Sightwitch

by Susan Dennard

  “No!” I swung around, palms rising. “No singing! Who knows what creatures are in here that you might wake up?”

  Captain’s face sank. Then he turned to the Rook, who’d been riding on his massive shoulder this whole time. “I wasn’t that loud, was I, Rook? Ow.” He swatted the bird off his shoulder. “He bit me!”

  “Of course he did.” I fought to keep my face set firmly in a frown. “His name is the Rook, not just Rook.”

  “The ‘the’ is that important, is it?” He rubbed at his ear and pouted like a sullen child the size of a tree trunk. Even his wrists and ears were enormous.

  When the air around us warmed with a charged heat, a delight sifted through me. Captain was finding his magic again. It was only a matter of time before he remembered how to use it.

  “The ‘the,’” I said, resuming the hike, “is as important as the lack of a ‘ta’ in my name. Ryber, not Ryberta. The Rook, not Rook.”

  “But you’re a person,” Captain argued, his footsteps resuming behind me. “It’s a bird.”

  “He’s a bird,” I corrected.

  “Noden save me—you really don’t ever break the rules, do you?”

  “What does that mean?” Heat fanned up my cheeks. How did he know I liked rules so much? He’d only known me a few hours.

  I almost wish I hadn’t asked the question, for he proceeded to describe in explicit detail (what an ability for recall considering he had no memory!) every single rule I’d told him to follow since leaving the workshop—as well as every single time I’d scolded him for not following said rules.

  “Forty-three times,” he told me. “Hye, I counted, and I’d say there’s no denying that you really love your rules.”

  “I don’t love them,” I muttered. “But why have them if you aren’t going to follow them?”

  “Or,” he countered, picking up his pace and falling into step beside me, “maybe rules exist simply for the breaking.”

  My chest tightened at those words. He sounded exactly like Tanzi, and the only way I could hide the sudden tears burning behind my eyes was to offer him the same answer I’d always given her.

  Though first, I offered a hard scoff. “I like rules.” I stomped a bit faster. “They give me structure. They give me a clear path to follow—which is Rule 15, by the way: Always follow the marked path.”

  “But maybe the marked path isn’t the right one. Maybe,” he dragged out that word as if still thinking, “there isn’t one set path at all.”

  “Of course there is. There are no coincidences, and there is no changing what is meant to be.”

  “But how do you know that? How do you know all of this”—he twirled his hand—“is what you’re meant to be and not something else?”

  I skidded to a halt so fast I almost tripped—and for some reason I really can’t explain, a fury rose inside me. A boiling, vicious heat that I could convey only in a single word, “What?”

  Captain took the question exactly as spoken. “I asked how you knew that—”

  “I heard you, but why would you say that?”

  “Well, you said you are the only Sister without the Sight, which has me thinking: maybe that’s simply not what you’re meant to be.”

  “Of course it’s what I’m meant to be,” I gnashed out. “There are no coincidences! I found the Convent on my own when I was only four years old. I’m the only Sister ever to do that! Which means Sirmaya brought me here because this what I’m meant to be. A Sightwitch Sister. A powerful Sightwitch Sister. End of story.”

  As I kicked into a raging stomp, hands shaking at my sides, a tremor struck. Stronger than before, it stole my feet from under me.

  I crumpled to the steps, curled in a ball with my hands over my head, and waited for the quake to pass.

  It lasted for at least a minute, the mountain grinding and furious. Dust puffed and plumed. Stones roared against stones.

  Sirmaya is angry. It was the only thought I could produce. Sirmaya is angry. Sirmaya is angry.

  I just prayed she wasn’t angry with me. I had forced my way into the mountain, and I had broken more rules than I could count.

  When at last the shaking subsided, I didn’t move right away. I simply lay there, wound up and with my pulse thumping in my ears.

  Had I made a mistake? Was the Goddess angry because I had chosen the wrong path?

  No, I decided at last. Captain was wrong. There were no coincidences, and this was my path.

