Sightwitch (The Witchlands 0.5)

I wanted to ask why. I wanted answers to everything—why Captain mattered, what waited beyond that door, and above all, how to heal Sirmaya. But the Rook couldn’t speak, and my only chance for real answers lay beyond that rubble.

My gaze flicked down to Eridysi’s diary, still clenched in one hand. Perhaps it held answers too. After all, I had found this for a reason, and there were no coincidences, right?

“Will I be able to get back in?” I asked the Rook, lifting my gaze once more.

Another bird nod, and a tension unwound in my chest. I could return. I could fetch Captain, and we could return.

“And … will you go with me through the door?”

His head shuddered with a no.

“All right, then,” I murmured. I hadn’t really thought he would, and now he was clucking at me to hurry. So after easing the diary and pouch onto the rubble, I clambered over the fallen bricks and swept aside the vines.

Then, for the first time in my living memory, I left the grounds of the Convent.





Y2788 D3


MEMORIES

All the doors are finished. Tomorrow, we will move the first people through. They will come from the Scorched Lands, for Rhian is the only one of the Six with a network in place. The Exalted Ones watch too closely everywhere else.

But it’s a start. Person by person, family by family, we will move them into our secret city. A temporary home to hold them, hidden and safe, until we can find more permanent lands. Until the Six can use my now-finished blade to kill the Exalted Ones once and for all.

Something Lisbet said, though, has left me pacing and picking my nails to the quick. It was as I celebrated with her father and Cora in the workshop. We had mulled wine. I had been saving the spices for weeks.

We were giddy. The heat from the drink had given us all flushed faces, and the excitement from finishing the last door—we laughed and laughed and I felt more full than I had ever felt in my life.

A true gift from the Goddess.

I stirred a fresh pot of wine while Cora taught her father to play taro. Lisbet had come to my side, watching as the liquid spun and spun in its pot. The serene smile she always wore rested on her small mouth.

Then it suddenly stretched bigger, her eyes glowing bright, and she said, “I always wanted a brother.”

“Oh?” was my absent reply. It was such an odd, Lisbet-like thing to say.

But then she patted at my stomach. “Him,” she said emphatically. “Though I won’t get to meet him for a very, very long time.”

It took three circles of the spoon before I understood what she’d said. “You mean …” My stirring slowed to a stop. “I am with child?”

She nodded, and I gulped. Her words simply would not click into place.

Me. A mother by blood.

There was no time for this revelation to settle, though, before Lisbet moved on to the next subject.

“It will all be over quickly, Dysi, so you don’t need to worry like you do.”

“What will?” The question was breathy and lost. “The child?”

“No. I mean the end.”

Cold ran through me. “The end of what, Lis?”

“Of everything, of course. It will be painful, but I promise it won’t last long … Oh, the wine is burning!” She pointed to the pot, and before I could stop her, she’d snatched the spoon and taken over.

It took all my energy to feign joy after that, and as I have done with all of Lisbet’s prophecies, I scribbled down these words on the nearest page I could find—a page already filled with her visions.

I should ask Nadya to search the scrying pool for answers, but I find myself bound by chains. Unable to leave the workshop, unable to do anything but circle the same path as blood wells from nailbeds torn too low.

I did not tell the general of our child. I should have, but I am too scared.


The Paladins we locked away will one day walk among us. Vengeance will be theirs, in a fury unchecked, for their power was never ours to claim. Yet only in death, could they understand life. And only in life, will they change the world.

-Y2786 D267




It will all be over quickly. The end of everything.

-Y2786 D38





I had no idea where in the Witchlands I was. When I strode through the doorway, fire had consumed me—or perhaps it had been cold. I couldn’t tell. It was all so fast, so intense.

Then I was there. Somewhere other, where rain slashed and thunder boomed. Tree varieties I’d only seen sketched in books bent and creaked against a storm.

Cypress and salt cedar trees were so much larger in person, and much, much more frightening when they were about to break.

I was soaked before I’d made it ten paces from the doorway. Small runoff rivers cascaded across my feet and into my boots. I wasn’t sure where I was going, I simply aimed for the eye of the storm. The skittering charge in the air thickened and shimmered the nearer I approached.

Captain’s magic drew me to him; I was a magnet slinging toward a lodestone.

Rain battered me. Winds surged behind, against, around. I fought on, until the jungle fell away to reveal a narrow spit of beach where waves rocked and dragged.

I’d never seen the ocean, yet there was no time to take it all in, for without the jungle’s cover, the storm’s force doubled.

Hail pelted down. I had to fling up my arms to block against it. Yet I’d found him. A cyclone swept around him, much too strong for me to cross.

More concerning, though, was the boat he held above his head.

A huge beast of a ship, like the Dalmottis used for trade. His winds kept it aloft, while lightning slashed and jagged around him. It hit the boat’s planks, the sand, and even Captain.

I narrowed my eyes, straining to focus through the brilliant light and whipping sands.

That was when I saw them: men. An entire crew’s worth, half of them crawling away while the other half ran as fast as the wind would let them.

Oh, Captain, what have you done? He had cleaved again—of that much I had no doubt. Yet he’d been able to come back, inside the mountain. Surely he could be saved again.

I certainly had to try, if for no other reason than to save the crew now trying to flee.

My arms fell. The hail beat into me anew, but this was nothing compared to the hell I’d faced inside the mountain. If I could face monsters in the Crypts and shadow wyrms, if I could battle Sirmaya’s ice and come out alive, then a little storm was nothing to fear.

Sand scraped my face; lightning sizzled my cheeks. Then I was to the ship’s shadow.

The boat jolted, dropping close. I fell to the sand. “Stop!” The word ripped from my throat and vanished on the wind. Even if I hadn’t worn my throat raw while screaming in the ice, I could never produce enough sound for Captain to hear.

Yet as I dragged up from the sand, something dug into my hipbone. The bell. In a storm-torn instant, I was on my knees and wrenching the bell from its pouch. Then I swung that thing with all my might, directly at the sky. Directly at Captain.

The sound was neither pure nor loud, but it was enough. It rippled through me, more feeling than anything else.