Bloodwitch

by Susan Dennard

  Abrupt silence, then the door clicked, and Iseult and Owl were there. Iseult stalked forward, both packs bouncing on her back as she peered into each stall. She made no move to claim a steed, though, and she made no comment on the boy with the broken jaw.

  Owl meanwhile flung herself against Aeduan’s leg, and almost instantly, panic took hold throughout the stable. The nearest horses started trumpeting, and some even bucked against stall doors.

  “Here!” Iseult called from a corner stall, already yanking gear off the wall. “This must be the gelding. I’ll tack him up—” She broke off as the black horse reared.

  “Owl.” Aeduan knelt beside her. Tears streamed down her pale cheeks, while great hiccups shuddered in her chest. And there was no denying that the horses kicked in time to each of her building sobs. “Remember the two fish from the story I told you?” He had to lift his voice to be heard over the growing roars from the horses. “Owl, remember how they stayed strong and escaped Queen Crab? We have to do the same now. You must be strong and stop crying. Owl, can you do that?”

  She wagged her head as if saying no, but her sobs did settle—and the horses did briefly calm. Long enough for Iseult and Aeduan to tack up the gelding together. Long enough for him to lift Owl, so light, so fragile in his demon arms, and drop her on the prince’s fine saddle. Aeduan offered a hand to Iseult.

  She did not take it. “You haven’t gotten a horse.” Her eyes darted side to side. She was putting it all together. “In the room, you said that I had to leave. That I had to go to the Monastery. I, not we.”

  On the saddle, Owl’s crying resumed.

  “I have business elsewhere,” he said.

  “Business,” she repeated, words getting more strained by the second. “You have business elsewhere? Does that mean you will find us after your … your business is concluded?”

  “No.” He turned away from her. The soldiers were almost to the stable, a surge of blood-scents he could not ignore, and though he could bar the door, hold it closed with his own strength, that was only a temporary solution—

  Iseult’s hand clamped on his shoulder. “What about Owl? What about her family?”

  “I cannot help them.”

  A shocked laugh. Then a disbelieving, “Are you serious right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.” She pushed in front of him. “You cannot just walk away. Not after everything.”

  Shouts approached: “Check the stables!” It was now or never if Iseult and Owl were going to escape safely.

  Which left Aeduan with only one option. If the choice was slaughter or the lamb, then slaughter it would have to be. Better that than the soldiers reaching Iseult and Owl. Better that than the Fury finding them.

  “I can walk away,” he said coolly. “And I will walk away. We are not friends, we are not allies.”

  “We are—” she began.

  “Nothing.” He leaned closer. Their noses almost touched. “There is no we, there is no us. Do you understand? You were a means to an end, and I have found a better means.”

  Time seemed to slow, and during the strange lull that stretched between one heartbeat and the next, it struck Aeduan that until this moment, he had never appreciated how much feeling Iseult showed. Not until right now, when she showed none at all. The subtle movements, the tics and tightenings—how had he missed the extent of them?

  And her eyes. All this time, they had held such depth of emotion, yet he had never noticed.

  Until now, when the emotion had faded to nothing at all. Her face was as empty as the moon and far less reachable.

  “You might lie to yourself,” she said at last, voice smooth as a scythe and twice as sharp. “But you cannot lie to me.”

  Then she turned away, and the soldiers arrived. They burst in from the back entrance, bellowing and drawing swords, pistols. Owl screamed, and Iseult swept onto the gelding.

  Aeduan charged the soldiers. Eight of them. No time for magic, no time for anything but brute force and speed. He unsheathed his sword. He would hold the men off long enough for Iseult and Owl to—

  The stable exploded. Wood crunched, the floor lurched. Dust and splinters rained down. The roof above was torn apart. Then fangs and fury crashed inside. Aeduan barely had time to dive away before Blueberry slammed to the earth. His wings spread wide.

  Aeduan did not think, he simply ran. Wood fell around him. Horses plowed from their stalls, the latches rising one by one—as if an Earthwitch pulled the iron from afar. He passed four soldiers, men who had come in from the front. Men who now wanted to leave.

  One by one, though, claws grabbed and screams ripped out.

