Everything in me recoiled as I imagined walking back down the slope, back to camp, and telling Lusha and Tem that all was lost. Returning to Azmiri with the shapeless, inevitable threat of the witches and their dark powers hanging over the fate of the village. No matter what Lusha said, what had happened with River, and what he would do when he achieved his goal, was my fault. I had led him to Raksha, I had risked my life time and time again to help him. And for what?
Guilt, heavy and cloying, overwhelmed me as I looked back on the days since I had left Azmiri. I had been so consumed with my own success, with impressing River and the emperor, making a name for myself as a great explorer.
How meaningless that seemed now. People had already died because of my choices—how many more lives would be lost?
My mother, I remembered, had once compared guilt to a dagger. You can let it defeat you, she had said, cut you, strike you down. Or you can take it and use it as a weapon against the world.
I drew myself to my feet. Nausea rose again, but I forced it down.
“All right, River,” I said to the wind, “if you made it to the top, I can too.”
Not that this statement made sense. River, for all I knew, had turned himself into a cloud shaped like a mountain goat and floated up the rock. I chewed my lip, tilting my head back. Which route should I take? There were several possibilities. If I chose wrong—
I glanced down at the earth, as distant as a star. Well. I would have a long time to regret it.
As I paced, I tripped over a lump in the snow. I kicked at it, expecting to dislodge a rock. Instead, the lump snapped back, dislodging the snow that covered it. I blinked, my mind failing, for a moment, to understand what my eyes were telling it.
It was a boot.
I stumbled back, tripping over Ragtooth in the process. The scream in my throat died as the fall knocked the wind out of me.
Breathe, I told myself. Breathe. It’s just a body. It can’t hurt you.
My mind worked frantically. The boot was old-fashioned, the leather stitched together in a crosshatch pattern that was rarely used anymore. It was weathered, some of the stitches broken by years of exposure to sun and ice. It was another member of Mingma’s expedition, still here after fifty years on this lonely slope. I was astonished—I hadn’t known that any of those long-ago explorers had made it this far.
The wind rustled over the broken snow, revealing the hem of a familiar, gold-stitched tahrskin chuba.
Mingma’s.
A tear spilled down my cheek. The explorer’s face rose before me—not consumed with bitterness, but the way he had looked when he spoke of his village, lost in a sadness so old it had etched itself across his face like a tracery of scars. He had been young, and brave, and he hadn’t deserved what had happened to him.
I wiped my eyes. I had little time for this—I had to catch up to River. But as I turned from Mingma’s body, I remembered something.
Did you look through it? I ran out of ink, near the end.
I started. The memory was so vivid it was as if the ghost had spoken in my ear. I wrenched open my pack and pulled out Mingma’s maps. With shaking fingers I found the panel that showed the slope I was standing on, then held the thin paper up to the sky. The starlight shone through it.
There. Etched into the malleable parchment, as if with the edge of a fingernail, was a thin, looping scratch. A line—a route, up the side of the mountain.
My vision blurred again. Mingma, like a true explorer, had recorded even his last moments. A character indicating a waypoint was etched onto a ledge above the rock face—he had made it to the top. And then, judging by the position of his body, he had fallen.
Had he been alone? One of his companions had found the body, that was certain—one of the only two survivors, who had retrieved the map and a few of his belongings and fled. But had he been alone when he died?
My hands shaking slightly, I unwrapped Lusha’s scarf from my neck. I placed it over the explorer’s face, which was only faintly visible through the snow, weighted it with rocks and then covered it with more snow. I felt as if I should say something, but I couldn’t find any words. I turned back to the mountain.
I stuffed Ragtooth into my pack and set about arranging my harness. I considered climbing without it, which would have been faster and less fiddly, but Lusha’s cautions still rang in my ears, and with Biter circling above, it felt as if my sister were still watching me. I attached two loops of rope to the harness, wrapping them over my shoulders to keep them out of the way. Then I started to climb.
Almost immediately, my mind cleared. My worries about what was ahead quieted to background noise—all I could see was the mountain. Following Mingma’s route as closely as I could, I reached the overhang. There I hammered an anchor into a crevice in the rock, and attached one of the rope loops to it with a spring hook. I attached the other loop to a second piton a few feet higher, unclipped from the first, and then repeated the process, moving slowly but surely. Now I was surrounded by stars; I could almost feel the night sky pressing into my back. I did not look down. I tried not to think. One wrong move, just one—
I shoved the terror back, over and over, as I moved through the thin, hungry air.
Ten minutes later, my nails cracked and bleeding from gripping the rock, I had cleared the overhang. Biter squawked at me, his wings beating frantically. He settled into nooks and crannies in the rock above, croaking encouragement. Once I reached him, he would take flight again before positioning himself upon an even higher ledge.
An inhuman moan cut through the regular sound of my footfalls. I pressed my body against the rock as a blast of icy wind engulfed me, nearly knocking me off the mountain. It subsided, but I could hear another howl picking up, speeding in my direction. My chest clenched as I realized why this part of the mountain was free of snow—it was battered daily by vicious winds that beat against this side of Raksha like a turbulent river against a stone.
I had to get off this rock face, fast. I was too exhausted to withstand prolonged attacks by the wind. Another gust struck me, swinging my body sideways like a door. The impact knocked the breath out of me, but I held on. Somehow, I forced myself to pick up the pace. Each time the wind struck, I braced myself until it passed, then climbed another few feet. It was exhausting. I barely noticed the passage of time, or the ache in my arms. All I knew was the feeling of the rock against my hands and the sound of my breathing. I was almost startled when I looked up and found that I had almost reached the crest of the rock face. A few moments later, I was hoisting myself onto flat ground, and crawling to the shelter provided by a small boulder.