Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

“It will be days.”

Anger flashed across the man’s face now, and black lines hissed across his skin. “How many days, Bloodwitch? Stop evading my questions.”

“I do not know.”

A dry, vicious laugh, and the Fury pointed a crooked finger at Aeduan. “Then I do not know when I will return.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe next week.” He shrugged the other. “Or maybe tomorrow—and do not try to escape me, Bloodwitch. No matter where you go, I will find you. And if your business is not complete when I return, then you can be sure I will finish it for you.”

With those words, Lady Fate’s knife finally fell. A downward clunking of her will like an executioner’s blade. She was making Aeduan choose. Only one path lay before him now.

“It will be done,” he said because they were the only words he could say.

“Good,” the Fury replied. Black crisscrossed his face. Wind rushed in. Then a flash of lightning, hot and blinding, scored down. By the time Aeduan’s sight and hearing had returned, the Fury was gone.





TWENTY


Time had never moved so slowly as it did while Merik half tumbled, half ran, trying to move where Esme wanted him to go, except that he had no sense of where that might be until pain arced through him.

Mind-numbing flames meant he had gone the wrong way. Moderate bee stings meant he moved correctly.

Twilight held sway by the time the Poznin appeared before him, moonlit and shadowy against the horizon. A vast, swampy river oozed between Merik and the city’s fortified walls. Without human engineering and witches to hold back seasonal flows, the floodplain had grown and swallowed and consumed. Fifty years since the Republic’s downfall, and nature had staked its claim. Rooftops and crumbling walls thrust up from the waters.

Merik had no idea how he was going to cross the river, and the pain jangling along his spine was not helping.

There are bridges, Esme said, tone curious. Like she wondered what Merik might do.

“But,” he squeezed out, “they are all submerged.”

Then find the one that is not. And with that command, the pain reared back completely. He could think, he could breathe. He knew it wouldn’t last. He knew Esme was only playing games with him—experimenting, as she’d said.

Hell-waters, though, he welcomed the respite. And this time, he would not be so foolish as to run.

Merik picked his way along the marsh, following soft mounds of earth through sluggish waters, reeds and cattails, and though he was soaked through by the time he reached the bridge, it was better than swimming.

Marble bricks lifted from the river like a sea fox coiling from the sea, still intact even if it led to nowhere. The marble had once been white. Now it was nothing more than moonlit gray with algae and dirt clotted thick. At the center, two columns thrust up with storm hounds howling to the sky. One still had its head; the other did not.

At the end of the bridge, the marshes resumed more densely. Easier to muck through—but also more crowded with the ghosts of a fallen republic. Collapsed walls, decayed wood, stairs that led to nowhere. Historians claimed Poznin had once been a beautiful, flourishing city, but now it was nothing more than a corpse picked clean by the crows.

Merik reached the fortified outer wall and clambered over a toppled section. Beyond, more water flowed over streets and bridges. This time, though, someone had assembled crude gangways connecting marshy spits to what remained of cobbled roadways. It zigged and zagged, ascended and sagged, eventually leading to the end of the floodplain, to a hill crowned by a second fortified wall.

This wall was much older. Ancient even, judging by the weathered slouch to its bricks. Like Pin’s Keep in Lovats, it had stood the test of time. As Merik approached a crooked archway in the stones, his thighs burning from the climb, he realized for the first time that he was shivering. Now that no water caressed him, there was only wind to gust it dry—a wind he could not touch, could not command.

His teeth chattered and his toes had lost all feeling. Cold that burrowed into one’s bones as this did was new to him.

He reached the top of the hill and shambled through the gate. A new city waited, untouched by floods, but not untouched by time. Here, oaks and maples, birch and ash thrust up through rooftops, ripped through walls, and clotted roadways with their trunks.

Ancient things made new again.

Merik thought it beautiful, until he spotted figures scattered amidst the green. At first he believed them a trick of the light, of his pain-rattled mind, but the longer he stared, the more he recognized human shapes within the forest. Statues, he hoped, but his stomach knew better. And as he shuffled down the hill and into the old city, his gut hollowed out with certainty.

He reached the first person. A young man made not of stone but flesh, a tattered Cartorran army uniform hanging off skeletal shoulders. His blackened eyes stared at nothing, and lines tracked across his face—lines Merik knew because they burned inside him too. He made no move as Merik approached. He made no move as Merik passed.

Nor did the next man, older and with dirt to coat every inch of him. Nor the woman after him or the little boy after her. All of them stood sentry, one after the next.

Merik was not sure when he began running again. No one hunted him, no pain lashed through him. He just knew he had to move. He had to prove to himself he was not one of these Cleaved, he was not one of these puppets. He was not poisoned like Kullen. He could still think for himself and command his legs. All he had to do was get this collar off, then he could flee too—

Merik tripped over a root. He fell to the earth, wrists snapping in a graceless fall. It did not hurt, yet a sob choked out anyway. It rumbled up from powerless lungs, and no amount of gasping for air seemed to make it stop.

It was not until a shadow slithered over the ground before him that he finally broke off. His head snapped up to find a little girl with blond braids and eyes black as midnight. She was dressed like a Northman in furs and colorful felt.

“Why do you stop moving, Prince?” she asked, and Merik knew it was not the girl speaking to him. He knew who really uttered those words.

“Lost,” he croaked, and the little girl smiled—an eerie, unnatural thing that stretched her lips sideways.

“Just follow the puppets.” Before she had even finished proclaim ing this, bodies lumbered into view. Out of fallen buildings they stepped, and from between the trees they trundled. All ages, sizes, races assembled into a long line that snaked into the city. As far as Merik could see.

Then as one, in a chorus of voices that scraped against his skin, they sang, “Follow, Prince Merik. Follow, follow until you find your way.”

Merik saw no other choice. He dragged himself back to his feet and followed.



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