangsa said he needed rest. I think we’ve been pushing him too hard.”
I shook my head. “Once we reach base camp, he’s staying put. He couldn’t climb Biru in his condition, let along Raksha.”
“We’re almost there, aren’t we?”
“Yes—according to Mingma’s maps.”
“Mingma,” Tem muttered, shaking his head.
“What?”
“You’ve been poring over his maps for days,” Tem said. “Ever since we left Azmiri. You and River rely on them so strongly.”
“Of course we do.” Tem’s tone made me feel annoyed, as if on Mingma’s behalf. The explorer’s hand was by now almost as familiar as my own. “He’s been accurate so far. His maps are a reliable guide to Raksha.”
Tem laughed softly, but there was little humor in it. “They’re a reliable guide to the grave, Kamzin. Don’t you see that? We’ve been following a dead man’s map to his own destruction.”
I felt a shiver of trepidation. “We don’t know how Mingma died.”
“No,” he said quietly. “But perhaps we’ll find out ourselves.”
We set off, moving with a nervous haste. Norbu managed well for the first hour or so, but after that, he began falling behind. River muttered to the fire demon, who paced along at his side, every time we were forced to stop.
The terrain rose and fell around the base of Mount Chening, which thrust its long spine out into the valley. Then, suddenly, there it was.
Raksha.
We had seen it before, in bits and pieces—a sliver glimpsed between two mountains, a shrouded peak looming ahead as we came to the top of a rise. But now it was before us, its monstrous form stark against the sky, as if the world had parted to reveal a glimpse of some dread realm where no beast or human had ever trod.
A cloud was draped over its side; it looked strangely like a crossed arm. The peak was embraced by the mountains Yanri and Ngadi, connected by uneven, bony ridges. Though its neighbors were also massive, much higher than Azmiri, Raksha loomed largest. It was cloaked in disheveled layers of snow, and its sharp peak slanted like a bowed head. There was nothing welcoming about the mountain—quite the opposite. The longer I gazed at it, the more I felt convinced that somehow Raksha did not want us there.
This was a place for spirits and monsters. Not for the likes of us.
We reached the glacier that afternoon. Though much of it was covered with rubble and snow, in some places we were walking directly on the ice, which was as smooth as a river-washed stone and gleamed blue-black. Water could be heard flowing beneath its surface, as faint as a whisper. I felt myself becoming lost in the sound as I trudged along. There was something lulling about it. It was like music from a ghost realm.
Tem placed a hand on my arm, pulling me to a stop. “Kamzin.”
I turned, expecting to see that Norbu had fallen behind again. However, Tem’s gaze was fixed on the sky. The thin line of clouds River had been eyeing that morning had thickened into something far more troubling. A storm was clearly brewing. It stretched to the ground in long curtains of gray.
“We should look for a place to take shelter,” I said. “Somewhere out of the wind where we can set up the tents.”
Tem coughed. “River wants to reach the mountain today. He’s not going to like that.”
“Then River can carry on alone.” My voice was hard. “This time, we’re doing things my way.”
“Don’t do anything rash,” Tem said. “Let’s wait to see if the storm swings west.”
I made an exasperated noise, but did not argue. We continued on, our footsteps barely audible over the shush-shush-shush of the glacier. I began to hope we would escape the storm, that it would turn to the west, as Tem had suggested, and miss us entirely. River set a punishing pace; even Dargye and I were having trouble keeping up. Norbu walked behind River, no longer struggling, but moving with a strange, stiff gait that made me suspicious—it was so unlike his usual stride. Had River, frustrated by Norbu’s sluggishness, put a spell on him to strengthen his body? If so, it was a dangerous thing—Norbu might not feel the strain being placed on him now, but he would later, when the spell wore off. Depending on how ill he still was, such a spell could break him.
Suddenly, my thoughts were interrupted by a crash that shook the ground, followed by a terrible cry.
I whirled. Behind me, the terrain had broken into shards, fissures radiating from the jagged crevasse that had materialized in the glacier. I blinked, unable to make sense of it. Aimo and Dargye had been behind me—now Dargye lay at the edge of the crevasse, where the ice sloped toward the sudden void, shouting and clawing at the ground. And Aimo—where was Aimo? Something inside me shattered, and for a second I could only stare—it was as if the world had frozen, like a nightmarish scene on a silk scroll.
I ran. Dargye slid another foot toward the darkness. One of his gloves had come off. Against the snow was a smear of blood from where the ice had grated against his fingertips. He held on, but barely.
I leaped across the crevasse at its narrowest point, trying not to think about how deep those shadows went. Throwing myself to the ground as close to the opening as I dared, I slammed my ax into the ice and reached for Dargye.
My fingers grasped the sleeve of his chuba just as he slipped farther away, the fabric tearing from my grip. Swearing, I stretched my hand out again, praying that my ax would hold. The crevasse was deep—so deep I could not see the bottom. Dargye gazed up at me, his eyes wide and uncomprehending with terror.
“Climb!” I shouted. Dargye slipped another inch. His hand—the cut one—shook uncontrollably as it gripped the ice.
“Do it, Dargye,” I ordered. Ice crystals stung my throat. I couldn’t hold on much longer myself—every muscle strained and protested. If he could gather enough energy to raise himself to meet my hand, I thought I had enough strength—just—to pull us both to safety.
Dargye slipped again. His mouth was open, but he made no sound. Tangled in his fingers were strands of torn, tan-colored fabric.
Aimo’s chuba.
I shouted at Dargye again, my voice so hoarse I barely recognized it, but still the man made no move to heed me. He continued slipping, down, down, down, until he had reached the very edge of the abyss. I could do nothing but stare in horror as his grip began to falter.
A whirl of movement on my left. “Kamzin!”
“Tem!” I almost let go of my ax, I was so startled. He had seemed to step out of the wind itself, appearing in a space he had been nowhere near, just seconds ago. “Tem, I can’t—”
“Leave it to me.” Sounding the kinnika, he shouted a word, some incantation I didn’t recognize, and suddenly I was falling uphill—as if the rules that bound the world together had been upended. I tumbled up the slope, my ice ax and Dargye skittering after me. My breath was knocked from my body as the man collided with me, and we sprawled across the snow, coming to a sudden, chaotic stop.
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 overhead. 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.