All the Wandering Light

by Heather Fawcett

  “If they catch the star,” Mara said. To my complete unsurprise, his certainty was wavering in the face of Lusha’s hesitation. “It’s possible it’s already returned to the sky.”

  “I need to think,” Lusha said abruptly. She strode to the edge of the stream, seating herself beside the water. Mara drifted after her, clearly of the opinion that his presence could only help her thinking.

  Tem was watching me. His expression was difficult to read—there was concern there, but also something like wariness. It seemed to soften as I met his eyes.

  Suddenly I was sick of the tension that lay between us, all the sharp, unspoken words. I just wanted Tem on my side again.

  “You don’t have to say it,” I said. “You were right. I won’t use Azar-at’s magic again. There’s too much we don’t understand about it.” I paused. “And one visit to River’s mind is quite enough for me.”

  Tem’s face broke into a smile so genuine that it warmed me like sunlight.

  “I can protect us, Kamzin,” he said, his voice low and fierce. “I promise. I won’t let you down the way I did with the fiangul.”

  I gazed into his drawn face, which looked even thinner in the wan light of morning. The shadows under his eyes were almost as dark as the bruise that bracketed mine. I forced myself to smile back.

  Tem took my hand. “Tell me everything.”

  It was no easy thing, describing what I had seen, because I hadn’t just seen it, I had lived it. The visual impressions were all jumbled up with scraps of River’s thoughts, and snippets of memories and emotions that I couldn’t interpret, being absent of any context. It was a bit like rattling around in someone’s messy drawer, trying to make sense of the odds and ends of things. By the time I finished speaking, Tem’s gaze was miles away.

  “So they’re still a distance from the Ashes,” he murmured. “And not all of them have mastered their shape-shifting powers, which means they’re probably not traveling much faster than human speed. I assume it would take them a while to find the star.”

  “River has mastered his powers.” I pictured the enormous black cat on the summit of Raksha, felt again the ghostlike flight of the owl. “We can’t assume anything.”

  “How far are we from the mountains?” Tem said. My own trepidation was mirrored in his eyes. It was one thing to contemplate traveling to the Ashes—it was quite another to actually undertake the journey. The Ash Mountains, which ran perpendicular to the Aryas to the northeast, were said to mark the edge of the world. No one—not even the emperor’s explorers—had ever traveled beyond them. Time was said to move strangely there—the nights lasting days, the daylight as short as minutes. The twilight mountains, they were often called in the stories.

  “Three days, maybe,” I said. “But I don’t know where to look.”

  “Lusha does.”

  We both turned to watch her. But she and Mara were no longer perched on the stream bank—they had moved to a small rise. They seemed to be gazing at something to the south. Lusha’s hand was pressed against her mouth in an uncharacteristic gesture.

  I squinted. Rising from one of those distant mountains, whose foothills were hidden by the horizon, was a column of smoke.

  My breath caught. The column was thick and towering, so great that, even at this distance, I was surprised we hadn’t already smelled it. As if in response to my thought, the wind rose, carrying with it a hint of ash.

  “That’s Mount Zerza,” I murmured.

  “And that,” Tem said grimly, “is witch fire.”

  I swallowed. The smoke was dark—unnaturally so. So dark it seemed mixed with shadow. It twisted strangely, plumes reaching toward the sky like grasping hands. There was only one possible source of that smoke—the sole village on this side of the Aryas, where, mere days ago, Tem and I had eaten and drunk and danced by firelight.

  “Jangsa.” I felt a chill deep in my bones. “Jangsa is burning.”

  The Elder of Jangsa had welcomed us, had given us shelter and aid when we desperately needed it. I remembered the smile of the healer who had treated Norbu, the faces of the villagers we had met. I remembered something else too: River’s hand on my waist as he spun me through the dance at the Ghost March, his voice murmuring in my ear. The elder had welcomed us, not knowing that among our expedition was someone whose true mission might destroy us all.

  I dashed away the tear that slid down my cheek. “We have to help them.”

