Page 126 of Witchlight
For Safi. For Aeduan. For everything Iseult had ever believed about herself—and for everything Safi and Aeduan had ever believed about her in kind. Her mother too. And Alma. For Mathew and Habim and Monk Evrane.
The blizzard vanished. The Dreaming engulfed Iseult anew—and this time, Leopold spoke to her. His voice was as desperate as his Threads. No masks to hide behind, no Trickster self to mock and jeer.
“Youmustrelease me, Iseult! Youmustfinish what we started!”
“No.” She smiled at him, her fingers squeezing tighter. He no longer ran. He simply stared at her.
“We will all die, if you do not.”
“Good.” She laughed. “Death is what we b-both deserve.”
He didn’t respond to this. Iseult didn’t know if he even heard her, since now they were snapping into a forest where the earth itself writhed. Root and rock and branch scuttled by as if answering the call of a master—and all of them moving with the Threads of the world, still sucking away.
Soon, there would be nothing left. Soon, the end would be complete. Death reallywaswhat they both deserved.
So Iseult kept hanging on.
SIXTY-FOUR
As Safi careened through the burnt forest, she had the distinct sense she was following a path someone else had made for her.
She’d been shoved onto tracks like a mine cart before, by her uncle in Veñaza City during the Truce Summit that had changed everything. By Vaness when she’d served as the woman’s Truthwitch in Marstok. By Henrick once she’d become his wife—and had later been bound to the Hell-Bard Loom. Then by Leopold as he’d manipulated and lied and spewed out pretty words to convince her to traipse across the continent after Iseult.
Now, Safi was almost certain she was locked on someone else’s tracks again. The question was, whose? Leopold was the most likely answer—always acting in the shadows. Always angry when no one obeyed his whim. And, if it turned out to be him, could Safi break free? For that matter, should she?
Very safe and very alone. It was what she’d thought about Leopold in Praga, when she’d first started wondering if maybe he couldn’t be trusted. Now here she was again, very alone… but most certainly not very safe.
She could still see Itosha’s Threads, far ahead—although they were hazing in a way that worried her. As if the Exalted One were somehow leaving, somehow sinking down into some place Safi couldn’t follow.
Because they are,Safi realized when she finally broke from the trees. Before her was a clearing filled with column-like stones that she would wager alotof coin weren’t natural. There was a pattern to them, a circling inward like the markers on a highway.
Oh,something tickled in her brain.That’s important and you should remember it.
She hugged Merik’s coat to her. It smelled like woodsmoke and rain, and she was glad to have it. Snow fell now in clumping, wet flakes that soaked Safi’s body. Gone was Itosha’s electric storm; now it was the forever clouds unloading.
She dug forward. This way, this way, on these tracks someone else hadplaced for her until she reached a hole in the ground of spiraling black stone where snow did not gather, nor melt, but simply vanished.
The Threads of the world shivered into the hole, following the ramp like a whirlpool. Itosha had gone that way. Which meant Merik must have as well. So Safi would go that way too, picking up speed as she spun downward. As Threads wormed past her in brilliant lines. More colors than Safi had ever heard Iseult describe; more than Safi’s eyes could fully separate; and more than this magic (that wasn’t reallyhermagic) had ever before encountered.
What thehell-gateswas going on?
Safi felt the sputter of a mountain door. Felt the familiar and agonizing gravity of it as it towed her inward like the worst kind of riptide. This time, as she was torn apart, she had the engulfing sensation thatsomeone else was there. A giant, inescapable being that observed her without malice or love. Just curiosity as Safi passed through.
Then Safi was rebuilt. Restored. And dropped inside the mountain—or at least her addled brainassumedit was the mountain. Logically, it had to be. It looked different though: a tunnel filled with melting ice instead of a cavern.
Everywhere she turned, glowing blue seemed to ooze and bleed. In some spots, she thought she saw bodies. In others, it was just limbs exposed and thawing.
A hand grabbed at her hair.
“Weasels piss on me!” Safi jerked away. “Don’t touch me—no, no. Get off, getoff!” She ran, her gait stumbling and desperate. To the right, ice had been gouged in huge pieces, lightning had scored stone, and Threads trailed where Itosha had been.
More bodies. More melting ice. More hands and occasionally mouths too, shouting about lands long contested and fissures in the ice and five turning on one. There was one particular refrain, though, that kept leaping out above the others.
“Think beyond. Think beyond.”
Beyond what?Safi wanted to scream back. But there were no fully formed faces for her to latch on to—and there were still too many hands grappling. Nightmares she couldn’t escape no matter how fast she pushed her legs or how many swivels and turns the tunnel made.
Until at last, Safi did finally escape the wretchedness. Shedidfinally reach a fork in the mountain with only stone. It was jagged and rattling, as if the mountain had onlyjustopened it up, but the chaotic, exuberant Threads traveled this way, so Safi would too.
