A Day of Fallen Night (The Roots of Chaos)

Change came like a flash of lightning. One day there was peace and stillness; the next, there was fire. The Snow Road had offered a last glimpse of safety – a pause between the loose slab and the snowslide. Now wyrms rode on the wind, and creatures hatched from rock, and not even the gods could stop them.

As soon as they smelled the tainted smoke, Furtia and Nayimathun stopped flying by day. Instead, they waited for dusk, to coast below the clouds while still avoiding the wyrms’ notice.

They need the sun to see, Nayimathun informed Dumai. They are not made for night, as we are.

One night, they passed a burning forest, and the glow was a sinister, unnatural red, bestranging all it touched. Watching its spread, Master Kiprun muttered to himself, twisting the rings on his fingers. The alchemist was enduring the flight, though he clearly had little patience for sitting. With four riders, the saddle was crowded, but the closeness kept them warm.

Northward they went like this, slow and wary, cleaving to the Whinshan Ridge. At dawn, the dragons would find shelter in the mountains, and the humans would huddle together, trying to sleep. Dumai and Kanifa shared their pelts. They heard the calls of wyrm and tortured beast, answered by occasional explosions of black powder.

Once, they had to stay hidden for more than a day, when a flock of winged lizards circled the mountains. Furtia raked her claws and bared her teeth, while Nayimathun lay still, her tail curled around the humans. Had their mission not been too important to jeopardise, Dumai suspected they both would have flown out to fight to the death.

That night was long and terrible. They risked no light or sound. The first time Nikeya reached for her hand, Dumai pretended not to notice. The second, their fingers twined.

Let her believe you are utterly caught. Dumai kept her hand steady. Let her think that she has won.

When it was safe, the dragons pressed on, passing the Lake of Cold Dawns and the inland port of Pithang, where coal had once been mined. Now fire revealed the city’s veins, making the very mountains smoke. Something had set the coal seams alight.

She wondered if its people had fled deeper into mountains, or chanced taking the roads elsewhere. The Empire of the Twelve Lakes was vast – too vast for Jekhen’s messengers to have possibly warned everyone what was coming.

Nayimathun quenched another three fires. For the first time since the capital, Dumai prayed, placing her bare hand on Furtia. Great Kwiriki, hear a daughter of the rainbow. She closed her eyes. I ask that you grant all lands your protection, and make our world a mirror of your quiet abode.

He cannot hear, earth child, Furtia told her. Kwiriki is beyond the bridge.

Nayimathun spoke of a star, from the black waters of creation. What does it mean, great one?

Only fallen night can stop it.

Dumai could not persuade her to say more. As a godsinger, she knew dragons were mysterious by nature, because they were not of the world – but as a human, she wished they would speak plainly.

They were within sight of Mount Whin, the source of the River Daprang, when Nayimathun made for a low and exposed peak on the ridge. Dumai tried to call out to her – dawn was about to break, they had to hide – but days of fatigue had thickened her senses.

Furtia followed the larger dragon, down to a broken pile of stone that must have been a watchtower. From the smoking remains of three giant crossbows, and the armour on the corpses, this had been a Lacustrine military outpost. It could have been a human attack, if not for the fallen god. The dragon had been shredded as if he were paper, scales glinting like silver leaf among the ash and snow. He must have been trying to protect the soldiers.

‘Taugran,’ Furtia hissed aloud.

The rumble of her voice woke Kanifa. Dumai felt him tense against her back. Her own muscles were tight, her stomach baulking at the sight of a god lying dead.

‘This is a border outpost,’ Master Kiprun dabbed his nose. ‘Built to ensure the East Hüran respect the Treaty of Shim.’ He eyed the carcass of a stallion, tangled with its charred rider. ‘It seems the wyrms found it.’

Dumai knelt beside the dragon and stroked the dull scales of his snout. With an aching heart, she looked north, hair ruffled by the wind. In the far distance, first light glazed the waters of the Daprang. All the land beyond that line belonged to the Bertak tribe.

‘Mai,’ Kanifa said.

