Page 117 of Witchlight
And before Iseult’s tearing, aching eyes, an image formed.
“Long ago,” Leopold said, his voice rhythmic and beautiful, “when twelve gods walked among you…”
Long ago, when twelve gods walked among you, six chose to use their powers for devastation. They called themselves the Exalted Ones.
The others, who simply called themselves the Six, worked in secret to stop the wickedness razing their land. A Sightwitch aided their fight, fashioning a glass that could find and reveal Paladin souls. Then that Sightwitch forged a blade that could sever Paladin Threads.
The Six’s plan was to track down each Exalted One and kill them. If the Exalted Ones’ Threads were severed, they could not reincarnate.
The cruel gods would be dead.
But one of the Six betrayed their fellows, and the rebellion was stopped before it could truly begin.
One Paladin—the Rook King—tried to salvage the situation as it all came crashing down inside a mountain. He and the Paladin of Air used the blade to kill the Exalted Ones. But that was when the true horror of what the Six had done was revealed: the blade did not kill the wicked six at all. It only transformed them into Wells, leaking their Threads into the land rather than returning their Threads to Sirmaya.
Because the Rook King did not know who within their ranks had betrayedthe Six, he used a simple steel blade to kill the remaining gods. They would reincarnate into new bodies, after all, and he could use that time to find out who had double-crossed their rebellion.
First, though, he set out to destroy Eridysi’s blade and glass, so that no one could ever misuse them again. But it was not within his power to destroy the tools; all he could do with his mastery over Aether was bind the powers of the blade and glass into humans.
The Cahr Awen, he called them, and to protect them, he transformed his army into their guardians.
Over the next decade, the Six returned with new bodies. They did not trust the Rook King, and they believedhehad betrayed them on that fateful day inside the mountain. So the Rook King fled and hid. As the centuries passed, he tried to uncover who had truly betrayed them all.
Meanwhile, unknown to any of the Six, one of the Exalted Ones still lived: the Paladin of Void, Portia. In the chaos, she had been able to trade places with one of the Six, and so she had died by a real blade instead of being slain by Eridysi’s. And for centuries, she worked in secret, killing each new iteration of the Rook King’s Cahr Awen.
With each killing, she claimed more of the brutal powers of the blade and glass. Given enough time, she would have taken all the power she needed. She would have been able to make a new blade and glass—and in turn use those tools to kill all remaining Paladins. Then only she would have been left to control the Witchlands.
But the Rook King discovered this—and at the same time, he finally found his answer of who had betrayed the Six: Midne. Bound by the first Loom, she had had no choice. And her warning had allowed Portia to switch places with her.
The Rook King worked quickly to counteract Portia’s plans. He claimed control for the newest dark-giver and light-bringer before Portia could reach them. Then he killed Portia.
Yet even when her latest reincarnation was removed once more from the Witchlands, that did not change the other great problem that a thousand years had revealed: Sirmaya was dying.
For you see, humans had used magic without caution. They could not help themselves. They wasted power, draining Sirmaya, Thread by Thread, thinking there would be no consequence. Even as cleaving razed across the land, growing worse each day, humans thought themselves untouchable. The problem was always someone else’s.
So this left only one solution for the Rook King: he had to heal the Wells. He had to bring back the Exalted Ones and let magic and Sirmaya return to whatthey were a thousand years ago. Let the goddess’s Threads blaze in forgotten colors across the sky, beacons for Her children to follow home.
Then and only then could the Rook King start fresh, restoring balance to the Witchlands.
Iseult watched as Leopold’s tale unfolded before her. It was not simply a performance she watched, assembled by an Aetherwitch who controlled Threads to build a glamour. No, she wasthere,caught in each scene like a ghost.
Here were the Six, close enough to touch inside Eridysi’s lab inside the mountain. She felt the cold that breathed forever off the stone. She saw how each of the Paladins looked in their ancient bodies—Bastien with his scars and festering rage at the Exalted Ones, Baile with her calm steadiness, Rhian with her clever smile. Even the Rook King, handsome and hard with dark hair and a silver crown.
Iseult watched as Eridysi focused all her time, all her life on crafting the blade and the glass. It was a brutal, desperate determination that filled her. And Iseult watched as two girls bounced and played nearby. They were Ragnor’s daughters: Lisbet and Cora. Aeduan’s sisters from before the sleeping ice could claim them—sisters whom Iseult had only just learned about from Ragnor.
Iseult also saw Saria, the Earth Paladin, as she quietly built magic doorways into the mountain. And she saw Midne, the Void Paladin, crushed by Portia on the Hell-Bard Loom.
Now there was Ragnor, younger, brighter, and stoically competent as he ordered armies wherever the Rook King directed from his fortress in the sky.
Until at last came that fateful day in the mountain, when the Exalted Ones descended on the Six. When Midne betrayed them—unwillingly—and a battle of unmatched, raw power ensued. Iseult felt the Rook King’s horror, followed by his cold detachment as he did what he thought he must do. As he and Bastien eliminated all of the Exalted Ones.
They never realized that Portia had replaced Midne. They found a mutilated body with a golden chain, and they believed it to be their friend, slain by normal means. And when they found the one they thought to be Portia, they didn’t believe her cries to the contrary.
The Rook King and Bastien slew Midne with Eridysi’s blade.
Then, as if this was not awful enough to bear witness to, Iseult watched asthe Rook King killed all of his remaining friends. Bastien, Baile, Rhian, and even his Heart-Thread Saria. The only people he let go free were the pregnant Eridysi, his general Ragnor, and the two daughters, Lisbet and Cora.
It was all real, vivid,tangibleto Iseult as if she were right there with Elias, living through it all. Wells formed. Magic changed. Witches became commonplace. And the Cahr Awen were born and reborn century after century. Until the day that a young imperial prince named Leopold saw an ancient tower and the memories of his past lives were triggered inside him. It was then that Leopold had realized what he was—and what he must do to save the goddess at the heart of everything.
