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.