He nodded to a soldier who could be no more than twenty. Deep gouges streaked his cheeks, and fistfuls of hair had been ripped from his scalp, scabs left in their wake. Odder still, both his sleeves had been torn, baring his forearms to the cold. Scarlet branched from his fingertips, almost to the shoulder. At first, Dumai thought it was dried blood, but on closer inspection, the redness was in his skin.

That colour was a warning – that livid red, like the flaming mushrooms that grew on Mount Ipyeda, so poisonous they could destroy the body through one touch. It woke some ingrained awareness of danger. Nayimathun leaned over them both to give the corpse a cautious sniff.

This one burned from the inside. A hiss escaped her. Fire from the earth devours the flesh and runs wild in the blood.

Now Dumai saw the rusty crescents under his nails. ‘His face. He did this to himself,’ she murmured. ‘My mother said the Nameless One brought sickness to the land of Lasia.’

‘I would step away, Princess,’ Nikeya said.

Nayimathun got there first. Taking Dumai and Kanifa by the pelts, she picked them up with her teeth, like kittens by the scruffs of their necks, and placed them next to Furtia. She turned back to the dead soldier and breathed over him, sealing him in a mound of ice.

Dumai clambered back into the saddle with the others. As the dragons abandoned the outpost, she set her gaze on the river, trying to forget what they had just seen. Soon they would reach Brhazat, where they would find an answer. She had to keep believing it.

In the meantime, she willed her father to prepare Seiiki. It would not be long until the chaos found its way there, too.

****

The Daprang was the longest of all rivers in the East, with few kinks or turns. From above, it looked as if a warrior had run a sword along the land. In the tales, it was always frozen, but now spring was here, its waters were starting to pour strong and black, parting the deep snow.

As the cold sharpened, the dragons smelled fewer wyrms, and risked flying by day again, allowing Dumai to see the wilds beyond the Daprang. As far as the eye could see, there were no fires or smoke, despite the thickness of the forest.

‘The wyrms must not have come this far,’ Kanifa called over the wind. ‘It’s as Nayimathun said. They spurn the cold.’

‘Then let us hope winter takes some time to thaw,’ Dumai shouted back.

The cold will not keep them at bay for long, Furtia told her. The tortured earth breathes hot, and burns as if with fever . . .

It seemed like years before the northern capital of Golümtan appeared – that walled city that had been called Hinitun, its walls rebuilt after the siege that had lost it. But first of all, it was the mountains they saw, the peaks that formed one of the walls of the world.

These were the Lords of Fallen Night.

Not even her tutors knew who had given them that name, but Dumai wondered now if it had been the gods. By all accounts, it was as ancient as the range, which marked where all land maps ended in the East. The peaks were terrible, most rearing far higher and wider than Mount Ipyeda, sheared to points that looked too sharp for one coin to sit easy on them.

There was Brhazat. Dumai knew it from a single look, for it stood a head and shoulders above the line of mountains in front of it, spearing insuperably into the clear sky.

Only fallen night can stop it. She gripped the saddle. Only fallen night . . .

A greathorn sounded, loud and deep, as the two dragons soared into Golümtan. The archers on its walls lowered their bows. Princess Irebül must have survived the long ride home.

After four years of Hüran rule, the city still appeared Lacustrine, though the tents beyond its wall served as a strong reminder of the conquest. Furtia and Nayimathun landed near the High Perch. The stronghold bestrode a crag to the west, its sloping walls made tall and smooth. Oxen and horses, eagles and dragons pranced across its roofs, and a sun and moon gleamed on the doors, to be parted down the middle when they opened. The sheer mountains towered behind, offering an outlook worthy of the gods.

Snow blew from the mountains, smoke from fires and bloomeries. Dumai climbed down. It was far colder here than on the other side of the Daprang – and darker, too, the sky already dull at noon.

There were more horses here than Dumai had ever seen. Furtia growled at a mare, which snorted in fear.

‘I think I’ll wait here, to prevent a war between dragons and horses,’ Nikeya said, amused. ‘You can face the fearsome warlord, as your father’s diplomat.’

‘I am no diplomat.’ Dumai reached for her pack. ‘Besides, I thought charm was your area.’

