Page 95 of Witchlight
Iseult’s spirit legs took her five steps across the Dreaming. Metal clanged and breaths rasped. Boots thumped and armor creaked. Threads hovered at the edge of her awareness, each set unnaturally bright in their own way. Leopold’s with his Paladin soul and loneliness. Ragnor’s with his all-consuming righteousness and grief.
She had almost trusted the Raider King. She had almost let his arguments trick her.
And shehadfaltered. Shehadfailed.
Iseult knelt beside the looking glass, sunk into the wet snow. She reached for the handle with dream fingers, but she couldn’t grasp it—for it was real, while she was not.
Threads uncoiled from it. Not Threads that break, like those quavering off the blade, but rather Threads that build. And seeing that tickled a memory inside Iseult’s mind. Many memories, in fact, that had gathered dust because she’d hidden them away.
Memories of watching Gretchya weave together Threadstones and of herself failing to do the same. The Threads had always slipped through Iseult’s grasp; they’d never braided and wound as she’d wanted them to.
These Threads, however, didn’t run or evade Iseult. Instead, when her dream fingers reached again for the handle, the Threads that build reached for her in return. They swirled and stretched. They strengthened and grew, grabbing for Iseult’s soul, melting into her wrist like snow. Power hummed inside her.
It made Iseult think of how Safi had always described her magic when it responded to truth.This—whatever it was—was true. And in that moment, itwasSafi’s. Iseult was connected to her Threadsister, their souls bound. Their Threads woven together.
Then it was done. There were no more Threads unspooling from the glass. Iseult was locked to it, and it was locked to her. Blade and glass. Moon and Sun. Initiate, complete.
Hurry, Safi,Iseult thought.I need you.
True, true, true.
FORTY-EIGHT
Stix was no longer reduced to a weakling. Power surged through her, strong as river rapids. And like the rapids, Stix’s magic was whittled to a choppy point. Everywhere she looked, the forest burned, and nothing she did could quench it.Nothingshe did could put it out. Yet all these people were going to die if she and Owl did not find a way.
Stix forgot about Ragnor or his cause. She forgot about the Cahr Awen or the Rook King’s wickedness. She forgot even that she did not trust Owl or know what the woman-child really wanted from her. What mattered right now was that they both fought against the seafire that burned this settlement hidden in the forest.
This was why Stix existed.Thiswas why Sirmaya had made the Paladins: to protect the people. To protect the Witchlands.
Last Holdout,Owl had called it as they’d raced through the woods.We must empty Last Holdout.
Stix had found a strange place made all the stranger by the smoke and the heat and the black, black flames. But it was familiar too—as if Stix had been here in one of her many past lives. The people were new, though, some dressed like Purists, some like Baedyeds, and some like poor beggars forever trapped in the Skulks of Lovats.
Stix didn’t care who they were; she just wanted to keep them alive.
Her magic frothed inside her. She swung and she swooped, claiming water from the river, from the soil, from the snow falling in the sky, and with each droplet, she built a wall. Ice would not stop the seafire, but it would slow it. And latticed within the ice was stone and soil riven from the earth by Owl.
Nothing they did was fast enough, though. Or high enough. For despite the shield of earth and water, wind always sent sparks circling around to ignite on branches and winter trunks.
Stix dripped sweat. Heat scorched against her. Inch by inch, she and Owl guided the people out of the settlement and north, ever north, toward a new doorway into Sirmaya’s home.
We must get these people into the mountain,Owl had said,and into your under-city, so we can finish what we tried a thousand years ago.
Baile and the others had never finished their mission—not before the Rook King had turned on them and the Exalted Ones had descended. But now… now Stix’s Paladin soul could finally finish. She could close the circle they had opened so very,verylong ago.
With that thought, Stix felt the past rise up and claim her. Felt the flames roar from Lovats and his Paladin wrath.
Just get them to the under-city. This is all Baile can think of as she rushes the people toward the doors of Paladin’s Keep. There is a secret way under her home, and she will fit as many people through that doorway as she can.
Somehow Lovats knows what the Six have planned.Somehow,he pounced upon Baile in the night with his jade ring made of curses and his magicked hold over her searing in her veins. He is one of two Paladins of Fire, but unlike Rhian—Baile’s closest, oldest friend—he uses his flames to dominate and destroy. This whole city, named for Lovats and built with stone carried across the Witchlands by slaves, nowburnsbeneath his rage.
He hunts Baile, and although she uses all her magic, all her waters, she is not strong enough to fight the pain his ring-bond sears into her. She can scarcely see for the agony of it, a thousand sparks scoring her from the inside out. She feels her skin burning like paper over flame. Her organs, her lungs, her brain. But she keeps moving, keeps dashing water against every attack that Lovats flings her way.
These peoplewillget into the under-city that she, Bastien, and Saria have built for them. Then the Rook King Eliaswillarrive with Eridysi’s blade.Death, death, the final end,it sings, and when its steel touches Lovats, his Paladin Threads will fray apart—and cut him forever from this world.
Soon, they are under Paladin’s Keep. Baile’s cats are charging into fire to protect their master. They are small, they are fast, and their claws are viciously sharp. Some reach Lovats; many do not. Baile cannot save them, and so she lets them go. She already weeps from the pain; she will spill tears for her cats later.
When the last of the city’s citizens has entered her secret door below the Keep, Baile thunders in too. She doesn’t bother to shut the door—there is no point. Lovats knows where they are going; the door and its lock are laughable for a power as vast as his. Baile instead calls more waters to her. More, more, every ounce she has ever bewitched inside the city’s Cisterns. The waters love her as her cats do, and so the waters come.