  Then Aeduan was to the stable yard, the cool air rushing over him. Horses and humans crowded for the exit. And there, galloping past the tree, its bark stark against the night sky, were Iseult and Owl.

  Aeduan did not watch them go. Instead, he flipped his cloak inside out, since soldiers would now be looking for a monk, and he set off in the opposite direction. Away from the inn, away from Tirla, and away from the lamb he had never wanted to kill.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The Adder shroud fell from Safi’s fingers. She had been here before, watching as a flame hawk plummeted from the sky. As the heat roared closer and fire consumed all sight. This time, though, there was no Caden to save her, no Hell-Bard magic to cancel out the power of magicked flames.

  Rokesh and the other Adders charged into tight formation around Safi and Vaness. Then everyone vaulted for the path. As they ran, Vaness flung her arms toward the sky. The folded tent whooshed by, and the hawk’s screeching cry told Safi the tent had hit its mark.

  They reached the path and descending steps right as Marstoki soldiers tumbled out from the forest, blades drawn to battle the hawk …

  Except their uniforms were already streaked in blood and death. False, false, false!

  “Ambush!” Safi screamed at the same moment the nearest soldier raised his sword for an attack.

  Rokesh swirled in. The soldier’s blade nicked his shoulder—but not before he thrust his own into the man’s heart.

  One by one, the Adders clashed against the false soldiers, formation strong. Safi and Vaness protected. Fire still crushed in from behind, though. A hurricane of heat borne on seething, magical wings.

  “I cannot control the blades!” Vaness shrieked over the battle. “They are not made of iron!”

  Shit, shit. This ambush was targeted and thoroughly planned—and now the false soldiers were too many to stop. An Adder to Safi’s left was torn away from the formation. Then an Adder just behind.

  Worse, the flame hawk had arrived.

  Rokesh dove for Vaness. Safi dove for the trees. Rusty trunks and green uniforms blurred at the edges of her vision. No soldiers attacked, though. Everyone was too busy running.

  Then sparks rained down. Branches ignited. And ten paces to Safi’s left, the hawk swooped by. A streak of orange that razed entire cedars to ash—and entire soldiers too. Their final cries rattled in Safi’s skull, somehow louder than the flames. Somehow louder than the creature hurtling by.

  Safi vaulted faster. She cut, she spun, she moved wherever her feet would carry her. Still, no one attacked as she sprinted by. They were too occupied by the flame hawk, already blasting in again.

  Yet something flickered in the farthest corner of Safi’s brain. Something that said, You’re missing part of the puzzle here. No time to consider, though. Only time to run.

  She reached a fallen cedar, its branches aflame. A wall of smoke and heat she couldn’t see beyond.

  She jumped. She tripped, hands flying forward.

  She landed on a dead man. Not just one, but a hundred. A whole pile of corpses waiting for the flames to consume them. Freshly dead, blood still sticky, and with only their smallclothes and weapons left to them.

  Metal weapons. These were the real soldiers.

  Safi yelped. Then tried to rise, to scrabble desperately back to her feet. But the blood was slick against de
ad skin.

  Flames and smoke choked in, along with flame hawk screams. False soldiers raced past, clearing the burning tree as Safi had and fleeing the flame hawk. No time, no time. Safi scrambled to her feet. Her bad ankle twisted, a distant pain she knew she would regret later. Assuming there was an actual later.

  She swung her arms high and joined the racing soldiers—except she opted to run an entirely different direction. If she followed them, they would all eventually reach the sandstone wall and be trapped. If she wanted to escape, she would have to circle around.

  As Lady Fate would have it, though, her plan was a poor one, for the flame hawk set its sights on her. It careened closer, screaming like the demons of the Void. Heat and noise and light.

  And death, if Safi could not find cover. She needed something that would not burn. The forest fell away. Abrupt, exposing, and leading Safi right back to the Well where this had all begun.

  She was left with only one real option: she dove in.

  A punch of cold, a swipe of silence. Then the flame hawk reached the Well. Instantly, the waters boiled, a rush of scalding heat that shoved Safi deeper. She swam as fast and as hard as she could. Down, down, down.

