Chapter 43
FORTY-THREE
Nothing could have prepared Iseult for the Cleaved.
She’d seen them through Esme’s eyes in the Dreaming.
Hundreds of bodies around the Air Well, standing and trapped in the worst kind of stasis.
Still, it wasn’t the same as being physically in their midst, breathing the same damp air. Touching the same frozen soil.
And for the first time since Esme had arrived as a weasel in Cartorra two months ago, carrying pages of Eridysi’s diary in her sharp predatory teeth, it hit Iseult with full, step-stumbling force that the Puppeteer had been punished too lightly.
That by saving her life, by binding her soul to an animal, Leopold had given Esme a second chance she did not deserve.
All of these children and aunts and partners, all these soldiers and traders and beggars and students—they were simply in the wrong place when Esme had learned to use her magic.
And when the Raider King urged her to do so.
All of these lost souls, their Threads severed from warmth, movement, love—that was Esme’s doing. And the Raider King’s too.
As he led Iseult past them, his own Threads focused inward and his eyes unseeing of all these people he’d consigned to this fate, Iseult forced herself to stare at him.
To nurse a growing fury, a hardening resolve.
He might now be armored, but there were gaps at his joints.
Her knife could slip in, sever a key tendon while her other hand claimed his sword.
She’d need that blade at his hip if she wanted to fully end him.
They were almost to Esme’s tower now. Iseult recognized it against the sky, even if she’d never actually been inside. There was a resonance to it. Another old place, where the walls between this world and the Old Ones’ were thinner.
Now, it was crowded with Threads. Determined, orderly Threads bound together in a common task Iseult couldn’t discern from this distance.
And Ragnor pointedly did not take Iseult nearer, even though she knew it was the most direct route to the Well.
Instead, he steered her down a smaller alley, then across an overgrown courtyard, where vines had crept over the Cleaved and snow had gathered on their feet.
Iseult made herself look at each face in the dawn shadows. I will fix this. I will heal the Well and free you. Then she made herself look again at Ragnor. His left armpit had the largest gap when he moved.
“Are you well rested?” Ragnor asked in a voice that was too kind. It hinted at the father he might have been to Aeduan … had raiders not attacked his family and set him down this path.
“Yes,” Iseult told him. Then, as he led her onto another small back street, she added: “Why are you taking me this way? What are all your raiders doing?” She pointed toward the Threads east of them.
“You mean why did I not include these plans on my desk for you to read?”
Iseult’s nose wiggled. “Yes.”
“Because as much as I want to trust you, I cannot.”
“Trust me?” Iseult half sniffed, a sound that was pure Safi.
“Indeed.” Ragnor’s Threads brightened with earnest intensity. He opened his hands, gloved in thick leather. “For I have something I am hoping you will do.”
Ah, so this must be what Kahina had referenced accidentally. “What?” Iseult asked.
Ragnor didn’t answer. They were on a street crowded with so many Cleaved, it was like saplings reaching for sunlight.
This was where Esme had died, her Threads snipped away. Her army suddenly left with no one to animate them. Iseult had seen Esme’s final moments, directly through Esme’s eyes. She recognized these particular Cleaved huddled right here at the foot of the hill where the Air Well lived.
As Ragnor moved easily, comfortably, horribly around the abandoned Cleaved, Iseult found each step harder to claim. There was a vibration in the air. It made the snow look sloppy and loose, made Iseult’s skin chafe beneath her many layers.
It’s the Well, she thought. Although whether she could sense that because of her magic’s connection to Threads … or because she was the dark-giver, and this was where Lady Fate had been leading her all her life, Iseult couldn’t say. All she knew was that Ragnor seemed not to sense it.
She also knew that this Origin Well would not heal as easily as the others before it had. Iseult and Safi would need every droplet of magic they had to bring this magical spring back into life. To finally heal Sirmaya and all of the Witchlands.
The weight of that task made Iseult’s feet drag through snowbanks. Stasis, she thought. Separate yourself from the Threads of the world. You know what you have to do.
The hill seemed interminable. More Cleaved. More death that wasn’t death. Until at last, Ragnor crested the hill with Iseult just behind. Six oak trees, branches barren and trunks pocked, circled the Well, which had frozen over save for a central gap where water blinked up at the dawn.
Such dark water. Like a pool of Severed Threads. It even wriggled like the Threads of the Cleaved as snow fell onto it. Although the sun might climb higher east of Poznin, it didn’t reach here. This place was a timeless gray.
“The Wells,” Ragnor said, stopping at a crooked edge where snow gave way to ice, “were never meant to be ours, Iseult. Magic was never meant to belong to the people.” His voice took on a coarse quality, as if the gray that lurked around them was changing the very nature of his throat.
