Sightwitch

by Susan Dennard

  Captain nodded slowly. It sent the light bouncing. “But then the cleaving stopped.”

  “That’s not possible.” I knew it wasn’t possible. Sister Hilga and Sister Rose both had taught me that, and I’d read it in Memory Records too.

  “But it did.” He mimicked me, pulling in his own legs. “A voice told me, ‘Not yet,’ and then the … the fire in my veins went away.”

  Though my wrists groaned in protest, I pushed myself to my feet. “The voices you heard before the cleaving—who were they? What were they?”

  “I don’t know.” He wagged his head, and as he continued to speak, I approached him, one measured step at a time.

  I kept my hand on my knife the whole way.

  “They used words I didn’t understand, Ryber, and they screamed and screamed and screamed. They were hurting. Someone had … had betrayed them. That much I knew—that much I could feel. Except that it also felt like me. Like the voices were my memories and I had been betrayed.”

  I reached Captain’s side, and as one, he and the Rook lifted their gazes to me.

  The Rook bristled, a challenge glittering in his eyes.

  Captain, however, looked so deeply ashamed, so deeply sorry, I thought he might ask me again to kill him.

  We held each other’s gaze, his chest unmoving. Mine bowing in and out. Three breaths I took. Then he said, “I don’t like this place, Ryber. I want to leave. After we find your Sisters, please: I want to leave.”

  It took me a moment to gather my words. The truth was that I didn’t know how to leave. I didn’t know what would happen once I found Tanzi and the others. For all I knew, I would join them.

  And at my core, that was certainly what I hoped for.

  So I answered simply, “We’re almost there, Captain.” Then I extended my hand to him.

  He tensed at the movement. Then he seemed to realize what it meant—that I was not only allowing him physical contact, but I was offering it.

  The edge of his lip twitched upward, but he didn’t take my hand in his. Instead he lumbered to a stand on his own—which I appreciated. After retrieving the torch, I found him hunched, a pillar of shame with the Rook resting on his shoulder.

  “If it happens again,” he said. “If I cleave again, please stab me with your knife, Ryber. I don’t ever want to frighten you, and I don’t ever want to hurt you.”

  “Hye,” I said, though I stared at the Rook as I said it.

  For we both knew he would never let me kill Captain. There was something special about this Nubrevnan man, and I had my suspicions of what that might be.

  Y2787 D271

  MEMORIES

  For once, all of the Six were present at today’s meeting in my workshop. Not that the Rook King contributed much. ’Tis strange how he sits at our table and speaks when spoken to, yet he never feels as if he is part of the group.

  This whole enterprise was his idea, so of course he is part of it. Of course, he is one of us.

  Yet this feeling nags. Plus, I’m often left wondering when I will meet his general. If this man is so important to our plans, then why does he never come?

  Like before, Lady Baile tarried after the meeting, waiting until all the others had left. I knew what she would ask before her lips could even part, and I flushed to my toes at the prospect of it.

  So before she could utter a word, I blurted, “How did you know Bastien was your Heart-Thread?”

  Her pale eyebrows sprang high. “The wise Sightwitch asking me for advice? What a strange twist.”

  Heat burned hotter on my cheeks, and she laughed. “I should not tease, Dysi. My apologies. And to answer your question”—she leaned onto the edge of the table and patted at her heart—“I knew Bastien was the one for me because I felt it here.”

  “Was he your Heart-Thread in … past lives?” I hesitated with that question. The Paladins spoke rarely of their reincarnations, and I’ve never known if it was because the subject was uncomfortable or if they’d simply forgotten that this body was not the one they’d always had.

  Judging by Baile’s easy response, I decided it was the latter.

  “No, he was not my Heart-Thread in past lives. And perhaps he never will be again. Heart-Threads are not fated, nor are they necessarily singular. Like any relationship, a Heart-Thread is a choice you make.

