Page 156 of A Weave of Lies
She smiled, and it felt like a sneer. “What was it you told me once?‘Had you trusted me less …’?” Jaw set, she threw her empty waterskin aside. “You don’t owe me anything anymore, Inquisitor Velten. You manipulated me, and now so did I. What a pair of Wyrdtwined we make.” The witch chuckled in a shrill, hollow breath.
The sound painted horror on his face. Had her heart not been so scarred by now—byhim—it would have made her aghast too.
Semras walked away toward the witch’s hut. “You’ll be fine,” she said without looking back. “Take some rest here, then return to your world and find a healer. Farewell, Estevan Velten. Maywe never meet again.” Mouth set in a harsh line, Semras left him behind.
She had done what she had to, and now her coven sister awaited.
The oak tree stairs sprawled up at her feet, and Semras began climbing. When she reached the top, she threw a final glance at Estevan.
To her surprise, the inquisitor had stumbled back onto his feet. She clicked her tongue in annoyance. Why was the stubborn man still trying to carry on? He’d only weaken himself. He needed rest and water, and—
Why didshecare?
Shaking her head, she knocked on the door and waited. No answer came, and she called out. “Is anyone inside?”
Only silence replied to her.
Semras waited as long as she dared before resolving to enter. The hinges creaked as she pushed the door open. Her breath stilled in her lungs.
Only a madman or a desperate fool would walk uninvited into a witch’s lair. Semras painfully knew which one she was.
Entering cautiously, she found beyond the doorway a dark living room carved straight out of the tree trunk. The dying flames of a fireplace projected their glow onto a few comfortable-looking chairs set around a small crooked table nearby. On the side, stairs led to an upper area.
No one stood there.
Semras threw a glance toward one of the wooden walls. An impressive collection of pinned butterflies and bleached skulls adorned it.
“Is anyone here?” she called again. “I apologize for the intrusion, but I’m afraid time is of the essence, and—”
A wave of pure darkness descended from the stairs. It engulfed her, and Semras gasped as her vision went blind. With her nightsight, she should have been able to perceive something, and yet she couldn’t. All the wefts of light within the Unseen Arras had been ripped out at once. That took immense willpower and skill. And intention.
The owner of the house knew Semras had intruded. Her voice, a deep matronly tone enriched by a thick Slavkan accent, echoed all around Semras. “Are you a madman?” Footsteps click-clacked down the wooden stairs in an exacting rhythm. “Or a desperate fool?”
“I’ve been both in the past week alone, Matriarch Weaver. I am Woodwitch Semras of Yore, the wild daughter of Sarana of Endor, and I come—”
The darkness lifted at once.
A woman of sixty summers stood right before her. The witch of the oak tree was tall and bony in the way of an old mighty tree. A black lacquered branch held a large bun of silvered brown hair behind her head. From it, one long strand fell to her waist, where a bronze belt cinched her frock—a deep maroon gown lined with bronze threads.
The matriarch cut an intimidating figure, and she clearly knew it.
Her lips curled into a sly smile. Dotted scars around them denoted a former warwitch, but the empty, healed stitch holes told Semras of a Path renounced long ago. They were now nearly imperceptible among her skin’s many freckles and whorled tattoos.
“Ah … a fellow witch. And one whose name I have heard of before. Semras, welcome.” The matriarch’s voice turned silky, like warm wine. “I know of you. You joined Yore four seasons ago, didn’t you? I was told that you possess a rare talent for brewing. It pleases me immensely as a fellow herbalist.”
Robbed of her voice, Semras stared wordlessly at the matriarch. She too had heard of the older witch’s name before—in her own voice mere hours ago.
“I am Warwitch Leyevna of Yore, daughter of Bohdana of Heiss,” the older witch continued. “A pleasure to stand beneath the sky with you, girl.”
A living, breathing legend stood before Semras, but the petrifying awe of fame wasn’t what kept her rooted in place and turned her tongue into lead. It was something much,muchworse.
“You mentioned a message of great urgency?” Leyevna asked, tactfully ignoring her shock. “Speak, I am listening.”
But Semras couldn’t. The intense glare of the matriarch kept her prisoner, as surely as if she were one of the pinned butterflies adorning the walls. She might yet join them soon.
For the gaze of Leyevna was one she knew all too well by now. The same gaze had haunted her for days; the same stare had burned her every time she found herself in its focus.
The same icy blue eyes of Inquisitor Estevan Velten.