Nikeya glanced at her in surprise, then smiled a little.

Kanifa dismounted. When they reached the steps to the High Perch, a group of palace guards in well-tooled leather strode to meet them. Horsehair tufted from their helmets.

‘Show us your hands,’ came a deep voice. ‘Are you Princess Dumai of Seiiki?’

Dyed wool swathed their faces, from their chins to below their eyes, which held no small amount of caution. This far north, people might have forgotten Seiiki; certainly she doubted they had met Seiikinese merchants, or heard Lacustrine with an accent like hers.

‘Yes. My father sends his respects to the Great Naïr,’ Dumai said. ‘May your hunts be rich in spoils, and your birds soar on the wind.’ She did as they asked. ‘Soldier, why do you conceal your faces?’

‘The Great Naïr has been told of a sickness, carried by scaled beasts. Sickness can be spread through breath.’

‘I have seen those beasts. They are burning crops and settlements, slaughtering without mercy.’

The wool hid his expression. ‘Princess Irebül is hunting in the Collar,’ he said. ‘You may join her.’ He held out a swatch of green wool. ‘You are asked to wear this in her presence.’

‘What of the dragons?’

‘They may follow.’ He noticed the alchemist. ‘Master Kiprun. The Great Naïr will be pleased to see you.’

‘Why is every ruler so pleased to see me this year?’ he muttered. ‘Shall I expect the Deathless Queen next?’ Faced with stony looks, he sighed. ‘Yes, yes. All under the mountains to the Great Naïr, and so on.’

A carriage drawn by snow camels bore them to a meadow that separated the city from the peaks, thick with grass and powder. This was the Collar, a stretch of land kept clear for falling rock and snowslides. Fine tents had been pitched at its western edge, where servants had gralloched a deer and set about roasting it over a fire.

Princess Irebül was some way from the camp. She wore a green coat lined with sheepskin and boots over loose wool trousers, and a quiver hung at her hip – a hunter of the winter plains, down to her ornate belt hook and the bronze eagle perched on her forearm. She beheld the Lords of Fallen Night, a tall woman rendered small in the face of them. Her people were said to have come from beyond those mountains long ago.

‘Princess Dumai,’ she said, seeing her approach. ‘I thought you’d changed your mind.’

‘I apologise for the delay, Princess Irebül. We were stranded on the Snow Road.’

‘No need to explain.’ She took the leather hood off her eagle. ‘The wait let me escape that court.’

The bird winged towards the mountains. From what Dumai had learned, this woman had been sixteen during the conquest, spending her formative years in the wilds.

‘You’d sooner be here,’ Dumai said.

‘That palace is a silken cage, and Hüran are not meant for walls.’

‘Why did you take a city, then?’

‘Necessity.’ The wind had flushed her cheeks. ‘Soon the days will grow colder. There will be an age of ice, of storms – a wild winter, deep and lethal. It has happened before. When a sage warned her, my mother declared we would settle, to survive the freeze.’

‘I assume the North Hüran don’t believe this, and that’s why they stayed on the plains.’

‘That was their choice. The Bertak will endure.’

‘Will you fight the wyrms?’

Princess Irebül glanced at her. Her eyes were long and dark above the woollen mask she wore.

‘You saw that creature,’ she said. ‘No bow or spear will slay it.’ The eagle circled. ‘We are not meant to fight this, islander. Let your gods try. What you see is the death of one age, the birth of another. Those who survive will build a new world from the ash of the old.’

The eagle swooped down on a fox and wrestled it into the snow. Princess Irebül called out to it, her voice echoing across the meadow.

‘What do you know of the woman on Brhazat?’ Dumai said. ‘Is she really an astronomer?’

‘I know only what the Lacustrine say. Some claim she is a spirit of the mountain, sent here by the gods to guard the city. They say she used to send them dreams, but it seems she no longer does. Apparently, our arrival scared her away.’ Her smile was thin and frigid. ‘Whatever she is, she is passing into myth. For myself, I suspect she died long ago.’

Dumai tried to conceal her disquiet. She could not let herself entertain the possibility that the person she had come here to seek might not be alive to answer her questions.

