Page 26 of Witchlight
They mounted their horses, a chestnut named Dandelion and a gray named Cloud, and set off into the afternoon. Half the morning had passed while Iseult bowed over that blacksmith. Wasted time with no one saved or healed.
Her throat ached. Her tongue felt sluggish behind her teeth.
“The w-wife is cleaving too,” she said once they had left the small village behind. Snow dusted the road, hiding potholes along the edges. Knowing Safi, she would send Hell-Bards to fix those holes later today because, even if she kept saying she was not Empress—even if she and Iseult wereleavingat midnight, Safi couldn’t seem to let the responsibilities go.
It had been a month since Safi had taken full control as Empress of Cartorra. They were calling it a military coup in Praga, and already domnas and doms gathered to oppose Safi. Little good it would do them. Many of the Hell-Bard forces backed her, and although they were no longer bound to a Loom or impervious to magic, they were still the best soldiers in all the Witchlands.
Thousands of newcomers arrived each day to the lodge, Hell-Bards and soldiers summoned from the capital, servants and nobility Safi’s magic told her could be trusted, and of course, the necessary craftsmen that followed large crowds and war.
Including that blacksmith and his wife.
“Evrane will go in your stead,” Safi said over the whip of wind through barren trees. Over theclop-clopof Dandelion’s uncrushed gait. “She will comfort the man more than you can. Her magic can at least soothe his pain.”
Iseult leaned forward to pat Cloud’s neck. The gray mare’s breath fogged. Iseult’s did too. “Maybe I can still find a solution. We haven’t left yet.”
“You said that yesterday.” Safi’s tone was sharp, her Threads fluttering with impatience. “And you said it the day before too, Iz. I don’t see how twelve hours will change anything. Which is exactlywhywe’re leaving: because you know what we have to do to help people.”
Yes, Iseult did know. She and Safi must heal the final Well. They had to heal all magic in the Witchlands, and only then could this cleaving end.
And only then could she and Safi finally step away from the noise, the Threads, the expectations. They were both so tired all the time.
Safi was especially exhausted, what with the added pressure of running an empire—not to mention the Cahr Awen souls stuck inside her. They gave her headaches, bulging her Threads to clotted thickness. Safi never complained, nor even mentioned the pain. But Iseult could see it so vividly.
And Iseult knew there was only one cure for it.
Ahead, the road split: one way toward the imperial hunting lodge, the other south to circle around the Solfatarra. A wagon trundled toward them; a square of Hell-Bards trotted north toward the lodge.
The girls sank into their hoods, fur-lined and drab brown.We are nothing more than standard travelers on the road. Look the other way, please.Certainly, their cloaks were finely made, their boots a supple black, and their horses too well tended to be steeds for the road-weary. But as Mathew always taught: people saw what they wanted to see. As long as Iseult and Safi hunched with exhaustion, as long as they kept their horses moving at a shamble, they were invisible.
The wagon’s driver nodded at them. The Hell-Bards never noticed they were there. And at the fork, they ambled Cloud and Dandelion south, away from the lodge and all its demands. At this distance, it was nothing more than a lump of white blending into the snow and sky.
A quarter mile down the new road, a trail veered into thickets and trees. Safi reined Dandelion that way; Iseult followed with Cloud. Few people traveled south, and fewer still aimed toward the Solfatarra. Within minutes, a new lump appeared—this one a daunting, shadowy place that both locals and newcomers avoided.
Cursed,they called it, and they weren’t far wrong. This ancient, half-collapsed tower was where Iseult had broken her Threadstone and Safi’s too. That act had freed all the souls and power that now thundered inside Safi’s brain.
It was also where Corlant had died, at the altar in the center. His body was gone, his blood had long since soaked into the earth. There was nothing to show he had ever been here, had ever lived at all—nor anything to show how often Iseult and Safi had visited. For the snow always fell anew. It always erased their passage.
Iseult’s cheeks were cold, her toes numb as she and Safi dismounted beside the tumbled stones at the tower’s edge. Each girl removed sacks from her horse’s saddle before striding into the tower. Past the altar they strode, and into a shadowy corner beside the curved remains of a staircase. Here, a massive mound of snow awaited. The girls each grabbed a corner of a waxed tarp.
Yank. Snap.Snow flew, spraying into Iseult’s face. Flaying her cheeks like blades as she and Safi flung the tarp aside and revealed crates to the winter morning. Ten of them, each carefully organized.
“Don’t you dare put that there,” Iseult snapped as Safi moved toward a box on the left. “That’s our camping supplies, and your pack is filled with food.”
“Right, right.” Safi scowled. Her Threads flashed with russet annoyance. “Food goes… here?” She kicked at a bottom box.
Iseult gave her a flat-eyed stare.
“Here?” Safi kicked at another.
More staring from Iseult.
“Here?Here?” She kept kicking, red suffusing across the entirety of her Threads with each failed kick. “What about here? Here?”
“Oh, don’t kick that one, Safi! That’s got firepots inside!”
Safi flinched back. But then promptly resumed her kicking, if more gingerly now. “Here? Here? Hell-pits, Iz, what abouthere?” She had reached the literal last crate.
“That,” Iseult answered with a stately nod, “is the one for food. Well done, Safi. You clearly have a knack for this.”
