Chapter 60
SIXTY
Safi wasn’t merely swallowed in cold and heat, in blizzard and rain, lightning and thunder, she became them. Literally, became them.
Because once the emptiness had passed, then the storm had pummeled in to fill her up instead. Threads vibrated through Safi, connecting her to every throb, every waver, every heartbeat in these winds. In the whole thrice-damned universe, for that matter.
She couldn’t escape it because she was it, and every slash of airborne magic flayed Threads and emotions against her. So much rage and hate and hunger—yet sadness too. Regrets of such profound depth, there was no name for them. There was only the blue and the blue and the blue.
Until, just as the prior emptiness had faded, the fullness eventually fell away too. A gradual peeling of Threads, of storm, of emotion and thunder until there was only Safi.
And she was so very, very far from the ground.
Safi began to weep. Not because of the death that would break her whole body when she hit the earth below, but because of what she saw.
The battle was over, and they had lost. The entire Well was gone. Decimated. A hole in the earth where there had once been, if not life, then at least the possibility for it.
Even that spark of potential was gone now. There was nothing left behind. No Iseult. No Aeduan, no trees nor stones nor snow. Even the seafire had vanished in a wide, jagged circle near the Well.
We lost, Safi thought as tears cut over her frozen face and slung upward, gifts to the unfeeling sky while she fell. I’m so, so sorry, Iseult. We lost, and I could not say good-bye.
Iseult was spinning. Flying faster than she’d ever experienced in her life. Threads. Magic. Rage. Ragnor was right. We should not have healed the Wells.
That certainty hit Iseult almost as hard as the impact that came next. It felt as if the earth leaped up to meet her. Her spine snapped and her brain slammed against her skull.
Then she realized she was no longer in the storm of unbridled Threads, no longer in the real world at all, but instead in the gray nothingness that was the Dreaming.
One heartbeat stuttered by. A second and a third.
Until Iseult melted back out of the Dreaming and found herself at one of Middle Sister Swallow’s shrines.
No, she was at the shrine where she, Safi, and Aeduan had camped only two days ago.
It was unchanged. Wholly still, wholly silent because the cataclysm that had struck Poznin hadn’t reached this far. But it would eventually—Iseult could see that in the Threads scuttling across everything. Lacy and vibrant and sucking through the land.
Iseult’s heart boomed in her skull for several long minutes as she crouched there, bent upon the snow. The brightness of the Threads, the cruelty of the storm, the impossibility of Aeduan’s too-still, too-dead, crystal-veined and bloodied body …
And Safi. Where was Safi? Where was Iseult’s Threadsister?
Iseult’s organs pounded with a stasis she didn’t want—one that held her in place like a prisoner chained to the ground. She panted. She shook.
Until her legs gave out, and she knew in a detached way that she was convulsing on the snow.
She also knew there was nothing she could do about it.
She saw nothing but shadow, she felt nothing but pain.
It was as if her body couldn’t adapt to a sudden emptiness—or her brain couldn’t comprehend why there was so much space now, when before she had been so full.
Full of what?
Searing silver Threads stretched across her. Then came a voice she knew well. “It will pass,” Leopold said. “The power of the blade is gone from you now, but your body will adapt. I promise, Iseult. I would never hurt you.”
But you already have! she wanted to scream at him. You have taken everything from me! Because that was the truth of it, wasn’t it? Ragnor had been right. Safi and Iseult should never have healed the Wells.
“Where is Safi?” she rasped out. “And … Aeduan?”
“Safi is safe. Or she will be shortly. And as for the Bloodwitch.” A tip of Leopold’s head. A bounce of his shoulder. “He fulfilled his purpose as Lady Fate’s knife, now there is nothing left.”
“I don’t b-believe you.” Iseult shook her head. Each movement sent Threads—of sky, of wind, of dawn—rippling above her like pebbles dropped into a pond. “Save the bones, save the bones. You can do that again, like you d-did with Alma.”
“I cannot.”
“Cannot or will not?”
“Cannot,” Leopold said softly. “Everything near the Air Well has been destroyed, Iseult. Gone. Eliminated—”
“No.”
“—so even if I wanted to, I could not bring that Bloodwitch back into life. There is no corpse within which to bind his soul.”
Iseult’s head shook faster. Snow and soil scraped against the back of her head. “Why? How is that possible, Leopold? What d-did … what did we do?”