‘The Great Naïr – my esteemed mother, the Eternal Sun of the North – has approved your undertaking,’ Princess Irebül said. ‘You have her blessing to search the mountain, in exchange for any knowledge you may find there.’ The eagle perched on her arm, talons bloody, and she replaced its hood. ‘Should you survive, I will ride south to inform Consort Jekhen.’

‘I pray your people will be safe, whatever is to come.’ Dumai started to leave, then said, ‘Do you know her name, the woman on Brhazat?’

‘Tonra.’ Irebül stared into the onslaught of wind. ‘It means alone.’

****

They had everything they would need on the mountain, but Dumai knew it would be wrapped in a cold she had never endured. If her mother ever learned she had climbed it, she would be speechless with anger.

‘You’re thinking of Unora.’

Dumai peered up at Kanifa. During the journey, his stubble had grown into the footing of a beard. ‘I miss her,’ she said, as she tied her spikes to her boots. ‘You know what she’d say.’

‘It’s worth the risk.’ He knelt to check her knots. ‘I’ve missed climbing with you.’

‘And I with you.’ She showed him the frayed piece of their rope, tied around her wrist. ‘I have always kept this with me, but we might need a little more for this climb.’

He chuckled. ‘We have enough.’

They both looked up and up. Faced with the terrible slopes of the Lords, Dumai had thought she would be afraid, but found it was resolve that filled her. She could do this, of all things.

‘Did you know this Tonra was almost a myth, Master Kiprun?’ she asked the alchemist, who was burrowed into his furs, squinting at the mountain. ‘Princess Irebül seems to think so.’

‘I knew she hasn’t been seen in years,’ Master Kiprun admitted. ‘But she probably exists.’

‘What if she’s just a story?’

‘The Nameless One was a story, Princess,’ Nikeya said, her face almost swallowed by her hood. ‘We will all be stories one day, and I’d want someone to believe we existed. Wouldn’t you?’

Against her better judgement, Dumai smiled, glad her face was too covered for anyone to see.

‘We will go now,’ she said. ‘Master Kiprun, I know you wanted to join us, but—’

‘No fear, Princess Fish. Now I see Brhazat, I am reminded that alchemists belong on the ground,’ Master Kiprun said drily. ‘I leave it to you to find any wisdom that lies on that peak.’

‘I will return with it.’ Dumai looked at Nikeya. ‘Last chance. There would be no shame in staying.’

Nikeya shook her head. ‘Where you go, I go, Princess.’

‘As you wish.’

The sky remained calm as they climbed on to Furtia. She took off, following Nayimathun. Dumai narrowed her eyes against the wind. As the dragons swam up the western face of Brhazat, the incline tipped her against Kanifa, who wrapped an arm around her.

The cold had already knifed through her layers. This high, in the gods’ abode, spring might well have never come.

Brhazat had four distinct sides that tapered into a spearpoint. Ice armoured its slopes, which shed white powder into the air. No life stirred. Dumai thought it was six miles high; climbing it would have taken months. On Mount Ipyeda, climbers stopped at the village for several days, so their blood could settle, but there was no time for that now.

She closed her eyes to listen to her body. By the time they were at the waist of the mountain, breathing was harder, and her head ached – but she was a kite, and the sky was familiar.

Nonetheless, she was a human, too, and soon she knew that she was past the ceiling of the world, past the point a mortal could survive for long. Her heart worked hard. They were now far higher than Mount Ipyeda, higher than she had ever been, the city a haze far below.

Earth children cannot live so high. Furtia moved slower. The waters of creation lap against this stair.

She breathes those waters, as we can, Nayimathun replied.

Dumai opened her wet eyes, the wind blustering in her ears. Who, great one?

The queen in the mountain . . .

The weather was starting to turn. She had never feared heights, yet her thighs gave a sudden tremor as the wind whipped into a fury, straining the saddle. Kanifa tightened his hold on her.

‘There,’ he called.

Dumai lifted her raw face. The dragons slowed to a drift. Some way below the top of Brhazat, where the ice was hard and pale as marble, she spied a tiny balcony, difficult to see – and a door into the mountain, perched on the very eave of the East.

