The answer to the Truthstone had been in front of Safi all along, but she had been so preoccupied by both sides of the coin, she had never considered she could only use one.
“Thank you,” she murmured absently to Rokesh, already swirling away. But she paused after two steps, a fresh bolt of inspiration rising in her chest. She glanced back. “How do you make your poison darts?”
If he was startled by the question, he didn’t show it. He simply said, “When we carve them, we tell them what we want them to be.”
“I see,” she said—and she did see. Just like Threadwitches reciting words to their stones, just like healers embedding their power into the act of creation.
Without another word, Safi left Rokesh and hurried to her desk. She knocked everything off the table. All the books with their matching covers, all the stones and threads and tools that served well for other witches.
Then she turned and faced the telescope outside. She had been so focused on stones because they worked for other Aetherwitches that she had failed to consider other tools. She had failed to consider that she needed to assemble something.
That old crow had been right all along.
Safi marched into her garden, but before she hefted the telescope high, a clack-clack-clack sounded from the garden wall. Chills prickled down Safi’s arm as she swiveled her gaze up—and met two dark eyes.
“You aren’t just a bird, are you?”
Another clack that Safi suspected meant, No, I am not.
“Do you belong to … someone?” As Safi asked this question, she realized it was a stupid one. All of this was ludicrous, actually. She was talking to a thrice-damned crow and expecting him—believing him—to answer.
A crow that saved your life by showing you a magic doorway.
And a crow that first suggested this very telescope to you, as well as Truthstones.
Nope. Safi was not going to talk to birds or entertain the possibility that they might be sentient. So even though its clattering laugh skipped after her, she lifted the telescope, returned to her room, and slammed the garden door behind her.
Then Safi worked. Piece by piece, she disassembled the telescope. Lenses, frames, mirrors, screws. While she turned and twisted and plied, she thought about Iseult. She thought about Habim, and she thought about the Hell-Bards, tortured and poisoned below. She thought about Vaness unmasked, and she thought about how wrong the world had become.
She put all her thought, all her energy, all her being into that one sensation, that one piece of her magic’s power. False, false, false. Lies, lies, lies. She sank into the way untruths made her skin crawl and her ribs rumble. The way they pinched her spine and squished her organs. She thought of Cleaved. She thought of Red Sails. She thought of every rotten, wicked person she had ever met.
Three times, she heard the chimes clang. No one disturbed her, so onward Safi worked, following the intuition that had always guided her. And now that she followed the right path, it was as if her magic wanted this—it craved freedom as much as Safi did. It rushed out of her, filling glass and brass and screw.
Until, hours later, Safi finished.
It lay gleaming in the gauzy sunlight: a tiny spyglass assembled from the telescope’s eyepiece, several interior lenses, and bits of thread and quartz.
A Truth-lens.
Then Safi staggered to her bed, her mind and body a husk, and she slept.
THIRTY-SIX
The lines of the Cleaved did not lead Merik back to Esme’s tower. Instead, they looped him west, up a hill clotted with forest. If there had ever been buildings here, no signs remained now.
It was sunset by the time Merik finally crested the hill, legs aching and spine stiff from too much walking. Running, too, when his body could handle it. There’d been no time to waste, so he had not waited to watch the Northman go. He’d simply pointed again, repeating the words Go north. People help you.
Then Merik had grabbed his wet shirt and run until his legs had given out. It had not taken long. Merik was a broken man. The Puppeteer had seen to that. Yet even if his muscles and bones might fail him, his mind was as sharp as it had ever been. Discovering the Northman had energized him. A storm of questions and implications, with one lightning bolt shining brighter than the rest.
If that man had returned from cleaving, if he had broken free of Esme’s control—even if he didn’t know how—maybe Merik could heal too. And if Merik could heal, then so could Kullen. So could all of these people.
That thought sustained Merik throughout the journey back to Poznin. He ran when he could, shambled when he could not, and he veered wide when he saw the gap in Cleaved that marked the deadly singing pool.