  “The bond forms from respect and shared experience, and though attraction can sometimes play its part, it is not necessary. Love is love, and is the most powerful connection we humans have.”

  She paused, her lips pursing to one side. Yet again, my blush would not abate, and I found myself glancing down at my hands like some child trying to impress her mother.

  “Dysi,” she murmured at last, and with a gentle flick of her finger, she tipped up my chin. Then she offered me the smile of one who has lived a thousand lives and loved a thousand loves. “If you have found someone you care about,” she said, “and if that person cares for you in return, do not let it slip past. It will be your greatest regret if you do.”

  She withdrew her hand, and before I could summon a worthy response, she rose from the table and our meeting was officially over.

  1(?) hour left to find Tanzi—

  Paladins’ Hall.

  If I had thought the lair of the shadow wyrms massive, it was nothing compared to this cavern. For as far as I could see, the ceiling crooked up and up and up.

  And for as far as I could see, it plummeted down.

  Captain and I stood on a crooked outcropping, the tunnel we’d just abandoned at our backs.

  There was nowhere to go save for a stairwell charging up to our left. Yet the map clearly showed seven doorways at different levels and depths, as well as a path straight through the hall’s center.

  “I expected a bridge,” I said, stretching the map wide and holding it before me. “See? Right here, it says a bridge will take us up to the door I need.”

  As I spoke, the Rook rubbed his beak against my ear. I absently scratched at his neck. “See anything useful?” I asked him, but all he did was coo.

  “Maybe the bridge fell?” Captain suggested. He strutted to the rocky edge. A tilt of his long body, a stretch of his neck, and he peered straight down.

  I shuddered. “You’re making me nervous bending over the edge like that.”

  “I am rather close, aren’t I?” He flipped his smudged hand in my direction, flashing his Witchmark. “I think my body knows it can fly, even if my mind says, ‘Absolutely not.’” With that, he straightened and declared, “There’s nothing to see anyway. Whatever bridge there was, it isn’t here now.”

  I sent a frown up the stairs. The map showed a doorway up there, but it was not the one I needed. In fact, it distinctly said No beside it.

  But there was no alternative, and every moment Captain and I stood here was one less moment I had to reach Tanzi.

  Time was running out. I didn’t know precisely how long I had left, but I knew it couldn’t be much.

  So up the steps we went, the Rook by wing and Captain and I by foot. Fifty-four steps in total, each one uneven and awkwardly steep.

  Captain found the steps an easy height, yet even he was panting by the time we reached the top—where we faced a second uneven outcropping as well as the door marked on the map.

  It was not a true door but rather an archway twice my height and four times my width. Gray rubble blocked half of it, as if a brick wall had been destroyed on the other side.

  Everything within the archway glowed with the faintest blue light, and I’d have thought it from the ice or the foxfire had there actually been any nearby. But there wasn’t. Instead, the cavern wall was empty save for six fat sconces stacked on either side of the ledge. They all burst into fiery life as soon as my feet left the final stair.

  I froze midstep, as did Captain. We stood there, braced for shadow wyrms or voices or Death Maidens to sing.

  The Rook, however, seemed as bored as bored could be. He hopped and pecked around the fallen bricks as
if hunting spiders—except I knew he would never deign to eat a spider.

  I didn’t trust his complacency, though, so with measured steps, I crept toward the doorway. With each inch, sounds trickled in. Frogs, crickets, a breeze … and something else. Something that buzzed atop it all and shivered in my teeth.

  “Cicadas.” The word popped from Captain’s mouth, seeming to surprise him almost as much as it surprised me.

  “But we don’t have cicadas here,” I said. “And … are these tree roots?” Curiosity dashed away my caution. I strode over and touched the gnarled plant that twined around the rubble. It was tough, but more bark-like than root-like.

  “It’s a grapevine,” Captain said, a puzzled lilt to his voice. “And that is my button.”

  I swung around to face him, and sure enough, the Rook had a silver button clenched in his beak.