Or as if we are stepping back in time. “Sirmaya created the Paladins as conduits of her power.
Then six of the Twelve died and their power bled into the land.
“For one thousand years, we have been stealing Sirmaya’s magic. Draining it away. You know this is true. She has no strength left.”
Iseult did know that, but when she spoke, her voice was weaker than she wanted it to be. “But how does cleaving the W-Wells help Sirmaya? How will that restore Her strength?”
“Consider it with your logical Threadwitch mind, Dark-Giver. If you and the light-bringer heal this Well, the magic might briefly heal across the Witchlands. But Sirmaya will be drained again after that. Again and again for all eternity.”
“But that is why the Cahr Awen exist: t-to heal again and again.”
“Is it why you are here, though?” Ragnor elevated his chin slightly, a military man addressing his troops. “What if you broke the cycle instead? What if you stopped the draining before Sirmaya could die? We could let Her claw back the magic She needs until life and land are stable again.”
Iseult blinked at Ragnor. Her lashes wanted to freeze shut. Her nose had lost all feeling. Not that she noticed; her mind was too wrapped up in Ragnor’s words—because, against her better judgment, she could follow his logic. “But cleaving the Wells will kill people.”
“And so will healing the Wells.”
There was no missing the threat in Ragnor’s tone—and Iseult’s mind shot back to all the Threads scurrying through Poznin, all the streets he would not let her see.
“There are political ramifications to also consider, Dark-Giver. The Wells go beyond magic, beyond even our Moon Mother. You must remember, the nations and empires of the Witchlands have fought for centuries over who controlled the Wells, convinced that possessing them would increase their power, their worth, their claims to rightful control. If there are no Wells, that stops.”
“But…” Iseult shook her head. “They w-will just find something else to fight over.”
“Will they? Or will a new era of peace be ushered in with the right rulers at the helm?”
Iseult couldn’t help it: she rocked back a step.
It felt as if she were staring at Eron fon Hasstrel.
A different twenty-year plan with a different solution for the same problem.
The same insistent, single-minded obsession on Ragnor’s face and in his Threads.
“Rulers chosen by you?” Rulers like Safi, who do not want to be one.
Like Mathew and Habim, who make matters worse.
“No. Rulers who are chosen by the people. Not by Wells, not by Paladins. I…” Ragnor hesitated. His chest swelled. Then he turned away. Cold clarity and certainty still gripped his Threads, even as his words bordered on fanaticism.
“Did you know,” he asked quietly, “that this city was once ruled by elected leaders?”
“Of course I know.” Iseult’s tongue shrank beneath the comfort of an easy answer. “This city was the capital of the Republic of Arithuania. It collapsed because of the plague.”
“Yes, the plague that wasn’t really a plague, but rather a curse from three empires who felt threatened.
They introduced a slow, seeping thing into the earth.
” Ragnor paused here to remove his left glove.
He dropped it to the snow, a smear of darkness on white.
Then he unstrapped the bracer over his left forearm.
It too fell to the snow. Lastly, he pulled up the sleeve of his thick wool gambeson.
Black lines ran down his skin, pooling at the top of his wrist. It looked almost like Iseult’s Witchmark. Almost like the waters of the Well, ready to reject all light and magic.
Iseult swayed.
The Raider King was slow cleaving.
“This Well,” he continued matter-of-factly, “was cleaved long before Esme got to it. Carefully and crudely by three empires who wanted to end what they saw as a threat. The Puppeteer … I introduced her to it, and yes, she finished the job by building her Loom. But this misery began long before we arrived.”
Iseult felt her neck stiffen. Felt all of her muscles brace as if they were about to get hit—hard, hard, by the power of a thousand truths slamming into her.
Then it came. Ragnor had one more missile to launch her way. One more explosion to topple her to the snow.
“If you can provide me with an answer, Dark-Giver, for why this”—he dragged a gloved thumb down the oily lines marking his skin—“has spread and worsened over the decades, then I will change my course immediately. I will give you and the light-bringer access to the Well. I will disband all of my forces and walk away. There will be no fight left in me, and I will let you fix what ails the Witchlands and Moon Mother. So tell me now: Why has cleaving worsened with each Well you have healed?”
Iseult swallowed. Her tongue bulged, bigger than ever. So much pressure, she thought she might choke. Because wasn’t the answer obvious? Don’t ruin this, Iseult. Don’t falter. “Because Moon Mother i-i-is dying, so cleaving has spread.”
“Except,” Ragnor countered, a mere murmur to be swallowed up by the trees, “with each newly healed Well, cleaving has only spread wider, poisoning more and more each time. People like me, with no magic inside them at all.
“So again, I ask: Why has cleaving worsened? Why, as you have healed more Wells, have more people died instead of getting better?”