She tried to blink away a sudden darkening in her eyes. Neither dragon would be able to get near it, but a wall of snow and rock led to the cave. ‘Kanifa,’ she said, ‘we can climb that.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

Furtia banked as close as she could. When the dragon huffed and shook herself, Dumai slowly understood that they would have to jump between the saddle and the mountain.

Kanifa unwound the rope. He secured one end around his waist and passed the other to her, and she anchored it to the horn of the saddle. She had to concentrate until her temples hurt to do it, the knots taking longer than usual to make. Their bodies were already running out of time.

Do not goad the mountain. Her cracked lips formed the old warning, over and over. Do not goad the mountain.

When Kanifa loosed himself from the saddle, Dumai did the same. He took out his trusty ice sickles and set his weight against the wind before he made the leap. Once he had thrown his end of the rope to Dumai, she turned to face Nikeya, who was already trying to get up, hands clumsy in their mittens.

‘I was trying to remember . . . if I have ever had cause to jump,’ she said, with a wheezing laugh. ‘I have danced and swum, hunted on horseback, but I have not jumped in a very long time.’

She barely got the words out before a coughing fit struck her. Without her hands free to smother it, Dumai heard the damp rattle in that cough. She grasped Nikeya and reached under her furs and tunic, pressing a palm to her breastbone, where her heart beat like a banner in the wind.

‘Nikeya,’ she said, ‘you can’t climb. You must go back.’

‘No. I can.’ Another hacking cough. ‘Give me . . . some ginger.’

‘Ginger is not a cure, you fool. Master Kiprun knew his limits. Know yours.’ Dumai took her by the cheek. ‘You promised.’

Nikeya looked past her, up to the door. Blood was spreading in the white of her left eye.

‘Yes,’ she rasped. ‘I did.’ She coughed again. ‘If I let you send me back, then I trust that it will serve to demonstrate my honesty. Will you remember it, Dumai?’

Every word seemed to shred her throat. Dumai nodded, eyes watering in the cold. Furtia, once I am gone, take them to the ground. She fastened Nikeya back into the saddle. I will call when we have what we need.

You will die here before I return, earth child.

I am no stranger to mountains. Please, great one.

‘Be careful,’ Nikeya croaked as Dumai rose and turned to face Kanifa. Just as she rested her boot on the side of the saddle, a swift gust of wind threw her balance, and suddenly she was over the edge.

The rope wrenched and went taut. Shouts came to her ears, but they were garbled by the wind. Her legs hung above the black precipice; her sight darkened again. With a growl, Furtia shunted her body towards the mountain, and Dumai went soaring in the same direction.

As soon as she landed, Kanifa grabbed the back of her coat. ‘Nikeya, the rope,’ he bellowed up to her. He dug his spikes into the crust. ‘Hurry, before it pulls us over!’

Somehow, Nikeya managed it. As soon as the rope slackened, they both collapsed into the snow.

As Furtia sank out of sight, Dumai rose and stooped against the wind, her hands tucked under her furs, and trudged after Kanifa, every step as hard as if her boots were made of stone.

Island child. With effort, she turned back to see Nayimathun. There is a foulness on the wind. The fire comes, but the star has not. The star that brought us to this world; the long-tailed light from the black waters of creation. I must protect the land I call home.

Thank you for escorting us. Dumai hunched into a bow. It was a greater honour than any of us earned.

You have the stars in you, rider. I will see you in the sky one day.

With those words, Nayimathun of the Deep Snows was gone, leaving them to stand where no human should. Dumai knew that she would never see the god of wanderers again.

Kanifa had already lashed the rope back around his waist. Dumai took out her sickles. She chipped one point into the ice, then drove her spikes in, and they began to scale the cliff.

Compared to their climbs on Mount Ipyeda, it was agony. Her weight seemed to have doubled. Each pull of her arms left her puffing and faint. By the time she edged a knee over the crust of snow at the top, she thought she would die from the burning pain in her thighs.

