It was enough.
The chain wrapped around her ankle, stinging and bruising, and then yanked.
The world tilted as Yellowlegs pulled her feet out from under her, and Celaena went crashing to the floor. Yellowlegs rushed for her, but Celaena rolled across the shards, chain tangling around her, clinging to the ax with one hand, until her face brushed against the coarse fibers of the ancient rug before the oven.
There was a firm yank on the chain, and then another whipping sound. Metal slammed into Celaena’s forearm, so hard that she lost her grip on the ax. She flipped onto her back, still tangled in the infernal chain, only to find the iron teeth of Baba Yellowlegs looming above her. In a flash, the witch slammed Celaena back down into the carpet.
The iron nails dug into her skin, drawing blood as the witch pinned her by the shoulder. “Hold still, you foolish girl,” Yellowlegs hissed, grabbing for the length of the chain lying nearly.
The rug scratched against Celaena’s fingers as she stretched for the fallen ax, just inches out of reach. Her arm throbbed mercilessly, her ankle, too. If she could just get the ax … Yellowlegs lunged for Celaena’s neck, her teeth snapping.
Celaena threw herself to the side, narrowly dodging those iron teeth, and grabbed the ax at last. She hauled it up so hard that its blunt end slammed into the side of the old woman’s face.
Yellowlegs was knocked away, collapsing in a heap of billowing brown robes. Celaena scrambled back and raised the weapon between them.
Pushing to her hands and knees, Yellowlegs spat dark blood—blue blood—onto the aged rug, her eyes blazing. “I am going to make you wish you’d never been born. Both you and your prince.” And then Yellowlegs shot forward so fast Celaena could have sworn she was flying.
But she only got as far as Celaena’s feet.
Celaena brought the ax down, throwing every bit of strength into her arms. Blue blood sprayed everywhere.
There was a smile on Baba Yellowlegs’s decapitated head as it thudded to a stop.
Quiet fell. Even the fire, still burning so hot that she was sweating again, seemed to have gone silent. Celaena swallowed. Once. Twice.
Dorian couldn’t know. Even though she wanted to scold him to high hell for asking questions that Yellowlegs had deemed valuable enough to sell to others, he couldn’t know what had happened here. No one could.
When she at last found the strength to disentangle herself, her pants and boots were stained blue-black. Another outfit to be burned. She studied the body and the stained, soaking carpet. It hadn’t been quick, but it could still be clean. A missing person was better than a decapitated corpse.
Celaena raised her eyes to the large oven grate.
Chapter 42
Mort chuckled when she staggered through the tomb door. “Witch Slayer, are you? Another lovely title to add to your repertoire.”
“How do you know about that?” she asked, setting down her candle. She’d already burned her bloodied clothes. They had reeked as they burned—reeked like rotting flesh, just as Yellowlegs had. Fleetfoot had growled at the fireplace and tried to herd Celaena away by pressing her body against her legs.
“Oh, I can smell her on you,” Mort said. “Smell her fury and wickedness.”
Celaena peeled back the collar of her tunic to show the little cuts where Yellowlegs’s nails had pierced the skin right above her collarbone. She’d cleaned them out, but had a feeling they would leave marks, a necklace of scars. “What do you make of those?”
Mort winced. “Those make me grateful I’m made of bronze.”
“Will they harm me?”
“You killed a witch—and you’re now marked by a witch. It will not be the usual sort of wound.” Mort’s eyes narrowed. “You understand that you may have just landed yourself in a heap of trouble.”
Celaena groaned.
“Baba Yellowlegs was a leader—a queen to her clan,” Mort went on. “When they destroyed the Crochan family, they joined with the Blackbeaks and the Bluebloods in the Ironteeth Alliance. They still honor those oaths.”
“But I thought all the witches were gone—scattered to the winds.”
“Gone? The Crochans and those who followed them have been in hiding for generations. But the clans in the Ironteeth Alliance still travel about, as Baba did. Though many more of them live in the ruined and dark places of the world, content in their wickedness. But I suspect that when the Yellowlegs learn of their matron’s death, they will muster the Blackbeaks and the Bluebloods and demand answers from the king. And you will be fortunate if they do not come on their brooms and drag you into it.”
She grimaced. “I hope you’re wrong.”
Mort’s brows lowered slightly. “So do I.”
Celaena spent an hour in the tomb, reading through the riddle on the wall, puzzling over Yellowlegs’s words. Wyrdkeys, Wyrdgates … it was all so strange, so incomprehensible and terrifying. And if the king had them—if he even had one …
Celaena shuddered.
When staring at the riddle gave her no further answers, Celaena trudged back to her rooms for a much-needed nap.
At least she’d finally discovered a possible source of the king’s power. But she still needed to learn more. And then the real question: what was the king planning to do with the keys that he had not done already?
She had a feeling she didn’t want to know.
But the library catacombs might contain the answer to that most horrible of questions. There was a book she could use to gain access to that answer—a book that might have the unlocking spell she was looking for. And she knew that The Walking Dead would find her the moment she began looking for it.
Halfway up to her rooms, all plans for a nap vanished as Celaena turned back around and went to retrieve Damaris, and every other ancient blade she could carry.