  She reached the deepest part of the Well right as the skin-cooking waters touched the soles of her feet. Her mind wiped clean with pain. Her lips parted; air burst from her lungs in a rush of bubbles.

  Then her hands touched the rock bottom of the spring.

  A tremor erupted. Water blasted against her, and with it came a light so white, so blinding, she thought she had died. That the flames had claimed her soul, and this time, there would be no survival. No rebirth.

  Except that two thunderous heartbeats passed, and she was not dead. Instead, she was being punched back toward the surface … Then above the surface, where she found herself gulping in air and gazing at an evening sky turned to gray.

  A sizzling sound behind forced her to turn. A light shone from the Well’s heart—a column that seemed to whirl and writhe. So bright, Safi had to squint to see what lay beyond: the flame hawk. Its golden-feathered body hissed and smoked, fires extinguished, while the saddest whimper Safi had ever heard came from its onyx beak.

  For approximately two seconds, she pitied the creature. Then its tailfeathers sparked to life, and she decided pity was better reserved for creatures that didn’t want to eat her alive.

  She paddled frantically to the Well’s edge and clambered out. Sopping, she aimed toward the path … Which was blocked by the burning wreckage of Vaness’s tent. While she gaped and searched for an alternate route, a sleek black bird shot past Safi. She knew in an instant that it was the old crow. The one from her bedroom that had left her a drained Painstone.

  For a single sodden breath, time blurred into a meaningless thing. The crackling flame hawk, the glowing Well, the fighting soldiers in the distance—it all became a blank backdrop to the old crow zooming by.

  It flew, squawking, to the golden spire.

  And that, Safi realized, was her protection. Lit by the Well’s light, it shone like polished gold. Solid, huge, and quite inflammable.

  Safi launched into a gallop—and time launched as well, suddenly feeling twice as fast. Too fast. She pelted past the Well. Twenty paces to the forest. Another fifty paces to the spire after that.

  She reached the cedars, sparing a single glance for the flame hawk. Which was, of rutting course, fully ignited once more. And now bellowing at Safi with a fury that told her she was out of time. Its next attack would be the last.

  The hawk took flight.

  Faster, faster—Safi pushed herself faster. This was who she was. No looking back, no thinking. She was a bundle of muscles and power honed to move, honed to live. This would not be her end. She had survived a flame hawk before; she intended to survive it today too, thank you.

  Gold radiated ahead. Brighter by the second. Closer, closer. And with the old crow never leaving her sight. Always, it darted just beyond. And always, the flame hawk darted just behind.

  Hotter, hotter. Louder, louder.

  The crow reached the spire. Safi reached the spire. She clawed for the edge, ready to sling herself around before the hawk could reach her.

  Her footing failed. Her weak ankle snapped, and before she could catch herself, she toppled forward.

  She hit empty air, no ground to catch her. Darkness engulfed her. She slammed against stone, though somehow she managed to tuck her chin to her chest, catch the impact with her shoulder, and transfer the energy into a roll.

  A roll that carried her into a bright blue light.

  Power crashed over her. Sudden and shocking, it stretched her and crushed her. It tore her apart and then put her back together again.

  Until she rolled to a stop and stared up at a stone ceiling far, far overhead. Her lungs pumped, her heart pummeled, and chills rippled down her body, while her ankle throbbed with angry, fresh pain.

  No memory of the flame hawk’s heat lived in her veins now, though. Only ice and silence, while blue light continued to waver in her vision.

  Where the hell-gates am I?

  Angling a bruised arm beneath her, Safi sat up—and almost fell right back down again. She sat sprawled upon a ledge scarcely large enough to hold her, and beyond waited a black abyss of nothing. Somehow, in her fall, she had slipped into a cave beneath the golden spire …

  And somehow that cave was large enough to hold the entirety of the Floating Palace. Twice.

  Even as Safi thought this, she knew it was impossible. Even as her mind tried to grasp why she no longer heard signs of battle or the flame hawk, why heat no longer chased, she knew, deep at the core of her witchery, that it was because she had left the Origin Well’s grounds entirely.

  She had left Marstok entirely.

  True, true, true.