The door that caulked the mountainside was blocked from within. Kanifa pounded it with his fist, to no avail. Gathering their strength, they used their sickles to splinter the rotten wood, breaking and prying it until Dumai could force an arm through and wrestle the iron bars from the other side. She had never overindulged in wine, but she imagined that this was what it would feel like, as if her blood had thickened.

Inside, her knees almost gave way. Kanifa steadied her before he took out the leather pouch he had acquired on the Snow Road. Inside was a Northern firestriker. He used it to light the oiled cloth he had tied around a stick, and a small flame revealed the cave.

Tonra had built a modest home. With blurred sight, Dumai made out a hearth and three faded cushions. A pothook had been fixed above. Thick fabric draped the walls, and mats covered the floor, helping to counter the unearthly cold. Paper had piled up on a table. Dumai limped towards an opening in the rock, which led to another cave.

And there was Tonra, slumped in furs. Black hair covered her face. It had grown so long that she had wrapped herself in it, and even then, there was enough left to trail across the floor.

Dumai stepped over it and knelt. She heard no breathing. Removing one gauntlet, she took the woman by the arm, drew up her red sleeve, and pressed a thumb to her inner wrist.

‘She’s dead.’

Kanifa brought the light closer. ‘She hasn’t decayed.’

‘The air is too pure and cold. Nothing rots this high.’ Dumai touched a stain at her waist. ‘There’s blood, but I doubt she died from it.’

‘More likely she starved.’ Kanifa dabbed his nose. ‘Or finally succumbed to Brhazat.’

Tonra was certainly thin, curled like a dry leaf in death. Dumai went to brush her hair off her face, then stopped. A corpse ought not to be disturbed. ‘It is as Irebül said, then.’ Her chest squeezed like a fist as she spoke. ‘We cannot have come this far for no reason.’

‘Keep looking.’

In the other cave, a writing brush lay on the floor, its hairs clotted into one hunk, along with the remnants of an inkstone. They sifted through rolls of fragile paper.

‘Some of these are in Seiikinese. An older form, but—’ Dumai paused for breath and blinked. ‘Was she an islander?’

I write not of what I remember or what I have done, for that will only bring fresh torment in my exile, and already my mind is in agony. Let me dwell on that pain and sorrow no longer; let me not be overwhelmed by what I can no longer change. Instead, I mean to watch the nightly passage of the stars, as if I had no past at all. I will have no dwelling but this, and no friends but these.

Do stars go out, I wonder, in the end – those candles of the world above?

A headache was mounting. She leafed through the papers, trying to find anything pertaining to a balance.

I woke again today, against my will. This brittle air slows me, as I trusted it would. I had thought myself reconciled to this fate, but I had the world to distract me, before. Now I have no comfort.

The path open to others is not open to me. If I let myself fall, I might break into pieces, yet remain. I fear to try. I cannot try. I must do as I promised, for who better than I to do it – I who am a remnant, a firefly still aglow in amber?

Dumai had held herself together for this long. Now her stomach rang with fear. These were the ravings of a troubled mind, not the calculations of a genius. Master Kiprun had been wrong.

Kanifa was reading one. ‘This seems important,’ he said, showing it to her.

How you haunt me still, as I hold my half of our pact – this quickened stone that I possess, and that possesses me. It does not rest, nor let me rest, and yet I must protect it. It holds the fire at bay, but at what cost does it exist?

One day I will know, when the binding is broken. No matter how far I must go, I will know it . . .

‘We need to find the stone she mentions,’ Dumai murmured, just as she spotted another scroll on the floor, fallen with the brush. She picked it up.

The comet will pass again soon. It will mark five hundred years and six since that day on the sea, and give my enemy new power.

This time it will come on the first of the spring, in the twelfth year of the fifth century, to cool the risen fire. Perhaps it will undo the past. If not, let me not wake again.

‘Kanifa. This is it.’ Dumai stared at the writing. ‘Tonra speaks of a comet that will come in the twelfth year of the fifth century – next year – to cool the risen fire. This must be the answer.’

‘A comet.’ His expression changed. ‘A comet is what keeps the balance in check.’

‘Father might know of it – but if this is true, this time of fire will not last for ever, just as Master Kiprun said. It is a wheel, always circling. It means we only need survive until this coming spring.’