As Merik passed the final sentry in Esme’s new path up the hill, the forest suddenly opened wide. Ruby light streamed down upon a long, rounded pond, the waters still and dark. Six oaks with barren trunks and branches reached toward the sky, like corpses breaking from their graves. Though clearly long dead, they had somehow never blown over in a storm.
Not somehow, Merik realized, the longer he stared. There were no man-made structures here. No flagstones to line the edges, no monuments to worship the magic. There was only thick grass, thicker forest, and the creatures of the night whispering from the shadows.
With that thought, a memory surfaced—a skipping song Aunt Evrane had once taught him as a child.
Oak and grass to honor the winds,
Limestone and cypress for water,
Beech and granite, gifts from the earth,
Cedar and sandstone for fire.
Birch trees and snowfall, the birthplace of Aether,
In shadowy foxfire, Void waits,
While deep in the heart, where no sunlight reaches,
The Giant called Sleeper awakes.
Oak. Grass. This was the Origin Well of Arithuania. This was the Well bound to air magic—the Well that was the source of Merik’s own power.
And it was dead. Just like the Water Well he had grown up beside, this Well’s waters had stopped flowing; its six trees had dried to husks.
“There you are.” Esme’s voice wriggled out from the trees, and moments later, the woman herself appeared. A small path wound into the forest behind her. She wore a rich ermine cape, its hood trimmed with white velvet that glistened beneath the sun as she skipped his way.
Always skipping, Merik thought, muscles locking at her approach. Always delighted by her latest games. Sure enough, when she slowed to a stop ten paces away and drew back her hood, she was smiling widely.
“Welcome to my Loom.” She opened her arms. “This is how I control everything. Is it not beautiful?”
Merik hesitated, swallowing on a throat that had suddenly stopped working. He saw no loom. He saw nothing, save the Well, and though it was indeed beautiful, he feared admitting he saw only grass and water and moonlight.
But then she laughed. “Of course you cannot see it, Prince. Only a Threadwitch may. Or…” She cocked her head coyly to one side. “A Weaverwitch. Now, give me the gemstones.” She held out a pale hand.
Merik obeyed, fumbling the satchel from where he’d knotted it to his belt. The stones ground against one another. They had left a bruise against his hip from all the running.
“So many?” Esme said, eyes widening with hunger.
“Onga. There were many at the shrine.” He offered her the satchel, head bowed, and with a cry of delight, she loosened the drawstring.
Her cry quickly became a snarl. “You got the wrong ones.” Eyes blazing, she advanced on him. “I told you to get the stones with thread or yarn around them, Prince, but most of these do not have thread or yarn. You disobeyed me.”
“No,” Merik breathed, hands lifting. “No, please, it was an accident. I swear it.”
Esme did not care. Her free hand was already rising, already reaching toward the water. She plucked at the air like a harp.
Pain exploded inside Merik. First his skull, white and blinding. Then it lanced down his neck, into his
chest, constricting his lungs and filling his organs with hot oil. He collapsed to the grass.
He screamed. He begged. He wept, but still the pain seared and slashed and boiled until all he could do was cling to consciousness.
When at last the attack reared back—a slow withdrawal that somehow hurt more than the full onslaught—Merik could do nothing but convulse against the earth. The pain was so much worse than he remembered. A day without it, and he had forgotten the full extent of what Esme could do.
Though only with her Loom, he thought vaguely, and in the back of his mind, he wondered if she had to physically be beside it to use it.
A thump sounded near Merik’s head, and, neck trembling—everything trembling—he squeezed open his eyes to see what lay beside him. It was the satchel of stones.
“Sort through them,” Esme ordered. She had not moved from her place beside the Well, and her arm was still extended, fingers ready to play again at an invisible Loom.
Which suggested she did indeed need to be near the Loom to use it. That was good to know, and likely explained why Merik had not heard from her most of the day: she had been elsewhere.
