“He’s a cute pet,” Xochil said, looking at Pahtl. His voice was almost unrecognizable. “Better than the turtle. Always hated that thing.”

The others had gone stiff and still at Tarek’s back.

“How did you get past the mists?” Tarek whispered.

A rasping laugh sounded from the deep hood. “You think you can discover the limits of my power from a few conversations? Stupid boy.”

“You tried so hard to keep me from reaching the mists. I thought…”

The old man stood with painful slowness. “Thinking was never your strong suit, big brother. I might like my meat to fall onto my plate perfectly cooked, but that doesn’t mean I won’t go hunt it down when I have to. It cost me dearly to come this far, Tarek, but when I don’t waste effort on illusions, there’s almost no limit to what Shaka lets me do.”

The old man cast back his hood, and Tarek took an involuntary step backward. Bachi was whispering something to himself over and over. Tavi made a sound of disgust.

The bearded, bald old man was gone. In his place was a scaled, blunt snake face. The eyes had vertically-slitted pupils, and his elongated face had no nose, only dimpled holes.

“What happened to you?” Tarek asked, horrified.

Xochil chuckled, still moving sluggishly. “You don’t live a thousand years without making a few sacrifices. The moon magic gave me the power to experiment, and mixing other essences with my own let me stay alive until my brother came back. No power comes without cost. You’ve started to learn that, I think.” He pointed to Tarek’s maimed hand with a taloned finger. “We do what we have to so we can finish the job.”

“I’m not coming with you,” Tarek said, but Xochil raised a scaled hand.

“We’re done with talking. This is the doing part, now.”

Green light wrapped around Tarek’s arms and torso, lifting him into the air. The others burst from their shocked stillness at the movement, but another sweep of light knocked them in a body into the pool, where they thrashed and shouted, trying to disentangle themselves. Kanga, still a ways distant, saw the commotion and ducked behind a rock, unnoticed by the vengeful old man.

Higher and higher Tarek went, edging closer to the waterfall as he did so. Xochil mirrored him on the ground, walking around the edge of the pool so he stood near the jagged rocks and looked directly up at his captive.

“I’ve lost my patience,” Xochil said. His voice echoed with unnatural loudness in Tarek’s ears over the thundering of water. “I’m going to give you a bit of a spanking and then you’re going to watch the others die. It’ll be good for you, I think.” The snake-like man gestured, and far below where Tarek dangled in the air, Tavi’s head disappeared under the water in flurry of green power. “Him first. But ahh, no, where is my discipline? You first, that’s what I just said. Stay where I put you and think about what you’ve done.”

Then the constricting light shoved Tarek into the pounding waterfall. It was far colder than the sea had been, and the air left his lungs in a rush. He wanted to tuck his chin and take a breath, but water surrounded him on all sides. His muscles clenched against the cold and his lungs screamed for air. It went on forever, and then he jerked forward back into midair.

“I don’t know why I believed you could make good decisions,” Xochil said. “You look like him, you see, so I wanted to agree with you, give you a bit of what you wanted. A thousand years is a long time, but apparently not enough to erase family ties. It was foolish of me. I should have seen my own bias.”

Tavi and Zulimaya were trying to climb out of the pool, but each time they hoisted themselves onto the rocks, brief flicks of green light knocked them back in. Bachi was swimming clumsily for the far side of the pool, trying to get as far from Xochil as possible. That was all Tarek could see before he plunged back under the waterfall. He was able to snatch a breath first, but Xochil left him in longer this time. He came back out shivering and gasping.

“What did I expect, really? You’re him. That same stupid, gallant boy who’d never listen the first time around. Brave, beautiful, beloved by all. Is it any wonder I had to kill him just to get him to do the right thing?”

Tarek’s eyes went wide at the words, and then he went back under the cascading water. It was him. Xochil did it. He thought back to the carved scene in the temple with the seated king, the pointing advisor, and the knife-wielding assassin, and the figures shifted ever so subtly in his mind. The advisor wasn’t pointing. He was beckoning. Xochil had arranged the murder of his own brother.

Xochil yanked him out again.

“Not this time,” he said. “I’ve spent the last thousand years regretting it.”

Tarek saw a dark, furry figure on the rocks above Xochil.

“Bite your throat!” Pahtl screamed, launching himself into the air.