“Ah.” He draped a cool hand on her brow, and like a maestro leading a symphony, he reached out to brush the weave of the world. Iseult could scarcely see him, but the Threads—the Threads were inescapable.
They shivered. They sang.
And before Iseult’s tearing, aching eyes, an image formed.
“Long ago,” Leopold said, his voice rhythmic and beautiful, “when twelve gods walked among you…”
Long ago, when twelve gods walked among you, six chose to use their powers for devastation. They called themselves the Exalted Ones.
The others, who simply called themselves the Six, worked in secret to stop the wickedness razing their land. A Sightwitch aided their fight, fashioning a glass that could find and reveal Paladin souls. Then that Sightwitch forged a blade that could sever Paladin Threads.
The Six’s plan was to track down each Exalted One and kill them. If the Exalted Ones’ Threads were severed, they could not reincarnate.
The cruel gods would be dead.
But one of the Six betrayed their fellows, and the rebellion was stopped before it could truly begin.
One Paladin—the Rook King—tried to salvage the situation as it all came crashing down inside a mountain.
He and the Paladin of Air used the blade to kill the Exalted Ones.
But that was when the true horror of what the Six had done was revealed: the blade did not kill the wicked six at all.
It only transformed them into Wells, leaking their Threads into the land rather than returning their Threads to Sirmaya.
Because the Rook King did not know who within their ranks had betrayed the Six, he used a simple steel blade to kill the remaining gods. They would reincarnate into new bodies, after all, and he could use that time to find out who had double-crossed their rebellion.
First, though, he set out to destroy Eridysi’s blade and glass, so that no one could ever misuse them again. But it was not within his power to destroy the tools; all he could do with his mastery over Aether was bind the powers of the blade and glass into humans.
The Cahr Awen, he called them, and to protect them, he transformed his army into their guardians.
Over the next decade, the Six returned with new bodies. They did not trust the Rook King, and they believed he had betrayed them on that fateful day inside the mountain. So the Rook King fled and hid. As the centuries passed, he tried to uncover who had truly betrayed them all.
Meanwhile, unknown to any of the Six, one of the Exalted Ones still lived: the Paladin of Void, Portia.
In the chaos, she had been able to trade places with one of the Six, and so she had died by a real blade instead of being slain by Eridysi’s.
And for centuries, she worked in secret, killing each new iteration of the Rook King’s Cahr Awen.
With each killing, she claimed more of the brutal powers of the blade and glass.
Given enough time, she would have taken all the power she needed.
She would have been able to make a new blade and glass—and in turn use those tools to kill all remaining Paladins.
Then only she would have been left to control the Witchlands.
But the Rook King discovered this—and at the same time, he finally found his answer of who had betrayed the Six: Midne. Bound by the first Loom, she had had no choice. And her warning had allowed Portia to switch places with her.
The Rook King worked quickly to counteract Portia’s plans. He claimed control for the newest dark-giver and light-bringer before Portia could reach them. Then he killed Portia.
Yet even when her latest reincarnation was removed once more from the Witchlands, that did not change the other great problem that a thousand years had revealed: Sirmaya was dying.
For you see, humans had used magic without caution.
They could not help themselves. They wasted power, draining Sirmaya, Thread by Thread, thinking there would be no consequence.
Even as cleaving razed across the land, growing worse each day, humans thought themselves untouchable. The problem was always someone else’s.
So this left only one solution for the Rook King: he had to heal the Wells. He had to bring back the Exalted Ones and let magic and Sirmaya return to what they were a thousand years ago. Let the goddess’s Threads blaze in forgotten colors across the sky, beacons for Her children to follow home.
Then and only then could the Rook King start fresh, restoring balance to the Witchlands.
Iseult watched as Leopold’s tale unfolded before her. It was not simply a performance she watched, assembled by an Aetherwitch who controlled Threads to build a glamour. No, she was there, caught in each scene like a ghost.
Here were the Six, close enough to touch inside Eridysi’s lab inside the mountain.
She felt the cold that breathed forever off the stone.
She saw how each of the Paladins looked in their ancient bodies—Bastien with his scars and festering rage at the Exalted Ones, Baile with her calm steadiness, Rhian with her clever smile.
Even the Rook King, handsome and hard with dark hair and a silver crown.