Page 10 of Witchlight
So Merik did, describing Fool Brother Filip and Blind Brother Daret. Then he told a story about a hungry Hagfish. And another that Evrane had once told him about a little monster who wanted to become a man. Cold burrowed into his bones. Hunger curled through his gullet. And the boy never unfolded. Only the wind broke the stillness as it kicked at the winter-stripped hedges and towed at the coattails and dress hems of an army that never moved.
After what must have been at least an hour of such stories, when Merik’s throat was too dry to continue and his body too cold, he pushed to his feet. The world wavered. Blood boomed in his ears. Then he called out, “I am going to search for food and shelter. You can follow if you like. Your choice.”
Merik turned away. Aurora went with him.
FIVE
They left when the full moon was at its peak. It was when the legends said Noden was at His strongest. Certainly Vivia’s magic was. The Jadansi practically screamed at her as she, Vaness, and Cam carefully trekked to the magic door.Little Fox, do not leave us! Use us! Take us! Carry us with you into the mountain!
Vivia exhaled against it.No,she thought, while aloud she said: “Draw your weapons.” The jungle around them thrummed with salted heat and cicadas. So loud, she didn’t hear the sound of steel ringing when she unsheathed her cutlass.
She exhaled again, this time more forcefully as she shifted the weight of a pack on her shoulders. Food, healing supplies, water—three days’ worth was within. Hopefully it would be enough for whatever waited ahead.
Because they were doing this. The water couldn’t stop Vivia; nor could fear. Weeks of being trapped in Noden’s Gift, and now she couldfinallymove, flow into a new riverbank, return to the plateau she’d always called home.
The magic door shimmered before them. No guards because Shanna had summoned them away for a shift change. The new group of twelve would arrive soon.
The noises of animal life changed almost imperceptibly. The ferns thickened. The doorway glowed like the Jadansi under moonlight, silvery blue and wavering. “It’s bigger,” Cam said quietly.
“We can still turn back,” was Vaness’s reply, left hand kneading at the Witchmark on her right.
“No.” Vivia’s grip tightened on the cutlass, and with her free hand, she checked her collar. Her buttons. But all were in order. There was no reason to stand here simply staring. “I’m going in.”
“No!” Cam barked at the same time Vaness hissed: “That isnotwhat we agreed upon.”
And it wasn’t, but Vivia also had neveractuallyplanned to let Cam go through first. The boy had no magic and his comfort with a blade was nonexistent. So before he or the Empress could actually stop her, Vivia leaped through.
The magic took hold, sudden and staggering. Like diving into a frozen lake, all the breath punched from Vivia’s lungs. All thoughts punched out of her mind. Even her soul seemed to depart momentarily as she was torn apart…
Then assembled again.
She almost toppled to her knees. She definitely dropped her cutlass. It clanged on stone as cold air wept against her, damp and ancient. She rubbed at her eyes, blinking.
It was a cavern—which she’d expected based on Cam’s descriptions. But hearing versus seeing… Well, it had sounded like something out of a child’s tale, and now that child’s tale was real.
The cavern before her could have held the entirety of Queen’s Hill inside it. Twice. And all of it was filled with fibrous strands of ice that looked like veins across a dying body. Some of the ice was a pure, almost glowing blue.
And some of it was black, as if cleaving.
Yet this was not the explosive cleaving Vivia knew, so much as the gradual, unabating kind that her spies said swept across the lands northwest of here.
Sheer dread rolled through Vivia. A feeling she recalled from the first time she’d seen the Sentries of Noden.How can such things exist?she’d asked her mother.What magic can make something like this possible?
Noden’s magic,her mother had replied.Anything is possible with a god on your side.
At the time, Vivia had thought her mother meant that Nubrevna was divinely chosen. Now, though, she had seen too much of the world to believe such things. And she had met the enemy and befriended her.
It was hard to see Nubrevna as holy if that in turn made Vaness unholy.
You’re thinking in circles,she thought.Get up. Keep moving.
A flash. A frizz. Cam stumbled through the doorway. “We”—gasp—“made it.” He doubled over. His sword clattered to the granite next to Vivia’s.
A heartbeat later, Vaness arrived too. Her flail swung. Her eyes bulged with incredulity, and like both Cam and Vivia, she gulped in air as if she were drowning. She, however, didn’t lose her weapon.
Cam was the first to recover from the journey. He leaped up and whooped. A boyish bound, an effusive sound. One that the Empress immediately cut off. She lurched at Cam, grabbing his arm.“Hush,”she snarled. “This is a place of silence.”
Vivia absolutely agreed. Cam’s cry hadn’t echoed, so much as pinged and plowed, skittering off their platform and vanishing into the abyss beyond—where she was almost certain the ice was now responding. It cracked. It groaned. It oozed frozen air this way with tendrils of white fog to drift toward them.