  “How?” Tem looked as if he had been struck. “It would take days to reach the village. By then—” He didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t need to.

  By the time we reached Jangsa, there wouldn’t be a village left to help.

  “Why?” I said. “Why attack them? Jangsa isn’t even part of the Empire. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Tem fingered the letter Biter had brought from Azmiri. “It does if you want the emperor’s attention.”

  I waited.

  “The Ninth Army,” he said. “Your father wrote that the emperor sent them to the southern villages. He also wrote that he was requesting an army to protect Azmiri.”

  My heart slowed. “And Jangsa—”

  “The emperor will send soldiers,” Tem said. “That smoke will be visible for miles. Jangsa might not be part of the Empire, but the emperor will want to know if there’s been an attack on his border.”

  “And if there are other attacks,” I said, “on other villages—”

  “The emperor will send soldiers there too.” Tem’s voice was grim.

  “Leaving the Three Cities weakened.” My throat was dry. “Vulnerable.”

  “Why fight the entire Empire,” Tem said, “when you can just cut off its head?”

  I slid slowly to the ground. The snow was soft, almost comforting. I gazed at the pillar of black smoke and tried not to think of Azmiri. The witches had burned it too, hundreds of years ago—it had almost been destroyed. Would they do so again? I saw black smoke wreathing the village, blanketing the whitewashed homes and narrow lanes, devouring the stand of pines where Tem and I had played as children—

  Lusha was coming toward us. Her face was pale, her mouth set in a hard line, but her eyes were blazing. I had seen that expression before, countless times—at the age of six, when she had accosted one of the village boys who had been teasing me; on Raksha, when she had confronted River. I knew, with a sinking heart, that it would be impossible to sway Lusha now. If she had made up her mind to go straight to Azmiri, that was what she was going to do.

  “Pack everything up,” she said as she strode past. “I want to be halfway to the Ashes by sundown.”

  Nine

  Chirri

  THE DAWN REACHED her hut before any other, nosing its way through the shutters. Chirri was already awake, hunched over a pile of talismans that would have seemed a hopeless jumble to a casual observer. Bronze, bone, wood—each had its own purpose, but could be combined to weave spells as complex and multitoned as a symphony. She wasn’t casting a new spell but strengthening one that already existed, laid down decades ago by the last village shaman, her aunt.

  It wasn’t enough. She groaned at the realization that she would have to stir from her cross-legged position on the floor—the process of getting up and down was something she tried to keep to a minimum these days. Small Nuisance, the one-month-old dragon sleeping at the foot of her bed, stirred and yawned. He was the last of the baby dragons who had been unwanted guests in Chirri’s hut. She had sold the others, mostly to traveling merchants who often remarked on the quality of the dragons bred in the mountain villages. For some reason, she had turned down their offers for Small Nuisance, despite the fact that he was the most troublesome of the brood, sharpening his claws on her furniture and taking an extraordinary amount of time to understand the practicality of doing his business outside.

  By the time Chirri finally lifted herself to her feet, she was light-headed and out of breath. The downside of a long life, she had often thought, was that you had to spend as much time in
an old body as you did a young one.

  Undaunted, she took up her staff and stepped outside. The clouds below her hut were woolly and gray with rain, partly obscuring the village. A whitewashed home here, a lane strung with laundry there—the rest was tucked under the cloud. Mount Imja to the north, separated from Azmiri by a thinly forested valley, was clear, its white peak glittering in the early light. To the north and south stretched the Aryas, towering and blanketed with snow. The sky was a vast canvas, richly blue.

  Though Chirri never had any shortage of responsibilities, she always paused to look at that view.

  A wisp of cloud hovered not fifty feet below her hut. Chirri slowly descended toward it, leaning on her staff, beating her way along the precarious trail worn by her own boots. She had fallen only once, during her overly excitable youth, in a hurry over something she couldn’t remember now. Chirri never made the same mistake twice.

