Page 8 of All the Wandering Light

“I’ll walk from dawn to dawn if I have to,” I said. “The rest of you can follow behind.”

“Kamzin—” Tem began.

“But first,” I interrupted, “we have to get off this mountain.”

I didn’t look at Tem. I looked at Lusha. I waited for her to argue with me, to call me impractical and headstrong.

But Lusha merely held my gaze. I thought I saw the barest hint of a smile cross her face. After a moment, she nodded and turned to gather her things.

Four

River

THE NIGHTWOOD WAS a labyrinth of smoke and shadow.

The trees were blackened, sharp-needled things, so dense the smallest animals could barely slip through—not that many did. The only living creatures who dared dwell among the twisted boughs were red-eyed mice and hooded crows, and the odd half-starved fox. The only way to move easily was to follow the mazelike passages—witch paths—that crisscrossed at sharp angles. Branches knitted together overhead, at times resembling a cage, at others melting into something as solid as a roof. Smoke rose from the ground, which was bog-like in places, and strangely hot. Ghosts flickered among the branches, darting away as soon as they drew your gaze.

River leaned against a tree, his hands shoved in his pockets. He felt suffocated in that dense forest, as he always had, and wished himself elsewhere—anywhere. He stood in the Great Hall in the heart of the Nightwood, which was not a hall in the human sense, a place of carved stone and tapestries and dragon perches. It was merely a part of the forest—the deepest, darkest part—a cavernous place of column-like trees the width of several arm-spans. It was so dark that a human would have perceived only a shifting maze of shadow—there was no illumination in the Nightwood, save for the occasional shaft of sunlight that struggled through; witches needed neither dragons nor torches to see their way. When River had been a child, the Great Hall had been an empty, desolate place.

Today it held several hundred witches. All waiting for River’s brother Esha to be officially named emperor.

Some stood in the shadows, conversing in small groups, or hovered in anticipatory silence around the boulder that formed a rough dais in the middle of the hall. A few—those that had already mastered their powers—perched high in the boughs as birds or monkeys, virtually indistinguishable from the darkness. There were more witches than River had ever seen in one place, a crowd so large it was unnerving, even to him. He could only imagine what a human might feel, gazing at that sea of strange faces.

“River.” A white-haired witch appeared before him and clasped his hand. The man—who River thought was called Sonpa—said nothing beyond that, merely bowed his head before turning away. River, who had only experienced such displays of deference in the emperor’s court, briefly expected to hear himself addressed as dyonpo.

It wasn’t the first gesture of respect he had been paid since his return yesterday. But not everyone had welcomed him back. There were those who simply stared at him, distrust on their lean faces. They knew he’d broken the binding spell, but they also knew that he had been one of the emperor’s most trusted advisors, an instrument of the hated Empire.

Let them think what they wanted. River had long since discovered that was easier—and in some ways, more advantageous—than explaining himself to anyone.

A girl was watching him. Dawn, he recalled, one of Thorn’s friends. Growing up, River didn’t think she had ever even looked at him, but now she smiled when she caught his eye. Her face was soft and pretty, framed by a waterfall of dark hair. She reminded him of Kamzin.

River looked away, pushing Kamzin from his thoughts.

He summoned a yew tree’s shadow and pooled it in his palm, letting it spill through his fingers like water before catching it in his other hand. The branches stirred beside him, revealing his second-eldest brother, Thorn.

“Looking forward to this?” Thorn said in his cool voice, gesturing at the dais.

“Immensely.” River had spent more than enough time on stages in the emperor’s court, presiding over endlessly dreary royal ceremonies. “Will they cheer me or kill me?”

“Both appealing options.” Thorn was smiling slightly, but it wasn’t entirely clear that he was joking. Unlike most witches, Thorn always looked neat—he regularly stole clothes from human villages, or perhaps scavenged them from Esha’s victims. He collected other things too: human trinkets. Salt candles and spirit statues; jade earrings and panes of colored glass. It was unnatural—witches had no possessions; ownership was not part of their world. It had taken River time even to get used to carrying supplies on his expeditions. But Thorn had always had a fascination—if not obsession—with the human world.

Thorn ran a hand through his dark hair, an absent gesture that River recognized in himself. He was closest to River in age as well as appearance. They were like blurred mirror images: Thorn’s eyes were the same mismatched brown, a trait inherited from their mother, but Thorn was densely muscled where River was slim, his nose broken in some forgotten quarrel. Otherwise, they could have passed for twins—long a sore point for both of them.

“Esha says you’re leaving tomorrow,” he said.

“Yes.” River had promised Esha he would stay for the coronation. His thoughts flashed to open skies and crisp mountain air. He wished he were already gone.

Thorn cocked his head, amusement flickering in his eyes. “Always so impatient. Where will you go?”

“I don’t know.” In truth, he did know where he would go—everywhere. He just didn’t know where he would go first. He had spent his childhood fantasizing about escaping the smoke and strangled sky of the Nightwood, of traveling to distant and bizarre lands. He had had a taste of it after joining the emperor’s court, though there, he had gone where he was bid.

“You don’t know.” Thorn’s amusement seemed to grow. “You haven’t changed. You never think ahead, do you? I still find it hard to believe that you of all people were the one who broke the spell.”

Thorn’s voice had a lazy quality River distrusted, though his face gave nothing away. It rarely did. Thorn had always been the quietest of the four of them, his thoughts like a lightless pool at the heart of a mountain. River and Thorn had never been close. Thorn and Esha were a pair, just as River and Sky had been a pair. Esha had barely noticed his younger brother at all—when he had, it had been to torment him. He was the cause of most of the scars River bore, more than all the glaciers he had scaled and wild beasts he had faced combined.

“Is there any point to this?” River said. “Other than stroking Esha’s ego.”

“Inheriting the Crown is a great honor.”