  My forehead scrunched up. “You must have come this way. But how? And where does this door even go?”

  Captain shrugged, but it was a distracted movement. Already, he was darting past me, aiming for the rubble and the vines.

  “I don’t remember being here,” he said, “but these sounds, this breeze. I do know them. Which means …” He bent forward, hands splaying on the stones. “It means I ought to go through, don’t you think?”

  He lifted one leg as if to climb—

  “No.” The word slashed out, and I lurched at him. With the movement came Tanzi’s face and Hilga’s frown and the shattered hourglass. All of it roared through me in a punch of stomach-stealing fear.

  I was out of time.

  “You can’t go that way.” I thrust the map at him. “It very clearly says ‘No,’ and besides … I …”

  “You what?” He scrutinized me, and for half a moment, as the blue off the archway pulsed over us both, I was hit with the sense of falling.

  Just a whoosh of air and a sharp pop in my ears.

  Then it passed, and I was left blinking as the words, “There is no bridge,” fell from my tongue.

  “No bridge,” Captain repeated slowly. He too, I thought, had felt that strange punch of vertigo.

  But then my words seemed to settle in his brain, and he straightened up off the stones, breaking free from my grasp.

  “I see,” he murmured. A halo of snow fluttered to life around his head. “You want me to fly you somewhere, even though I don’t know how.”

  “You do,” I countered. “The magic is still in you.”

  “If that were true, then don’t you think I would have summoned it against the shadow wryms?”

  “You’re using it right now!” I pointed, and the map—still clutched tight—crinkled in my hand. “That snow is from you!”

  He glanced left, right, and his widening eyes told me that until that moment, he hadn’t even noticed the snow. All this time, he’d been changing the temperature, and he hadn’t even realized.

  “I … don’t think …” He shook his head. “I don’t think I’m doing this.”

  “You are.”

  “Then I don’t know how!” Captain backed away, almost tripping over the Rook who hopped and squawked.

  The snow chased after, and this time, the faintest wind gusted up from Captain’s toes.

  What little color he possessed leached entirely from his face.

  “Magic is what makes a person cleave.” He clasped his arms to his chest, as if he could keep the wind and the snow at bay. “If I try to use this power, I might cleave again. Then what?”

  My lips parted. I sucked in air, ready to answer …

  But then my mouth clamped shut. For there was nothing I could say. If he cleaved, then one of us would die. That was that.

  “I thought so.” His arms relaxed, and the snow broke off. Not the wind, though. It funneled around him and whipped against me.

  Hot, dry, powerful wind.

  “I won’t let you risk it, Ryber. I won’t let you endanger your life just so you can go deeper into this nightmare place.” He drew himself up to his fullest height, a towering beast of a man, and there was a clear challenge in his jaw.

  I was having none of it.

  I matched his posture. I matched his expression. Then I marched right up to him and poked him in the shoulder. “Don’t,” I hissed, “say ‘just.’ I do not want your magic just so I can go deeper into the mountain. I go after my family, Captain. After my Threadsister.

  “You may not remember anything, but surely you know what love and loyalty feel like. So do not tell me that if your family, that if your best friend in the entire universe needed you, you would give up on them.

  “All I’m asking is that you fly me to this ledge.” I shook the map in his face. “Then you can leave. You can go right through this door and figure out who you are.”

  So certain was I that he would argue more—so sure was I that he would shout or make a run for the archway—that I planted my feet and braced for impact.

  Instead, his chin dropped, and he said, “Fine.” Then he spun away and marched to the outcropping’s edge.

  My jaw sank low, and when I glanced at the Rook, he looked as shocked as I, his beak half open and head dipped to one side.

  “Well?” Captain called. “Are you coming or not?”

  “Right.” I scurried over, and before he could change his mind, I flung my arms around him.

  “Uh.” He cleared his throat, and the air around us ratcheted up to boiling. “Why are you holding me?”

  “For flying.”

  “The thing is, you, uh … You don’t need to.”

