Page 132 of Witchlight
Now here he was again.
Yet rather than watch as the vision ended with Evrane carrying Aeduan away, the memory continued. Rain kept falling. Smoke kept rising from flames buried deep in the wreckage. As he had done beside the Aether Well, Aeduan turned to see if he blocked someone from entering…
That was when he saw a new figure. Staggering, frantic, the man dove into what remained of the tent. He flung, he searched, he wept and shouted:“Son! Where are you, my son!”
It was Aeduan’s father, too late to save those he’d loved. Too late to do anything, for even Dysi’s corpse was gone now. There was nothing at all for Ragnor to find. Nothing at all for him to save.
He scoured and crawled anyway, and for a time he vanished from Aeduan’s view, as if he searched wider, farther than the nightmare would let Aeduan see. Then Ragnor returned and collapsed to his knees in the middle of their ruined home.
As Aeduan watched Ragnor’s heart break, he felt his own break too. For how many nights had his own father relived this carnage? This failure? How many times had Ragnor, like his son, died that day? And how many times, like his son, had Ragnor been alone in this nightmare with no child, no wife, no escape? He’d had only the darkness and himself, the nightmare and himself.
As the vision continued onward, Aeduan sensed his father’s blood transform. From frosted baby’s breath and sleeping ice, from loving hounds and nighttime songs, a new shape emerged:bone-deep loss and flame.
All these years, Ragnor had blamed himself for what had happened that day, and Aeduan knew precisely how such blame could warp you. How it gave death meaning and life a twisted light.
Aeduan had been a child trapped in the wreckage of war, and Ragnor had been a father trapped in the same. Ragnor had not done this—he had notcausedthis—yet he had lost his life to it all the same.
One need not be evil to become it.
Ragnor lifted his head. His hazel eyes found Aeduan’s. The tears streaking down slowed. “Ah, my son. I failed you. I failed her.”
“You didn’t, Father. You tried to protect us from the flames.”
Ragnor frowned, glancing around at the nightmare—and seeming to realize, much as Aeduan had, that none of this was real. “Here. Yes, I did.” A slow nod. An inward puzzling that made his brow furrow. Then again, his hazel eyes found Aeduan’s. “Butthere,at the Well—I failed your mother. She warned me the Wells should not be healed. Shewarned methat only more death and violence would ensue. And I tried. By the Sleeping Goddess, I tried.”
“What did she tell you, Father? You’ve always said it was her cause that you aimed to finish, but what was it?”
“She said the Cahr Awen were not real. That they were a lie to make usall believe someone would save us, when the truth was that no one would.Wehurt Moon Mother.We,the people of the Witchlands, hurt her. For you see, when the Six and your mother and I made the Wells, we cut six deep wounds into the goddess. But those wounds could never heal because we never understood that no one can save us but ourselves.”
Ah.Aeduan felt his breath unwind. A release of air held too long. Six Wells. Six wounds. And a desire to give death meaning by forever blaming oneself. Aeduan had learned that lesson the hard way, hadn’t he? Months ago, in this same nightmare with the same flames and the same falling rain.
No one could save him but himself.
Four long steps carried Aeduan to his father. He stared at the face so much like his own, half hidden by shadows and pain. Ragnor had been a loving father long ago. Now he was nothing more than a ghost filled with aching memories.
Just as Dysi had been.
With careful hands, Aeduan gripped Ragnor’s shoulders. “Father,” he said. “It is done. There is nothing here, and you can let go now.”
His father nodded. A tired movement as he gazed back at Aeduan. “She told me you were special, you know.Born in the Moon Mother’s own ice,she always said.And that which is closest, she cannot see. A strand fallen from the weave, cast adrift on winds of flame…”
His father did not finish. Not before he crumbled into black nothing and whispered away. But Aeduan already knew what came next, for he’d heard the lines of the Lament before. Inside the mountain, inside the Moon Mother.
A knife with two sides. Blood on the snow,he thought.
He looked down at his shredded clothes. At the six old wounds exposed into this nightmare. They’d bled away his life and strength for so long. But no one could heal them. No one but himself.
SIXTY-SEVEN
On the one hand, Kullen had not led Merik astray. The brightest doorway had led Merik to a place where no settlements clustered in the forest and no boats slid down the nearby river. There were no plumes of smoke from cooking fires or mines; no signs of humanity at all.
This was the Contested Lands, and it was a hot, green place broken only by a canyon filled with stone.
As Merik flew ever higher into the sky, it occurred to him—vaguely, distantly—how very similar those megaliths in the nearby gorge looked to the stones he’d just escaped near Poznin. Different colors, different shapes, but still a mark on the landscape that someone in the sky might see.
Just as someone from the ground would see Merik.
And Itosha did spot him as soon as she burst into the light. Thunder and storm clouds spewed up from the earth with her. Laughter split into Merik’s skull, except now, rather than declare her joy at finding Merik, she bayed out something else entirely:Sister, you are here!
