Page 42 of A Weave of Lies
Given time, the fire would consume the world, and let It in.
Expanding her strained sight as far into the Arras as it could go, the witch raised one hand toward the sky and lowered the other to the depths of the earth.
Deep down below, water coursed through the soil in underground rivers and lakes. Far above, winds blew through light clouds. Bringing above as many of the threads below as she could, Semras begged the world to fill the sky with rain clouds.
Whether it would answer or not remained to be seen. She could do no more; she needed her remaining strength for one more feat.
Semras turned her attention to the warp shape of the inquisitor. In the stretched time of the Unseen Arras, his movements drifted, as if wading through time itself. Huncheddown, he was gripping his sword with both hands to face the three wolf-shaped masses of threads in front of him. Velten swayed on his feet, unbalanced by exhaustion.
A deep weariness had crept through his warp shape in the form of insidious, blackened veins. The same plague afflicted her hands, but not as extensively as his. She had been right; in this state, he wouldn’t last much longer.
There was no time to hesitate. Semras ripped the blackened wefts out of the inquisitor.
At once, strings of agony twirled out of his faceless mouth. Velten fell to one knee. She blanched but kept weaving. Turning her fingers against herself, she plucked threads of vigour right out of her core.
To give, something had to be taken. A thread woven in was a thread woven out of somewhere else, in an endless, delicate act of balance.
Semras wove the inquisitor’s gashes closed with her own wefts. Left exposed, her empty core pulsated with pain, and she took the strained, blackened threads of Velten to replace her own. The foreign sensation of someone else’s lifeforce invaded her as they furled around her warp shape.
Then sheer pain hit her, and Semras staggered back, breathless. Velten had shown no hint of how much he’d been suffering, and now she knew it intimately—in the shaking of her arms and legs, and in the wild beating of her heart, and in the weakness that seized her entire being.
His worn-out, wounded lifeforce was now hers—and hers, still strong, his—for as long as it would take for their threads to unravel and return to their respective core.
Now he could fight for them both. This was a fair Bargain—a true witch deal.
Semras hoped he would uphold it. If he didn’t, she would become easy prey.
Slowly blinking away the Unseen Arras, the witch returned to the Seen World.
The sight that awaited her made her sacrifice worth it. Velten had risen again, his grip on his sword reasserted. He thrust the blade down the muzzle of an approaching beast, and it tore through its skull in a clean cut. The wolf didn’t even have time to yelp in pain.
The inquisitor paused in front of the bloody corpse, bewildered by his renewed strength.
Ears flattened on their heads, the two remaining wolves growled. They charged again, and Velten followed suit. Semras stared at the inquisitor, unable to tear her eyes away from him.
He looked mesmerizing. Through the blood, the gore, and the screams of the beasts, his dance of death was a sight to behold. He seemed unstoppable; a single-minded force of nature, driven by a purpose beyond himself.
Lost in awe, she saw the attack too late.
One wolf threw itself at the inquisitor, teeth aiming for his throat, while the last one—the silent, fifth predator—slipped past him.
And then lunged at her.
Weakened and sluggish, Semras passively watched the sharp fangs aim for her throat as if she was still wading through the Arras.
The world swirled, and she fell.
Jaws snapped in the empty space she’d been mere seconds ago. By sheer luck, her enfeebled body had fallen to the ground just in time to avoid them. Blinking her lethargy away, Semras lifted her head.
The wolf circled back, then pounced at her once more. A primal, visceral fear froze her in place.
Time slowed down in front of the jaws of death. Blood pooled on her lips where she had bitten them in her fall, its metallictaste seeping onto her tongue. Beneath her palms, cool dirt and dried leaves crinkled at her touch. The sun shimmered somewhere far above the treeline, and then faded as gathering clouds obscured it. A shiver ran down her spine.
Semras took a deep breath.
The Vedwoods were her world. She would not succumb to its danger.
The beast lunged at her, and she raised her hands. Grabbing a few threads from the wolf’s mind, she jerked them closer, then wove them to the warps of her own. At once, she felt it. The connection was weak, amateurish, but it was there. It would be enough.