  Small Nuisance followed her down the slope. He didn’t try to settle on her shoulder, knowing he would receive a rap on the snout for the impertinence. The light in his belly was just beginning to darken—it would be a rich emerald when he was fully grown. Chirri, who still told herself she intended to sell the beast eventually, tried to ignore the fact that his presence made it easier to navigate the shadowed path.

  Upon reaching the finger of cloud, which was tangled in clover and grasses, she removed a vial from her chuba. Gently, she blew part of the cloud into the vial, then stoppered it. The cloud appeared to dissolve once placed in the vial, but that wouldn’t affect the magic.

  Some magics were older than talismans, Chirri knew. Talismans were useful, though most these days were imbued with a dark magic, a stolen magic, and they were now beginning to falter. But shamans had existed before there were talismans, and while their magic then had been of a quieter variety, they could not truly be called weak. Unlike most shamans, Chirri had been taught those magics.

  She climbed back to her hut and started a fire in the pit outside her door. Once it was hot enough, she tossed the vial into the flames. The glass began to char, and then to melt, glowing as it warped and stretched. Chirri spoke the incantation, and the trapped cloud rose out of the flame, invisible but for a flicker of silver here and there, like metal catching the light. The wind rose, scattering the cloud over the village, where it broke apart, vanishing.

  The wards protecting the village seemed to shiver. Chirri closed her eyes and felt them knitting together, their threads tightening, sealing any gaps worn by weather or time.

  Chirri settled herself on a grassy ledge with a sigh of relief. Small Nuisance perched beside her, and she fed him scraps of balep that, for some reason, she had stored in the pocket of her chuba after last night’s dinner. He devoured them, snorting in an exuberant way that might have been intimidating had he been larger than a kitten.

  Chirri waited.

  An hour passed. The sun crept higher, and the clouds dissolved. Finally, they came.

  It was difficult to distinguish them at first—they could have been ordinary shadows, perhaps cast by tree branches tossed by the wind. But these shadows were not attached to a tree or anything else, and the sunlight did not disperse them. They crept up the mountainside, gliding like dark snakes, moving with no particular hurry, but with a clear purpose. Chirri could see it all from her high perch.

  Would the wards hold?

  The shadow-figures paused at the edge of the village and seemed to recoil. Chirri thought she caught the edge of a cry, twisted and barely human. The shadows melted together, and then they surged, throwing themselves at the wards.

  The wards held.

  The shadows dissipated, as if the wards themselves had vanquished them, but Chirri knew better. It was not the first time the witches had come to Azmiri in recent days, nor would it be the last. But Lusha’s letter, carried by her exhausted raven, had given Chirri the warning she needed. Not five minutes after Elder had thrust it into her hand, Chirri had been at work, strengthening the wards surrounding the village, visiting each house and farm to teach their inhabitants a few basic incantations to defend against witch fire. She should have taken such precautions long ago, she knew. If she had been younger, with fewer aching bones, she might have done better. If she had been gifted with a halfway useful apprentice, who had not spent most days trying her patience. But “if” was the least practical word in existence, and Chirri quickly cast such thoughts aside.

  Yet there was one “if” she could not overlook. The witches hadn’t attacked in great numbers, but in small parties more suited to a quick raid than a full-scale assault. What was holding them back? If they came to Azmiri in full force, Chirri would not be able to bar them. One of the emperor’s armies was on its way to the village, but would the soldiers arrive in time?

  She rose, accompanying the movement with such a heartfelt flurry of curses that Small Nuisance flitted away in alarm. She wandered back to her hut, muttering to herself. Where she stopped.

  Perched on an open windowsill was the fox.

  “Hello, old one,” Chirri said. “Back again, are you? And what is it this time?”

  Ragtooth bared his teeth. He was thinner than when Chirri had last seen him a few days ago, and his fur was matted. But his eyes were as bright as ever, a green glitter like the dew on spring leaves.

  Chirri propped open the door of her hut and rummaged through the shelves. The last time, he had come for ruhanna bark, a potent painkiller—she hadn’t wanted to think too hard on the reasons for that.