“This time, Prince,” she said, “do it properly. I only want stones wrapped in thread or yarn. Do you understand?”
He nodded jerkily. His throat didn’t work, and his muscles scarcely cooperated as he tried to push himself up and grab for the satchel. His fingers twitched. His eyes blinked and blinked. Once he had the stones, it took him several tries to remove his coat. His shirt sleeve was still damp, and the evening’s breeze was a welcome chill against the fire alight within his veins.
He spread the coat on the grass, and then dumped the stones atop it. And Esme’s hand finally lowered from the Well. From her Loom.
For a time, she watched Merik separate the stones into two piles. It was slow work; he could scarcely see, even with the sunset streaming down. Thick tangles of cloud passed every few minutes, stealing the light, and often the strips of thread or yarn were so thin, they were almost undetectable.
He hated having Esme watch. At any moment, he might put a stone in the wrong pile and then she would punish him. So, though it made his throat ache and lips tear, he forced himself to croak, “Why do you need these stones? We did not…” He wet his lips. “We did not finish our lesson.”
At the sight of her sudden grin, his spine melted with relief.
“I knew I could teach you!” she cried. “Oh, you are fun, aren’t you?” Sweeping her skirts to one side, she sank gracefully to the grass and tucked her knees beneath her. “To answer your question, Prince, my Loom needs power, and to get that power, I need an outside source. Magic is not infinite, you know—or did you know that? I can see from your Threads that you are already confused. So dull and dim your brain must be.”
Esme motioned to the waters, rippling beneath a breeze. “It started with this Well. It was not completely dead when I found it six years ago. Mostly, but not completely. There was still enough life in it for me to cleave.”
Merik’s fingers froze over a red stone. Surely he had misheard.
“The death of a Well, and the birth of an army.” She sighed, a sound filled with fondness and longing. “An exciting time for me. All experimental, but I succeeded—as you can see.” She smiled at that.
And Merik hastily resumed his sorting. He had not misheard her; she had cleaved an Origin Well. Though how such a thing was possible, he could not even begin to comprehend.
As if following his thoughts, Esme said, “It requires great power, Prince. An immense amount of Threads to craft a Loom, and I almost killed myself doing it. Things today are not as they were in the time of Eridysi. Such power was easily accessed by the Paladins. Now…” She trailed off, gazing down at the grass. “Now, magic is different, so to claim enough power, I have to … think beyond.” Her gaze snapped up, shooting to Merik.
He did not dare meet her wild eyes. He grabbed more stones, inspected, and discarded.
He felt her focus drilling into him, though, as she went on. “When I found this Well, I knew it could provide what I needed. I did not know the full extent of my powers then, only that I could not make Threadstones and that my tribe”—she spat that word—“had no need for a Threadwitch who couldn’t craft them.
“It makes you wonder,” she said, voice suddenly distant, “how many Threadwitches were cast out because they were like me? How many faced ruin and hate, when the truth was that they were not Threadwitches at all?”
Merik didn’t answer her question, for he knew she expected none. She was, however, expecting something. He could feel the anticipation fretting off her.
“You … have no tribe?” he asked, hoping more questions would appease her.
His risk succeeded. Finally, her attention fell away from Merik, and, grazing her fingers across the grass, she stared once more at the pool. “I am amalej now. No tribe, no family, no home. And not by choice, but by force. They sent me away because I was not what they wanted me to be.”
For half a heartbeat, pity unfurled in Merik’s heart. To be cast out from home and family because one did not fit … He had felt that way his whole childhood, relegated to the Nihar lands while Vivia grew up in the royal palace.
The truth, though—the truth that he hadn’t seen until it was too late—was that his family had been there all along. Evrane, Kullen, the people of Nihar, and even Vivia herself. He had just been too holy in his conceit to ever see them.
Merik’s eyes slid sideways, cautious not to draw Esme’s attention as he watched her. To be truly exiled, cut off from people and love—it was a fate he wished upon no one. And perhaps a person still lived inside all that hate, some of the girl she had once been.
