“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?”