Page 99 of Witchlight
“The Cahr Awen forced your hand, didn’t they.” It was an observation, not a question. “They left too soon, so you had to leave too.”
Evrane’s dark brows jumped. “How did you know that? Have you seen them?”
Merik nodded, and in quick, crude strokes he explained how he’d found Safi—but not Iseult. How he had a small encampment in the woods calledLast Holdout. And as he spoke, he saw Evrane’s face lose color. She spoke, rasping and almost inaudible in the rising tumult of the tent. “Your people, your Last Holdout—it is gone. The entire forest is consumed by seafire. No one could have survived that attack. Merik, wait!”
Merik didn’t wait. At the wordseafire,he’d shot to his feet. And although Evrane shouted after him, he had no capacity to hear her. She had her battle, and he had his. She had her cause, and he had his. All his life, she’d put the Cahr Awen and her vows above all else. Merik had resented it as a boy; he understood it now.
But he couldn’t do the same.
He reached the world beyond and found a battle raging. With flames, with ice, with arrows to batter into shields. Siege engines mired in earth too soft for them, loosing iron shot after iron shot at a city that had been quiet for decades.
And to the east, Merik found the forest exactly as Evrane had described it: the same thick, clotting seafire that had been his first death months ago now devoured the haven he’d built for lost souls.
Did I do this?he wondered, as the magnitude of what happened bowled over him.Did I do this by entering Poznin and catching the Raider King’s eye?
The answer didn’t matter. Not right now, for Merik’s course of action wouldn’t change. He had people who needed him, and if any might still live inside those flames, then he would be the one to find them.
After all, he could not die like normal men.
Merik heard Evrane shrieking, begging for him to wait as he kicked into a run. As his winds slung closer, taking strength from the healing magic that still glittered in his veins.
Once his fight was over, he would rejoin Evrane. Then, he too would fight for the Cahr Awen against the Raider King. But not before Merik saved his own people. Not before he was the king they needed him to be.
FIFTY
Never had Stix focused so much energy into such a confined space, never had she had to stay so perfectly concentrated, perfectly connected to the magic coursing through her. If her attention lapsed, if she lost even a droplet of the water she’d fought to find, then it was a long,longway down for her and the people of Last Holdout.
So much ice inside this mountain, yet so little that she could touch—because Sirmaya wasn’t willing to let it go.
Beside her, Owl did the same with whatever earth and rock she could claw from Sirmaya’s grasp. They both stood, feet planted, stances low, and arms outstretched for balance, upon a sheet of ice thin as paper, beneath which was a sheet of even thinner stone. Inch by cautious inch, they stepped across the gaping abyss that filled this cavern. But like walking on a frozen river, one false move and the ice and stone beneath them would give way.
It didn’t help that Sirmaya wanted the magic inside Stix, inside Owl, inside all the people, huddling close and following.Come, come, the ice will hold you.It stretched and spanned in feathery tendrils all over the massive cavern of Paladins’ Hall. Easy to tell apart from Stix’s ice because it glowed, it throbbed, it whispered with black shadows. Yet for some reason, as hungry as it was,thatice made no move.
It was as if something had happened that had chained it in place; now it could do nothing but watch and salivate while food sauntered by.
“Thicker,” Owl cried in her child’s voice. “Youmustmake the ice thicker!”
What about you?Stix wanted to snarl, but she dared not speak. Dared not lose focus. If she did not cross this gap, then she would not reach the door into Lovats. And if she did not reach the under-city, then all of these people would die.
And, if Stix was wholly honest with herself, there was another reason she wanted to go to Lovats.
At that thought—at Vivia’s face forming in Stix’s mind—two dropletsbroke free from the ice, followed by a greatcrack!across the surface.Shit, shit.Stix crouched lower in her stance. Anything to keep balance, anything to keep her weight even and the ice intact. They were only halfway across the cavern.
“Wait,” Stix croaked, as she realized the path she was trying to forge veered away from Owl’s. “Where are you going?”
“You need that water.” Owl pointed to a gush of liquid that poured out from the doorway into Poznin—the doorway Stix and Kahina had used to reach the Raider King’s armies. Most of the water pouring out of it had frozen like a river in winter, but there was still a narrow current slithering down, pooling over a lip of stone, then dropping into eternity.
“I can reach the Nubrevnan door without that water.”
“No” was all Owl replied, and there was little Stix could do to argue. She needed the reinforcement, weak though it might be, of Owl’s stone. Otherwise, she and these hundreds of terrified people would never cross the abyss.
No regrets, keep moving,she thought, invoking Vivia’s words. Stix couldn’t second-guess. She just had to keep moving. And if, when she reached that waterfall, she didn’t like what Owl said or where Owl tried to go… well, then that water would be the advantage she needed.
Stix did not breathe. Every fiber inside her body was alight.One more inch of platform. One more inch of platform. Not too far now. Another inch of platform.Voices murmured or sobbed or whimpered. Stix ignored them, just as Baile had ignored the people in the under-city. Not because she didn’t want to help them, but because the only way she could was by powering forward.
At least Stix didn’t have a ring-bond breaking her from the inside out as Lady Baile had.
That thought made Stix think of Kahina… andthatthought made her stomach kink. A thousand years ago, Rhian had been Baile’s dearest friend. A mentor in much the way Kahina had become for Stix.