  A squawk pierced her eardrums. Safi flinched, snapping right and flinging out a hand to brace herself. It was such a long, long way to fall.

  She found the crow glaring at her a mere arm’s length away. It perched upon an unlit torch fixed to the cavern wall. Beside it was a door. The door Safi had traveled through.

  It glowed blue and seemed to pulse against her, a shivering sensation not so different from the magic that thrummed inside her chest. She had to crane her neck to take it all in. Ornate carvings were etched into the granite. Ancient, Safi thought, even as they looked untouched by time.

  Another squawk from the crow. But this time, Safi was prepared. She glared right back at it. “Where,” she demanded gruffly, “have you taken me?”

  The bird blinked. Then its beak clack-clack-clacked, and she would have bet every piestra in Dalmotti that it was laughing at her.

  It was, as she dusted off her bloodied hands, that a new light winked in Safi’s vision. Red and flashing.

  Iseult. Her gaze snapped to her Threadstone, dangling against her chest. It must have fallen out of her uniform during the roll, and now angry red light blinked up at her. It tossed bloodstained shadows across the cavern walls.

  But did the stone blink because Iseult was in danger, or did it blink because Safi was? Safi had no idea, no way of telling. And before she could rise and try to gauge in which direction Iseult might be, the old crow made a move. Its wings swept up and it hurled itself at Safi.

  She reacted without thought, shoving herself sideways to avoid it. She hit the blue light and toppled once more through the doorway.

  Again, Safi was pulverized and pulled apart. Again, she was crushed and expanded while time sped so fast it stopped entirely. Then she was through the magic, striking a sharp, muddy slope. Light shone through a tiny crack above, but no flame hawk. No heat or rage.

  Safi glanced to the blue light, now behind her. It glowed from an archway blocked by stones. Roots and weather had cleared a path along the bottom. Safi must have hit a crack in the earth beside the spire, slid into this hidden ravine … and then slid right on through that magic doorway.

  She shivered. In the distance, pistols popped and
people screamed, so she hauled herself up the incline, still soaked from the Well and now muddied too.

  Her ankle protested the climb. It wasn’t broken again, but it wasn’t happy either.

  She reached the golden spire. Voices were near—voices she thought she knew, even as they were swallowed by the flame hawk’s roar. Then she heard someone holler in Cartorran, “Is that all you have for me?” and with no concern for her ankle, Safi started to run.

  “Come at me, you bastard!”

  The Well appeared through the trees, still distant and hazed by fire and smoke. With each loping, uneven step, Safi saw more. Corpses in Marstoki green. Corpses in Adder black.

  And the flame hawk, on the ground and limping. Each of its hops shook the earth as it stalked toward the Empress of Marstok, unconscious beside the Well.

  Ten paces away was a second woman, crouched defensively. No armor, no helmet, no weapons save a single knife extended before her.

  The Hell-Bard Lev.

  Safi had no idea why the woman was there—or how—but relief sent her muscles spinning faster. If the Hell-Bards were in this fight, then Safi and Vaness might actually survive.

  The flame hawk lunged at Lev, beak out and neck extended. Then its body passed right over, and before Safi’s eyes, Lev dissolved into darkness. Wherever the magic of the flame hawk touched her, she became a skeleton made of shadows.

  A skeleton now thrusting its blade into the flame hawk’s chest.

  The monster shrieked its pain—but that was only the beginning. As Safi stumbled out from the cedars, aiming toward the fallen Empress, the other Hell-Bards—lumbering Zander and lithe Caden—charged from a different expanse of trees. They rushed the hawk from behind, and like Lev, they wore no armor, no helmets. All they had were simple knives …

  And the power of the Hell-Bard’s noose. The ability to withstand any magical attack, even a flame hawk’s.

  The two Hell-Bards reached the creature’s tail. Then two more skeletons streaked into the firestorm. Zander attacked the wing. Caden leaped onto the beast’s back. Five bounding strides and he reached the top of the creature’s spine. He shoved his blade in, right where the wings met. Right where the hawk would feel it most. Such beasts might not die, but they could be injured. Safi had learned that firsthand with sea foxes.