‘Easier said than done.’ Kanifa coughed. ‘Dumai, we’ve stayed too long.’

She stood without argument. Great one, we are ready to leave, she called, but Furtia did not reply.

While Kanifa gathered the old papers into a sack, Dumai combed the cave once more, searching every crevice, trying to ignore how fast her heart was beating. She returned to Tonra, and noticed, on her second look, that the body was curled around something.

A box.

She thought it was of Lacustrine design, hammered silver with gilding, its surface beautifully engraved. Its shape put her in mind of fruit. With care, she took it and removed its lid – and there it was, the stone. Big as a plum and smooth as a pearl, it was darkest blue, with a white glimmer at its core. Dumai gazed into those depths, finding herself entranced.

‘Kanifa.’

He crouched beside her. ‘This must be what she was protecting,’ he rasped. ‘What is it?’

‘I don’t know. Should we take it?’

Kanifa considered, then nodded. ‘She can’t look after it any more. We should try to find out what it is, and why she banished herself with it.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Is Furtia coming?’

‘I called her.’

Dumai cupped a hand under the gemstone, hesitating as she did it. She felt as low as a graverobber – but they needed any clue they could find.

Even through a padded gauntlet, the stone was cold to the touch. She wrapped it in a length of wool and stowed it in the pouch at her hip, pulling the cords tight before she knotted them.

An ominous sound came from outside. She joined Kanifa on the balcony to see a storm gathering over the Collar, where dusk had already fallen. As clouds enwheeled Golümtan, the whole city became a weave of burning threads, and Dumai saw a flash of gold.

‘Wyrms,’ she breathed.

‘The gods must have summoned a storm to weaken them. We have to start climbing, Mai, to get below the ceiling.’

‘We won’t make it that far in this state.’

‘We can try.’

Shivering, Dumai blinked against an icy blaze of wind. The sun, already tarnished, was turning red. ‘All right,’ she ground out. ‘We go as far as we can and find shelter.’

With the rope between them, they angled themselves over the balcony and picked their way back down the ice. Descending a mountain could be far more dangerous than scaling it, and while every instinct told her to hurry, she resisted. Do not goad the mountain, her mother had said, but they had, by daring to climb as high as gods flew.

Furtia, please, hear me. Dumai kicked her spikes into the ice. We can’t breathe this air for much longer.

Kanifa lost his grip and fell, and then so did Dumai, wrenched by the rope. They helped each other up and went on foot, following a ridge of bare rock. Soon it had turned steep enough that they had to sit, to stop the wind ripping them off Brhazat. Dumai tried to think of nothing but the next tiny movement. Her feet had turned numb in her boots.

They skirted a great weathered outcrop. Below, the storm thickened. A burst of lightning came, making something glint again, and then a deep rumble of thunder.

‘Dumai, is it a wyrm?’

The storm had blown into them before she could reply, driving her against the mountain, hard enough that she struck her head. Freezing rain scissored her face, sharp as pottery shards, and Kanifa clasped her to him, trying to shelter her.

They kept clambering down. By the time they reached a dizzying slope covered in looser snow, it was dark enough that they could barely see a foot in front of them. Kanifa retched. Dumai breathed in shallow white puffs.

Can anyone hear me?

Silence pealed in her mind, somehow louder than the storm.

‘Kanifa,’ she said, in a fainter voice than she had meant, ‘I taste iron. Is my nose bleeding?’

‘A little.’ He tried to dab it with his thick gauntlet. ‘It can’t be m-mountain sickness. It’s us.’

Dumai managed a weak laugh, though it left her so breathless it hurt. ‘Just a bad cold.’ Lowering herself into the snow, she unhooked one of her ice sickles and fastened it to her arm. ‘Come on. We have to slide. We’ll get you down, Kan. You’ll be fine.’

He took the same position. Dumai sat with her legs in front of her and shunted herself forward, using her heels and sickle to control her descent, and together they went slewing down the face of Brhazat, towards the city that lay far beneath the ceiling. She dug in just before they reached the end of the slope, a solid overhang crusted with snow.

