Page 13 of Witchlight
When Merik had been here as a prisoner, there’d been nothing to the east but swollen river and marshes for miles. Wet forests of beech trees, and plains rolling toward Cartorra. That was unchanged; the very earth there was still a sponge.
But the north and west held a landscape unlike anything he could have imagined. The plains that stretched endlessly to the north, all the way to the Sleeping Lands, were now a clotted patchwork of fires and tents and figures moving through the night. Black smoke drifted across the otherwise unmarred night sky. One plume in particular swept across the Sleeping Giant, diffusing its three bright stars into hazy smears of shadow-light.
Merik surveyed the various encampments. Although dark, the stars and the fires were bright enough—and near enough—to reveal red banners that marked Red Sail tents. Yellow banners that marked Baedyeds. And then loose, shapeless tents that seemed beholden to no one.
“Purists?” he wondered aloud. They had loved the southernmost stretches of Nihar, where poison and fire had drained the land of magic. And they had loved to tell Merik he was cursed for the magic he bore.
Merik strained to see some central spoke to the encampments. Some clear organization that would suggest where, in all those campfires and tents, he might find the Raider King—and thismustbe the forces of the Raider King. It was the only thing that made sense. But Merik could find no coherence, no structure.
The only consistent detail Merik did notice was that all the tents stopped at a very sharp, very specific distance from the northern wall of Poznin. It suggested the raiders and Purists were forbidden from setting camp any closer than that…
Or perhaps were too afraid to.
Aurora wagged her tail twice. A heavy thump on icy stones that prompted Merik to absently pat her head. He’d look more closely at this view tomorrow—see if this Raider King was out there… and then decide what his next moves should be. Perhaps heshoulddo as the two girls had suggested and simply approach the man directly.Why are these Cleaved still here? Can we do anything to help them?
It was a foolish thought that disappeared almost as quickly as it formed. Of course Merik would not approach the Raider King. He had already come too close to death; he had no desire to tempt Noden’s Hagfishes again.
Merik also would not stay in this place stricken by plague and shadows. These Cleaved weren’t alive—there was nothing he could do for them. The boy, though, he could help. He would get the child out of here, and together, they would aim south. Because Nubrevna was home, and Nubrevna was where Merik needed to be.
SEVEN
Heat roars. Wood cracks and embers fly.
“Run.” Blood drips from his mother’s mouth as she speaks.
It splatters his face.
With arms stained to red, she pushes herself up. She wants him to crawl out from beneath her. She wants him to escape. “Run, my child, run.”
He does not run. He does not move. He waits, as he always does, for the flames to overtake him and the world to burn alive.
The wounds on his chest scream.
Aeduan thrashed awake. Thirty paces away, the Earth Well burbled, steam rising off its moving waters. Tendrils that lifted into the night, circling past beech trees with summer plumage despite the winter nearby. No snow touched here; grass grew; and the air was warmer than it had any right to be. Which had made it a logical place for camping.
Overhead, the bright column of stars that Cartorrans called the Sleeping Giant sparkled down, almost bright enough to outshine the moon. It felt bigger this high in the mountains, and there was a sharpness to it from the cold, as if the moon’s yellow edges were chipped out of stone.
Aeduan’s horse nickered. Then pawed at the first stones edging around the Well. Surefoot was a squat gray beast with a constellation of white spots across her rump and a comfort with mountains unmatched by any man.
Aeduan trusted her with his life. She’d carried him without wavering for almost a month now, one mission after another, always in the name of the Cahr Awen.
“I hear you, girl,” he murmured as he hauled himself to his feet. “You’re hungry again. You need to pace yourself, though. These fresh offerings from the Hasstrels won’t last forever.”
As despairing as the main estate had been, the stables had been clean,warm, and fully stocked. The fon Grieg brothers cared about their horses—a reminder that even the worst humans usually had a good side. (And the best humans almost always had a bad.)
After offering Surefoot fresh apples to go with the grass she’d already cleared, Aeduan turned his attention to the Well. He had never been here before, although he knew of it. Iseult had come here; she had healed these waters with Safiya; and what had once been dormant for centuries now thrived again—all because they really were the Cahr Awen.
Without thinking, Aeduan reached out with his Bloodwitchery. It was a habit. An instinct. A need.Think of Iseult. Reach for the silver taler.But she wasn’t within the range of his magic, and Aeduan already knew that. She was a hundred leagues away, at a hunting lodge near the Solfatarra.
Aeduan ran his tongue over his teeth. One heartbeat passed. Two. Then he strode all the way to the Well’s edge and stared into the waters. Despite never having been here, never having seen this Well or watched its waters roil, there was a familiarity that seeped through the night.
And the waters, he was quite certain, stared back at him. Because long ago these waters had been alive.
A thousand years ago, they had been Exalted Ones—not that Aeduan had known that when suddenly one of their souls had been shoved inside of him. All he’d known was that one moment, he was himself. The next, he was drowning and a Paladin named Nadje had controlled his body.
Once, as a young boy living near Saldonica, Aeduan had seen a bear forced to dance by a Herdwitch. All life had been sapped from the poor beast’s eyes. There had been nothing left but broken resignation.
That was how Aeduan had felt when the Paladin had been trapped inside him. Nadje had been a Paladin of Aether before death had claimed him a thousand years ago. Now, fragments of Nadje still lingered inside Aeduan—not the man’s consciousness so much as memories, hazy and illogical. Like a song from childhood in which the words are gone, but the tune still remains.
