Sightwitch (The Witchlands 0.5)

“Plus, the passages will be so narrow, you probably won’t be able to fly. You’ll have to hop everywhere!”

Finally, his wings furled entirely and his head sank. But rather than feel triumphant, a prickly sadness unwound in my chest.

I would have liked to have his company. Especially since the words A LONE SISTER IS LOST were carved into a wall mere paces behind me.

I gulped, fists clenching, and whispered, “Firmly gripped upon it.”

Then before my courage could falter, I pushed into the Crypts and left the Rook behind.





Y2786 D218


MEMORIES

Cora distracted me today, humming to herself as she always does. We were in my workshop, for I still have much to do and the girls can study their books here as easily as they can in the Convent.

Lisbet sat bowed over a Memory Record, and Cora was practicing her letters, her quill scratching in time to one of the skipping songs I taught her last week.

“One by one into the tombs,

One by one for sleeping.”



Yet Cora added a new verse—words that sent chills down my back. When I asked her if she made them up, she simply said, “It is how the song ends. That’s what the ghosts told Lisbet.” Then off she went, chanting again to herself:

“One by one into the tombs,

One by one for sleeping.

Shadows, fissures, cleft in two,

As one by one comes creeping.”



When I asked Lisbet if she truly had heard these new lines from the ghosts, her response only made the chills worsen. “Of course, Dysi,” she said in that serious way of hers. “Don’t you hear them saying it too? They certainly want you to hear.”

“They want me to hear,” I repeated, trying to sort out what her words might mean.

She took it as a question, nodding sharply. “Oh, yes. It’s a warning for us all, but no one ever seems to listen.”


LATER

I noticed tonight at the evening meal that Lisbet’s eyes are clearing.

Yes, already. She has not even been Summoned to the heart of the mountain, but already flecks of silver speckle her hazel eyes.

I do not know why this frightens me, and when I draw the cards, they offer me no help.





LATER — 9 hours left to find Tanzi

I was a fool to worry. The lower Crypts were not so different from the higher levels.

Yes, the Firewitched lanterns were fewer and farther between. And yes, the air turned heavier, the weight of the mountain pressing ever harder. The biggest difference, though, was how quickly the temperature plunged.

Level 6, I was comfortable enough. Level 7, less so. By the time I was halfway across Level 8, my teeth were chattering and my breath plumed. I had to huddle deep in my cloak with my hands stuffed into my tunic pockets.

Gloves, I thought. I should have brought gloves. I puffed an exhale, and it twined around ghosts that flittered close.

Fewer than I’d guessed. Far fewer. As if the memories here were so old, the ghosts had finally settled back onto the page.

I was especially regretting the absence of gloves when I reached the stairwell down to Level 9. So dark was its snaking tunnel that I had to stop and rummage the lantern from my pack—a Firewitched lantern, for at least in this regard I had come fully prepared. No flint nor flame to worry about. Just a whispered “Ignite.”

Then down I went.

When I eventually stepped out of the stairs and onto the balcony of Level 9, I drew up short. Where the ghosts had been silent and absent before, now they rushed at me. A tidal wave of whispers and wind that sent me doubling over.

I couldn’t see a thing. Only the fan of yellow light that sprayed out from the lantern at my feet.

The cold, the pressure, the ghosts, and the darkness—this is what death must feel like. Trapped, with chains of ice and whispers to pin you down. I wanted to return to the blessed silence, just for a moment—

“No,” I spat. “I am firmly gripped upon it.” Though I lacked the Sight, I knew how to follow rules. How to do what needed to be done.

After scooping up the lantern, I set off once more. Ten paces—that was as far as I could see ahead. Enough to descend the steep stairs onto the main floor of Level 9. Enough to set off down the central thoroughfare that bisected the shelves exactly like every other level.

The ghosts followed, clotting thickly. A haze to dampen my lantern’s glow. A roar of indecipherable voices and angry memories that somehow turned sharper, louder with each step I pushed forward.

Whatever records were on this floor, they were not happy ones.

Onward I slogged. One foot in front of the next. I lost all concept of time, all concept of space. It was simply me, the ghosts, and the cold.

Until abruptly it wasn’t anymore.

Between one row of stone shelves and the next, the ghosts fled. With a shriek that set my skin to crawling, they burst into a spinning wind. It knocked against me. I lost my footing and fell to one knee.

Then they were gone. Just like that. No more ghosts, no more furious memories—only the resounding quake of their final howls to shimmer in the air.

I knew in an instant that this was bad. Whatever could scare away ghosts had to be bad, bad, bad.

Gulping in air, I shoved myself to my feet and thrust out the lantern. Left. Right. Nothing but shelves, stone, shadows, and tomes.

“Ryber,” trilled a voice behind me. High-pitched and singsong.

I lurched around, light streaking. Pulse keening. But there was nothing.

“Ryber,” called a second voice, slightly deeper and from a different direction.

Again, when I twisted toward it, I saw nothing. Only swaying beams of lantern light.

“Ryber,” came a third. The highest tone of them all and coasting toward me from behind.

I didn’t want to look, but I knew I had to.

I turned. I saw.

Three women glided toward me. Solid. Real. And so very, very wrong. They wore silver tunics, their bare feet peeking out from the bottoms …

Feet that did not touch the ground. They hovered. They flew.

And where there should have been faces, there was nothing at all. Just black skin, brown skin, and pale skin.

It was their arms and hands, though, that were the most unnatural. Stretched to their feet and with fingers three times as long they ought to be, the women’s hands scraped over the stone as they floated toward me.

“Ryber,” they harmonized in a minor chord. “You should not have come here, Ryber.”

Every muscle in me shook with the need to move. To run. Yet it was as if ropes held me down. I could not look away. I could not turn or move or do anything at all.

“Why did you come here, Ryber?” Closer, closer. “This is not where you belong.”

No, I thought, it isn’t. And with that one thought, my body finally ignited.

I turned. I ran.

The women followed.

Not that I could see them. Forward was all I saw, pack clanking and lantern light bouncing. Shelf after shelf, rough tile after rough tile.

But I heard the women, chanting my name over and over, all while their fingers scratched louder across the floor.

What the blighter were they? And how the blighter was I supposed to get away from them?