Page 125 of Witchlight
Kullen gave no reply beyond a fresh surge of power. It hurled Merik toward a new door glowing brighter than any other in the cavern. It stood upon an island of rock in the center of Paladins’ Hall—a central platform that Merik was certain hadn’t been there before.
Warmth sparked against Merik. Inside him too, and he remembered that feeling. It was a sense of star-spun power, and it had fed him faster, higher the first time he’d come here, with the Northman.
Now, since it fed to him through his Threadbrother, there was a new dimension. One of strength, of love, but also one of crushing sorrow—
No,Kullen barked, and cold slapped through Merik’s lungs.Focus on flying, my king. Get out of this mountain. Get Itosha away from here.
Merik obeyed, rocketing across the dark abyss that filled the cavern. There was the galaxy he remembered, forever swirling in the mountain’s heart. And there was the door he needed to use.
The magic pulsed against him. Then it grabbed hold and sucked him through. Seconds later—after his whole being had been pulped and then reconstructed—Merik erupted into a new place. A hot, baking place where no storms darkened the sky and where green dominated red soil.
Don’t slow,Kullen commanded.She is right behind.
How do you know? Are you awake? Where are you, Kullen?
I am where you left me,Kullen replied, and again, Merik could feel there was more to this answer. Something his Threadbrother was intentionally holding back. But—again,again—Merik could do nothing except resume flight with a fresh torrent of power.
Not a star-spun power, but a Paladin-shaped one, tender and old.
Merik flew into a new day.
No.Leopold’s panic blazed through his Threads into Iseult. He hadn’t expected her to do something this excruciating—or this profoundlystupid.
But stupid was the one thing no one ever saw coming.
Iseult’s hands were on fire as she held on to Leopold’s Threads. Herbody was getting pounded to dust. But she couldn’t let go of him—no matter what he did, shecouldn’tlose him. He tried, his eyes huge and his body moving like a dancer’s. Like a fighter’s. First, in the Dreaming, he dipped and spun andtriedto shake Iseult free.
But he couldn’t.
So then he ran, his body streaking so fast, it snapped Iseult almost horizontal in the immaterial space between worlds. She was like a banner on a ship. The wind-flags in Tirla.
Still, Leopold could not get rid of her.
So he leaped out of the Dreaming. Gray smashed into seething Threads and hard earth. Golden grass, but without snow—as if these were the Windswept Plains to the south where winter had not yet taken hold.
Leopold tried again to wrench Iseult off him. His face was flushed, his lips too, and his Threads glowed with such intense determination, it darkened the sea green of his eyes into forest shadow.
Never trust what you see in the shadows.
Iseult should never have trusted Leopold—and she would never make that mistake again. Nor would she let go of him. He sank low in his stance and lurched sideways. The move tore Iseult forward like a dog on a lead.
The fraying weave of the plains smashed once more into gray. The intensity of the shift obliterated Iseult’s senses. Wiped them all away so that there was nothing but her and Leopold. His silver cloak. His many Paladin faces, wavering across him. Ghosts of the past he could never escape.
She might have pitied him for that curse. She might have felt something other than rage if he’d onlytold her the truth. If he’d onlyacted directly.And Iseult couldn’t help but wonder—in that little corner by her left lung—if this was exactly what Moon Mother had felt when Trickster had saved her from the storm in that legend of long ago. Had she stared at the creature before her and marveled that he thought himself so clever he could marry a god?
Iseult wasn’t a god.
But she wasn’t quite human either.
Lightning flashed. Winds beat. Snow cut against her. They were out of the Dreaming once more, where peaks towered wicked and young against the sky. These were the Sirmayans—the Rook King’s old home.
Leopold reached for Iseult, his body lithe and trained. But Iseult was lithe and trained too. In fact, this was exactly what Aeduan had taught her to evade. So when Leopold lunged, she twisted. She swept. He dodged her counterattack, although only barely. His Threads erupted with white panic.
AndstillIseult held on. The fire of his Threads saturated her veins,burned behind her eyeballs and up into her own Threads. Fuses she knew existed even if she couldn’t see them. They’d caught fire when she’d tried to hold on to Corlant.
But she wasn’t that Iseult anymore. She wasn’t chosen. She wasn’t special. She wasn’t a blade or a Threadstone or the dark-giver half of the Cahr Awen.
She was just herself. A Threadwitch who’d never made a Threadstone. A Nomatsi hated wherever she went. And it would be enough, not because Iseult was chosen, but because she waschoosing.
