All the Wandering Light by Heather Fawcett

Author:Heather Fawcett
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-10-05T16:00:00+00:00

Part III

The Three Cities

Eighteen

AZAR-AT GAVE NO warning.

The mountain vanished, the snow crumbled underfoot, and the stars went out like snuffed candles. All was black and still, the stillness of dead things and snow-cloaked forests. I was dying but unable to die, to breathe, to move. I felt—something. Countless shapes moving, rustling against my bare skin.

Those were the only impressions I had before I tumbled forward onto the floor of a forest.

I lay on my back, winded, as if I had fallen from a great height. Had I? I had a strange image of myself falling from the peak of that unnamed mountain in the Ashes, into a forest that didn’t exist that far north. But here, it was day, an ordinary afternoon. The light of an overcast sky spilled through the trees.

I pushed myself up onto my elbows, head spinning. Lusha groaned a few feet away. Wind played through the leaves, and it was gentle, almost warm, with none of the sharp edges it had in the north. A stream flowed over a bed of moss.

Where are we?

I didn’t have time to wonder about it. For in that moment, the world dissolved again, obscured by a veil of agony.

Someone was screaming, some distant part of me noted. Everything was distant—it was as if, in that moment, I was reduced to a kernel of pain, every other thought, memory, and sensation stripped mercilessly away. It was a pain that was everywhere, and nowhere, and it went on and on.

Then, without warning, it stopped.

“Kamzin.” Someone was touching me—a hand on my face, another on my shoulder.

I blinked, my eyes coming open. Tem knelt over me, his face pale. With his other hand, he grasped at one of the kinnika, as if readying to cast a spell. But there was no spell that could help me.

The pain was gone, though in its place was a bone-deep weariness. I drew myself half-upright as my vision swam.

“River—”

“It’s all right.” Tem’s voice was low. “He’s not here. What happened? We saw you fall . . .” The way he touched me was strange, his hand light and tense, as if he was torn between restraining and comforting me. Mixed with the concern in his face was something harder, like anger.

I saw River’s face, half in shadow. The blood staining the snow. Something twisted inside me, sharp as a knife. The pain clouded my vision, as sharp one of Azar-at’s spells but somehow deeper.

Tears streamed down my face. They didn’t freeze here, but fell against the grass like rain. Tem held me. It seemed impossible that River could be dead. He had defied death so many times as Royal Explorer—how could be be defeated by a shard of glass? My palms tingled, as if remembering the fire River had summoned days ago.

“Can you stand?” Tem asked when I had calmed.

“I don’t know.” The world tilted again as exhaustion rolled over me like heavy fog.

Branches rustled as Lusha strode into the glade. There were leaves tangled in her hair and a smear of dirt on her cheek.

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