Bloodwitch (The Witchlands, #3)

Then the Fury shoved into the tent, and immediately, all voices silenced. Aeduan followed a heartbeat later. Orange light washed over him, bright enough to steal his sight.

Gradually, four figures materialized, poised around a long table covered in maps. On the left was a woman with skin as dark as the night’s sky and white hair piled atop her head. She held a pipe in one hand, extended mid-gesture before Aeduan entered. A jade ring glinted on her thumb.

Beside her stood a man with serpents tattooed across his brown face and the gold serpentine belt all Baedyeds wore. On the table’s right was a Threadwitch, tall with wide-set green eyes that glittered in a brazier’s glow.

At the head of the table stood Aeduan’s father, the Raider King of the North.

Ragnor det Amalej.

He was not a tall man, shorter than Aeduan by half a head, but furs added breadth to his shoulders. Beneath them, he wore the same high-necked black silk he always wore. Silver streaked his hair, more since Aeduan had last seen him. There were more lines around his eyes too—eyes of pale hazel beneath thick lashes.

Age, height, and eye color. The only differences between father and son.

“Leave us,” Ragnor said, and his three commanders instantly obeyed. The Baedyed and the Threadwitch ignored Aeduan as they strode by, but the white-haired woman paused her saunter just long enough to give him a thorough once-over.

And just long enough to murmur, “Blood on the snow.” Though if she directed these words at him or at herself, he could not say. Then she was gone, and the Fury swiveled to follow.

“Wait,” Ragnor ordered in Arithuanian.

The Fury obeyed, spindling toward the table. The tent was too small for him; he had to duck beneath struts, and once at the maps, he twitched and blinked and fidgeted like a leopard trapped within a cage.

He bore no sign of cleaving darkness, though. No shadows or cruelty or anything beyond blond height, blue eyes, and a mangled ear. Snow flickered around his head. He bowed.

“General.” It was the wrong title, but Ragnor did not correct him.

“Find Corlant. Bring him to me.”

The Fury straightened. “What about the attack on the Crypts? I have a new strategy for entering the door—”

“And this errand will not detract from it.”

The Fury’s face tightened. Snow swirled faster around his head. “But it will. I lose precious time with the Puppeteer. She fights me at every turn.”

“Then you will have to fight harder.”

Another tightening. Another swishing of snow. “And what if your soldiers reach the Monastery before I can break the Crypts?”

“Then so be it.” Displeasure hardened Ragnor’s tone. “Why do you argue with me, Bastien? Go to Esme, have her find Corlant. Then fetch the priest and return him here. These are your orders.”

For a long moment, the air in the room stretched long and tight. A bow being drawn. Until at last, the Fury loosed it.

“I do not like Corlant,” he spat, and at that declaration, frost erupted across the floor. It crackled over the rushes and climbed the walls. It crunched on Aeduan’s boots. “This iteration is an abomination, and you know it. Kill him and be done with it.”

“We need him. A babe is no use to our cause.”

“Nor are raiders! They will turn on us—and on each other at the first gleam of gold.”

“We have opened our arms to all, and that means all.” Ragnor’s voice had turned lethally low, unimpressed by the Fury’s ice. “Now leave. This argument is over, and I will hear no more on the subject. You have your orders. Follow them.” Without another word, Ragnor turned his back on the Fury and focused on the maps before him.

Black lines laced over the Fury’s face. The snow around his head turned to shadows, and the frost at his feet turned to darkness.

Then his whole body tensed, head cocking sideways as if he heard something far away. Two breaths before his face relaxed, the shadows dissolved. He sighed audibly, a smile even towing at his mouth.

The Fury left in a slice of cold and wind.

Aeduan approached the table, approached the bloodied iron and sleeping ice that marked his father’s blood. The frosted baby’s breath and bone-deep loss. Even as weak as Aeduan was, his father’s scent was too familiar to ever lose—and too strong to ever evade. It called to his magic, a brief spark of power muffled by the curse’s pain.

His father had already sent for Corlant, so Aeduan would deal with the poison in his veins when the man who’d caused it arrived.

As Aeduan skirted the table, a map of the valley came into focus, recently drawn, with the river’s current flow and the islands marked. Coins were spread across the eastern hillside, denoting troop placements. Ragnor offered no expression when Aeduan came to a stop beside him. He simply assessed his son.

There was a stillness about the Raider King. A thoughtful calm that suggested that he always knew the best course of action and that he had, in his quiet way, thought through all possibilities before landing on the best outcome for everyone. No words were spoken without a pause, no choices ever made without great deliberation. This moment was no different.

“Son,” Ragnor said eventually, using Nomatsi.

“Father,” Aeduan replied. Two years of saying that word, yet it still tasted so strange.

“It is good you arrived when you did,” Ragnor said. “I did not want to begin the assault without you.” He bent over the map.

“You plan to attack the Monastery?”

“We have already begun.” His father pointed to silver coins placed atop the river. “Icewitches,” he explained. “From the Herk-hül tribe in the north. As we speak, they freeze the river so our troops and cavalry may cross.” He waved to bronze and copper coins. “The horn for the attack should sound at any moment.”

“Many of your soldiers will die.”

“Yes,” his father agreed.

“The Monastery is built to withstand years of siege. Decades, if needed.”

“Yes,” his father repeated. “But what is it that I always tell you?”

Aeduan swallowed, fingers tapping at his sword pommel. “That the empires have grown lazy and unambitious.”

“And the monks have fared no better. They have gone to war amongst themselves, never suspecting someone might be waiting for such an opportunity.” With curt efficiency, he pulled a second vellum map from a stack beside the table. Two steps brought him to a clear expanse, where he unfurled it.

Despite dirty edges and faded ink, the layout of both the Monastery and its surrounding grounds was unmistakable. Large portions of the building were absent, though. The forge and mills were in the wrong place, and there were inconsistencies in the landscape. Trees where there should have been a stream, rock where there was now forest.

Sweat broke out on Aeduan’s brow.

“This is the fortress as it was a thousand years ago,” Ragnor said. “When it still belonged to kings, this cave here,” he tapped a shaded circle at the base of the cliff, “leads to a tunnel. It was once used for escape. Today, it has been left forgotten—and left open.”