Page 64 of Witchlight
This,the ghostly memories whispered,is another doorway into the mountain.
Aeduan stood still as the towering stones around him. He stared at that doorway twenty feet below. Something about this spiral was familiar. It made the six old wounds pulse and bleed—he couldfeelthe blood trickling out once more. Sliding down onto his abdomen, where the wool of his garments rejected it.
Snow coasted languidly by, in no rush to meet the ground. Untouched by wind. Where it landed on the ramp, it disappeared. Not melting, not freezing, simply vanishing.
Aeduan let his magic unfurl cautiously toward the spiral. Then toward the blue door.Bright and fresh and laced with fireflies. The taler and its bloodstain had come this way—and mixed with it were the dandelions and the meadows.
So Aeduan must go that way too.
He jumped. A single coil and spring of his muscles that took him through the soft snow. Then down, past spiraling granite where all light and moisture disappeared. The light of the doorway shivered across him. His feet hit hard rock. He transferred the power into a roll.
And the magic of the portal reached him. It stretched him, ripped him, compressed him into a fraction of his being. Blood, muscles, ice.Run, my child, run,the voice said.
Then Aeduan was through. He was inside the mountain made of starlight that the Paladin Nadje had once known.
THIRTY
Iseult had lied to Aeduan when she’d told him she would cleave the raiders. She had lied when she’d said she would follow him and Safi into the forest. She had lied as soon as she’d realized she couldn’t control the Windwitches. She hadn’t wanted to lie—she hadn’tknownshe was lying, in fact. But it was as if the back of her brain had assembled a plan while the front of her brain simply fought to stay alive.
Then, once Aeduan had disappeared from sight, Safi already gone by then, the back of Iseult’s brain finally decided to provide her with its new decision. A single bolt of logic that sizzled through her like Severed Threads.
Leopold couldn’t kill the Raider King because he could not get close to him.
I can get close to him now that Aeduan and Safi are safe.
I can kill the Raider King.
Those were the key points of the plan—the primary thoughts that formed across her consciousness like music notes. And only now, as she was being escorted toward Poznin, did all the connections surface. The dots and lines that transform individual parts into a melody.
If the enemy is too small to target, then restrict their range of movement.It was a lesson Habim had once taught Iseult and Safi years ago—and it was what both raider ambushes had successfully done. But Habim had also taught the counterstrategy:Make multiple, smaller targets. If a group was already too weak to stand against massive numbers, then there was no reason not to separate. Break the hornet’s nest into individual hornets, then the enemy couldn’t containeveryone.
But Iseult wasn’t merely trying to shrink their unit—she didn’tmerelywant Safi and Aeduan to get away. She also knew that she had a unique opportunity to get close to the man leading everything. The heart, the brain, the strategic mastermind.
And if I do this, Aeduan will no longer have to face the possibility.
Iseult was careful to show no hostility as the raiders—of which therewere at least a hundred—escorted her to Poznin. There was a threat that hung in their Threads. The raiders watched Iseult closely, and at any sign of violence, weapons would be drawn, witcheries aimed, and chains locked around her limbs. For now, she walked unimpeded—but that was only because they’d locked her into a heretic’s collar.
The wood was smooth with age, the iron bolts cold on her skin. And although it was true: she couldn’t use her cleaving magic, shecouldstill see Threads. As if the collar, rather than eliminate her magic, had simply punted her from the Void and into the Aether.Now you are a mere Threadwitch again.
Which was good. Excellent even, for now all these raiders thought they were safe against her. They all believed her fangs were muzzled, forgetting she still had claws.
It took the rest of the day to reach the first outskirts of the Raider King’s encampments. Iseult had of courseseenall these troops and factions and small settlements on the maps Eron fon Hasstrel kept constantly updated. But dots and figurines upon a flattened surface could never capture the sheer scale of what actually surrounded the former capital of the Republic of Arithuania.
She felt it before she ever saw it. A change in her center of gravity, as if she were a rock rolling downhill. As if the weight of all these people and horses and tents and weapons and magics had sunk into the landscape and there could only be one path forward.
It was breathtaking and horrifying just how many troops the Raider King had beneath his banner—and therewasa banner now: a simple black flag with a red crescent moon at the heart. It was a combination of the Red Sails and the Baedyeds—but it was more than that, too. The black felt like the black Threadwitches wore, and the red shade of the moon…
It felt gruesome. Like the Moon Mother reduced to arterial blood.
Leopold had been right: there was no way Iseult, Safi, and Aeduan could have gotten into this city without an army at their side.
Which made Iseult’s new plan that much more urgent.
As she was led over a newly built bridge across the wide river that slid past Poznin and had overflowed its banks decades ago, Iseult reached for her Threadstone. It of course wasn’t there.And neither is the taler.
Her hand stilled, stuck at the base of the heretic’s collar. Then, for the first time since she’d been captured, terror sluiced through her body. She patted and scraped and searched under the collar for the coin, but it wasn’t there. She’d lost it. Somehow, somewhere—it was gone.
This is good,she tried to tell herself.You didn’t want him to follow you anyway, and you were going to leave him at the lodge. This is good. A completion of what you’d tried to initiate with your first plan.
