Page 102 of All the Wandering Light

I raised my shaking hands to unleash the star’s light.

But before I could, shadow spilled from Esha’s hands, quick as lightning, and Lusha and I were engulfed in roiling darkness. I felt it pulling at me, tugging my body this way and that. It was like being buffeted by an intense wind, only the wind had claws and ghostly fists. I flung a hand out instinctively, and light flickered. I concentrated, trying to push the star’s light farther, to force the darkness back, but before I could feel any noticeable effect, the shadows rolled away.

Esha stood unmoving, regarding me with anger and calculation. There were other witches here too, circling at a distance.

Lusha.

She lay against the steps, her arm splayed at an odd angle. Esha’s magic had flung her backward.

“Lusha!” I fell to my knees, turning her toward me. Her eyes were closed, her face pale. Her arm was broken, clearly. Had she hit her head?

The witches circled, claws clicking on the stone, feathery wings rustling the air. The shadows ebbed and flowed and the wind was laced with ash. Yet all this was mere distraction, as I passed my hand over Lusha’s body, searching for wounds, broken bones. Apart from the arm, there was nothing, save a tiny trickle of blood from her mouth. “Lusha.” I shook her. Then again, harder.

“The shadows have no effect on you,” Esha said. “Let’s see if this will.”

I looked up. Above me on the steps crouched a monstrous red-toothed bear, snarling and growling. It bared its teeth, which were dark with blood. We weren’t the first humans the witch had encountered tonight.

It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that Lusha wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing. Even Esha, brimming with magic, couldn’t frighten me now.

But Esha had done this. I turned to him, my eyes narrowing with something colder than hatred, more fundamental than rage. He wore that odd expression that was not quite a smile, the corner of his mouth upturned in a way that reminded me of River. But River’s eyes had never held the malice Esha’s did.

“You’re a child,” Esha murmured. “You’ve involved yourself in something that has nothing to do with you. You should never have come here.”

At that, I felt a tremor of déjà vu. River had spoken that same sentence when we stood on the peak of Raksha. I felt again the anger and frustration of that moment, the feeling that I was challenging not only the witches, but a conflict as ancient and unyielding as a mountain peak. But Esha was wrong—this had everything to do with me. And I had battled mountains before, and won. Esha, standing before me, would destroy everything that I cared about. In a way, he already had. The memory of Raksha melded with my despair to form something white-hot and painfully sharp. With an incoherent cry, I raised my hands, picturing the light soaring from my fingertips like arrows—not at the bear, which drew ever nearer, ready to spring.

At Esha.

Screams rent the air. Even as they did, I summoned more light. Fallen stars convey power over death, Lusha had said. Not only the power to raise the dead, but the power to kill. Could I summon that power?

More, I urged. More.

The screams faded. But even then, I didn’t stop. More. The starlight spilled from my fingertips, pale as bone and bright as a hundred suns, beautiful but deadly, painful. I experienced the pain only distantly. I was shielded from most of it—I felt only a throbbing behind my eyes, like snow blindness. The light enveloped everything in its path.

When finally I collapsed, and the light flickered and died, the witches were gone. All but two—the bear lay on the steps only a few feet away, as motionless as Lusha. And on the stairs below lay Esha, his eyes open and unseeing.

There came a cry—two witches in the form of choughs circled the stairs. The birds wheeled once around Esha’s body, then fled.

“Lusha,” I whispered. Her face was too pale. When I pressed my hand to her throat, I didn’t feel the blood moving. But that couldn’t be right. Lusha was unstoppable. She could climb mountains and track fallen stars and bend even an emperor to her will.

I shook her again as tears spilled down my cheeks. “Lusha. Lusha.”

Thirty-Two

LUSHA WAS COLD.

Her hand in mine had cooled some time ago—I couldn’t say when. I didn’t know how long I had been sitting there with her head cradled in my lap. My legs were stiff, and I was shivering. I felt it distantly, along with the tears drying on my cheeks. Everything was distant, unimportant.

The fires still raged, though it seemed as if some had burned themselves out. Fire burned, shouts sounded in the distance, and no one came. Not River. Not Tem. Not the emperor or his soldiers. We were alone.

Except for Azar-at.

The fire demon had appeared shortly after the witches vanished, hovering at the edge of my sight. At first, I had ignored it. But as time passed, I found that increasingly difficult.

“What do you want?” I said finally. My voice was a croak. It too seemed to come from somewhere outside myself.

Why do you mourn, Kamzin? it said. Mourning will not help the dead.

I felt the word like an iron hand gripping my throat. “Nothing can help this.”