It was an ermine. A weasel with its winter coat. And somehow, though it didn’t speak with actual words, it uttered a sentient chatter that reminded Safi of another creature—except that the weasel was the old crow’s opposite: white fur with black upon the tail versus black feathers with white around the beak.
The weasel squeaked, a frustrated sound that seemed to say, Just let them die and be done with it.
Iseult shook her head. Her bandaged hands trembled. “Not again. Not this time.”
The weasel’s tail flicked. She chattered and ran toward the nearest Windwitch. She twirled twice around his legs, but Iseult only shook her head harder. Her hands quaked. “I know I need a Loom, Esme, but there’s no time.”
Safi eyed the weasel with a frown. She knew the name Esme, and though her Truth-lens said nothing, her gut told her plenty: that animal had once been human. That animal had once been the Puppeteer. “Iseult,” she started to say at the same moment Iseult jerked her chin toward the sky.
“Corlant is coming.”
Safi looked south—Caden too, still kneeling with his face pinched tight. It pinched all the tighter once he spotted what Safi saw: a storm gusted their way. No snowstorm either, but a hurricane with black clouds and lightning.
Safi’s heel started bouncing. “The Cursewitch made that?” Iseult had told her of the priest who’d hunted her, but Safi didn’t understand how he could be here. Or for that matter, how he could be controlling such a storm.
“There’s more.” Iseult flexed and fisted her shaking hands. “Hell-Bards approach from the north. They march this way from the hunting lodge, and will be here any moment. We need to move.”
“Shit.” Caden towed in his legs again. “The Windwitches must have come from there. How close are they? I can walk.”
“Lie,” Safi spat as her lens murmured the same. And this time when she dropped to Caden’s side, he didn’t resist. He was much too cold to the touch, though sweat shone on his brow. She looped an arm behind him and helped him clumsily to his feet. “You’re … heavy,” she said, trying for a distraction.
“All muscle,” he wheezed. Then he leaned upon her, his chest billowing. The crash must’ve damaged a vital muscle. Possibly even broken a bone.
“Caden.” Iseult swallowed, a sign that her stutter was taking control. A sign that she was losing her Threadwitch calm. “We’re going to have to run. Their Th-Threads are … near.”
“I can manage,” he said, and though he believed his words and the Truth-lens stayed silent, Safi shook her head at Iseult. He definitely couldn’t make it.
Iseult winced. “Y-you two go first. I’ll … hold on to these witches as long as I can.”
“Iseult,” Safi said, as lightly as the snow still falling. As gentle as the truth she saw inside her Threadsister. “Release them.”
Iseult’s knees trembled. “Then they will attack us.”
The weasel squeaked loudly at this, but Iseult only winced more deeply. “I … d-don’t want to,” she squeezed at the creature. “I’ve already k-killed too many. I’ve already ruined … and lost…” Iseult’s voice choked off. Her eyes screwed shut. Whatever had happened to her hands, it hurt her as much as Caden’s leg pained him.
The Cleaved started to groan; and Iseult’s eyes squinted tighter, tighter. Meanwhile, stamping feet of Cartorrans now reached Safi’s hearing. The Hell-Bards would soon arrive.
And Iseult’s shoulders drooped. “Forgive me,” she whispered to the dawn. “I do not want to do this.” Then her eyes burst wide, her arms leaped above her head, and as one, the Cleaved collapsed beside her.
They convulsed upon the snow. Tar erupted across their bodies, and two streaks splattered Iseult. Not that she seemed to notice. With each passing heartbeat, as the men cleaved and died, her spine straightened. Her chin lifted. Until at last her eyes opened and she nodded.
“Let’s go,” she said. “Let’s fly.”
* * *
The tower remnants Iseult had seen from the sky were an old place. Iseult felt it as soon as she landed. Where the walls between this world and the Old Ones’ are thinner.
The real walls were thinner too, the forest visible through cracks and a gaping hole that might have been a door. Curving stairs led to nowhere in one corner, and the edges of two more stories clung to stones high above. No roof, but what remained of the walls blocked the wind. Snow slanted down now.
Safi landed less gracefully beside Iseult, Caden still clasped against her, and though Iseult tried to make his landing soft, his leg collapsed beneath him the instant his feet touched down. His face was red with pain and cold; Safi’s teeth chattered every few moments.
It was only going to get colder as Corlant’s storm approached.
The Cartorrans approached too, for the tower wasn’t far from the crash, and an old, snow-strewn trail led right to it. But Iseult needed access to the Dreaming, and this was the only place she could think of.
Esme squeaked in Iseult’s ear, offering the image of a stone table at the tower’s heart. Almost altar-like, it had collapsed on one side. After hastily wiping off the snow with a sleeved forearm, Iseult nodded. It would have to do.
She turned to Safi, who crouched beside Caden trying to get the Hell-Bard into a more comfortable position. The gash in his leg glistened; his pale skin did too. It was the sort of wound that would kill slowly, festering and seeping and plucking away at life bit by bit—assuming the snow didn’t get him first.
His Threads verged on unconsciousness, though red dwelled there too. Yet from frustration at his weakness or frustration with the situation, Iseult couldn’t gauge. And Safi’s Threads held their own mystery: a beige worry Iseult didn’t recognize. A faint horror she’d never seen her Threadsister wear before.
One she prayed was not aimed at her.
But there was no time to worry about Threads or winter’s breath, just as there was no time to listen to the voices gathering in her brain: two Windwitches, freshly dead. Freshly trapped inside her veins. No time to worry over Gretchya either, dependent on Corlant’s obsession to keep her alive, and no time to dwell on Alma, cloaked in blood and dead upon the snow. There was only moving forward. Only following what had to be done so Iseult could finally, finally make things right.
“The Threadstones,” she said, crossing the small space to Safi. “I need the Threadstones.”
Safi blinked up, clearly startled by the request—though she didn’t argue and didn’t question. She simply plucked them from a pocket and dropped them onto Iseult’s bandaged palms.
Two drops of pressure. Two sparks of pain. Iseult swallowed at the sight of them, a hunger opening wide inside her belly. The rubies seemed to glow, dim light bouncing off them. An eternal flame, eternal sunshine. The bright half of the Cahr Awen to Iseult’s eternal frost and midnight.
But then she caught sight of Safi’s wrist. “You’re cleaving.” She grabbed for her Threadsister with her other hand, clumsy and aching.
Safi withdrew. “It’s fine.”
“It isn’t fine.”
“I’m not cleaving. It’s the Hell-Bard’s doom.”