Chapter 48
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.
Nothing she 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. This was 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, very long 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, now burns beneath 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 people will get into the under-city that she, Bastien, and Saria have built for them. Then the Rook King Elias will arrive 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.
They flood the under-city. The foxfire meant to light the stone streets turns the water green as it rises.
Not so high as to drown, but high enough to soak the floor and reach to Baile’s knees.
She calls more, more, from each tunnel that she bewitched because Lovats made her; she pulls the currents.
There is so much here, more than when she could reach aboveground.
Lovats and his fires cannot burn this place.
Stix reached the clearing filled with stones.
She still fought the seafire, but now Owl had many more rocks to add to their defense.
The columns slithered and reshaped, until there was a vast dome stretched overhead.
What little sun had pierced the clouds now vanished until all that remained was a lone beam pouring down like the light into a Nomatsi tent.
The heat from the seafire cut off. So did the smoke.
But Stix and Owl were not done yet. These people couldn’t stay here, because although the wall would stop the flames, it wouldn’t stop the soldiers blasting with them.
“Into the doorway,” Stix shouted, pushing at bodies she didn’t know with faces she had never seen before. “Follow the stairs down and we will guide you to safety!”
Wide eyes stared at her, stunned or confused or terrified. But there were others shouting. Urging them to listen. A boy and a girl in Purist gray. A Baedyed with eyes glowing green. They yelled at people who would listen, and they shoved at people who would not.
Outside, the forest burned, heating the stone wall. Soon, if they could not get into the mountain, they would all cook like crabs in a pot.
Lovats is stronger than Baile realized. Or perhaps she is weaker. Her cats are gone, her waters are limp, and the pain from the ring-bond is snapping her spirit in two. That strange, awful ring that Portia, the Voidwitch Paladin, made for Lovats.
“She told us what you planned,” Lovats said, glee building in his eyes and fattening his pupils. “She told us what you would do. You thought she was one of yours, did you not? Your little six meeting in secret? We knew. We always knew, because she has always been one of ours.”
Baile cannot fathom this. She hurts too much. There is no space inside her to follow words or logic.
“I won’t go in there!” This came from the hooded girl. She stood at the lip of the hole, with its spiraling ramp into the mountain, and she held up her hands in the Purist sign against magic. “I won’t go in there—we can’t go yet.”
Stix didn’t speak much Cartorran, but in some past life she must have. She understood the girl as if this language were her mother tongue, and when she grabbed the girl’s shoulder, a voice that wasn’t quite her own emerged: “You must or you will die.”
“Merik,” the girl said. “Our leader.”
“Gone.” This was from Owl, who now stood on Stix’s other side. The heat swelled with each passing second. “He is not here, and you will die if you remain.” This was all Owl said before she scurried past on her child’s legs to join the others down, down toward a magicked—and now glowing—doorway.
A growl sounded nearby. It was almost lost to the seafire’s roar, but Stix felt it rattle in her intestines. She didn’t have to turn to know the mountain bat was there, menacing. Go into this mountain, child, or I will eat you.
The young woman shook her head. “Blessed are the pure,” she rasped. “Blessed are the pure.”
“Come on, Ulga!” yelped a new voice, and a boy sprang up beside her. “We can’t help Sky or Merik if we’re dead. Come on.” He flung his arms around her and towed. It was a desperate movement, made from love. They were family; he wouldn’t let her roast here.
The mountain bat growled again. And the girl, Ulga, deflated into the boy’s arms. He pulled. She followed.
Lady Baile floats on her waters toward the under-city’s other side. That is where the Cisterns are, and she wants Lovats to follow her there. Anything to get him away from the people.
A static sensation scampers across the waters into her body. It is not Lovats’s flames or his laughter, though, and when Baile forces her breaking neck to look at the door, she sees a figure in black furs stepping through. On his head shines a silver crown. In his hand gleams a silver sword.
Elias. The Rook King. He has the Paladin blade that Eridysi forged, and now Baile can finally stop. He will kill Lovats. It will all be over.
Except that this is not what Elias does.
Instead, he strides past Baile, splashing water across her body, her face.
He does not look at her, does not even seem to see her floating there.
“Lovats!” he thunders, his voice echoing off stone even as flames and smoke engulf.
“The doorway is open. You can go through!”
This makes no sense to Baile, and although it hurts more than she knew anything could hurt, she makes herself and her skeleton rise. All the way up until she can see into the doorway that Elias just left through.
A battle rages there. Flames, smoke, stone, and ice. Winds and lightning too. Then Bastien is at the doorway instead. His scarred face is a mask of more fury than Baile has ever seen.
He spots Baile and rushes to her. Waves lap and spray over her in his haste.
Then he is beside her. Lifting her up. “We must hurry, my love,” he says, and Baile realizes he is weeping.
“We must get away before Elias can destroy you. He has already killed the others. I will take you to safety, and then…” He does not finish his sentence before scooping up Baile with a grunt of exertion. Of exhaustion.
But she doesn’t need to hear his words to know what he means: I will take you to safety, and then I will destroy the Rook King.
In that moment, she realizes that Elias did not in fact have the Paladin blade. It is tucked into Bastien’s belt now, vibrating with its power to kill immortal Threads.
Death, death, the final end.
Stix wiped sweat off her brow. She remembered now—how everything had collapsed inside the mountain. How the Rook King had betrayed them all.
But there was still one piece from a thousand years ago that was missing. One memory shaped like the girl who now watched Stix through smoke and sparks. She was just a child in this life, but her strength was as vast as an earthquake.
Stix knew she stood no chance against Owl.
If only she could remember why she might need to.
With another rub at smoke and heat upon her brow, Stix stepped into the mountain.