  I flung off my arms and tumbled back. Heat that was not from his magic flagged through me.

  “Not that I mind, of course,” he added hastily, amusement crinkling his eyes, “but surely I can create multiple air currents. Seems logical, right? And the two separate currents will get us where we’re going—and where is that, by the way?”

  Embarrassment blazed onto my neck and cheeks as I pointed vaguely up. “Somewhere that way. And stop smiling.”

  His grin stretched wider. “I’m not smiling. This is simply my summoning-magic face.”

  “Liar,” I muttered. Then, for good measure, I added, “Blighter.” But the word was lost in a roar of wind that tore around me. It curled beneath my feet, a physical thing that grabbed my arms, my legs, my waist.

  I rocketed up, the stone fell away, and the next thing I knew, I was flying.

  I might have been screaming too, but my voice was lost in the charged, spinning air that grasped me. My stomach was lost as well, left on the stone below where it could vomit up bile without me.

  And my heart—blessed Sirmaya, it was going to explode in my eardrums if we didn’t slow or return to the ground or … something.

  At least the wind was too strong for me to look down, though, and see how far we had to fall.

  As I tried to swivel my head to see Captain, something fizzy surged up from my belly and curled into my skull. It sang along the back of my neck and behind my ribs.

  I was flying. I was flying.

  Captain had done it, and any moment now, we would land and I could finally, finally reach my Sisters.

  Y2787 D336

  MEMORIES

  The first doorway is complete.

  I did it.

  I cannot believe it, but the magic path stands directly before me as I write this, sitting on the cold floor in Saria’s carved hall.

  The Rook King was the first of the Six to get me a boulder. Less than a day since our meeting, and the monolith arrived on a wagon hauled by twelve horses. We set it up in the meadow west of the river, where the earth dips low and Sirmaya’s power rises up from the soil.

  It was simply too awkward to get the stone into the mountain itself, and just as I had speculated, I didn’t need to. The spell worked fine aboveground, and all the Threads bound exactly as they should.

  From Goddess to boulder to doorway.

  Now the question is: Do I dare walk through?

  1/2 hour(?) left to find Tanzir />
  Our landing was not as graceful as our takeoff.

  The ledge and door that the map led us to were easy to find—exactly where I’d pointed, and, like before, sconces whuffed to life at our approach.

  An approach that was not slowing down. The light from the lanterns flared into six orange lines.

  “Too fast!” I bellowed over the winds, but either Captain didn’t hear or didn’t care. “Too fast!” I tried again, shrieking now. We were going to hit that rock at full speed. “Too fast, too fast, TOO FAST—”

  We slammed to the ground. My ankles crunched, my knees buckled. I crashed forward, hands catching me for the second time that day in a wrist-popping finish.

  But there was no time to notice the pain. No spare thought to waste on it. I staggered to my feet and aimed for the door that had been marked on the map.

  Identical to the entry into the Crypts and the workshop, a knife-sized slot waited just ahead. Vaguely, I was aware of the Rook joining us—with a far more graceful landing—and of Captain behind me, laughing, clapping, and declaring, “I did it! Did you see, Ryber? I just flew us over that chasm!”

  Captain and the Rook were unimportant, though. Dim and distant. Nothing mattered but opening this door.

  And praying that time had not yet run out.

  Breath held and hand shaking, I slid the knife in. A rasp of metal on granite. Then a click, a shudder to ripple outward, as the doorway split. A pale glow sliced down the center and two panels swung back.

  Ice met my eyes.

  More cursed ice.

  I don’t know precisely what I’d expected. The map had said SUMMONING, so I’d envisioned something vaguely glorious. Something to make all this horror and heartache worth it.

  Instead, there was simply more ice like we’d seen throughout, with shadows and black webs hovering inside. Fog skated across my boots.

  Unlike before, however, the passage that cut forward was a mere crack in the cold. So narrow and low, I would have to walk with head bowed and shoulders angled sideways.