And there was nothing Corlant could do. When he sent his Hell-Bards to attack, nothing happened. When he tried to flee the basin, he was swarmed by the lives he had claimed—ghosts now set free and ready to exact their vengeance.
It was slow work. It was exhausting, and the power of the dark-givers that Iseult had taken from the Threadstones now seeped away with each soul Iseult saved. But the dark-givers had wanted freedom, and these Hell-Bards did too.
Green Threads that build spiraled upward, a thousand thousand blades of new life to replace the ash wasteland of the Hell-Bard Loom. And it was like the old rhyme Iseult had once sung to Aeduan:
Dead grass is awakened by fire,
Dead earth is awakened by rain.
One life will give way to another,
The cycle will begin again.
No more Threads that break. Only Threads that build, on and on for as far as Iseult could see, as far as she could feel. And with each Hell-Bard she healed, Corlant grew weaker.
Living, living, breath and living. Iseult didn’t stop until she saw only a realm of green. Threads that heal, Threads that thrive. Until she had healed Caden and Lev and Zander. Until she had healed Eron and every guard she’d ever met. Until they had all been healed and there was only one spirit left.
“Safi.” Iseult smiled at her other half, bright and beautiful and golden. “Be free, Light-Bringer. Be free.” Then she carefully unbound her Threadsister from the Loom. Here was Safi’s Truthwitchery, if only half, and here were the colors and brilliance of her being. The bursts of laughter. The crass swears. The eternal loyalty and moral compass always aimed true.
Initiate, complete.
Safi and all the other Hell-Bards were finally free.
And Iseult finally turned to face Corlant. Like a corpse left to deflate in the rain, he had shrunk in on himself, an empty, desperate body huddled within the basin. She could cleave him with just a thought. He was too weak to fight her. The daughter with a Void power he’d passed on.
But Iseult did not want to cleave him. He would be the last life she would willingly claim, and she would not twist it or sever it. Not the man who was her father.
She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and imagined the forest and the snow she had left behind. No other thought, no distraction to keep her from doing what she had struggled so long to do. True stasis guided her, grounded her. All the way into her fingers, all the way into her toes.
The Loom disappeared.
* * *
She found her father curled in on himself upon the snow. He was inside the tower. No more storm, no more stolen Threads. Simply a man drained to his true essence.
And she’d been right: it contained only fear—and fear had so easily become hate. Hate for oneself, hate for the world that had rejected you. She had lived a lifetime with it; she understood that concept well.
Corlant unfurled from beside the altar as she approached. Then dragged himself to his feet. He couldn’t escape; he knew that, and his Threads wore weary resignation.
Hell-Bards, newly freed, flared like fireflies at the edges of her magic. The shadow wyrm was nowhere she could feel. With its master weakened, it had returned to the darkness in which it thrived.
Iseult reached Corlant. Huddled in as he was, his head was at her level. He clutched his damaged face in his hands. “I don’t want to kill you,” she told him.
“Coward.” He didn’t remove his hands. She wondered if he could still see her through the Dreaming. “I will simply be reborn again.”
“All the more reason to let you live.”
His Threads glistened with sky blue. Relief perhaps. Or maybe sadness. Then he lunged at her, arm extended. Hand flat. And suddenly his palm was on her, his crusted, oozing face only inches away.
Cold stabbed through everything, sucking Iseult dry yet stuffing her full. It was like Praga all over again, when Henrick had almost claimed her for the Loom. She was going to explode, to erupt, to collapse inward like broken ice upon a stream. Yet just like in Praga, a distant part of her still reigned. The cold, logical, Threadwitch part her mother had taught her so well. Lift up your sword, it said. So Iseult did. And kill him.
“May Moon Mother,” she gritted out, forcing her eyes to meet the bloodied crevices where his had been, “light your path, and may—”
Steel burst through Corlant’s heart, the tip piercing toward Iseult from a saber thrust into his back. A saber she had not wielded and had not seen coming. Blood spewed. Corlant gasped. His palm fell from her forehead, his magic failed.
And warmth rushed over Iseult as her own power roared in.
Corlant collapsed to the snow.
“And may Trickster never find you,” said Leopold the Fourth of Cartorra.
The Fool card finally played.
He looked just as he had in the palace when he’d helped Iseult escape: his sword dripped blood and his Threads were a cacophony of color with a wild core that would never fade. The only difference was that now Iseult knew who he was. Knew what he was.
“Why?” she asked him.
“Because no one should have to kill their own parent.” He sheathed the saber with practiced ease, his Threads briefly shrinking with an inward contemplation. Then he added, “Trust me, I would know.”
Corlant’s Threads gave a final shivering twist between them, and when Iseult looked down, she found that the lines on her father’s forehead had smoothed away. She could almost imagine the man he might have been. Could almost imagine the childhood she might have had if he hadn’t been cursed with Portia’s soul.
“Let’s go.” Her gaze lifted to Leopold once more. “There is one more person I must still try to save.”
FIFTY-THREE
Safi and Iseult parted ways. Not because Safi wanted to leave her Threadsister so soon, but because Iseult still had work to do … and Safi did too. They would find each other after—Safi made Iseult swear that a thousand times over, and she waited until Iseult was nothing more than a fading silhouette within the trees before she set off too. Then with Caden slumped on a black mare before her, a hundred Hell-Bards trailing behind, she rode to the Emperor’s hunting lodge.
And as she rode, Safi surveyed a new world.
Before life as a Hell-Bard, she would have thought it bleak and barren. A wasteland where death crept in on silent, frozen feet. Winter’s breath cut into her. Snow blanched everything, and gray forest bled into gray sky.
After life as a Hell-Bard, Safi saw only potential. This winter, like all winters, would end eventually; green would return; the cycle would start anew. In the meantime, life harbored in countless pockets she’d never noticed before. Glimpses of evergreen thick with snow. Paw prints tracing between trees. Birds startling into flight. Holly berries beating red.
So much she had missed. So much she was grateful to see now—and to feel too, with her magic and soul fully returned. Both truth and lie, she sensed with stark clarity. Not merely half of her magic, but somehow the full entirety had been restored. Louder too, like an exuberant chorus living inside her.
True, true, true, it sang. Free, free, free.
The hunting lodge soon loomed ahead, perched on a craggy ledge above the Solfatarra. It reminded Safi of a different castle exposed to cold. A different life a hundred miles away. But where her childhood home had fallen into disrepair, the lodge had windows and walls intact, roofs without holes, and life—so much life.