The otter landed on Xochil’s reptilian head and his teeth sunk into the old man’s neck. The green magic enveloping Tarek disappeared. He plummeted through the air, windmilling his arms. Just before he hit the water, he saw Xochil flick his fingers, and Patl’s furry body streaked toward the rocks, slamming into the stone with crushing force. Tarek could feel bones breaking through their bond. Lots of them. It felt like someone had stabbed in in ten different places all at once. He plunged into the depths of the pool, screaming his despair in great, muted streams of bubbles that rose gently into nothing.

A giant hand of light dragged him to the surface before he could drown. “I’ll kill you!” Tarek cried, blind with both dripping water and tears. “I hate you!”

Xochil brought him close, and he hovered over the stones an arm’s length from the old man. “That’s probably for the best.”

Then Kanga was there, and he brought his long torch down on Xochil’s leg with brutal strength. The reptilian man screamed, a shrill, anguished sound. Tarek dropped to the ground once more, but this time he was right where he wanted to be. He scrambled over and tore the weapon from Kanga’s grasp. In a frenzy of grief, he struck at Xochil again and again.

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An explosion of power knocked both him and Kanga from their feet. Kanga spun into the rock face, his shoulder connecting hard with a sickening crunch. With a cry of pain he fell to the ground, clutching his arm. The club spun from Tarek’s grasp into the depths of the pool, and he scrambled back to his feet.

“Tarek!” Tavi shrilled from where he was climbing out of the water. He pulled the metal knife from his belt and lobbed it to Zulimaya, who was already standing on the rocks nearby. She didn’t hesitate. Turning on her heel, she threw the weapon end over end right at Tarek.

Her aim with the knife was as good as it had been with a bow. Tarek plucked the hilt from the air with his good hand and turned on Xochil.

Too late. The inhuman elder had pulled himself upright with his staff, his broken leg dangling. With a snarl, his green light flicked the knife from Tarek’s hand, sending it skittering across the stone. The power snaked around Tarek’s throat and lifted his toes from the ground.

“Maybe I was right the first time,” Xochil spat. “Can’t you listen? Can’t you obey even in the simplest of things? If you’d have just listened we could have done this together from the start! No, the great a’hau can’t take advice from his little brother! I told you how to make it all stop! Why don’t you listen?”

Xochil was shaking with rage, and Tarek’s vision was narrowing to a black-edged tunnel. The world was fuzzy. The fuzziest part was right by Xochil, and it was moving.

Then the old man gasped and clutched at his side with scaled fingers, and Bachi was there, his face red from forcing his broken voice to hide him in the Song, a blood-edged knife in his shaking fingers. Tarek’s feet slammed back to earth, and he sucked in sweet air.

“Here,” Bachi whispered, pitching the knife at him awkwardly. It tumbled and turned through the air, skewed sideways, and veered off to Tarek’s left.

He caught the blade between the thumb and forefinger of his maimed left hand, let the momentum pull it out of his grasp, and brought his bloodstained fingers to his lips. Xochil’s essence burned where it touched his tongue.

The old man looked up, saw the blood on his lips, and his yellow, slit-pupil eyes widened.

“Wait,” he said.

Tarek did not. All his self-doubt and guilt about his blood magic flashed away like dry grass in a bonfire when he thought of Pahtl broken against the rocks. “Die,” he told the old man.

Power tore through him more strongly than he’d ever felt, the magic in his blood mingling with the moon magic that soured Xochil’s. Green light poured from Xochil’s taloned fingertips in fans that closed in on themselves as he clutched at his own serpentine head, his scaled skin flaking as the strands of magic wrapped around his body, squeezing, crushing.

The reptilian man began to shrink and crumble under the onslaught. “Tarek, please.”

Tarek felt a pang but clamped his lips shut. He would not relent. Xochil’s robe began to fall slack as he withered.

“You don’t understand,” the frail, shrinking face said.

Tarek didn’t want to understand. He could feel Pahtl dying, and no twisted, manipulative explanation of history or responsibility could change that. Xochil’s staff clattered to the ground, and he crumbled into the folds of his robes, disappearing. Tarek felt his magic begin to wane as the his sense of Xochil’s panicked self began to flicker and then… changed somehow. Xochil felt smaller, less real. A moment later, a small yellow snake slithered out from the hem of the crumpled clothing.

Tarek brought his bare heel down on its skull. It thrashed once and lay still.

