Page 104 of Witchlight
“You’re from Last Holdout.” Safi recognized the girl now, even if they’d never spoken. “Sky?”
The girl nodded, and Safi looked at Aeduan. “She’s telling the truth.”
“S’more raiders coming, though,” the girl continued. “They’ll follow us to the Well.”
“No,” Aeduan said flatly. “They won’t.” Then he turned and shouted, “Lizl!” A monk, strong and swaggering, appeared from the clot of white cloaks and focused Threads. She had blood streaked across her cloak and authority in her bearing.
“It’s Abbot Thewan to you,” she barked, and to Safi’s shock, humor warmed the woman’s Threads. As if the world around her weren’t collapsing. As if she and Aeduan had just met on the street, and oh, what a coincidence to see you here!
It wasn’t at all what Safi had expected when she’d heard Eron and Evrane mention the Carawens’ new abbot. In fact, Safi would bet she and Lizl would get along swimmingly if they were anywherebuthere. Yet now, that woman was going to blockade the road, and in all likelihood, she would die. One more person on Safi’s conscience. One more sacrifice to heal the final Well.
Aeduan lowered his fire-flap to murmur something Safi couldn’t hear. Then that was it. The woman reached for the opal at her ear, bowed low at Safi, and shouted, “We hold this line!”
No,Safi wanted to say.Don’t do that.But Aeduan came to her elbow, his magic cranked into her, and his witchery once more claimed control. “Go,” he ordered Safi. Then again to Sky: “Go.”
The young womanwent. Fast as a rat in the sewers, she set off, and Safi and Aeduan chased after her. Around the Cleaved and into alleys, all while the seafire burned.
“Through here!” Sky shoved into a building where the door had long since rotted off the hinges and the windows had collapsed into holes. “There’s a door in the back!” She vaulted easily over broken floorboards and collapsed walls, familiar with the space even as smoke rolled across it.
Safi’s eyes streamed tears. She could hardly see, and she certainly couldn’t breathe. But Aeduan had her, and the Bloodwitch didn’t let go. So onward, they followed Sky.
Until smoke erupted. A volcano of heat so thick it knocked Safi into a nearby wall. Then the seafire itself clawed into the building. Aeduan towed her back the way they’d come, but the seafire easily followed. Nothing in its path was an obstacle; everything it touched became fuel.
They toppled onto the street. Sky was gone. Safi saw no sign of her scrappy figure or Threads, and now this building and all the buildings near it burned.
Safi clutched at her hair. Half of it seemed to be missing. Half of her sleeping gown too. This couldn’t be the end, though. This couldn’t be all that was left for her and Aeduan.
He slid in front of her, and gently, he lowered her hands from her hair. Gently, he gripped her biceps. His blue, blue eyes bored into her. “Do you trust me, Truthwitch?”
“Yes,” she replied without hesitation.True, true, true.“I trust you, Bloodwitch.”
“Then brace yourself, for you are about to feel great pain.”
FIFTY-THREE
“Hold on,” Leopold said, his arms wrapped around Iseult’s bloodied thorax. “Please, hold on.”
I hope he means figuratively,Iseult thought,because literally is impossible.But of course he meant figuratively, for although Iseult had managed to crawl her spirit back into its body, she hadn’t moved far since. The heat of the seafire bore down. She felt it through the trees around the Well, and she felt it over her bond with Safi.
How had everything changed so quickly? Iseult had been quietly planning inside the Raider King’s tent, savoring her pause and logic, and now the whole of the Witchlands was aflame.How very Safi,she thought,for a plan to go horribly wrong. She wanted to laugh at that. She wanted to share it with Leopold and watch him chuckle too—then have Safi show up and crow,Goat tits, Iz, you’re supposed to be the clever one.
Instead, Iseult would be lucky if she did not die and float once more into the Dreaming.
Leopold lifted her. It should hurt, but Iseult was too detached to feel anything. His words,Hold on, please, hold on,echoed as if they were in a cavern. She sensed as the heretic’s collar fell from her neck—a weight releasing. A gust of hot, hot air.
Goat tits, Iz, when you told Sky you found a route to reach the Well, I assumed you meant a tunnel or something. Not a city consumed by seafire.
I know, Safi, but it’s not really my fault the city ignited. Plus, I doubt you actually talked to Sky, and this conversation we’re having isn’t real.
Oh, but I did meet Sky. And who needs Threadstones with our magics connected?
Iseult’s bones rattled. Blood spurted, although there wasn’t much left to keep spurting. Leopold was walking her toward the ice-crusted shore of the Well. “It’s dead,” Iseult wanted to inform him. But of course the words wouldn’t come.
And of course, he knew it, anyway. After all, he’d been trying to getSafi and Iseult to travel here all along. His schemes, his armies, his maps and drawings andinsistencethat Iseult and Safi listen to him… Well, he’d been right, hadn’t he? They’d done it their way and they’d failed.
“Drop her.” A voice cut across the Well, command honing it razor-sharp. Threads of pure, pure flame.Admiral Kahina. Of course she would come here. Of course she would be able to cross through the seafire advancing on all sides. “I don’t want to kill that girl, Rook King. She and the other one have done nothing wrong. So if you drop her, I won’t hurt her. Otherwise… well, she is a weak shield against my Paladin flames.”
“I was wondering when you would arrive.” A falseness scuttled over Leopold’s voice. But he did as Kahina ordered and gingerly lowered Iseult to the earth. She was at the Well’s edge, and cold, cold snow soaked against her.
