Page 65 of Witchlight
But it didn’t feel good. Iseult felt alone. And she felt small. Very, very small.
“Stasis,” she mouthed to herself. “Stasis in your fingers and in your toes.” She was a Threadwitch by training, and for once, a Threadwitch in magic too, since she could no longer weave. And as a Threadwitch, Iseult had no need for feelings or for fear. Logic had gotten her here. Stasis would keep her going.
When the bridge ended, soggy floodplain dusted in fresh snow squelched beneath her feet. High stone walls climbed from the earth ahead, stretching shadows across her. Until she was within the walls and the wind from the plains fell silent.
It was strange to feel stillness again. To hear only the sounds she was meant to hear, untempered by Middle Sister Swallow’s howling. She examined the city around her; it was different than what she’d seen in the Dreaming, through Esme’s eyes. More raiders, more tents, more Threads crammed into a city that had died fifty years ago from a plague that might still lurk in the soil and stone and waters trudging by.
Certainly there were Severed Threads here, thick as cobwebs. Everywhere Iseult’s gaze landed, she could detect them, coiling and wriggling.Threads that break, Threads that die.
This close to the final Well, all magic had become poison.
As for Esme’s actual army of Cleaved, Iseult spied none of them. Eron’s intelligence reports had said they still stood here, yet on this particular wide avenue that led uphill with buildings like skeletons left upon a battlefield, there were no signs of her forgotten army.
“This way,” one of the raiders said, veering Iseult toward a copse of trees grasping at the winter sky. A path with occasional flagstones cut through the forest and snow, until a small clearing appeared. Here stood a single domed Nomatsi tent.
Inside, Threads burned with such teal certainty, it was almost hard to look upon them. They were like Evrane’s Threads, bordering on fanaticism. But they were also like Eron fon Hasstrel’s: unrelenting and self-assured.
And swirling at the core was a knotted cluster of grieving Threads. Of pure cobalt and stark navy that were a perfect match for the Threads of a different man from a thousand years ago.
An undercurrent of darkness stirred inside Iseult. She was so close, it would be so easy. So quick. One death to prevent many.I will not falter.
“Stop,” said the raider woman leading Iseult, and she dismounted with the expectation that Iseult should do the same. Moments later, a raider opened the tent flap for Iseult. Heat and orange light poured over her.
Once inside, flaps swimming shut behind her, it took several moments for Iseult’s eyes to adjust. All she saw were the Threads.Forest green determination. Cerulean preparedness. Rose calm.
Blue, blue, devastatingly blue grief.
Until at last, Iseult also saw Ragnor Amalej.
And her resolve didn’t merely falter, it shattered into a thousand pieces. For here stood a replica of Aeduan, except Aeduan of the future. Aeduan with Threads and silver-streaked hair, with hazel eyes and thick lashes. Ragnor was slender like his son, but dressed neatly in a black gambeson and breeches. Lines fanned out from his mouth, as if he’d smiled often long ago.
The undercurrent inside Iseult became a tidal wave, and suddenly her logic was drowned just as most of Poznin was.
Ragnor stood, his stool sliding over a rug, and with a deliberate, thoughtful frown, he said, “So the dark-giver has finally come to me. Welcome. I do not wish to kill you, but I will if I must.” Then, to Iseult’s shock and discomfort, the Raider King pressed his hands flat to his sides, hinged his torso at the hips, and bowed. It was a bow like Nomatsis gave to a Threadwitch, meant to show that Iseult had earned the respect of the tribe—and it was the same bow she had taught Caden only days ago.
She swallowed. Then swallowed again, harder, her throat clogging up. No one had ever bowed like this to her, and she had to brace herself against the floods.Stasis! Stasis!
When the Raider King rose again, his gaze leveled past Iseult toward the door. “Admiral,” he called to someone outside, “bring in the food. Our esteemed guest has traveled such a long way, and we must show her proper hospitality.”
THIRTY-ONE
Safi awoke sweating.Thrice-damned city,she thought blearily.Why is it always so hot in Veñaza City?She opened her eyes, expecting to see the top of her four-poster bed, to find she’d forgotten to open her bedroom window the night before…
But it was not a white ceiling above her, nor the wooden beams of an attic where heat could gather from Mathew’s kitchen. Instead, Safi stared at densely woven branches lit by a hanging lantern. There was a scent in the air—a cold, wintery scent laced with peat and cedar. Outside, sounds of people clattered and clanked and hummed.
Her left arm pulsed, but with a distant throb like music that plays from several streets over.
Iseult.This was Safi’s first thought once clarity wedged in. She’d lost Iseult. Where was Iseult? She tried to rise, but the movement defeated her. Pain speared through her. Then gentle hands pressed against her chest. A voice she didn’t recognize murmured in Marstoki, “You are safe. You are protected.”
The voice was attached to a brown face blessed with age. She smiled. “You are safe,” she repeated. “You are protected. I am Riness, a healer.”
Safi’s magic hummed with the truth of this, even as the Cahr Awen souls argued,But we need the dark-giver! We are so close to the Well!
“I… don’t care about me,” Safi said. “Where is Iseult? And Knifey? I mean… the…” She had to pause. To gasp in air as her gaze fastened on her caretaker. “The Bloodwitch. He’s a Carawen monk. I was with them.”
“And my people will search for them,” came a different voice. One Safi knew. One that made no sense yet comforted her all the same. “I promise we will find them,” Merik said.
True, true, true.