With a sob, he left the shattered, bloody thing behind and darted to the rocks next to the waterfall where Pahtl’s life was flickering.

His beautiful friend was twisted around the rock that had broken his back. Blood leaked from his ears and mouth. Tarek wept as he knelt beside him, tearing the sodden cloth bandage from his broken hand. He slapped the unhealed wound against a stone, relishing the pain, willing the blood to the surface.

The healing elixir within him trickled onto Pahtl’s broken body, seeping into him a wide, bloody rent in his pelt. Slowly the otter straightened as the bones knitted themselves back into place. When Tarek lifted him away from the rock, though, his body was limp and still.

“Come on, Pahtl!” he said urgently. “Come on!” He squeezed his half-fist, shaking a drop onto the otter’s muzzle. The wound ached with a depth that told him it would never heal properly, but the blood would not flow any more.

“I need the knife!” he shrieked, but the others were too far away, and Kanga was too stupid and slow as he clutched at his broken arm. “Help!”

He bit his own tongue in a frenzy, feeling a flap of the muscle tear free as his teeth bit all the way through the edge. Forcing Pahtl’s slack mouth open, he spat the blood onto the otter’s tongue. “Drink it!” he screamed. “Do it! Please!” His cries dissolved into tears, and he pulled Pahtl’s body close, weeping into his fur. He smelled like fish and oil and musk. It was the smell that had brought Tarek back from the brink of blood madness. It was the smell of fun and wisdom and perfect friendship.

The otter stirred in his grasp. “I flew,” Pahtl said weakly. “Like the lizards. Before I bit the bad man, I flew.”

Tarek’s heart leapt as the spark within his friend flared. “You did,” he said, laughing, sobbing, and then laughing again. “You are the god of otters.”

* * *

They stayed by the pool for days, healing, recuperating, and eating. Tarek was able to use a bit of his blood to heal Kanga’s broken arm, though he was mightily tempted not to when the hateful man started muttering about “filthy blood.” Pahtl caught them all a profusion of deep-sea fish and seemed not at all bothered by his brush with death.

None of them ventured anywhere near the spot where the snake corpse of Xochil lay undisturbed. Without ever discussing it they all stayed on the far side of the pool. They didn’t speak of him at all. Occasionally someone’s eyes would drift over, but the others were all quick to engage whoever it was in distracting conversation, even if it happened to be Kanga.

Tarek took a fish bone and dried, twisted fish guts to fashion a ridiculous pair of short pants, a leather vest, and a pair of shoes out of the cape Bachi had so kindly given him. The lad grinned and knuckled his mustaches whenever he saw Tarek in the outfit, never failing to mention how well it all fitted. Tarek was disgruntled by the fact that his arms and legs would go uncovered in the snow, but there was no denying that the clothes would keep him warmer in the high peaks ahead than a simple cape could. He just wished there had been a little more leather to go around.

They dried fish and gathered greens and even found a wild beehive they were able to smoke into stillness and take the honeycomb. When Zulimaya found a clutch of small wildflowers lying in the spot where she always slept, she scowled at Tarek, shook her head, and threw them in the fire. Bachi, who had left them there, sputtered, tugged his mustaches, and said nothing.

The next morning all was in readiness and they looked to the mountains ahead.

“It’s going to take forever,” Tavi said. He didn’t sound sad.

“Watch for good trees,” Zulimaya told the others. “I have waited too long for my own bow already.”

“This is stupid,” Kanga said, spitting on the rocks. Everyone ignored him.

Except Tarek. “No, this is amazing,” he said. “And when we get to the top, we’ll know what’s on the other side. There’s a whole new land we get to see. There’ll be a home for all of us somewhere.”

Kanga snorted.

Tarek took a deep breath. “I have to look at him, just once,” he said. “I owe him that much. Wait here a moment.”

He crossed to the other side of the pond and stood for a long, silent moment over the untouched heap of Xochil’s clothes. He had thought to say some final word of farewell over the snake’s corpse, but instead he just stared and frowned, cold creeping through his innards. He started to say something, but then stopped.

“Come on, Tarek,” Tavi called from the other side. “Leave it. It’s over.”

Tarek looked up and saw his friends waiting.

“Yes, it is,” he said, and walked away without a backward glance. “Let’s get started.”

On the rocks behind him lay a frayed brown robe, a twisted staff, and an empty, molted snakeskin.