Page 97 of Witchlight
If only she could rememberwhyshe might need to.
With another rub at smoke and heat upon her brow, Stix stepped into the mountain.
FORTY-NINE
Safi sprinted as if she was not in Poznin. She sprinted as if she and Iseult were on the streets of Veñaza City, racing to be the first back to Mathew’s. As if the day were hot and the sun high. She was the light-bringer, the world-starter.
The Witch.
The Empress.
The Sun.
And Birth,she thought as her arms swung higher, her knees pumping almost to her chest. She ran with the speed of a hundred Cahr Awen. She fought with the power of a Weaverwitch and a Truthwitch combined. She saw the weave of the world, and felt its truth. Nothing could stop her.
They tried. Raider after raider, but she was always one beat ahead. A shift of Threads, a warning of what was to come.
A raider came at her from the left. A Red Sail, and with the now-familiar lines of the slow-Cleaved across his face. He had two cutlasses, his movements were graceful. At another time, Safi would worry that she’d met her match. But what good was steel against her Truth-blade? What did his grace matter when she was as fast as a hundred souls bound in Aether? He swung his blades, two arcs aimed inward for her neck.
All she had to do was swipe, duck, and there went his cutlasses, cleft in two. He was startled, as every other fighter had been before him, and in that moment, she swung across his abdomen.
Blood sprayed hot against her. It landed on ice…
Ice, she realized, that was moving. Retreating uphill, as if summoned. She had no time to study it before light erupted and sizzling heat smashed a wall behind her. Then Safi sensed a Stormwitch’s Threads, yellow, sharp, focused, and coming this way.
Safi dove sideways, barely escaping three more lances of lightning. One sliced against the back of her head. She felt the heat of her own blood rise.A smell like metal burning overwhelmed her—as did the scent of her hair on fire.
She’d never faced a Stormwitch before—never even seen one except from a distance at the Weatherwitch Guild in Veñaza City.Steel,she thought,is not going to help me here.No matter how sharp her blade, it would only be a liability now.
Safi leaped for a narrow side street. Here the ground was so dry, it was almost desert. No frost to slip on, no soggy moss like Merik’s forest. Just dry, dead earth… Which was wrong. She thought back to the ice moving on the avenue. Could that be where all the moisture was going?
The Stormwitch stalked into the alley behind her, wearing a uniform Safi didn’t know—black with a red moon. It was terrifying, as was the woman now lifting her hands. Safi barely careened out of the alley before two more bolts cracked out.
A new cacophony met her on the street beyond. So many people on the move. Threads spun and slashed, disorienting her until she had no idea where she was in the city.
Then came more lightning. Safi barely dropped before it sliced across her head. She smelled metal again and more burning hair. The lightning hit a Baedyed man. He screamed as his whole body shivered and burned. Safi scrabbled sideways before the next attack came—and ran right into a familiar square of troops wearing familiar uniforms.
How they were here, she didn’t know—but she would use them.
“HELL-BARDS!” Safi shot up as tall as she could, thrusting her blade toward the sky. “TO ME!”
The Threads around her shifted with surprise, awareness, purpose, as the Hell-Bards who spotted Safi realized who she was—and realized what they must do: protect the Empress.
There were other soldiers with them. Cartorrans from the army, the navy, personal guards. They too heard her cry and swarmed. So now, as lightning smoked and sizzled through the dawn, it did not reach Safi. The lightning found other targets to incinerate from the inside out. The stench of burning hair, cooking flesh—none of it was her own.
Safi ran on. She had to. Shehadto finish this journey. Shehadto reach Iseult before it was too late. Her heart could break for Cartorran lives lost later. For now, there was only chasing in the same direction as the ice that snaked across the cobblestones.
Four Hell-Bards sank into position around her, moving instinctively into a square. She didn’t know these guardians, but her mind turned theminto familiar faces. Caden, Zander, Lev. She wished it was them; she knew it was not.
She and her Hell-Bards reached a new avenue. Trees stretched wide, branches dipping down to the cobbles, and all around them, wooden spikes had been stabbed into the ground. There would be no getting across this intersection. No aiming directly for the Well from here. “That way.” Safi skewed right, and her Hell-Bards skewed with her. In the distance, she heard pistols fire. She heard flames roar. And lightning—still there was that pop and crack of a Stormwitch hunting.
Do not stop,the Cahr Awen screamed inside of her.Do not slow.
New sounds erupted. Firepots, she thought, exploding nearby. She felt the heat of them, but they were not so close as to slow her or the Hell-Bards.
Until one of them did get hit. A flash of light, a cry of pain, then the Hell-Bard on Safi’s right fell. Smoke plumed.
Still, Safi didn’t slow; nor did the other Hell-Bards. They were on a road cleared of stakes. The ice, though—it was here and retreating, as if the earth itself were being sapped dry.