‘Dumai.’ Kanifa stopped behind her. ‘Can you see anywhere to shelter?’

‘No.’ Her heart struck her breast like a hammer. ‘It’s so dark. I can’t think.’

Kanifa crawled to her side. As he put his hand on the edge, Dumai heard the crack, and in the terrible moment that followed, she saw what they had both failed to notice, in their blindness. This was not a shelf of rock, but ice – and when it broke away from the cliff, they fell with it.

Blackness howled around her. Instinct kicked to life, and she lashed out desperately with her ice sickle. The blade sparked and shrieked before it caught, arresting her fall. The rope went taut, almost pulling her down, but somehow, she kept her grip, cracked open her eyes, and found herself staring at her own gloved hand, wrapped around the handle.

Kanifa was some way below, saved by the rope. ‘Kanifa,’ Dumai cried. His entire weight pulled on the other end, pulling it hard around her waist. ‘Kan, quickly, swing yourself!’

‘I can’t.’

She looked down in fear. Her sickle had caught on a frozen outcrop. Through the sleet, she saw that he was right – even if she had been at full strength, the rock face was too far away for her to swing him to it.

Her arm trembled. Every joint and rib was threatening to snap. She had lost so much strength at court. Calling on her deepest reserves, she reached down to detach her other sickle from her sash. With a scream of effort, she drove it into the ice. Now she could pull them both up, she could . . .

‘Dumai,’ Kanifa called hoarsely. ‘Dumai, listen to me. You’re too weak to save us both.’

‘No. I can—’

The ice creaked. Her grip slipped on both sides, and she caught herself just in time, sobbing in pain.

Kanifa twisted into a new position. Dumai groaned as the rope tightened around her waist, and then she spotted the blade in his hand, twin to the one she had left in the temple.

‘What are you doing?’ she heaved out.

‘Mai, listen to me.’ He was straining to speak. ‘We’re both dying. If you keep holding me, you’ll be too weak to save yourself.’

Dumai stared down at him. When she saw the choice in his face, she felt the blood drain from her own.

‘No,’ she rasped. ‘Kanifa, don’t.’

‘I have to.’ He reached up to grip the rope. ‘A kite can’t fly with a weight on its line.’

‘You are not a weight,’ she screamed in agony. ‘Stop this—’

She willed the storm to freeze her hands to the sickles, to let her hold on for as long as it took.

‘We fall together. Always together. It’s us, Kanifa,’ she sobbed. ‘It’s us!’

‘You have to live. To see the comet.’ Kanifa found a last smile for her, blood crusted on his lips and nose. ‘Seiiki could ask for no better queen.’

He set the blade against their rope. Tears smeared her sight, but in that moment, Dumai saw him as if for the first time, the quiet boy who climbed the peak. He offered her the same blade she gripped now, so she could touch the sky, like him. So she could one day save herself.

He had always been there. Always with her.

And then, in one flash of steel, he was gone.

****

Later, she would not remember how she pulled herself on to the outcrop. She would not remember how she found the place where she curled up like a small hurt thing and waited for the end.

Freezing was not too cruel a death. Dumai remembered her mother telling her so, the first time she had seen a climber brought down from the mountain, unmoving. It’s like falling asleep, my kite. Unora had drawn her close. There is no pain. After a time . . . it begins to feel warm.

It did. It felt like she was sitting by a stove, or tucked into her bedding on Mount Ipyeda. She started to shrug out of her furs, burning. As she dug into the snow, she thought she really could hear her mother.

Sister. Not her mother. Someone else. Sister, I feel you fading. Don’t leave me. Stay . . .

‘I can’t,’ she breathed.

Earth child. Voices mingled, young and ancient. She held a constellation of consciousnesses in her own. Darkness strikes the mountain, and you with it. Find the light that touched you in the waters of the womb.

Let me help you. Tell me how.

Somehow, Dumai reached for the stream, and the figure on the other side.

Help me find the light.

The ice was already deep in her skin, but now it branched in her blood, too. The fog in her breath thickened before a dazzling whiteness shone from her hand, lighting up the snow around her. She held it aloft until her arm lost the last of her strength, and then it went out, and she knew no more.