  Ragtooth stretched in a sunbeam. He sauntered to one of the cabinets at the back of the hut, where cobwebs hung thick in the shadows.

  “Really?” Chirri followed with some trepidation. Small Nuisance’s light flickered against the cabinet, sending a few spiders scurrying away. Chirri tugged at the first drawer, which groaned open. It held several vials, some half-empty. Each contained a dark powder that sparkled like glass. A poison—but not one meant for humans or animals.

  She settled a full vial on the floor. “This won’t stop them. Not now that they have their powers back.”

  Ragtooth only gazed at her. Small Nuisance fluttered close, thinking to make a new friend. The fox snapped at his tail, sending the dragon scurrying behind her legs.

  “You’d best be careful,” she said sternly. “Going back and forth like this—it will wear you down, even an old one like you.”

  The fox took the vial in his jaws and slipped out the door. Chirri was tempted to go to the window to watch, to try to pinpoint the exact moment when he vanished, folding himself into a gap between mountain and sky. But it was a juvenile impulse, and the shaman quashed it.

  What are those fool children up to?

  Lusha and the others had been gone for weeks. The elder believed they were on their way home, but Chirri was less certain. It wasn’t just Ragtooth’s visits, or Yonden’s vague pronouncements. Chirri had no doubt that, given the opportunity, her bumbling apprentice would seize upon some new quest of great importance. But would it be a quest that helped the Empire, or caused even greater harm than what had already been unleashed?

  Chirri adjusted her shawls and began making her way down to the village. She would visit the farmers, those whose fields were closest to the Amarin Valley, and task them with laying animal traps among their crops. Then she would speak with the elder and reassure him that, once again, the wards had held. They were holding—for now.

  For now. Chirri squeezed her staff and continued on her slow, careful way.

  Part II

  The Ashes

  Ten

  MY HANDS ACHED with cold, and my arms shook, but I hauled myself onto the top of the boulder. There I lay on my back, unmoving.

  My breath rose in clouds above me, muting the bright of the moon. The sun had set early—too early. We should have had another hour of daylight.

  The twilight mountains. I tilted my head to look at them. They bristled out of the horizon like blades of darkness that sliced away the stars.

&
nbsp; We had been traveling north for two days, over an increasingly barren landscape. Two days of marching late into the night, yet we still hadn’t reached the foothills of the Ashes. The problem was the terrain, which was stony and pitted and caked with frost, making for dangerous going with the yak. I was beginning to despair. We knew where the star had fallen—at least, Lusha swore she did—but could we reach it before River? Before a creature who could take any shape he chose?

  I shoved the question from my mind, because it wasn’t a question. We had to reach the star before River did.

  I forced myself to my feet, squinting into the darkness. I had left the others to set up camp for the night in order to scout the terrain. Nothing stirred among the shadows, either animal or witch. My heart sank—the landscape before us was even more rugged, strewn with boulders and gouged by glaciers that had once dragged themselves across the land. The earth was held together by ice—we had left behind trees and grass—but in places, hills sagged into loose debris that would be impossible for the yak to scale. I could see no clear path.

  I examined my hands. The last finger of my left was an unhealthy white, and bending it was difficult. I cleared my mind and focused.

  Warmth spread through my hand, as if I had doused it in a bath. The color returned to my skin, and my fingers felt limber again. I paused, waiting for the flash of pain to subside. As long as I restricted myself to small spells, it was bearable. Small magic had a small price.

  I put my glove back on. I had made use of Azar-at’s magic several times since our battle with the fiangul, always for similarly small spells. Whenever I did, I took care to hide it from Tem and Lusha.

  I pushed the guilt aside. I had promised Tem I wouldn’t use Azar-at’s magic, and for the most part, I had kept my word. I doubted that Tem would want me to develop frostbite.

  Something stirred the air above me. Just a bird—probably. There was no way to be certain anymore. The fire Tem had lit, though it burned low, was like a beacon among all that snowy dark.