Page 71 of Witchlight
The six wounds on his chest scream.
THIRTY-FOUR
Vivia awoke to screaming. An entire chorus of voices in a clamor of languages she couldn’t split apart, much less comprehend. She couldn’t see, and she was cold—so blighted cold.
“Move. Please,move.” One voice severed through all the others, in words Vivia could understand. “You’ve got to get out of this ice—Zan,help.”
Vivia felt her arms rip upward. Her muscles resisted. Her mind too, although it was starting to reclaim awareness in spurts.You are in the mountain. That awful ice consumed you.
She opened her eyes. It hurt—not merely from all the light, radiating off of ice and foxfire—but from frost crystallized across her eyelids. It had glued her lashes shut. Her vision was blurred and bulbous. As if the shadowy ice had pushed so hard against her eyeballs, it had changed their shape.How long was I frozen? Why are we waking up now?
“Zan,” the woman named Lev cried again. “Help!”
The giant smeared into focus before Vivia. He dug his hands into her armpits, and he tugged, tugged, wrenched at her. Because ice had glued more than just her lashes in place.
Vivia kicked, she pulled, she fought against any ice pinning her down. Voices still screamed. She couldn’t see where they came from; she couldn’t get her mind to understand them. And the light—why was the ice so bright, even with filaments of darkness to slide through?
The last shards cracked away. Vivia fell into Zander’s arms. “Cam?” she shouted. “Vaness?”
“We have the Empress. But not the boy.”
Vivia spun. The door out of the workshop was still split apart, but now ice filled every space between the wooden panels. She found the Empress, limp on the ground with blood across her face—and with Lev stamping and tromping at ice trying to crack in and claim her.
But no Cam.No Cam.
And the ice wouldn’t sit still. It wouldn’t stop groping for new bodies. It had lost its quarry once; it wouldn’t lose them a second time.
“Grab the Empress!” Vivia barked at Zander. The Hell-Bard obeyed, hopping over ice claws and swooping up Vaness. The movement looked harder than it should have been. The giant was tired and weak. They all were.
Nonetheless, Vivia and the Hell-Bards ran. Vivia hit the workshop first, Lev only steps behind. There was no ice here, thank the Hagfishes. But the icewouldbe here soon. It was following.
Vivia sprinted through the timeless space built for a Sightwitch she’d never believed was real. Whatever spell had kept it safe for so many centuries, it was failing now. The room shook. Dust fell from the ceiling. Entire fans of foxfire broke loose and toppled down.
And the Waterwitched pumps groaned.
Which gave Vivia an idea.
YES,her magic squealed.Use us and attack. Join us and attack.
I will,Vivia agreed, and the dam broke inside her. It was like an addict seeing Painstones after too long without. Vivia dove right in and lost herself to the power. No control, only channeling. Water exploded from the pumps in the wall. It slashed outward, forming sharp lines to snake and fly through the workshop. Waters couldn’t stop the ice. After all, water had no shape. It only engulfed, eroded, flooded, or drowned.
But there were shelves here. There were ladders and tables and stone, and they could not resist so much power, so much strength.
The tides—tens of tentacles, each as strong as a bull shark—slammed into any surface they could find. Two tables flung up and launched at the archway through which ice clambered. A shelf fell. Hundreds of books and beakers toppled down. And wherever there was nothing solid, the tides settled in.
It was enough. The ice, for now, could not get through.
But Vivia found she couldn’t stop the waters. She was so deeply bound to the magic spewing out of the wall, her mind was dissolving into it. After all, the waters never asked her to simplyusethem; they also asked her tojointhem. And like a sandcastle collapsing beneath a wave, Vivia lost control of everything.
“Take her,” the woman Lev shouted from a hundred miles away. “I can manage the Empress. You take the queen.”
Once more, Zander’s arms came around Vivia. He was solid, he was safe.
No!the waters shouted.He is confining. He is controlling. Do not let him stop us.Against Vivia’s will, the tides took aim. Whips and waves that flung full power at a Hell-Bard whose only crime was trying to carry Vivia to safety.
Before the tentacles could slice him, drown him, slay him, all the foxfire in the workshop moved. Fans that flew off the walls, off the shelves, up from the waves. They launched upward in an onslaught of glowing green that encased both Zander and Vivia together.
The tides smashed against the fungus. It shredded, it collapsed. Zander, however, did not, and in that moment while green smeared through her, Vivia was finally able to reclaim control.
