Sightwitch

by Susan Dennard

“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.

  Captain felt it too. Through the lashing sand and lightning, I saw him tense. Then roll his head back.

  He wheeled around, the ship spinning with him and crashing lower, lower. Low enough for me to see barnacles and caulking, to hear cows’ plaintive moaning from within.

  Then a groan of wood, a smash of lightning, and Captain threw the boat. As easily as Tanzi skipped stones off the Sorrow, Captain launched the trade ship into the jungle.

  I never saw it land. My attention was on the sailors, finally able to run. Soon, they were nothing more than shadowy specks beyond a wall of wind.

  Captain stalked close. His skin roiled and shifted. Tarry lines pulsed beneath his pallid cheeks. His eyes were black from rim to rim.

  But there was no violence in his posture. No death. He was puzzled more than anything else.

  So I slung the bell again. Harder. No rhythm or beat, just a vicious clanging to holler above the storm.

  Then, as Captain came toward me, I screamed the only words I could think of—words he’d sung to me before.

  “The maidens north of Lovats!

  None ever looked so fair!

  When they catch your eye, you’ll fall in love,

  So everyone beware.”

  He stopped his approach. I did not stop mine. On and on, the bell rattled in my grasp, and on and on I hollered.

  “The maidens north of Lovats!

  Are as strong as ten large men,

 
With minds as sharp as hammered steel,

  When they fight they always win.”

  He crumpled to his knees, and the winds answered in kind. Softer, softer they spun.

  “The maidens north of Lovats!

  If ever one you meet,

  Turn hide and run the other way,

  Or a blighter you will be!”

  I sang the final line, and the pustules smoothed on Captain’s face. The lines of tar shriveled and shrank.

  I stopped ringing the bell, and as the last wind whispered away, the final shreds of darkness swirled into nothing. Familiar blue eyes met mine.

  Then Captain bowed over, breath heaving, and rasped, “Thank you, Ryber. Thank you.”

  Y2788 D41

  MEMORIES

  The Exalted Ones found us. They found the doors, and I fear the world is ending.

  There is no time. The ice comes for me, and I must write. Lisbet told me I must write.

  Five hundred and two people. That was all we got through the door from the Scorched Lands and into the underground city.

  Then the Exalted Ones came. They used the door from the Windswept Plains—a door that none of us were guarding. The Six, the general, and I were too busy coordinating the movement of a hundred families through the cavern.

  The only warning we had was a rumble through the earth. Saria felt it first. I saw her frown, then stride away from our spot at the rear of the group. “What is it?” I called after her.

  Then the earthquake hit.

  After that, my memory is a mess of broken moments. Of falling to my knees, then heat barreling over me—so hot, my hair caught fire and my eyebrows singed off.

  Of screams, frightened and shrill, as people fled. A dropped satchel. A forgotten book.

  Of the Exalted Ones loosing magic and war cries that hummed with fury, betrayal, revenge. Each emotion spilled over me. Solid. Real.

  What had we unleashed?

  Then I watched the Six abandon our group and meet the Exalted Ones head on.

  In those seconds that seemed never to end, only two words filled my mind: the girls. Fool that I am, I had let them join us in the cavern. I’d sent them up to the highest ledge, beside the spiral tomb’s entrance, where I’d thought they could watch everything proceed while safely out of reach.

  Fool, fool, fool.

  I had to get to them.

  Then he was beside me, my Heart-Thread, clutching my arm to lift me from the stone. Together, we ran across the glamoured bridge that shook beneath our feet.

  Wind roiled against us, water and ice sliced past—and fire, fire, everywhere there was fire.

  But we did not stop. We did not slow. Hands grasped tight, we ran for the girls, who meant everything.

  We reached the ledge. The girls were not there, but the tomb entrance was open, and Lisbet’s knife poked from the key slot. Its amber hilt glinted in the flames.

  Clever, clever Lisbet. We could hide in the tombs until the war below had ended.

  I yanked the knife free and flung a final glance behind.

  I wish I had never looked. The Six were losing. Rhian and Midne lay crumpled on the stones, while fire engulfed Bastien. Baile was pinned by swords to the wall, and Saria was trapped inside a growing cage of stone. The Rook King—the one to whom I had given the Paladin-blade for safekeeping—was nowhere in sight.

  There was nothing to be done, not with the girls’ safety at risk. So I hauled the door shut and led the way into the ice.

  Our breaths hashed out, overloud. Our feet hammered and scraped. Until at last we reached the spiral’s heart.

  And there, my darling, wonderful girls awaited. Lisbet stood tall, her sister clutched tight. Her eyes glowed.

  Once to them, their father fell to his knees to inspect them all over. Lisbet rooted her brilliant gaze on me, though. “We must sleep now, Dysi.”

  It took me a moment to understand what she meant. Sleeping was what dying sisters did when they saw their time come.

  “No, Lisbet.” I cupped her face. “We can hide in the tomb, but once this battle is over, we will leave.”

  “But it won’t end. He’s betrayed them all, don’t you see?” She pulled from my grasp and turned to her father. “Tell her, Da. Tell her that it’s time to sleep now.”

  “Sleep?” He glanced to me, confused. “Lis, love, we need to hide. Like Dysi said.”

