Or as if the soil feeds him. When she’d seen his storm forming, she’d thought he had claimed his power from the very earth itself. Just as Portia had once done to build her Loom, where the Threads of Sirmaya were closest to the surface.
“Aren’t you coming?” Corlant whispered. “Or is your Hell-Bard friend not enough to entice? I can take the light-bringer too. She is so near—”
“Don’t touch her,” Iseult snarled, and immediately she sent out a new command: Protect Safi. Six Hell-Bards shot off toward the forest. Toward the brilliant colors of her Threadsister—now beside a fallen emperor. And as the Hell-Bards ran, Iseult ran too.
“Closer,” Corlant purred. “Closer, closer.”
She hopped roots and ducked under branches, her Hell-Bard guardians moving in perfect synchrony around her—and the rest of her army moving too. Corlant would not touch Safi. She would crush him with Hell-Bard bodies he could not maim. She would break and bend him as he had tried to do to her. And as he had succeeded with so many others.
* * *
Safi canted against the storm, crossing a small clearing where fallen trees had opened up the sky.
Wrong, wrong, her lens warned with each step. False, false.
Safi pushed all the harder. Whatever waited ahead, she wouldn’t leave Iseult to face it alone. Yet as soon as she pushed back into trees, a fir briefly blocking her from hail as large as her fists, the world went silent and still.
No lightning, no winds, and no hail—only the holes they had pocked into the snowfall. And her Truth-lens practically screaming against her skin.
She scanned the forest, holding Henrick’s sword with the gentle grip Habim had taught her. Not too tight, not too loose. Simply ready. The storm continued unabated in the trees beyond. She saw it, a wall of gray and white. She heard it, a thousand angry sighs.
A laugh trilled behind her. She tore around. Wrong, wrong, wrong. But there was no one within the trees.
“Come out!” she shouted. “And maybe I’ll go easy on you.”
Another laugh, so close she felt it on her skin like a winter draft leaking through a window. She spun again, now facing the clearing she’d just abandoned. But still, no one. And still, her Truth-lens screamed of wrong.
Then something fell into the snow, straight out of the sky. So fast, she almost missed it—and so hard, the earth trembled beneath her feet. A body, human and limp.
“Caden.” Safi rushed for him, all thoughts of the laughter gone. All thoughts of the storm or danger gone. She only made it three steps, though, before wind surged against her.
A man descended into the clearing. Snow billowed away from him as he landed beside Caden. Safi’s vision crossed. Dizziness wheeled over her, and for half a frozen breath, she saw only the man’s face—except that there were so many. Face after face smeared and melted and formed, as if he were the pages of a book being rapidly flipped.
And her Truth-lens shrieked so intensely, it practically bounced against her skin.
Then the book settled, a single page unfurling. A single face for her to blink at, blood oozing from an eye that would never see again.
“What a clever light-bringer,” he said in Cartorran. “Using your device like that to negate the Loom. Useless, but clever all the same.” He advanced a step. No eyes, yet he could clearly see.
And Safi lifted her sword. “Who are you?”
“Your Threadsister did not tell you?” He fanned his fingers at his face. “You do not see the family resemblance?”
Safi didn’t know what that meant and didn’t care. There was only one person he could possibly be. “The Cursewitch,” she said, and his cheeks bunched with a smile. It squeezed blood from the eye that still remained.
“Do not touch them,” Iseult shouted, fierce and right and good. Then a breath later, she stalked into the clearing, her cheeks bright, hair wild, and body covered in snow. Marching on either side were Hell-Bards, moving wherever she bade.
She briefly met Safi’s eyes, and there was that vicious smile again. “You can steal all the power you want,” Iseult called, striding to Safi’s side, “but your magic can’t touch a Hell-Bard.” Then, a flip of her hands and the Hell-Bards around her shot into guarding positions around Safi and Iseult. Six bodies to block Corlant.
Another flip and more Hell-Bards shoved out from the trees. They too encircled Safi and Iseult, more and more of them by the second. Row upon row, until Safi lost sight of Caden and Corlant. All she saw were forest-camouflaged uniforms and empty, controlled eyes.
She didn’t like those eyes. Didn’t like how her Truth-lens reacted to Iseult now, saying wrong, wrong, wrong. And suddenly, she remembered that Iseult had controlled her too. On the flying machine, Iseult had taken over her muscles and her eyes and it had been as wicked as Corlant, as foul as the cleaving lines that wormed over her hands.
Yet before she could plead with Iseult to find a different way, Corlant spoke. A frostbitten whisper that filled the entire clearing.
“Oh but my daughter,” he said, “I can hurt a Hell-Bard. I can hurt them very badly indeed.”
As one, the Hell-Bards collapsed to the snow. As one, black lines of the doom laid claim to their bodies, to their faces, to their eyes. And beside Corlant, Caden screamed.
“Do something,” Safi begged Iseult, but Iseult only shook her head and grappled at the air. As if reaching for Threads she could no longer see.
So Safi dropped her sword and grabbed for her belt. The tongue, protect the tongue. Her frozen fingers fumbled. Her brain tried to remember what Zander had told her to do. She couldn’t save them all, but she could at least try to reach Caden.
Yet as she twisted toward him, she found Iseult had grabbed the fallen sword and was now sprinting toward Corlant. No grace, no control, only erratic desperation like Safi had never seen her stoic Threadsister wear.
Corlant’s laughter came again. “Nice try, Dark-Giver.” He tossed out his hand. Wind hit her, a funnel to smash ribs and lift Iseult high. Then he turned his focus toward Safi. With long steps with spider-like legs over each fallen Hell-Bard, he walked. And as she moved, he killed them. A snap of fingers, a widening smile, and they stilled upon the snow-thick earth.
Safi could do nothing but watch. Her muscles were no longer her own.
“I told you it was useless,” he said. “Now I believe I will take back all these souls I worked so hard to claim.” He snapped again.
Pain shattered through Safi. A cold pain borne on knives made of ice—and with it was a laughter to fill her, to crush her, to end her. The snowy clearing faded. The doom closed in.
* * *
Iseult flew. Her back hit the tree. Her skull too, and stars flashed over her vision. But Corlant wasn’t done. A gust of winds laced with fire lashed out, catapulting her up, up, through snow and Threads and frozen shadows. Then she was above the trees and sucked into Corlant’s spinning storm.
Winds hit her, collapsing her lungs, and erasing all sight. There was only snow and wind and unconsciousness clawing in. She could do nothing. She had no army. She had no stolen power, and the lives of the Cahr Awen couldn’t help her here.
Then as quickly as she’d been siphoned upward, she was tossed back down. A sack of organs and bone, she hit the ground with such force she couldn’t even feel the pain. There was only death rushing in.