EIGHTEEN
Iseult looked for an escape. All night and into the dawn, she studied Aeduan’s and Evrane’s Threads and waited for moments when one of them was off guard. She scanned the trees for anything she might use as distraction. And she called and called to the weasel.
Pointless. The weasel held her silence. The Threads held no answers, and anytime Aeduan’s attention wandered, Evrane’s did not. Or it was reversed, with Evrane’s eyes meandering into the woods while Aeduan observed Iseult like a wolf. The one time both monks were distracted—by a strange, scuffling sound in the forest—Iseult couldn’t wriggle free from her bindings upon the ash tree.
“Can you sense what that was?” Aeduan asked after yanking the gag from Iseult’s mouth. His voice was all wrong, wrong, wrong. The morning’s cold had turned his nose red.
“No,” Iseult croaked between coughs. “I cannot … sense animal Threads, if they even have them.”
“All life has Threads.”
“You don’t.”
He tensed before her, Threads sputtering with surprise.
“The real you,” she added. “The Bloodwitch whose body you stole.”
He sniffed, the sound almost lost to a breeze biting through the trees. Then: “Interesting. I did not know such a thing was possible.”
“Portia once told me it might be,” Evrane inserted. She stood before Owl, and at her voice, Owl huddled deep beneath a blanket. Iseult’s own blanket had fallen off in the night. “She said for those born directly in the Sleeper’s glow, their Threads never form. Something like that.”
Portia again. The woman from the diary pages. Iseult ought to ask about her—press for how these usurpers knew such a name—but that was when the rustling resumed in the forest. A snapping branch. A pattering like a hundred feet. And Threads. Faint but unmistakably silver.
Now Iseult was the one to tense. Aeduan noticed. “What is it?”
She didn’t answer; instead she squinted into the barren hardwoods and green pines. Twice she had seen Threads of such pure silver: Once on sea foxes in the Jadansi Sea. Second on Blueberry, Owl’s mountain bat. And as much as she wished those Threads might be Blueberry, they were too quiet. Too stealthy.
“What is it?” Aeduan repeated.
“Something hunts us,” she said, glad they spoke in Arithuanian so Owl wouldn’t understand. “We should leave.”
Alarm brightened Aeduan’s Threads—and Evrane’s too. But neither monk argued. They simply unbound Iseult and Owl and hurried them onto Lady Sea Fox and Lord Storm Hound. They’d already loaded up camp, and neither Iseult nor Owl resisted as they were forced into the same pairings as yesterday.
Eventually the silver Threads faded. Eventually the sun rose. And eventually signs of humanity laid claim to the forest. A well-trod road, cleared fields for grazing, and finally fieldstone huts with thatched roofs. A family’s farm, one of thousands like it spread throughout the Ohrin Mountains. Sheep called from within fences as Lady Sea Fox and Lord Storm Hound passed. A lone dog barked his alarm, ears high and gray fur thick upon his back.
Soon, Iseult heard the villagers. Shouts as if soldiers corralled. Cries as if families resisted. Then came the Threads—later than they should’ve come, muted and slow. Fear and rage, violence and obedience.
Corlant. He was here. It was the only explanation for so many pallid Threads: a Cursewitch’s power and corrupted touch.
The cries of the village. Owl’s Threads blanked out, and Iseult’s fingers tightened into fists. White, white, always white. One day, Iseult would make sure the child never felt fear again.
An empty promise. One more failure to add to her growing list. She could no more help Owl than she could help herself. Please, weasel. Please come.
The commotion brimmed louder, bouncing off stone walls. Threads tangled and clotted at the center of the village, and as the horses rounded a corner, chaos unfolded before Iseult’s eyes: an open square turned to mud by hooves and shepherd boots. Sixteen people kneeling, backs bent and Threads saturated by uniform terror. Two children weeping. And twelve women and men with blades out and Purist robes billowing on a winter wind.
At the center of the yard, where an ancient well slouched, stood Corlant. He’s so tall, Iseult thought distantly as the horses continued their approach. She’d forgotten how much he towered over everyone, hair oily and eyebrows perpetually high. With furs atop his shoulders, he looked broader. Commanding, even, as he smiled at the sight of Iseult.
“Your timing is perfect,” he called. He flung open his arms like a performer.
And Iseult blinked. She’d only ever heard him speak Nomatsi, yet now he spoke Arithuanian—no accent, no stumbling.
“Get them off the horses,” he commanded. Aeduan dismounted and dragged down Iseult too. She hit the earth with a knee-snapping jolt, no balance with her wrists still tied, before Aeduan pushed her toward the well.
Owl whimpered.
“Gag her,” Corlant ordered once Iseult was before him. “It is her fangs we must watch out for.” His Threads sharpened with anticipation. He knew what Iseult’s true magic was. Somehow he knew she needed her mouth, needed her teeth in order to cleave.
He smiled as Aeduan grabbed the back of Iseult’s head and thrust in the old filthy wool. She tried to avoid the Bloodwitch, but he was stronger. The cloth filled her mouth, her eyes burned, and she gagged ineffectually against bile rising in her throat.
Owl’s tiny sobs joined with the other children’s.
“You will enjoy this,” Corlant murmured to Iseult, closing the space between them. So tall. He ran a single finger down her jaw, and though she screamed stasis within, her body could not obey. Iseult recoiled, and Corlant laughed. Then, with that same finger, he beckoned to the nearest Purist.
“The Herdwitch,” he said. “Bring him to me.” The Purist grabbed for a man at the edge of the kneeling family. The man yelped. His Threads ignited with fear while beside him a woman reached for him. “No, please no—”
A second Purist kicked her, square in the back. She splayed out on the mud, a cry scraping from her throat. Iseult moved, muscles reacting without thought. She would attack that Purist, attack Corlant—
Aeduan moved faster. He yanked her back, arm sliding over her throat. He squeezed. Her vision crossed. “Stay.”
Iseult nodded. She had no choice. And though she wanted to screw her eyes shut as Owl did, she forced them to stay open. She forced herself to witness Corlant’s powers in action.
The first Purist hauled the Herdwitch to Corlant. Sheep bleated frantically; in the distance, a dog howled.
“Blessed are the pure,” Corlant told the man as he drew him close and placed his palm upon the man’s forehead. “May you become as clean as Midne, as pure as the world when it was born.” With his free hand, he grabbed at the air above the man’s head, at Threads pale with terror.
Iseult could do nothing but gaze on, her belly sinking like a stone. Her breaths coming in shallow gasps.
She might have seen Corlant’s magic at the Midenzi settlement—seen how his presence faded Threads like rain erases paint—but she’d never encountered his magic used openly. She’d never watched as he slashed away the very power that made this Herdwitch who he was.