Page 10 of All the Wandering Light

“What are you doing?”

River came back to himself with a start. He was in the Nightwood, beside Esha on the dais. Esha was staring at him—he had stumbled slightly, and now stood blinking in the darkness.

Kamzin. That was Kamzin’s mind. Kamzin’s thoughts.

His vision swam. For a moment, he thought he would be pulled back to that snowy world, where the cold burrowed beneath his skin in a way it never had before.

It wasn’t possible. It didn’t make sense.

And yet he couldn’t deny what had happened. It had been real, as real as the murmur of the nearby stream and the taste of smoke. He had been enspelled. But by who? Some small, detached part of him was impressed by the tidiness of the magic—most spells left traces, but he could sense nothing.

She had been frightened. River felt a brief urge to lash out—not at Kamzin, but at whatever it was that had been threatening her. He tried to probe the memory, but it was like pushing against a door that only swung one way. He couldn’t find his way back to Kamzin’s thoughts. What she had been thinking in that moment wasn’t enough to piece together an explanation.

Two things were clear: one, he had been enspelled. And two, he couldn’t reveal it to anyone. It was a clear sign of weakness.

“Don’t look so concerned, Esha,” River said. “I just climbed the highest mountain in the Empire. If you want me to stay awake, don’t drag me to tedious ceremonies.”

Esha’s scornful look returned. “I apologize for expecting you to take this seriously. I should have known I’m still dealing with a child.”

The two witches had reappeared, each dragging a captive. The captives were clothed in finely made chubas, light in color, and they stood out against the surrounding shadow. River started.

The chubas were made of tahrskin.

The explorers—one man and one woman—were led to the front of the dais. Horror dawned on their faces as they beheld Esha looking down at them. River felt a stirring of unease. He didn’t recognize the man, but the woman he had met before. Her name was Malay, a member of the nobility and one of the emperor’s favorites. River had once sat beside her at a banquet, where they had traded jokes and stories about their separate travails in the Drakkar Mountains.

Malay’s gaze drifted from Esha to River. She seemed to freeze, her face whitening. River, unconsciously, had taken a step forward. Esha was already speaking.

“These two were found in the Amarin Valley,” Esha said. His voice remained low, but it carried across the Hall, which was eerily silent, despite the number of witches present. “Empire spies.”

That raised a low hiss from the gathering. Malay looked over her shoulder, as if startled by the number of voices she heard. In such darkness, she would be barely able to see.

“It’s said that, in ancient times, every coronation ran red,” Esha said. “The stories say the Crown is strengthened by blood.”

The murmurs were approving. A enormous hawk alighted on a lower branch closer to the dais, as if to seek a better view. A bear growled from the trees.

Esha raised his hands, and the darkness began to stir. It snaked over the two explorers. The man struggled before growing still, his mouth round with horror. The shadows twined about his wrists and ankles, lifting him into the air.

Malay did not move—her gaze was fixated on River, her graying hair stirred by the shadows. Her eyes had a glassy quality, as if she was too shocked to comprehend what she saw. Even as the man began to scream, as the shadows pierced his skin, she stared at him.

After a moment, the man fell silent. River didn’t even glance at him. The shadows moved to Malay, sliding over her body and lifting her into the air. She jerked in alarm, breaking eye contact with River at last.

He was moving before he knew what he was doing, leaping off the dais, summoning the shadows that wrapped around Malay. To his surprise, they obeyed him without hesitation, spooling at his feet like thread. The explorer hit the ground hard, and River crouched beside her. She was unconscious, though her eyelids fluttered as he touched her face. Her mouth was still open, as if she had carried her terror with her into sleep.

River was so relieved to find his friend still alive, still breathing, that he didn’t immediately notice how quiet the hall had become. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.

He looked up. Esha’s jaw was slack with shock. Thorn’s eyes were narrowed, absent their characteristic amusement. And hundreds of witches stared at him with a hungry fury in their eyes.

“I take it back,” Thorn said. “Everyone definitely wants to kill you.”

River ignored him. He threw himself down on the throne, folding his ankle over his knee. The great rock, situated in a clearing on the brow of a hill some distance from the Great Hall, was stained with blood at the base, evidence of innumerable battles and assassinations. River’s thoughts flashed to the emperor’s immaculate, gilded throne. How many times had he seen Lozong seated there in precisely the same posture?

Esha was pacing. He hadn’t spoken a word to River since the scene in the hall an hour ago, when he had ordered the witches to disperse, barely a heartbeat before they tore River to pieces.

“What’s wrong with you?” There was no anger in Thorn’s question, only bafflement. He stared at River as if he were a stranger.

“I know her.” River heard the strangeness of his own words. He felt a sense of futility, as if he were trying to communicate with his brothers in a language they didn’t speak. Malay was part of the Empire—she had, in all likelihood, come to the Nightwood to spy on them. But still . . . she was his friend. He wasn’t going to watch Esha harm her.

“Is that sentiment?” Esha turned to face him. “For one of the emperor’s slaves?”