Page 52 of All the Wandering Light

“Well?” he said. I recoiled. The shadows around us seemed alive—they swayed and undulated like branches in the wind.

That was when the kinnika rang out.

River fell back, his face a mask of pain. Mingma stepped out of the shadows, sounding a single bell—the bell marked shadow-kin, an old term for witch.

“Kamzin,” Mingma said, but before I could run to his side, River fixed him with a murderous look and uttered a single word—

“Stop.”

The bell fell silent. Mingma stood as if frozen, his knuckles white as he gripped the kinnika.

I looked from Mingma to River in disbelief. Lusha, who had drawn herself to her feet and now leaned heavily against the mountainside a few yards away, looked as baffled as I felt.

“Surprised?” River said. “Don’t be. He still carries traces of the witches’ spell that tied him to Raksha. His will hasn’t been fully his own for fifty years. It still isn’t. I’ll take those.” Mingma handed him the kinnika, hesitating only briefly. His gaze, fixed on River, was as bitter as it had been on Raksha. He was trapped, just as he had been there.

River grimaced, holding the kinnika between his thumb and forefinger, as if they were something he’d fished out of a swamp.

“Shamanic magic,” he said, “has a terrible smell. Like something left out to rot. I’ve always been amazed how humans don’t notice it. Oh well.” He placed the kinnika around his neck. The witch bell let out a shiver, and he grimaced. “I’ll have to hold on to these. I don’t relish the prospect of you sending me over a cliff again, Kamzin. And as for you . . .”

He turned to Mingma, his expression dark. “I’m growing rather tired of running into you. Were you not already dead, this would be much more entertaining. Fortunately, though, that old spell provides an alternative.”

“River, don’t—” I began.

“Begone.” River slashed out his hand. Mingma was flung back, or so it appeared—a gust of wind seemed to lift him, and winnow him like grain. His outline seemed frozen in midair, and then it too dissolved, and was gone.

I stared at the place where Mingma had been. “What did you do to him?”

“I sent him away. He won’t bother us anymore.”

“Where?”

“Where?” River could not have sounded less concerned. “Far away, I hope.”

“How could you do that?” My voice was shaking. “Hasn’t Mingma been through enough?”

River gave me a look of frank disbelief. “Do you truly feel for him? He tried to kill you.”

I remembered voices luring me from the safety of the cave on Mount Raksha. Cold hands dragging me beneath colder water. But that thought was subsumed by the image of Mingma sitting by the fire, easy and smiling. For the first time in fifty years, he had been happy.

“He didn’t have a choice,” I said quietly.

River shrugged, his mood shifting again. “You’re very forgiving. That’s good. It will make this easier.”

“We’re not giving you the star.” My voice was fierce with determination.

“I thought it was a rock?” He picked it up from where it had landed in the snow. “I was here for part of that argument. Lusha? You said you knew the signs. Are you still convinced?”

Lusha let out such a vicious string of insults that I half expected the snow to melt between them.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” River held the rock up to the sky, his brow furrowing. “I’ve never seen one before, so I’ll have to trust your judgment.”

I met Lusha’s gaze. Her hand was pressed against her shoulder where it had struck the stony ground, and there was a jagged cut on her chin. Through the pain, her expression was fierce, almost pleading. And suddenly, I realized why.

Lusha was utterly convinced that we had found the star. If we had, and it was now in River’s possession—

I swallowed. Lusha was pleading with me to trust her. Because I was now the only one with the power to help us. It would be big magic, costly magic—but what choice did we have?

“Azar-at,” I murmured.