Page 94 of Witchlight
Merik’s feet dragged over silt. Vegetation scraped against his legs. Then his head bumped against ice that slushed apart at his touch. Light piercedhis dead eyes. Sounds pierced his dead ears. And a touch, gentle and warm, reached his shoulders.
Warmth coursed through him as a head leaned over his body. She was upside down at this angle, but there was no mistaking her face.
Sun-browned and silver-haired. Haunting, wise, and painful in a way Merik had not known his chest could still feel. “I cannot believe it,” Evrane told him, her hands clutching his face. “I cannot believe it, yet here you are, Merik. Delivered to me by Noden Himself—and oh my nephew, it is so good to see you.”
FORTY-SEVEN
Iseult was in the Dreaming. Her body, still bound by a heretic’s collar, was beyond saving without magic. There was too much blood across the snow. Her eyes had no life in them, and the winter would freeze her quickly like this.
Still, the Moon Mother had not yet reclaimed her Threads, and so here Iseult stood—a spectral version of herself—while somewhere in the city, horns blasted. They were dampened by the Dreaming. Muted into a distant musical undertow as Ragnor faced off against his most ancient enemy.
“Come, Rook King,” Ragnor shouted, waving the bloodied blade that Iseult had recognized as a piece of herself. “Come, my liege. I see you there. This glass my wife made shows all, no matter what tricks you may try to play with it.” With those words, Ragnor lifted a broken looking glass and held it before him like a torch. Its square frame was nearly empty save for a few shards of clear glass clinging to the edge. “I see you, right there. So stop hiding, Rook King, and face me.”
Iseult saw him too, in the Dreaming. He was a Paladin’s ghost, broadened by dark furs and shining with a silver crown. He stared at Iseult’s soul, and she stared back at him. “I cannot save you,” Leopold told her, his grief as pure as Ragnor’s. “There is not enough power left in the Moon Mother. I cannot save you like I did your friend. Sirmaya does not answer—”
Ragnor charged at the Rook King.
And suddenly the ghost was gone from the Dreaming. In his place was Leopold beside the Well. He whipped sideways before the broken blade could pierce him.
He was fast.
But so was Ragnor. Incomprehensibly so. A master above all masters.
“My life for hers,” Leopold shouted. “I will give you my life for hers! You can have me, Ragnor, if you let me save the girl.”
The girl,Iseult thought vaguely.Not the dark-giver. She wasn’t sure what that distinction meant—only that it was there.
“No.” Ragnor swung again at Leopold, and this time, as he swirled past inhis armor, the moon sigil on his chest looked bloodied and cruel. His Threads too, the forever grief now dominated by focus and violence. It might not have been his first choice to kill Iseult, but he was using her death to his advantage.
And it occurred to Iseult that perhaps this had been his long-term aim all along. That he hadwantedto lose battle after battle so that he and the Rook King might one day face off.
Ragnor had called Iseult a tool; now he’d found a way to use her.
“You have always believed yourself so clever, Rook King, but it was never your brain that won our wars. It was neveryourstrategies or evenyourarmies. They marched at your whim, but it was my command they followed. It was me they always trusted.”
Leopold blocked and dipped, his feet tangling in snow. He had a weapon, but his rapier—long, sharp, gleaming—looked weak against the broken blade Ragnor swung. In the Dreaming, the Severed Threads coiling off the sword made it seem whole.
They reached for Leopold like tentacles.Death, death, the final end.
“You poisoned my thoughts,” Ragnor continued, his words reverberating through the dawn. “You poisoned our minds—each of the Six. Dysi. Mydaughters. You tricked us with your tales of rebellion and salvation, and then you killed us one by one.”
“I did not betray the Six.” Leopold scooted aside as the broken blade and its Threads hissed toward his eyes. “And I did not kill Dysi or your daughters or take your son—”
“But you would have if Sirmaya had not protected us! Do you deny it?Doyou?”
Leopold did not, yet there was a flood across his Threads that told Iseult he didn’t merely regret what had happened a thousand years ago, but it wastheregret that had haunted him ever since.So if you did not betray the Paladins, Polly,Iseult thought,then who did?
So many questions.
So many answers she would never get unless she somehow escaped this Dreaming and returned to life.
“We were Threadbrothers once,” Leopold said.
“And Threadbrothers do not betray each other.” Ragnor rushed him again. Leopold barely evaded. His feet were slipping on this ice. His breaths were coming in fast. He was flagging, and soon he would lose. His skill with the rapier was simply no match for Ragnor’s hate and rage—or the broken blade’s bloodlust. That steel wanted to end Leopold. It wanted to ensure he was never reborn again.
Oh,Iseult thought, and suddenly a small click of understanding sifted into her dream mind. That blade: it was what had killed the Exalted Ones permanently. It was what had ended them before Leopold… or someone else had turned on the Six. But what, then, was the glass that Ragnor had tossed to the snow?
And why are both items broken?