  “No.” Cora pulled free from her father’s grip, and slipping her little fingers into Lisbet’s, she drew her sister away three paces. Then both girls thrust out their jaws.

  “Lisbet saw what is to come,” Cora said, “and we have to sleep now. All of us—even you, Da, so you can be there when she wakes up.” Cora pointed at me. Then up the spiral. “There’s a tomb waiting for us.”

  Their father rose. “I don’t understand.”

  “I do.” The words slippered from my throat, for I did understand. This was what Lisbet had seen.

  And this was what Sirmaya had chosen for us all.

  “It won’t hurt,” Lisbet said to me. To her father: “The ice will protect us for a time, and then we’ll sleep until it’s time to wake up again.”

  My fingers moved to my belly. “What about … him, Lis?” I almost choked on the words. Tears slid down my face—when had those started?

  “He’ll be fine,” Cora answered. “Lizzie told me all about him, and he’s going to be a very good older brother one day.”

  “Older brother?” I tried to ask, but the girls were already marching for the spiral.

  Their father did not follow.

  “Come.” I reached for him and took his hands in mine. He looked ancient in this light, and so tired. “You must trust the magic of the Goddess, my love.”

  Still he did not move. “There are people out there. I must help them.”

  “You can do nothing.” I squeezed his fingers tightly. “The Exalted Ones will kill you.”

  “I have to try,” he countered. “I cannot abandon my king.”

  “Yet you can abandon me? And the girls?”

  His eyes averted. “No. I …” Then he wilted into me, his forehead resting against mine. “We cannot walk away from this, Dysi. Someone betrayed us.”

  “Or we were not careful enough.”

  “Da!” came Cora’s call, muffled by the ice. A heartbeat later: “Dysi! Come! We have to hurry!”

  “I don’t want to do this,” he murmured.

  “I know. But you have to trust me and trust the girls.” I rested my hands on either side of his face—that beautiful, lined face that I had grown to love. “This is what the Goddess wills, and so we must obey.” Then, when he made no move to turn, I murmured the only No’Amatsi words I knew: “Mhe verujta.”

  Trust me as if my soul were yours.

  He gave a long, slow blink. Then whispered, “Mhe verujta,” and together we ascended the spiral.

  A tomb waited for us with four gaps in the ice. If I’d had any doubt that Lisbet’s vision was true, it was gone now.

  Though that did not mean I was ready. Cora went first, then her father. And I cried—it was selfish of me, but I could not stop the tears.

  Everything I had worked for had crumbled away. The doors, the rebellion, and a life with my Heart-Thread, these two little girls, and the boy growing in my womb.

  I was the last into the ice, for Lisbet told me I must write a final entry. “Leave the diary and your taro cards behind,” she ordered me. “The last Sister will need them.”

  Yet as the ice scuttled over Lisbet, I had to ask her. I had to know. “How can you be so calm? How have you lived all these weeks and months despite knowing all that was coming?”

  “Not despite, Dysi.” She gave me a sympathetic half smile, and it was not a child’s face that stared at me. “Because. We value things more when we know they won’t last forever.”

  Then ice covered her completely, and she joined her family in the Sleeper’s embrace.

  So I did as she commanded, and now it is only I to sit alone
in this room of eternal cold and blue, blue, blue.

  Whoever you are, last Sightwitch Sister, please make use of the time you have. Do not do as I did. Do not trap yourself away inside a mountain with your head stuffed in the past.

  You have a life to live, and Sirmaya thinks it is an important one.

  So go outside. Meet the world and embrace its trials head-on.

  A lone sister is lost, you know, so never let yourself be alone.

  Kullen Ikray

  Y18 D218

  Ryber tells me that I must write everything now that I remember it. “Nothing is real until you record it,” she insists, and though she laughs at my poor handwriting, I do as she commands.

  She is not the sort of woman to be disobeyed.

  Not that I would ever want to. Her frown is

  My name is Kullen Ikray, though Ryber still calls me Captain. I was a Captain, temporarily, and at the urging of my Threadbrother Merik, I led a crew of sailors and civilians to the northern border of Nubrevna. We were building watchtowers, and all was progressing with perfection.

  Until it wasn’t. I received word about a possible Dalmotti tradesman willing to negotiate with Nubrevnans. Well, specifically with me. I decided not to tell Merik. After all, he is a prince and he has more than enough to worry about. I could fly down to this rendezvous point and be back in a day.

  I should have known, Ry. I should have known it was a trap. How did this Dalmotti know where to find me? How did he know who I was to begin with? But the prospect of food and trade clouded all judgment. I left immediately, and though my lungs protested at the demands of a flight without breaks, I crossed all the way to the coast in a single day.

  I met the tradesman on the shore. He had two ships, one on which he had sailed and another packed with food and livestock. Mine for the taking if I would just give him the one thing he wanted.

  Me.

  He wanted me, and though I plied him with the wares of Nubrevna (we have excellent sheep), he grew more and more insistent.

  Then he turned on me completely and attacked. He and thirteen of his men. I am an excellent fighter, Ry, but even I cannot take on that many trained sailors. I had to use my magic, and for the first time in my life, I had to use it to cause harm. Without aim, without focus, I had to blast my winds crudely and try to flee.