Page 115 of Witchlight
And so many people would die because of it.
Stix reached Hawk’s Way and the sharp canal that carved through Lovats. The River Timetz was draining from it, and it was like watching water poured from a pitcher. Out it gushed, renouncing its magicked route to follow gravity instead—which led directly into the valley surrounding Lovats. Anyone not crushed by toppling stone would drown. Tens of thousands of people would die, first from this devastation. And then tens of thousands more when crops never grew again.
Unless Stix could stop it.
Stix leaped onto what remained of the river, summoning waves to catch her. She was the Paladin of Water, and this was the city she had protected for a thousand years. She would not let the madness of the world, of the Rook King, destroy everything.
Though we cannot always see
the blessing in the loss.
Strength is the gift of our Lady Baile
and she will never abandon us.
A frizz swelled in Stix’s chest the nearer she came to the collapsing water-bridge. Stone by stone, it was falling apart. Sand sliding through an hourglass. She was practically flying by the time she reached it—and by the time shesawthe hundreds of ships flailing backward. Ferries, frigates, galleons. Nothing could survive this. They rocked, they yawed, and the draining waters trawled them toward total emptiness.
“No,” Stix commanded in a voice made of waves. “Stop.”
The water obeyed, and the sound of ice forming cracked across the city. Briefly louder than the bridges collapsing, louder than the screams and quakes and boats crashing onto farms below.
The ships froze in place. Crooked, dangling, and with six of them halfway off the bridge. Yet beneath the ice, stones still fell. More sand from the hourglass.
Stix jetted onward. There was still so much river ahead, so much death and loss she had to get to. These bridges were vast and crowded.
In a blur of heartbeats, Stix reached the end of her ice, where the gap between this stretch of bridge and the next was massive—far too largefor old Stix to have ever crossed with any speed. But she was notthatStix anymore. Nor was she Lady Baile. Nor was she any life that had been lived by this soul inside.
She was simply the Paladin of Water. And so these hundreds of feet of empty air were laughably small. A power as rich and untapped as hers? She could topple mountains if she wanted to.
Ice erupted outward, assembling a new bridge from anywhere there was water to be found. From the river draining; from the river already collapsed into the valley; from the clouds that drifted by, no longer carrying swallows or gentle breeze—
Winds suddenly crashed against her, wild and charged. These were unnatural winds birthed by magic and targeting this way. They slammed into Stix’s back.
No,Stix thought, wrenching around to face them.No!She could not fight right now. She might have more power than she’d ever felt before, but a battle—it would ruin the city. It would take more lives.
Except when she fastened her weak gaze into the winds, she spotted no single enemy. Instead, there were nine creatures—massive, winged, savage—flying toward her from the west. One single hound hurtled at the fore, a vibrant blur of gold-and-white sunrise.
And on the storm hound’s back was a small figure in Nubrevnan blue who whooped as he shot by.
Cam,Stix thought. She didn’t need spectacles to recognize him. She remembered his voice—and she remembered, like a fledgling just finding its wings in her skull, a moment from inside the mountain. It had happened months ago: Ryber had drawn her gold-backed cards for Stix.
Lady Fate. The Paladin of Foxes. The Nine of Hounds.
She’d said the card meant Stix could trust Cam to reach Vivia, to pass along the necessary warning about the Raider King… But what if it had meant something more? Because now Stix could feel other shapes cresting through the waters of the bridge. Massive creatures she’d connected with back in Saldonica.
Yes,she thought as they came to her.Help me.Tears she hadn’t known were brewing now crawled free, offerings to the wind and the waves.
Then it wasn’t merely storm hounds retrieving ships and holding the bridge intact, but sea foxes too. They twined through the water, melting Stix’s ice in an instant. And while the storm hounds’ winds blasted up from below, the sea foxes’ currents drove ships straight toward the plateau.
A new water-bridge built using the most primal of all powers. Themost wild of magics in the Witchlands. It wouldn’t hold forever, but it didn’t need to. All the city needed was enough magic to get people off these bridges and onto safe ground.
So Stix shot forward, carrying herself on waves all her own, and she got to work getting Nubrevnans to shore.
SIXTY
Safi wasn’t merely swallowed in cold and heat, in blizzard and rain, lightning and thunder, she became them. Literally,becamethem.
Because once the emptiness had passed, then the storm had pummeled in to fill her up instead. Threads vibrated through Safi, connecting her to every throb, every waver, every heartbeat in these winds. In the whole thrice-damned universe, for that matter.