  I would finish what I had come to do. I would find Tanzi and the other Sisters, and no matter what might happen, I had to stay firmly gripped upon that.

  Y2787 D176

  MEMORIES

  Something Lisbet said this morning has altered everything. One comment, and my entire perspective has changed.

  I was showing her my latest design for the viewing glass and blade.

  “The glass must be bigger.” She pointed at the frame.

  “Glass is expensive,” I said, more than a little annoyed. This was, after all, my fourth design that an eight-year-old had turned down. “Not to mention, it’s very hard to buy in the middle of a mountain range, Lisbet.”

  “Bigger,” she insisted.

  “The power from Sirmaya is strong,” I insisted back. “I do not see why we must lose more time and money on a larger piece of glass.”

  Her little jaw jutted sideways, and I swear her eyes flashed with silver light. “It does not matter if Sirmaya is strong,” she said with all the authority of the Goddess. “If Her Threads do not have enough surface to bind to, then the spell will never be powerful enough.”

  My mouth fell open. I gawked like a fool for at least an entire minute while the implications of her words unraveled in my mind.

  Of course. Of course a spell to reveal a Paladin’s past lives would need heaps of power, and of course the Threads of that power would need space to adhere to.

  All this time, it was not that the Vergedi Knot hadn’t been strong enough to create a passageway; I had been using materials too small.

  Blessed Sirmaya, why had I not seen? It was so obvious! The answer had been lurking beneath my toe all along, but I had never once thought to lift my foot.

  “Right,” I mumbled at her, already turning away. Already shooting for the stairs. “I’ll have Nadya send for more glass.” My feet hit the steps, and I barreled downstairs to my piles of rock. Limestone from the coast, granite from these mountains, clay from the plains in the North …

  Six types of stone for the six doorways I needed to build. But small rocks would not do. I needed boulders. I needed monoliths.

  Saria, I decided before I even reached the closest pile. Lady Saria would be able to help, and I had a meeting in a week with the Six.

  It was all going to work.

  And Sister Nadya had been right this whole time: all I had needed to find my answer was a change to shake things loose.

  2(?) hours left to find Tanzi

  Captain tried to apologize. It was the only time we spoke for the rest of our trek on the Way Below—and also the only words we shared in a tunnel carved entirely through ice labeled The Future.

  Seventeen times Captain declared he was sorry, and seventeen times I ignored him.

  It was childish of me. I see that now, but responding meant I would have to consider why his words upset me.

  And that was something I was not ready to do.

  The Rook nestled on my shoulder the whole journey, and each time my teeth started chattering, he cuddled against my neck.

  Like before, in the cavern with the shadow wyrms, the ice seemed lit from within. It glowed so bright I had to squint to see.

  And also like before, black filaments and patches hovered deep within the frozen blue. Too far away to distinguish real shapes, but they were there all the same and impossible to ignore.

  “What do you think they are?” Captain asked as we hurried past one dark expanse that was faintly human in shape. Lines radiated out from it in all directions. “It almost look
s like the ice is … is cleaving.”

  “You remember what cleaving is,” I said flatly, speaking to him for the first time in at least half an hour, “but not your own name?”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t understand it either. I know how to hold a knife properly and I can sing all the words to ‘The Maidens North of Lovats.’ But what my name is or how I got here or why I’m covered in this foul gunk”—he swatted at his sleeves—“I cannot recall at all.”

  A beat passed. Two. Then he added hastily, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you before.”

  Apology number eighteen, and this time I offered a grunt in return.

  Ninety-three steps later, we left the Future and reached a new spot on the map: a long, dark room labeled The Past.

  “Strange names,” Captain whispered as he read the map over my shoulder. “Sort of morbid, don’t you think?”

  “The Sightwitches love their symbolism,” I replied—also a whisper, for this space demanded quiet. Then, because I didn’t know what else to do, I murmured, “Ignite.”

