Page 8 of Witchlight
Poznin had changed.
This was the first thing Merik thought when the magic of the mountain released him. Gone was the pond filled with dead bodies—although not the bodies. They were still here, but now frozen and slumped across the pond’s empty basin.
It was winter now too, the world gray and white.
Aurora whimpered and Merik dragged himself toward her. Her golden fur was stained with red from where the ice had pierced her. Merik was bleeding too. A gash on his chest; a puncture on the back of his calf. They were lucky the ice had not killed them.
“Aurora,” he murmured in a voice that felt too loud here, where cleaved bodies had frozen into bloated meat. “You’re safe now.” He laid a hand onto Aurora’s back. Her spine protruded; her ribs too. “We’re out of the ice now. You’re safe.”
Merik didn’t actually know if this was true. So far, no Cleaved were approaching—and no Puppeteer laughed or cackled in his brain. She’d been mortally wounded when Merik had last seen her, but she might have survived. He had no way of knowing.
Carefully, he continued to stroke down the storm hound’s back, feeling each knob in her spine, each ripple of young, malnourished muscle. Then Merik drew in cold air. It sparkled in his lungs, alive with his Windwitchery.Maybe I can fly us out of here,he thought.Maybe I can summon enough winds to carry myself and Aurora far from here, across the Witchlands, all the way to Nubrevna, where I can…
He didn’t know. He’d spent so long trying to escape Esme, then trying to save Kullen… and then asleep in the ice. How long had he been frozen? How much had changed in the Witchlands since he’d left it behind?
Slowly, slowly, as Merik continued to stroke Aurora’s back, she unfurled. Her body relaxed. Her whimpers ceased. She lifted her canine head and found Merik’s eyes with her own of silvery blue. There was trust in those eyes, and strangely, inexplicably, Merik felt his heart break.
He’d only ever hurt those who’d trusted him. He’d only ever abandoned and betrayed them. His crew on theJana. Kullen. Cam. Ryber. Safiya. And even Vivia. He’d tried to help, tried tobewhat he’d thought people needed from him… but he’d only ever been a disappointment. Just as his father had always said.
Aurora snuffed, her silver eyes blinking.
And Merik shook his head. “Dark thoughts,” he told her, scrubbing a hand over her downy snout. “But as my father always used to say:Sitting still is a quick path to madness.Come on, little one. Let’s move.”
Aurora obeyed, stiffly rising. The wound on her wing was ugly, but it wasn’t life-threatening. And Merik thought again of what the strange girls with their archaic speech had commanded.There’s one thing you have to do once you’re free: you have to find our father. He calls himself the Raider King.
That, Merik had already decided, was most certainly not what he was going to do. “This way,” he said with more confidence than he felt. “I’ll try to lead you around the bodies.”
Aurora snuffed again. Her feet were clumsy like the puppies Master Huntsman Yoris used to raise in Nihar. But unlike those pups, Aurora had no interest in these corpses. There was no desire to nose around and root through the interesting smells. She seemed to recognize these bodies were not for her; that there was something inherentlywrongwith them.
Then they were out of the pond, out of the collapsed building, and emerging into the full cold of the day. Merik hadn’t conceptualized how much the crumbling walls blocked out a winter wind. It crushed against him now, calling to his magic—and freezing him to his bones. Aurora seemed not to feel it. In fact, she visibly strengthened before Merik’s eyes, and visibly brightened too. As if the power of the wind fed the Airwitched heart of her.
Merik knew so little about the magic creatures of the world. They were so rare, more often relegated to legend than ever seen. But hedidknow that creatures like storm hounds and sea foxes and shadow wyrms were creatures of pure elemental power.
Her snout wiggled in the air. The wind rippled and towed through her fur, turning the blood streaks into fluttering lines. Her wings stretched wide, and for several seconds, she looked like a cormorant drying in the sun. Then her injured wing began healing right before Merik’s eyes—as if she was absorbing strength directly from the wind.
In a lurch of horror, Merik realized he should stop the storm hound. What if the Puppeteer sensed Aurora’s magic? She might jump out and snap wooden collars around both their necks—
But then Aurora folded her wings back in. No longer injured. She blinked slowly at Merik as if to say,We can go now.
Merik swallowed. Food. Shelter. That was all he had to find—and without the Puppeteer sensing them. But which way should he lead Aurora? To the left, he could see the top of Esme’s tower. He wouldnotgo that way.
The river?he wondered.The forest to the east?
East, he decided, would be safest, and he was surprised how easily he remembered Poznin and its streets. His imprisonment here had been so brief; his mind, his body, his magic so subjugated. Plus, winter had since sapped all color from the city, leaving snow to gather in steep banks along various corridors.
But Merik knew it, all the same.
Aurora kept her wings folded against her spine, lending her a hunchbacked look as she prowled forward. Her nose shoved into occasional snowdrifts. Twice, she pulled up a human body part: a finger. A foot. Like before, she didn’t eat them. If anything, she seemed disappointed they weren’t proper food.
When they reached a wider avenue through town, the Cleaved stood sentry. These were also as Merik remembered, untouched by time. People of all ages, all sizes, all genders and colors and castes. One tall man with a long, pointed beard reminded Merik of the Northman who’d stabbed Esme.
Merik hoped that man was safe. He hoped that man was headed toward his family now… or perhaps already there.
Merik was about to continue onward, when a sound hit his ears. A mere whisper beneath the wind’s howl, and instinctively his gaze snapped to Aurora—as if she really were one of the hunting dogs he’d grown up with. Her ears swiveled forward; she heard the sound too.
Someone nearby was crying.
For several blinking heartbeats, Merik found himself not in Poznin but in a tiny room where he and Vivia used to play.
