Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

“Isn’t your home far?” Iseult asked, eyeing Blueberry warily. He flew high above them, and though Owl had promised he would not eat the horses, Iseult wasn’t entirely convinced.

“Quite far.” Leopold smiled, his Threads flickering with matching shades of mischief. “I told you, he’s a very well-trained horse.”

Without their steeds, the group’s pace slowed. Owl could not walk quickly, and the terrain grew steeper by the hour. By midmorning, snow and ice clung to everything—to the miniature trees, to the granite rock, to old travelers’ huts long forgotten. The sun glared down, melting the frosted gravel to slick scree.

Twice, Iseult fell. Twice Leopold fell. Owl, however, never fell. The little Earthwitch always knew where to place her feet. Or perhaps she simply commanded the stones to remain intact, and they dutifully obeyed.

Eventually even the dwarf evergreens trickled away. They had trekked above the tree line, where only rock and snow held court. Iseult had never seen so much snow, and she decided she didn’t much like it.

It was cold, it was wet, and there never seemed to be an end to it.

She had also never been so high in her life. She hadn’t known—could never have guessed—how vast and gaping the sky would feel at this altitude. So huge, so blue, so empty. Especially when they reached the end of their path and nothing waited beyond save a sheer cliff and a very long drop to a river.

With her back against the granite mountain, Iseult stared at the cliff ten paces away. In the last few moments, gusting winds had risen, rolling fog across the ledge like waves upon a seashore. Somehow, not seeing the precipice and thousand-foot drop only made the height seem that much more terrifying.

Owl clung to Iseult’s side, little fingers fisted into Iseult’s cloak and terror spiraling through her Threads, and though Iseult knew she was the second choice—Blueberry coasted on airstreams too high to see—it left a strange feeling in her chest. A warmth that wasn’t quite pleasure, and certainly not love, but something.

Something nice that made her nose wiggle. Something nice that made her think of Aeduan, because she was, it seemed, no better than Owl for the hoping.

Leopold, meanwhile, searched the cliff for a “sky-ferry” he’d insisted would be waiting for them. Every few moments, he leaned dangerously over the edge, which made Iseult feel like vomiting and made Owl wince and whimper.

After six such instances, Leopold’s Threads finally flushed with triumph and he threw a perfect grin Iseult’s way. “I found it. I told you I would!”

True to his word, the prince had worn only honest emotions since last night. And despite what he’d claimed, it had not disarmed him at all. If anything, he was more charming when his face and feelings were in tune.

The “it” that Leopold had found turned out to be a round, flat stone that had been covered by a hundred pebbles, and after kicking the pebbles into the mist-filled canyon—which also made Iseult feel ill—Leopold began tapping a complicated rhythm with his toe. A lock-spell, she thought at first, until halfway through, the ferry began to appear. Inch by inch, tap by tap, it coalesced amidst the haze.

A glamour-spell. Awe washed over Iseult. Shaped like a wide river barge, the ferry was affixed to a long, rusted chain that ran diagonally up and vanished into the clouds. At the center of the ferry’s deck was a steel-toothed pulley over which the chain ran.

Leopold opened his arms wide. “Did I not promise an easy route? This does all the climbing for us.”

Owl was the first to speak. She tapped at Iseult’s leg. “Dead,” she whispered, pointing at the ferry. Tan confusion clustered in her Threads.

At Leopold’s own confused Threads, Iseult translated: “She says it’s dead.”

“Yes, well.” He shrugged a shoulder. “Wood is dead. But that does not make it unsafe. See?” To prove his point, he tossed the first of their supply sacks on board. It thumped down beside the pulley, and the wood creaked like a ship at sea.

The ferry itself, though, scarcely budged.

Still, Iseult and Owl did not join the prince. Iseult had no interest in peeling her back off the mountainside, and Owl had no interest in peeling herself off Iseult.

“Have you used this before?” Iseult asked.

“Many times.”

“How many?”

Leopold heaved the second supply sack onto the ferry to a second fanfare of groaning wood. “I have ridden this four times? Perhaps five? Admittedly, I don’t use it every time I visit.”

As far as Iseult was concerned, “five times” did not equate to “many.”

“And how many times have you actually visited?” she asked, even as she knew she was stalling for time.

Leopold indulged her, his grin wide. The cold air suited him. His cheeks glowed pink. “I have been here more times than I can count, Iseult. Ever since I was a boy. The new Abbot is the sixth son of a Cartorran nobleman, and the Abbot before him was the eighth son. Men like that, you see, are useful to princes.”

Iseult did not in fact see, but she supposed she would learn soon enough what Leopold meant. No more standing here clutching Owl. No more waiting for courage to find her. After three stabilizing breaths, Iseult knelt beside the girl.

“We have to get on,” she said in her gentlest tones. “I know it’s scary, but we can’t stay here any longer.”

“Why?” Owl’s Threads hummed with red resistance.

“Because it’s the only way to reach the Monastery. And this”—Iseult motioned to the fog and narrow path—“isn’t a good campsite for us.”

“Why?”

“Why … what?” Iseult’s nose twitched. She did not want to argue. Everything had been going so well with Owl since last night. Please, Moon Mother, don’t let it stop now. “Why can’t we camp here? Or why are we going to the Monastery?”

Owl nodded, and Iseult had to assume she was nodding at the second question. “Because we’ll be safe with the monks.”

“I don’t want to.” Then, before Iseult could stop her, hundreds of tiny pebbles scuttled across Owl’s body, and within half a breath, she was hidden away.

This time, Iseult’s nose really wrinkled. Stasis, she reminded herself, even as fire sparked in her fingertips.

“I like it here,” Owl added, a tiny mouth appearing in the stones. “So I will stay.”

Ah, Iseult thought, and just like that, her frustration bled away. She had heard these words before. She had said those words before—ten years ago. I like it here. So I will stay. Her mother had tried to pull her from a tree in the Midenzi settlement. It was the tree Iseult had always sought refuge in when the other children had turned on her.

On that particular day, Iseult had refused to come down when Gretchya called, so her mother had snipped, “Fine,” before walking away. It had made Iseult’s heart drop to her toes. Made her whole body feel empty. She had wanted her mother to argue with her. She had wanted her mother to ask why she was even in the oak tree at all.

But Gretchya hadn’t asked that day, nor did she ask on any other.

Iseult wouldn’t make the same mistake.

“Why don’t you want to go?” Iseult aimed a taut smile at the stones.