  A small puff sounded, and a lone torch burst into life on the wall beside us. It was the only one like it. So I crept over, Captain just behind, and hauled it out.

  The Rook didn’t appreciate the bouncing of my shoulder, so after an ornery hiss in my ear—even he stayed quiet in this room—he hopped back to Captain’s broader roosting spot.

  The torch fit perfectly in my hand. Exactly the right size for my fingers to grip comfortably, exactly the right weight for me to hold without my arm tiring.

  “What do these marks mean?” Captain asked, and when I swung the light where he pointed, a stark relief came into view.

  It was the same motif from the tunnels, but carved above every tenth stone was a new design.

  “They’re … mason marks,” I said slowly, the memory of a lesson with Hilga unfurling. “Which means this room was built before the time of Earthwitches.”

  “I didn’t know there was a time before Earthwitches.”

  “Because people have forgotten. It was a time before magic existed everywhere in the Witchlands.” Keeping the wall at my side, I resumed our walk onward. This time, Captain stayed next to me and I didn’t stop him. The darkness in this room felt alive. It breathed and prowled, and the only weapon we had was the torch’s weak flicker.

  If not for the map, I would have had no way to know the room’s shape was rectangular or that an exit waited at the room’s opposite end.

  “When the Sightwitches hid behind the glamour,” I explained in soft tones, “all the records and memories we’d kept were soon forgotten, for history is all too easily rewritten and the past is all too easily erased.”

  Just as I had done in the Way Below, I slipped into my role of teacher. Reciting lessons and sharing what I knew—something about that simple task made the endless black around us seem less threatening.

  And just as I had memorized every rule word for word, I had memorized this lesson exactly as Sister Hilga had taught it to me.

  “Once, there were only twelve people in all the Witchlands with magic. Known as the Paladins, they were gifted their powers by the sleeping Goddess Herself and tasked with protecting the land. When a Paladin died, his or her memories and magic were reborn in another. Over and over again, this cycle continued for as long as the Witchlands existed. Until one day, the Twelve disappeared.”

  Cold whispered over me—a gust from Captain’s magic. “Where did the Paladins go?” he asked.

  “They died forever. No more reincarnation.” I ran my hand over the motif as I walked, its grooves surprisingly warm to the touch. Then I recited:

  “Six turned on six and made themselves kings.

  One turned on five, and stole everything.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” Captain murmured. He rubbed at his brow. “It’s from … something.”

  I nodded. “‘Eridysi’s Lament.’ Though I’m surprised you’ve heard that part. Most people only know one tiny verse.”

  “About a broken heart, isn’t it? For some reason, I remember that song too. But don’t worry. I won’t sing it.” Captain scratched at the Rook, who didn’t offer his usual croon at the attention. “But the lines that you quoted—what do they mean?”

  “They mean that the Paladins turned on each other. After millennia of watching leaders rise and fall, of maintaining peace and living on the fringes of society, half of the Paladins decided they wanted power. They wanted to lead. So six killed six, and then one final Paladin betrayed them all …” I trailed off as Captain vanished from the torch’s light.

  He had stopped walking.

  “What is it?” I angled back. Light washed over him. “What’s wrong?”

  His head was cocked to one side, his eyes thinned. A breath passed before he whispered, “Do you hear that?”

  My fingers moved for my knife. “Hear what?”

  He surveyed the center of the room, but there was nothing to see beyond shadows.

  “Voices,” Captain said at last. “Do you hear them speaking to us?”

  “No,” I said, “and you probably shouldn’t listen.” Already he’d set off, though. With no worry at all, his long legs carried him away and the darkness pulled him in.

  My stomach hollowed out. My mouth went dry, but against all reason or logic, I pushed into a scamper after him.

  He took one loping step for each of my three. Soon enough, though, I and my torchlight caught up. He was planted before a marble pedestal, on which a hilt rested, almost as long as my forearm but with only a jagged fragment of steel to jut above the cross-guard.

