“I don’t know.” I squinted. “From this angle, it reminds me of a boot. That curve there could be the arch.”
“Mount Boot? I think we can do better than that.” River dusted the crumbs off his hands, and pointed. “That little band there? Those are the coils of a snake ready to strike. The col is a hand wrapped around the snake’s neck—the peak is the head of a man, you can see the nose and a hint of a mouth. It’s Belak-ilen—the hero who slayed the serpent of creation before it swallowed the Earth. He strangled it with his bare hands, even as its venom spread through his body, killing him.”
I couldn’t help smiling. River’s face grew animated as he spoke, his cheeks flushed red by the cold. He looked several years younger than he was, and about as far as could be from the fearsome explorer of his reputation.
“Belak-ilen is all right,” I said. “Though I’ve never liked that story. I prefer ones with happy endings.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“Yes.” My voice was quiet. “Aimo.”
River’s expression grew thoughtful. He gazed at the mountain. “There’s hardly a happy ending in that. But it is fitting, isn’t it?”
We began packing up the remains of lunch. We were traveling as light as possible, and not a single scrap of food could be wasted. We weren’t even bringing dragons, in order to avoid having to carry enough to satisfy their voracious appetites.
River glanced back at me often, to make sure I was keeping up, and I smiled at him, delighting in the simple pleasure of movement. He smiled back. His face was flushed, but otherwise he seemed about as tired as I was—which, with the warm sun on my face, and the mountainside stretched out before me like a dream, was not much. The foreboding I had felt at the thought of Raksha seemed to have vanished, unexpectedly, now that I was actually climbing it.
It grew warm as the day wore on. The sky was cloudless, the sun seeming to burn hotter the higher we climbed. Fortunately, the wind picked up in the afternoon, drying the sweat on my brow.
I can do this, I thought as we traversed a maze of seracs, boulder-sized lumps of ice and snow that towered over our heads, or leaned heavily against one another like weary giants. I felt better than I had in days. As if I could fly up the mountain, as if it were barely a challenge at all. It was how I often felt back in Azmiri, roaming about with Tem. And really, what was Raksha? A mountain. I had climbed mountains. I would climb Raksha just as I had climbed the others—by putting one foot in front of the other.
“Kamzin!” River shouted.
“What?” I almost laughed at the look on his face, it was so uncharacteristically serious. Something groaned strangely behind us. I felt something brush my pack, light as a bird’s wing, as a shadow passed over me. Then, suddenly, I was knocked off my feet by a tremendous impact.
I rolled, and would have rolled farther, if River hadn’t raced to my side and seized my arm. I drew myself to my knees, dazed. When I looked behind me, my heart stopped.
A serac had fallen into the space where I had been standing only a heartbeat ago. It was a monstrous size, taller than two men and wider than the widest tree. So heavy that its own impact had cleaved it in three—long, jagged fissures running through the ice like veins.
“Spirits,” I whispered. I couldn’t stop staring.
River took my chin in his hand. “Are you all right?”
I let him help me to my feet. My knees wobbled, and River grabbed me again. “I’m all right.”
Was I?
“I thought you were finished when I saw it start to fall,” River said. His expression was strange—he looked almost frightened. I had never known River to be frightened of anything, apart from the yak. He touched my face again, as if to reassure himself. “The spirits are looking out for you.”
“Are they?” I said faintly, glancing at the serac again. I could still feel its brush against my back, see its shadow envelop me.
“Let’s keep going,” I said. “I’m fine, really.”
“Are you sure?”
I nodded, though my knees still felt weak. I wanted to put as much distance between us and the seracs as possible. But we had not traveled ten paces before there came another tremendous groan from behind us.
Another serac, perhaps weakened by its neighbor’s fall, crashed to the ground, sending up a plume of snow crystals. Another fell across it, cracking in two. Behind that, three more seracs, one after the other, toppled over with a mighty thud. I felt each impact through my boots.
River was still holding me. “Well,” he said, as finally the sounds of groaning and splintering melted to echoes, “at least we’re through the seracs.”
We didn’t speak much after that. By silent agreement, we hiked as rapidly as possible, our breath rising in great clouds around us. As the moments passed, and the terrain opened onto a steep but even meadow of snow, I began to feel like myself again. My hands stopped shaking, and I no longer heard the uncanny groan of the serac echo in my mind. But its shadow did not leave me.
We moved more cautiously, even after leaving the seracs behind. Our progress slowed further as we made our way up the side of a small cirque, a bowl-shaped depression in the mountainside. Mingma’s map clearly indicated that this was the best route, though it was exhausting—an uphill climb over broken piles of snow and ice. River and I were forced to stop frequently, to navigate the difficult path ahead. My knee throbbed with renewed vigor, slowing my pace and further dampening my mood.
We didn’t reach the Ngadi face until late afternoon. The shadow of the land had fallen upon it, and clouds obscured the hopefully flat terrain above. If possible, these things only made it more terrifying. The ice rose up, up, up—impossibly high and unforgivingly sheer. It curved around the mountainside, fading into mist and shadow, but what could be seen was monstrous, bigger than any ice wall I had ever faced. It could have been the edge of the world, a great solid barrier preventing entry to the mysteries beyond. The jagged striations reminded me of tear tracks, as if the ice was weeping.
“I guess this is it.” I swallowed. “There’s no other way up.”
“Mingma didn’t think so,” River said. “He surveyed this side of the mountain thoroughly, before he disappeared.”
It began to snow. The wind whistled around us, a thin, billowing sound. I shivered, trying unsuccessfully to shake off the shadow of unease that had stalked me all day. River tapped his ax against the ice wall, seeming to consider.
“We should make camp,” he said. “It’s only a couple of hours until sunset. We’ll hope for better weather in the morning.”
I squinted up at the mountain. “Why don’t we give it a try? I bet I can get high enough to see what’s above these clouds.”
“The winds will only get worse with elevation. And even if we do reach the top, we don’t know what sort of terrain we’ll be facing—Mingma’s notes past this point are unclear. I’m not getting stuck out in this storm.”