Page 100 of Witchlight
You will find her. Once you know these people are safe, you will find her, and together, you will finally deal with the Rook King.
Soon, the weak waterfall vibrated against Stix’s magic, and like a harpoon launched at a shark, Stix aimed all of her magic at it. Her witchery lanced deep, deep into the heart of the liquid, freezing it instantly. Ice exploded outward. Thousands of crystals to fly and assemble until suddenly their flimsy bridge became an avenue. As strong as the bridge crossing the river into Poznin and covered in just as many people.
As Stix worked, reinforcing all she’d built, spirit swifts whorled upward from the chasm. They reminded Stix of the swallows that nested beneath the Water-Bridges of Stefin-Eckart. And when the Aether-bound creatures swept against her, an exultant song trilled into her skull.Good Paladin, strong Paladin.
Stix finished her bridge and hurried onto the stone platform where the doorway into Poznin awaited. The water, sourced from that city, was nothing more than a trickle now, as if Stix had drained the city dry. Beside her, Owl crouched on her knees and quivered. But there was no emotion on her face. None of the grinning, gulping triumph that Stix felt.
“We still have far to go,” Owl said, pointing across the chasm at the door that would actually take them into the under-city of Lovats. “And we’re running out of time.”
“Hye,” Stix agreed. Now that she had access to so much water—water that was not the goddess’s—she could get everyone to safety much more quickly.She lifted her arms, then cast them forward in a punch of strength and power. Her witchery crunched out a second bridge to span the cavern.
“This way,” Owl shouted in her small voice. “This way.”
At first, Stix assumed the child was addressing all the people of Last Holdout, who hewed close to the icy center of the bridges while galaxies seemed to dance beneath them and blackened ice watched hungrily.
But then Stix saw that Owl waved her arms. That she had gathered rock beneath her and had vaulted herself up, high as Stix. Then higher. “This way! This way!” And it was then that Stix saw to whom Owl shouted: new people thronged into the mountain from a different doorway.
Stix knew them. Of course she knew them, smeared though they were without her spectacles, sheknewthe Carawen monks in their distinctive white cloaks and hoods.
Lady Baile had known them too, but they had been soldiers in an army for the Rook King a thousand years ago, back when the Monastery had been nothing more than a fortress atop a mountain.
“What,” Stix snarled at Owl, “have you done?”
Baile stands surrounded on all sides by thick forest and white-capped peaks. Snow falls, and nearby, a river churns, its dark waters spanning a stone bridge. Elias, the Rook King, strides toward her.
He has found her. Here, where she and Bastien tried to flee into the Ohrin Mountains.
Elias points beside Baile, and she tries to turn her head… but she can only slide her eyes sideways to where a woman lies on her back, a broken blade thrust through her belly. Silver pools around her, glowing with power. Magic entwined in her very blood, and where the raw magic moves, rifts gouge into the rock.
Two paces away, on his knees and crying, is Bastien. He looks at Baile. “I am sorry.”
It is all right, Baile wants to say, for it is not his fault he couldn’t save her from the Exalted Ones. Yet no words come; she can’t part her lips to speak.
Bastien doesn’t turn when the Rook King arrives. He doesn’t turn when the king calls out, “Is your fury quenched? Is your wrath complete?” Nor does Bastien turn when Elias yanks the shattered sword from the Exalted One’s gut.
Only when the king comes to a stop before him does the man finally twist his head. “I will find you,” the scarred man rasps. “In the next life, I will—”
The king slices off his head. Bastien’s words break off. Blood sprays, mixing with the silver.
Then the Rook King fixes his gaze on Baile, and she realizes that he holds a different sword. It is not the blade to kill Paladins—although that is clutched in one hand. Instead, it is a simple soldier’s sword, now bloodied with Bastien’s life. “It will all be over soon,” Elias tells Baile before his blade arcs out and crashes against her neck.
Only as the sword cracks against stone does she realize why she has been locked in place. Only when it cuts through the rock—three swings it takes him—does she realize she was encased in granite.Saria’sgranite.
It was not only the Rook King who betrayed the Six. It was his Heart-Thread too.
Blade bites flesh. Baile dies.
“What have you done?” Stix’s magic snapped off, her bridge unfinished toward the under-city. She would destroy it and her first bridge if she had to. “What have youdone,Owl? You said we were going to help people, and now you betray me? I remember, Saria. Irememberwhat you did a thousand years ago.”
“I do not think you do.” Owl blinked like a real bird from atop her stone perch. Her silvery hair shone almost blue in all this ice.
“You helped Elias and turned on Bastien and me.”
“No.” Owl’s face scrunched into a sneer. It added years and lines to her skin. “You know the words of the Lament:six turned on six, and one turned on five.But it wasn’t Elias who betrayed you, and it wasn’t me.In Elias’sstrange, frustrating way, I think he was trying to fix what went wrong—and he is still trying to fix it to this day. One reincarnation after another, focused on the same problem year after year.”
“But those soldiers arehis.” Stix flung a pointed finger at the monks. “Just as the Cahr Awen ishis. And now you have brought them here.” As Stix watched, more monks poured through the distant doorway. Two by two, they filled the mountain like white termites. “I trusted you.” Stix lifted her other hand, ready to dismantle her first bridge. Burst the ice into instant steam and plummet the monks into darkness.
She wouldnotlet the Rook King’s soldiers enter Poznin.
