Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

“You’re awake,” said a young woman with short black hair, warm skin slightly lighter than Stix’s, and eyes of moonlight silver. She held a lantern high, brow tight with worry. “Do you know how you got here?”

Stix shook her head, the faintest of movements. Her brain throbbed. Her body ached. She remembered voices … and water … and a doorway. Not much else.

“Do you know who you are?” the young woman pressed. “Can you remember your name?

“Stacia … Sotar.” Her voice sounded—and felt—like broken razors. Noden curse her, where was she? And why did everything hurt?

“Well,” the girl said, glancing behind, “she’s already doing better than Kullen. When I found him, he couldn’t remember his name or position or anything.”

“But First Mate Ikray had already cleaved, right?” The second speaker moved into view, coppery brown skin with paler patches over his right cheek. He held a bandaged hand to his chest. “First Mate Sotar doesn’t look like her magic has gone corrupt.”

“It’s … Captain Sotar.” Stix tried to sit up; her stomach muscles very much disapproved, pushing a grunt from her abdomen. “And I’m not … corrupted.”

The boy scooted closer, easing his good hand behind Stix’s back and helping her to sit up. “Be careful, Captain.” He offered a bright smile, so at odds with the dark and dank that surrounded them.

“How,” Stix asked roughly, “do you know who I am?”

“We were in the Royal Navy, sir. Stationed on the Jana before…”

“Before it blew up,” finished the girl. She strode closer and knelt on Stix’s other side, setting the lantern nearby. Then she unlooped a canteen from her belt and offered it. “I’m Ryber. He’s Cam.”

Stix accepted the canteen, which only made the boy beam wider. A comforting smile, she had to admit while she gulped cool water. She also had to admit that he and Ryber did look vaguely familiar.

“What is this place?” she asked, after sucking back a final gulp. “How did I get here?”

“This is the Past,” Ryber responded, as if this was a perfectly reasonable answer. She pushed to her feet and seized a bulging satchel off the ground nearby. “As for how you got here, I have a pretty good guess. But we don’t have time to linger, so either you get up and come with us, First Mate … I mean, Captain, or you stay here.”

“Don’t stay here,” Cam inserted. “There are raiders behind us. We don’t know when they’ll get here, but you don’t wanna be around when they do.”

Ryber and Cam might as well have been talking to Stix in another language for how little their words made sense. “Why are you two even here?” she asked. “What is this place and what raiders are you talking about?”

Ryber wagged her head. “I told you. There’s no time. I can try to explain while we walk, but we can’t wait another second.” Ryber extended a hand. “Are you coming?”

Stix didn’t see many other options before her, so she clasped Ryber’s hand and said, “I’m coming.” Then Ryber pulled while Cam braced an arm behind. Together, they helped her stand, and Noden curse Stix, but she needed every bit of their aid.

Before she could pull free from Cam’s support, her eyes caught on a low pedestal nearby. On it lay a broken sword and a broken looking glass. Death, death, the final end.

Gooseflesh slid down her neck, her arms. “What are those?” She took a step toward the pedestal. “I … know them.”

“Those,” Ryber said, moving in front of her, “are dangerous for people like you. Did you pick them up?”

“I … think so?” Stix blinked. Then rubbed her eyes. Death, death, the final end. “What do you mean by ‘people like you’?”

“I’ll explain”—Ryber laid a firm, but not unkind hand on Stix’s shoulder—“once we’re walking.” Together, she and Cam angled Stix away from the table and away from the calls for a final, final end.

The room was an endless streak of darkness beyond the lantern, no end in sight. No change in the rough flagstones beneath their feet or the shadows wavering in from all sides.

And still Stix remembered nothing.

The tunnel beyond the low door was too thin for Cam to keep supporting Stix, so after checking she could move on her own, he moved into step behind Ryber. They vanished into the maw.

Stix took up the rear, ready to follow. Except her feet didn’t quite move as they ought to.

Death, death, the final end.

She glanced back.

Figures floated behind her. A hundred of them, all shapes and sizes, suspended like dead men from the gallows. They stared at her—she felt them staring, even if she saw no eyes within the shadows.

They aren’t angry anymore, she thought, even though she didn’t know what that thought meant. All she knew was that the ghosts didn’t mind if she left, so she hurried after the fading lantern’s glow.

And Stacia Sotar did not look back.





THIRTY-ONE


Heat roars. Wood cracks and embers fly.

“Run.” Blood drips from his mother’s mouth as she speaks.

It splatters his face.

With arms stained to red, she pushes herself up. She wants him to crawl out from beneath her. She wants him to escape. “Run, my child, run.”

But he does not move, just as he did not move when the raiders first ambushed the tribe. Just as he did not move when his father drew his sword and ran from their tent.

Or when the raiders reached their doorway, loosed their arrows, and then his mother fell atop him. She hid him with her body until the raiders moved on.

“Run,” she whispers one last time, pleading desperation in her silver eyes. Then the last of her strength flees. She collapses onto him.



* * *



“Get up, Bloodwitch.”

Aeduan’s ribs shrieked. Pain punched him awake. Water rushed into his mouth. It shocked. It choked. His eyes snapped wide, and sunlight burned in. Water too. He must have fallen into the creek when he passed out.

He was freezing.

“Get up.” The pain erupted in his ribs again. Although the touch was nothing more than a gentle toe nudging, it felt like one of Evrane’s knife-toed boots. Aeduan angled his head back. A face swam into view. Brown skin, black plaits, a Carawen cloak gleaming bright.

“Monk Lizl,” he tried to say, but that was not what came out. All that came out was coughing. Speed and daisy chains, mother’s kisses and sharpened steel. Her scent was there, if weak.

She grabbed his shoulders and hauled him upward—enough for him to get his own arms under him. Enough for him to sink into a four-legged crouch. The coughing continued, although at least upright, he could drink instead of drown. One gulping splash became four; the coughing finally subsided.

Not the pain, though. Never the pain.

As if following his thoughts, Lizl dropped to a squat beside him. Dangling from a stiletto in her hand—his stiletto—was Aeduan’s Painstone. A drained, useless chunk of rose quartz. “Want to explain this to me, Bloodwitch? I thought you healed from everything.”