With the glittering pool and stark sunset glowing upon Esme’s regal posture, fine cloak, and lucent skin, Merik was struck by how still the evening had become. How otherworldly, as if he floated not in nightmares, but in dreams.
“They were the first to go,” Esme said, snapping Merik’s mind back to the clearing, back to the lesson. She smiled serenely at him. “Every last one of my tribe. Every person who had ever turned me away, I destroyed.” Without looking away from him, she reached her hand to the Well. A flick, a pull, a strum, and a rustling overtook the forest.
One by one, Cleaved stepped from the trees. Onto the grass, onto the paths, hundreds of Cleaved—and hundreds more trailing behind.
“It was worth near-death to claim them, Prince. Nothing tastes better than justice. And now I can tug at their Threads whenever I want”—she plucked at the air—“and then I can watch them dance.”
No, Merik wanted to say. Please don’t make them do it. But it was already too late: the Cleaved had started their dancing. Some clapped, some spun, some bounced and swayed, and two even went so far as to move their feet in a shambling, grotesque imitation of the Nubrevnan four-step. It was as if each Cleaved did whatever they thought was dancing.
And on and on they went, while Esme beamed and giggled and clapped a rhythm for them to move by.
Merik thought he might hurl. He had no trace of pity for her now.
“How … how do you do it?” he forced out, even as bile thickened in his throat. All he knew was that he had to stop this somehow, and maybe questions were the way to do it.
They weren’t. She just ignored him, giggling all the louder and clapping all the faster. Faster, faster even as Cleaved began to topple into one another or trip over their own half-dead feet.
So Merik tried a new tack. A trick he’d learned from Vivia, so adept at handling their father. “How do you control so many, Esme? You must be very skilled.”
Her hands paused. The Cleaved paused, some with legs kicked high, and others half fallen against tree trunks. Lazily, she withdrew her hand from the Loom. “I am the most skilled.”
The Cleaved abruptly fell into stiff-backed formation. They did not retreat into the forest, though, but remained where they were with a thousand sightless eyes to gaze upon Merik.
>
“It is the power of the Loom, Prince. But even its gifts are finite. Which is why you must help me. Why you must choose the proper Threadstones.” She bared her teeth. Then, in a sudden burst of speed, she folded onto all fours and crawled toward him.
Now, she did not look like a dream. Now, she looked like death on the prowl. Like hell-waters and Hagfishes come to claim his soul.
When she reached his coat, she scooped up a handful of gemstones bound in thread. “These will give me the power I need to make my next Loom, Prince. Threadwitches have bound their powers to these, and I suck them dry, like marrow from a bone. I grow stronger with each one.
“So now, when King Ragnor claims the Monastery, I will be ready to claim the Aether Well. And with that power, why…” She laughed, a bubbling, girlish sound. “Why, we will use Eridysi’s doors to take all of the Witchlands. One by one, the empires will fall, and one by one, the Wells will become mine.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
Burn them. Burn them all.
In her dreams, Iseult stood on a battlefield thick with smoke. Massive rocks blackened the edges of her vision, and fire burned across the earth. Unstoppable. This was the Contested Lands of her memory, the Contested Lands where she had killed the Firewitch, severing his Threads and cleaving him through and through.
Burned hair and smoking flesh. Autumn pyres and mercy screams.
Ten paces ahead, the Firewitch leered at her, a skeleton made of flames. His skull grinned. Laughed. Clack, clack, clack went his teeth.
He dangled too, arms outstretched at his sides like a puppet awaiting Iseult’s command. Shadows slaked down his frame, dark webs within the orange flames.
Unnatural flames, summoned by magic. Dominated by will.
But it was not the Firewitch who had summoned the flames this time, nor was it the Firewitch who controlled them. Iseult knew it was her own power, her own will—for she and the Firewitch were one now.
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