Page 2 of Witchlight
I begged Stix not to. I begged her to see that the Raider King will destroy the Witchlands, but she disagreed. Something about him has convinced her he knows what is best for our future.
Who is right? Who is wrong? Who will bring terror to the Witchlands? Who will save us from it? I will keep searching for clues in the Sightwitch Crypts. I am the only Sightwitch Sister left, so if I can’t crack this puzzle, then who will?
At least I’m no longer alone. The Rook found me today, swooping into the Convent as if he’d never left me a year ago. I cried at the sight of him. And I will cry even more at the sight of you, when you find me again.
If you do awaken and find this letter—if you are Kullen and not Bastien’s eternal fury—then come to me in the Crypts. I have drawn you a map so you can find your way through the mountain. And I will have the Rook keep bringing these messages to your tomb.
I love you.
—Ryber
ONE
Prince Merik Nihar could not get his footing on the ice inside this mountain. It reached for Merik with frozen claws, just as it reached for the storm hound pup at his side.
Merik dodged and dove. He’d come to this tomb to trick Kullen into the frozen, hungry ice. It had worked, and Kullen was still there.
Merik no longer was.
Nor was this storm hound—a blightedstorm hound—whom he’d only just been told that he must raise. Told by two little girls who found him in the ice, no less, because somehowthatmade sense.
The hound yelped and galloped beside him. Aurora, he’d named her five minutes ago, because five minutes ago, a new dawn had seemed very symbolic. Poetic, even. Then the ice had decided to kill them both, and now here they were at the highest level of an enormous nautilus-shaped tomb of ice, both trying not to die.
“Watch out!” Merik shouted as ice launched down from the ceiling, but the puppy didn’t understand. The ice pierced her left wing and pinned her to the cavern floor. Aurora screamed.
Merik blasted out his magic. His winds cracked against the ice, freeing her wing—but it was like throwing chum in the water, and now the sharks were coming. The ice sensed his power. It surged at him with double the force. It crunched over his feet like shackles.
Merik punched out more winds, shattering the ice. Then he swept air beneath him and grabbed hold of himself and Aurora. Awkward, frantic winds, but enough to launch them upward… before toppling them off the path and into the open core of this spiraling ice.
Merik fell, Aurora fell. And Merik felt as if he were trapped inside a frozen seashell as countless curving floors blurred past.
Aurora howled as blood striped upward from her wing. She couldn’t seem to fly—or maybe she hadn’t learned yet—and Merik could barelymanage flight either. He grabbed and reached and strained for more winds. Just one burst, one burst before they crashed on that ice—
Air whooshed under them.One burst. Merik slowed their fall.
The storm hound hit first in a thunderous crack. Merik hit a split moment later, breath punching from his lungs and muscles ripping from impact. But the pain was so distant. He and Aurora weren’t dead, they weren’t shattered—so they must keep moving.
Merik hauled to his feet before dragging up the massive pup. Her wing gushed blood now. She whimpered and whined.
But she also resumed her clumsy gallop, trusting Merik to lead her to safety. He prayed to Noden that he would be worth that trust. He prayed to Noden that there was a way to survive this. Why else would he have woken up from the sleeping ice? Why else would those strange girls speaking riddles in their ancient tongue have given him a storm hound and told him to leave?
During his time with Esme the Puppeteer, Merik had learned of one line from “Eridysi’s Lament”:Fissures in the ice always follow the grain. Unless something stops them, something blocks them, something forces them to change. Then the fissures in the ice will find new ways to travel.
There are no coincidences. Except when there are.
He had followed fissures in the ice to get here, into the icy tomb that had swallowed him whole. He had lured his Threadbrother Kullen into that ice that had always been singing—that sang even now, begging Merik to return to its embrace.Come, my son, and sleep. Come, come, the ice will hold you.
Now he followed the fissures a second time, all these shadowy veins, like ore through a mountain. And ahead, the end of the tomb opened before them.
He and Aurora reached it, bursting into the enormous, eternal cavern Merik had come from before the ice had claimed him. He skidded to a stop, shoving in front of Aurora before she could topple off a ledge into a spinning galaxy of stars hundreds of feet below.
If the nautilus-shaped ice tomb was strange, this massive star-filled cavern was far stranger.
Behind them, ice crackled and reached. It left the tomb in a trail of chasing hoarfrost. Aurora whined and pressed against Merik, large as a draft horse. Blood stained her golden fur. She pushed her wet nose into his neck.
“I know,” he murmured. “Let me think.” The frost was coiling over her tail, over his feet, and although he kept shifting his weight, it kept simply skittering apart like ants disturbed in their mound. Then it would converge again to claim them.
Merik needed a way out of here. He needed one of the magic doorways that had first led him into the mountain. At this point, he didn’t care where it led. But gone was the ice bridge he’d crossed when Kullen chased him; now the whole cavern was filled by filamentous ice.