  And beside the broken blade was a square frame with a long handle. It reminded me of a reading glass used to magnify small text, except that this frame was larger and most of its glass had been shattered and lost.

  Before I could stop Captain, his fingers had curled around the glass’s handle. He was lifting it high. I grabbed for his arm, but I was too late. Too slow.

  Then I saw him. Through the shards still clinging to the frame’s edge, I saw him. I ripped my hand back and clutched my throat.

  For it was not Captain’s face that appeared through the glass. It was a scarred face, a furious face. A man with his lips curled back and teeth bared in violence.

  I reeled back two steps, and the face changed to a woman’s. Then another man’s. Then too fast to tell, I saw one person blur into the next—each as vicious and wrathful as the last.

  Then Captain dropped the glass, and his hands clutched at his face. “Stop,” he snarled. “I can’t understand you—”

  He broke off, whipping around. Then he shouted into the darkness, “Who are you? Show yourselves!” He spun again, louder and louder with each cry. “Stop shouting at me—who are you? Stop, stop, stop.”

  He fell to his knees in a great crunch of bone that rattled through the tiles. His movement turned jerky and frantic.

  I did not know what to do. My feet were stuck to the floor, and my mind had shrunk down to a useless pinprick of thought: What is happening to him?

  I got my answer mere moments later when he lurched right for me.

  “Kill me.” The words razored from his throat. His eyes bulged, glittering orbs in the dim circle of light. “KILL ME.”

  Black lines radiated across his face and into his eyes. One black bubble built at the edge of his jaw.

  I didn’t think—there was no time for it. All I could do was react. He was cleaving, his magic was burning through him, and if I didn’t do something right now, he would kill me.

  I had not seen cleaving before, but I had read about it often enough to know death was the only outcome.

  I flung the torch at him. It shuddered through the air, and before I saw it land, I was at the pedestal and hauling up the massive hilt. It took both my hands to grip it, but that shorn steel jutting up was still long enough to slice.

  And long enough, I hoped, to kill.

  I rounded back toward him. On his hands and knees, he ha
d already crawled past the torch. It burned behind him, silhouetting him in flame.

  He looked like Skull-Face from the Crypts.

  I attacked. I had to—he was too large for me to fight if I didn’t get him while he was low. So I aimed for his face, and I charged.

  In two leaping steps, I was to him. He tipped back his head, as if offering me his throat.

  “Kill me,” he repeated. No longer a rasp, but a clear, insistent command that coursed straight to the center of my mind.

  I stumbled. I slowed. I hesitated.

  And in that moment, the Rook dove between us. Feathers and howling and talons to slice. The attack he had threatened in the workshop he now gave in full force.

  His claws slashed my face, his power drove me back. The blade fell from my hands in a clatter of metal. I rocked back, arms flailing—but not enough to keep me from crashing to the floor.

  Then everything stopped. The Rook flapped to Captain, who now lay sprawled across the tiles, and for several booming heartbeats, I sat there and did not move.

  My wrists ached from breaking my fall. My face burned with lines of throbbing heat, where each of the Rook’s talons had torn skin.

  Meanwhile, the torch flickered on and on, shadows to undulate over Captain. Darkness thrummed around me. I was outside the light’s reach; I could hear nothing but my own shallow breaths and slamming pulse.

  “I’m sorry.” The words slid over the tiles to me. Captain rolled to his side, the movement stiff. Pained. With the torch behind him, I couldn’t see his face. “I … am so sorry, Ryber.”

  The Rook nudged Captain’s leg, purring with concern.

  “What are you?” I breathed, my body still as stone.

  “I don’t know.” With a harsh exhale, he pushed into a sitting position.

  The light behind him shrank even more, and the Rook hopped around to Captain’s leg.

  Twice now, the bird had chosen this Nubrevnan man over me. Yet I was neither upset nor angry.

  The Rook did nothing without reason, so the question was: What was his reason?

  “You cleaved,” I said, finally drawing in my legs as if to rise.