Page 84 of Witchlight
Nearby, the mountain bat did not move, but its eyes blinked and blinked… and it flicked its tail like one of Stix’s cats.
“I will ask you again, Owl, and I want a direct answer this time: Whose side are you on? Do you support the Rook King?”
Owl sighed, her little shoulders deflating. She was suddenly a lost, shivering child in a terrifying forest that wanted to claim her. “I amnoton his side, but rather on the side of the Witchlands. And that means I cannot let you go back into Poznin—it means, that although you have gathered all this water… I need only splay my fingers to hold it in place.”
She did it so easily, so fast, Stix had no time to comprehend Owl’s words. The child simply spread her hands wide, and the connection Stix hadjustforged, the water she hadjustassembled in the soil…
It squeezed away. Compressed downward as the earth wrung it out like a sponge—and in a tiny pocket of her mind, Stix recalled a Sightwitch learning rhyme Ryber had once sung to her:
Earth encloses Water,
Water drowns the Air,
Air snuffs out the Fire, blazing everywhere.
Aether shines on Void, shadows turned to light.
So Void seeps into Earth and, softly laughing, wins the fight.
A useful rhyme that Stix wished she’d remembered before she’d started this fight she could not win—before Owl had shifted her weight, and in doing so, sent three of the largest rock columns scuttling sideways.
Except the attack Stix expected never came. Instead, a hole in the ground was revealed.
Stix had to squint to find any details without her spectacles, but even as she gaped, she knew what descended before her: a doorway into the mountain. A doorway into Sirmaya’s ice.
“A portal,” she said, awe briefly supplanting outrage or fear. “It’s a new one, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Owl replied. “And soon, you will come with me inside. But first: there are innocents who need us, just as they did a thousand years ago.”
“What innocents?”
Owl lifted a hand, and Stix thought it was a quelling palm meant to silence her. But then she realized Owl pointed upward. “The innocents of this forest who are about to be burned alive in their homes.”
FORTY-TWO
There were two small blessings in the loss, as far as Vivia could see—and she clung to them like rafts in a storm. First, the Hell-Bard Lev had grabbed Vivia’s pack on their escape through the workshop. In that pack was Vivia’s healer kit, which meant they could tend both Zander’s bleeding and the Empress’s.
Which led to the second blessing: Vaness was not dead. Of course, she also wasn’t waking up, and Vivia could see no reason why. Like Vivia and Zander, she’d used too much magic. The blood on her face gave her away. But Vivia and Zander had awoken—sowhywasn’t Vaness awakening too?
“I’m bound to Air,” Lev kept saying. “And there’s nothing wrong with her lungs. Otherwise, I’d help.”
“It’s all right,” Vivia kept responding. Except it wasn’t. Not really, because nothing was all right. They were still within sight of the megalith on which the mountain door had formed—but it was closed now. Because of course it was closed now.
The Empress had been right.What if this magic is simply fickle, as you yourself suggested, and the door seals up behind you? Then you will be stuck inside the mountain for all of time.
Yes, Cam was stuck. Vivia had no idea where the boy was.
And now hereshewas stuck—with Vaness and these Hell-Bards—hundreds of leagues from home.
Keep your mask on, Little Bear. Youhaveto keep your mask on.She was the leader now; she was the ruler in charge.
It certainly didn’t help that the river through the trees beckoned and crooned. That a breeze pushed through the jungle, hot and sticky. And tasting like thunderstorms with tantalizing rain.
Vivia gritted her teeth against it and stayed seated, cross-legged, beside the Empress on her bed of asphodels. The night sky, thick with constellations, turned Vaness’s copper skin to silver. It made her look less like awoman who’d almost died tapping into her magic, but like a story maiden about to be woken by her Heart-Thread.
Vivia cleaned blood crusted under Vaness’s nose, while beside her, Zander murmured, “I have seen her do this before. I can carry her, if we need to travel.”
Vivia had seen it before too, and she was angry. Vanessknewthis would be the consequence. She’d had this kind of response to the iron since childhood—now magic was so much harder to control. So why keep the shackles on herself? Why tempt herself constantly?
