“Can you break through such a monstrosity?” Alexus asks. “You can conquer death, see through time, and feel people’s emotions from miles away. Perhaps this won’t be the task I fear.”
I curl my fingers around words unspoken. Saving him was the grandest magick I’ve ever worked. I’ve saved a doe, Tuck the dog, a bird, and a few other small creatures, and I’ve performed a few minuscule healings, but stealing death for a person? Last night, thanks to desperation, I’d held enough faith that I could save Mother and Alexus, but there was never any guarantee.
“We shall see,” is my reply.
A half-hour later, we ride along the forest’s thorny fringe, headed toward Littledenn. We pass so many fallen Witch Walkers that I stop, wanting to bury the dead, or at least build a pyre piled with bodies and ashes and pray to Loria for their souls.
Alexus slows his horse and gives me a long look, a hint of sadness lining his brow. “I’m sorry. It goes against all that I am to leave them here, but there isn’t enough time.”
I know there isn’t time, but my heart still breaks all over again, a crevice forming in my soul that might never heal.
Alexus dismounts anyway and retrieves a trampled flag that lies rumpled and dirty on the ground. Neri’s flag—ice blue and snow white, with a white wolf stitched in silver thread. He hands it to me, an offering, a piece of my home he thinks I might wish to keep. To cherish.
I accept, but I take the dagger he gave me and stab it into the fabric, tearing the blade from one end to the other, over and over, until the material is nothing but shreds, and the rising pain inside me has abated.
A lone tear escapes down my cheek, but Alexus is watching, so I ignore it. Instead of wiping it away, I toss the flag to the ground and sign to him.
“I hate Neri.”
He plants his hands on his hips and raises his dark brows. “I see that.”
Concern flashes across his face, and something more as well, but he turns away and mounts his horse before I can place it. I’m sure he finds me sacrilegious, but I don’t care.
“Look for any weakness,” I tell him. “Broken limbs. Thin vines. Missing bramble.”
He eyes the thorny barrier with diligence as we ride on, but the wall is so perfectly intact, the magick crafted with flawless precision. For Witch Walkers, if a refrain is chanted wrong or a lyric left unsaid, it manifests as a damaged thread in the fabric of our construct. I cannot imagine a horde of warriors creating magick as sure as this, without even one imperfection.
Soon I’m reminded that nothing is perfect.
We come upon a weak spot in the barrier along the outskirts of Hampstead Loch, a place where the thick limbs are sparse enough to see through, providing a glimpse of the green and brown expanse that is Frostwater Wood. I dismount to sit at the forest’s edge and begin trying everything within my power—which, decidedly, isn’t much—to get inside.
First, I try conjuring a wood-eating blight. Once upon a time, when Finn and I were young, we managed to cast such a disease on Betha’s favorite flowering bush, all because she made us collect its buds for her soap, and we’d grown tired of bloody fingertips from its thorns. We were barely ten years old and didn’t give an owl’s hoot about such things as smelling fresh. This isn’t a bush, however, and Finn isn’t here to craft his part of the song.
My heart squeezes around the empty place he used to inhabit, and I force myself not to cry.
Later, when the afternoon sun sits lower in the sky, and I’ve tried the handful of magickal designs that exist in my arsenal, I’m ready to give up.
Then I think of lightning.
I’ve always been drawn to thunderstorms, the way the air pulsates with power beforehand, making me feel like—if I just stand outside long enough—I can absorb it. Sometimes storms tear through the vale mid-summer, leaving behind a path of destruction for us to heal. But other times—the times that thrill me most—lightning bolts arc across the sky, white-hot light tinted in lavender, fracturing fevered nights, wild and restless as me.
Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to capture lightning. And when I try my hardest to craft a song built from ancient words, begging Loria to imbibe my spirit with a bolt of energy—the kind that can split even the heavens, that I might part this godsforsaken wall—nothing happens.
Not a damned thing.
Alexus crouches beside me, watching the tiny construct of my magick fall apart. He’s been silent as I tried and failed and tried again, which is a lot given that we needed to get through the wall hours ago.
Sensing his growing disappointment, I let the final silver strands of my spell collapse, my hands along with them.
He drops his head and lets out a quiet sigh. When he looks back up, he says, “Might I give some instruction?”
I start to roll my eyes but remember who I’m with. This is the Witch Collector, a man who—much as it pains me to admit—seems to truly know the Witch Walkers in his care, as well as their talent. Yesterday, the thought of allowing him to teach me anything would’ve likely made me implode from the sheer absurdity of it all. But now I nod, annoyed and embarrassed that my lack of skill is so painfully visible, regardless of the marks decorating my skin.
“You’re thinking too hard.” He taps his chest. “Magick can be created from a song, but it isn’t required. In truth, the most powerful magick is conjured from the deepest parts of our souls, not with voices or hands or anything else. But, no matter how a conjurer builds their magickal constructs, it must come from the heart. You know this, yes? Born of emotion, love, hope, sadness, desperation, all tied to ancient commandments of the old gods. The words are easy. Reaching for the emotion is what’s hard.”
“Easy?” I give him an incredulous look. “You cannot fathom how hard the words are for me.”
Everything about the ancient language of Elikesh is different from how we speak in Tiressia, down to the way the words in each sentence are ordered. I don’t have the luxury of mimicking sound. The emphasis on certain syllables must be correct as well, something I do with precise movements, or else the entire construct fails.
It’s anything but easy.
I glance down, but Alexus tilts my chin, forcing me to look into his bottomless eyes.
“Forgive me. It was wrong of me to say that. I only meant that I could give you the words. I may no longer have power at the ready in my blood, but I know Elikesh like no one else in the Northlands. I know the right words to say if you can translate them.”
I nod, slipping my chin from his touch. I’ve never thought about what kind of magick the Witch Collector possesses. It’s never mattered. He’s the king’s man, which gives him power regardless. I wasn’t even sure if he had magick until now. There are no marks on his skin, which leaves me curious. I may no longer have power at the ready in my blood, he’d said.
Which means that he did, once upon a time. What happened to it?