Page 101 of Witchlight
Owl moved, fast as an avalanche. Two stone shackles that latched on to Stix’s arms while the girl herself sprang down from her stone column. “Your queen needs you.” Owl’s eyes glowed a pure, pure brown—and they pulsed too, as if bound to the heart of Sirmaya. “And her people need you. I have not betrayed you because I amnothim.”
“You encased Lady Baile in granite a thousand years ago.”
“To protect her! I failed, though. Elias killed me too. He killed Saria, his own Heart-Thread, with a plain, unmagicked blade just as he killed Baile.You. So believe me: whatever it was he had planned that day and whatever it is he plans now, I have no part in it.”
At those words, Owl aimed a small arm at the first bridge. The monks were approaching fast, vague features taking shape. One, however, was at the lead, sprinting far faster than any other monk behind him.
“Stix, you are needed in Nubrevna,” Owl continued, “because everything is about to change, andthatis where you belong. Both of us will need to be ready for when the past returns to life, so don’t let the same fury that blinded Bastien blind you.”
Yes,the spirit swifts seemed to chime. They flapped upward, dazzling colors and light into Stix’s weak eyes.Listen to the Earth Paladin. Poznin is not your home; the king here is not the one you must lift up and serve.
“We are on the same side.” Owl lifted her tiny chin. “The Rook King Elias played me too, a thousand years ago. But now the Queen of Foxes needs you. All of Nubrevna needs you, so get these people into the under-city and I will join you there.”
FIFTY-ONE
The Truthwitch wasn’t dead when Aeduan reached her. She should have been, but she was not. Perhaps the Cahr Awen souls protected her, perhaps there was some other magic at work. But the light-bringer was not dead when Aeduan fell to her side.
Carawen monks flowed around Aeduan, charging from a magicked doorway Owl had led them to. While Aeduan and Lizl had sprinted across a bridge of ice and stone—ice that had not retreated from Aeduan’s path—he’d seen theotherice throttled at the edges of his vision. Panting and shimmering.No, he’d thought at it.No, don’t move. Please, leave me be.
And it had. Somehow, that awful sentient ice left him alone, so the journey progressed steadily. True.
At least until Aeduan felt Iseult die.
It was like a hundred arrows cutting him all at once. Like the flames of his childhood burning anew. Her Threads snipped, and the sudden absence of her—the abruptseveringof their connection—carved out all of Aeduan’s insides. It squeezed, it wrung, it ripped while the six old wounds…
They punched outward with fire. Literal flames that he would have sworn he could see smoking, just like the arrows that had once razed through his mother into him.
“What is it?” Lizl asked, seizing Aeduan before he could topple off their paper-thin bridge into star-swept nothing. “What’s happening?”
Aeduan couldn’t answer. He had no voice, he had no words; he had only smoke inside his lungs. And for a brief flicker of a breath, he had power too, gathering inside him like a starving storm. As if the six wounds had decided not to kill him, but to reinforce him. Forge his muscles and bones in flame.
“The Cahr Awen,” he rasped, locking eyes with Lizl. Her blood had always smelled of speed and daisy chains, of a mother’s kisses and sharpened steel. Right now, Aeduan could sense none of it. “They need us now. We have to move.”
“Yes,” she said. And when Aeduan resumed his run, Lizl followed. He was the first monk to enter Poznin; she came mere paces behind.
The air reeked of rot and smoke, and a dry pond bed slanted upward. Long-dead bodies littered the ground, bone-dry, while cattails, pond scum, and snail shells rattled in the wind.
Blood scents crashed over Aeduan, witches and raiders and soldiers. Then he smelled the Truthwitch, right there—right thereat the top of the hill where a body lay smoking into the awful dawn.
Aeduan ran to her, while behind him Lizl burst from the mountain.“FOR THE CAHR AWEN!”she screamed, and at those words, the opal in Aeduan’s earlobe pulsed. Just as it had when Leopold had used it to summon the monks beside the Aether Well.
More monks toppled from the mountain. More monks shouted for the Cahr Awen and charged into battle.
And Aeduan’s heart surged. Illogically, a buoyancy coursed through him. A vibrating certainty that, even if he danced to Leopold’s command, thiswasthe right course. The Cahr Awen needed him. Iseult needed him.
Without knowing he did it, Aeduan joined his fellow monks in a roaring cry:
I guard the light-bringer and protect the dark-giver.
I live for the world-starter and die for the shadow-ender.
Steel flashed around Aeduan. White cloaks flipped and streaked as hundreds of Carawen monks, trained for this moment, fought in a battle they’d thought was months away. Many, like Aeduan, had never been true believers; they’d simply followed where the money went. But now—now they could not deny. Theywouldnot deny, and their certainty lent Aeduan even more strength.
He reached Safi. She had been hit by something all-consuming that had scorched parts of her hair and her skin. Her eyes were closed, but she still breathed—and the meadows filled with dandelions still beat inside her. At her side was a sword, sharp and silvery. Untouched, somehow, by the ash and blood that filled every other inch of this city.
It pointed at Safi like an arrow. Like the Sleeping Giant aiming north.
Aeduan sank to the ruined earth beside Safi. Her blood still pumped, still flowed—even if her heart was badly weakened—so Aeduan could command her.If you have to take control of me and walk me like a puppet to that Well, then I expect you to do so.
