Page 124 of Witchlight
And the next, buildings were falling and she was doubling over.This belongs to me,she heard, even though there was nobody there.I do not want to, but I fear I must take it back now.
The suffocation ratcheted higher. A fist to close over her throat. Then her mind. She felt like she was being drained of some fundamental part of herself, and she grasped clumsily at the ground. At the air. At her own head as if maybe whatever was leaving her could be kept inside.
It was an animal that finally roused her. A blur of white at the corner of her weeping eyes. Furtive movements that meant something else lived—and something else wanted to stay that way.
Sky wrested her head high enough to see what was passing. It was white, it was wriggling, and oh yes, it was very much alive. Because animals—like Sky—were awfully good at surviving.So get up, Skyvenjetsa Drakora,she thought.Get up right now and move.
Sky got up. Her muscles rebelled and screamed. Her lungs too, and for several heartbeats, she could do nothing but cough and hack and try not to fall again. But then the intensity of the unexpected pain finally cleared.
And so Sky finally moved. A stumbling run. Then stronger, faster, after that slip of white squirming beyond.
Within two blocks, she was close enough to recognize the animal as a weasel. It wore its winter fur, which was a real blessing. Had it been dressed in black, Sky would never have seen it in all this soot and ash.
Twice, the weasel looked back at Sky. Twice, its nose twitched before it kept running. Which meant Sky kept running too. For now, it was leading Skyawayfrom the Well, and that seemed like a good thing. Because now that the quake had stopped its aftershocks, a new chaos was setting in: winds.Badones that kicked up seafire and sent it flying onto new roads and houses and humans.
Alotof humans. Most of them already dead, but quite a few who simply stood there, as lost as Sky had been. Or trying, like her, to stumble out of here. Sky ignored them all; she still had her Baedyed gear, and she didn’t know who might see her and thinkenemyor thinkfriend. Too many Cartorran soldiers here, and Red Sails and all those monks in white too.
Sky pounded onward, leaping and gasping through her scarf as she tried to never lose sight of that weasel. But then the weasel finally hit an avenue filled with smoke so thick, she couldn’t see anything but blackened shadows that sang with seafire.
Sky wiped ashen tears from her eyes. The winds were kicking harder, and now thunder rumbled. She had never hated this city more, and now she hated that weasel too.
Except, no. Something was changing. The shadows were shrinking, and a flicker of white could just be seen darting and swerving through. The weasel was close to the ground, and she’d found a way through the seafire.
Sky was about to chase forward after it, when something fell before her. It came so hard, so fast, she leaped backward, yelping. Her arms flung over her head. She dropped to a protective crouch. Several smoky seconds boomed by.
But nothing else crashed down, so Sky unfurled. She needed to move. She needed tonotlose that cursed weasel before it escaped through all this black smoke. That was when she saw it, though—what had landed before her.
A sword. It was still sheathed, and she recognized it immediately. The woman Safi had been wearing it at her hip when Sky had tried to help her.Now here it was. Juststabbedright into the charred cobblestones with the bottom half of its sheath split apart. “Well, shit,” Sky said to no one as she snatched up the blade. Leather scraped off it to reveal pure silver to a dawn made of storm. “Well, shit,” she said again.
Then Sky ducked low and dove into the gaps of seafire where the weasel had just sped away.
Where the hell-waters am I?Merik thought as he blasted into the mountain. He’d made it through a magicked doorway and was almost certain Itosha would follow him, but it was proving to be a minuscule blessing in the loss.
For this was not the vast hall crawling with ice he’d expected, but a snaking tunnel filled with water and half-thawed bodies who screamed at Merik as he passed. A cacophony of sound that overwhelmed almost as much as Itosha’s attacks had.Follow the grain! Forced to change!
I am!he wanted to scream back.I have no other choice!And he didn’t, for the tunnel was too narrow, too unpredictably curving for him to tap into Kullen’s magic. All he could do was sprint and occasionally launch himself faster on winds fed by his Threadbrother.
Then all blessings vanished when, after a steep rise in the tunnel, the voices snapped off. Merik knew right away it meant Itosha was with him inside the mountain. Andshewas able to fly.
Move,Kullen roared into Merik’s mind.Go, my king. Go!
“What do you think I’m doing?” Merik snapped—a waste of breath as his vision blurred with panic.
That way goes to Paladins’ Hall, Merik. Keep going, and then take the brightest door when you get there.
“Why? What’s through it?” Merik veered past hanging limbs encased in wet ice. Past faces with silvery eyes. “Are you there? Are you in that hall?”
No.This was all Kullen said, but Merik could feel—across their Thread bond, across their many years as Threadbrothers—that there was more to that word than what Kullen was letting on.
He didn’t like it, but he also had no chance to press for more answers because Itosha wasright there. She carved through this tunnel with far more speed than Merik had, since unlike Merik, she wasn’t trying to avoid the bodies in the ice. She just crushed them as she flew.
Merik saw the tunnel’s end ahead. He saw the melting ice release its claim in a crooked, raw hole. Merik had been in this mountain twice before; there’d never been a passageway like this one before.
Move,Kullen commanded, and power burst again inside Merik. He shot as if from a pistol into the vast cavern called Paladins’ Hall.
There was no ice now. No summoning song for sleeping. No whispers ofCome, come, the ice will hold you.It was just a vast abyss inside the mountain, where several doorways glowed.
The ice is gone,Merik thought at Kullen.Does that mean you’re awake? Does that mean you’ve been set free?
