He took hold of my chin, his thumb brushing my cheek, and examined me. “You’re like ice.” He wrapped his arm around my waist and hauled me up.
“I’m fine.” I took a step, and immediately, my legs buckled. I was shaking so hard I felt as if I could come apart. River looped his arm around me and helped me walk.
“Wait—Ragtooth!” I cried, spying his limp body. Grimacing slightly, River lifted the fox by the scruff of his neck and stuffed him in his pack. Ragtooth stirred, and I felt a wave of relief. River pulled me close again, and we limped on.
Distant crashes shook the ground, and shouts echoed through the mountain. “What’s going on?”
“Azar-at is sealing the cavern,” River said, “melting the rock with fire and weaving it with a spell the ghosts won’t be able to penetrate. They won’t trouble us again.” I gazed at him, startled by the barely contained fury in his voice. His arm tightened around me, his hand gripping my hip as if at any moment he expected me to be torn from his side.
“You’re—you’re sealing them in?” I breathed. “Can’t you set them free?”
“The spell that prevents them from crossing over is ancient, and as strong as the mountain itself. It’s possible that I could break it, but it would cost more than I’m willing to sacrifice.”
Water sloshed around my boots. We were wading through a stream that had not been there before. It was growing, spreading across the cavern floor.
River dragged me through the water, which began to lap around my ankles. “The fire,” he muttered. “Azar-at’s spell. It’s melting the snow above the tunnels.”
“What?” How could he not have considered that?
“I was in a hurry,” River said. “I’m not sure I fully thought this plan through—”
“Do you ever?” Fear brought some of the feeling back to my limbs. The water rose rapidly, swirling around us in powerful currents. We plunged into the tunnel that led to the surface, gaining elevation with every step. Still the water surged, lapping almost to my waist. It lifted me off my feet, but River kept his grip on me, and finally we broke free of the torrent. I bit down on a scream as I looked back. The cavern was now completely flooded.
And rising through the flood was Mingma, one hand outstretched, eyes wide with some terrible combination of horror, hatred, fear. River yanked me back around, and we sprinted the final distance, bursting out of the mountain and into the light of a gray sunrise. River let out a wordless shout as we fell forward onto the snow, throwing his hand out. The rock behind us seemed to glow and melt. It crumbled, sealing the shadowy entrance with a surprisingly soft sound like a sigh, and it was as if the tunnel had never been.
TWENTY-TWO
CLOUDS GATHERED ALONG the horizon, their gray backs brushed with pink and gold. The sunlight was already spilling over the mountain, igniting the snow. After being so long in darkness, the sight made my eyes ache. I lay still, overwhelmed.
“Hey.” River lifted me upright, his voice low and urgent. “Kamzin. Stay with me.”
Stay with him? Where else was I going to go? Then it occurred to me that he had interpreted my stillness as a sign of dire health. I made no move to discourage the notion—I felt breathless and bloodless, as if I were suspended in ice.
“Let’s get this off.” River unbuttoned my sodden, ice-crusted chuba, drawing it over my shoulders. He stopped suddenly, as if realizing what he was doing, and an unfamiliar color entered his cheeks.
He was blushing. I blinked. I had never seen River blush before—it wasn’t something I had thought he was even capable of.
“Azar-at,” he called. I couldn’t see the fire demon—it was beyond my range of vision—but I felt it when River’s hands on my arms grew warm, a warmth that spread across my body. The moisture rose from my clothes and skin in a cloud that was borne away by the wind. I began to shiver again as I dried. The warmth remained when River removed his hands.
I stood slowly. I felt strange. River had never used his magic on me before, and the sensation was . . . befuddling. It felt different from Chirri’s magic, or Tem’s. Was that because it came from a fire demon?
The power is Azar-at’s, he had said, but the magic is mine.
The warmth lingered on my skin, on every inch of me. He returned my gaze, and I realized that he could feel the spell too. I looked away, color spreading across my own face. As I did, my gaze fell on the tunnel, or the place where the tunnel had been. And I felt the chill of water like knives burrowing into my bones, and saw Mingma’s remorseless face looming over me.
I pulled myself to my feet, stumbling only slightly. Then I began to march away, very fast, not looking back.
“Kamzin?” River had to jog to catch up with me. “Slow down; you don’t have your strength back—”
“This is the way back to camp?” I said, not slowing.
“Yes, but—”
“Good.” I clambered over a boulder, banging my knee. That didn’t slow me either. “We’ll gather up our things and set out for the Ngadi face. If we move fast we can reach it by nightfall.”
River grabbed my arm, but I threw him off. “You want to give up?”
“I’m not giving up,” I snapped, my tone so ferocious that River took a step back. “You can’t give up when you had no hope of succeeding.”
“Kamzin—”
“They’ll win, River.”
“Who will?”
“The witches.” I stopped and faced him. “This is their mountain. They have the power—they trapped Mingma and his men, turned them into evil things, just like they are.” I saw Mingma’s face again, rising toward me out of the water, saw him trapped there in the darkness as minutes turned to days, and days to years—I shoved the image back, because it was too much. “Do you know who Mingma was?”
He gazed at me, silent, his mouth a thin line.
“He was a great man. My father’s library is filled with scrolls about his heroism. He drew half the maps of the Empire. He was fearless, brave. And the witches defeated him without even raising a finger.”
River rubbed his eyes. He was still soaked, I noticed, though the cold didn’t seem to trouble him.
“This is their world,” I went on, “and it doesn’t want us here. What will happen when we reach the summit? When we find their city?” I shook my head. “Tem was right. This expedition is madness—we’re much better off returning to base camp and figuring out another way to defeat them.”
I watched him, waiting for him to argue with me. To say that we couldn’t return, that there was no other way to defeat the witches. To talk me out of leaving.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I started. “What?”
“I should never have agreed to this,” he said, seeming to speak half to himself. “I shouldn’t have brought you this far. You should have stayed back at camp, where you were safe.”