Sightwitch by Susan Dennard (10)

LATER — 7 hours left to find Tanzi

The mountain has changed. No more slinking tunnels but a proper passage. Square and with a familiar motif running along the walls at shoulder height.

It’s the same design sewn along the sleeves of a clear-eyed Sister’s silver tunic. It’s the same design carved along the fountain of the Supplicant’s Sorrow, on the dolmen in the Grove, and around the rim of the scrying pool too.

I’ve seen it my whole life and read thousands of Memory Records, yet I still don’t know what this motif means or where it comes from.

As I walked, I ran my fingers along the grooves etched into the stone, and so preoccupied was I by the sudden structure, the clear marks of humanity, that I didn’t notice the gradually growing roar not until I felt it trembling through the rock.

Water. A lot of it.

“Is there a river?” I asked the Rook, and he ruffled his feathers in acknowledgment.

Sure enough, 213 steps later, I reached it. The water’s churn masked all other sounds and cut straight across my path, much too violent to cross. And also much too wide.

“Blighter,” I muttered, lifting the lantern higher and squinting. Far to my right, a waterfall crashed down, bursting from a hole in the rock tens of paces above.

Behind the waterfall stood the exit. Exactly like the square-shaped hall I’d just abandoned, the path forward continued precisely where I could not go.

For half a breath, defeat settled over me. A sense of hopelessness as icy as the water misting off the river. I had taken the only path forward, and now it seemed to end.

But I gritted my teeth, fingers tightening around the lantern, and cut right. There had to be a way across. The Summoned Sisters came this way, didn’t they?

Probably.

Maybe.

Either way, it was my only option forward.

“Help me?” I asked the Rook as I swung my lantern left, right, searching and searching.

A huff of air in my ear—undeniably annoyed—and the bird hopped off. In four easy flaps, he crossed the river and glided to a stop beside the exit.

Useless.

“Thanks.” I flung him my fiercest glare. Then I stalked back the way I’d come. I fell into a rhythm, moving in time to the constellation skipping song we all learned as children.

Four times, I went up and down the rough riverbank, water sinking deeper into my exposed skin and hair with each pass.

It wasn’t until the fifth pass, as I was aiming away from the falls, that I realized I had the right idea—but the wrong rhyme.

I wrenched about, light spraying wide, as the words unfolded:

It was one of the stranger Rules that Tanzi used as proof in her argument against them. I had always thought it meant I had to stay sharp and aware of my surroundings at all times.

But maybe …

In long lopes, I hurried to the waterfall, then craned my neck to glimpse behind. Right there, impossible to see unless you knew where to look, were stepping-stones.

After tying the lantern to my pack and verifying all my tools were still in place on my belt, I sucked in three deep, bracing breaths.

Then I jumped. Water pelted against me, numbing my limbs. Mist clouded my vision, and for a terrifying moment, I thought I’d missed the stone entirely.

But no. There was solid ground beneath me. I was still, somehow, upright.

I had to swipe water from eyes again and again before I could even see the next rock, and I took at least ten more steeling breaths before I felt confident enough to make the leap.

Hop, hop, skip, skip. Four stones in total before I reached the other side.

There, the Rook waited. He paused his preening just long enough to glance at me, an expression of such deep boredom I couldn’t resist marching over to him and shaking.

Water sprayed.

He hissed and clacked, skittering back. And I laughed—my first laugh in …

Goddess. I can’t remember the last time I laughed. And it felt so good. A light warmth to fizz in my chest. Even as the Rook catapulted onto my shoulder and nipped at my ear, I couldn’t stop giggling.

I had made it.

I had evaded the monster of the Crypts. I had crossed the storm. Now I was moving forward once more.

Just under six and a half hours to go.

LATER — 6 hours left to find Tanzi

My delight over my progress was short-lived. Soaked through from the waterfall, I was all too quickly freezing. All too quickly shivering.

To make my bone-chill worse, ice took hold of the landscape. Hoarfrost at first, a white glaze to coat the stone and mask the wall’s design. Then came icicles, spiking down from the ceiling. Some stretched so low I had to stoop and swirl around them. Shortly after that, there was no stone left. Just a slippery, glistening expanse that tinted my lantern’s light blue.

I was cold. Colder than I’ve ever known. My fingers turned to clumsy bricks. I had to stop sketching in my diary. No more drawing each bend and curve in the halls, each rise and step or intrusion of ice. Instead, I marked numbers of steps and turns.

One hour passed, one flipping of my hourglass, yet it felt like days I tromped forward. One stumbling footstep to the next, counting, always counting. Even the Rook on my shoulder and the pack on my back became distant, forgotten things.

The halls were too cramped to risk a fire’s smoke, so I tried jogging to stay warm—and to gain speed—but after falling twice and almost twisting my ankle, Sister Rose’s voice came scolding through my mind.

“Rule 10, Ryber! Rule 10! What does it say?”

I’d been racing for a seat beside Tanzi in the dining hall. I’d tripped; my bowl of stew had sprayed.

“It’s the Rule of Meticulosity,” I’d answered while sopping up stew with my tunic.

“Exactly. And it does not merely apply to our work, yes? There is never a reason to rush. Wherever you are trying to go will still be there, even if it takes you longer to reach it.”

Sister Rose had been right that day in the Convent. Tanzi would have waited for me no matter how long it took me to fetch my stew.

But would she wait now? Could she?

“Doesn’t matter,” I hissed, toddling back upright while the Rook watched. “If I hurt myself, I’ll never reach Tanzi or the other Sisters. Rule 10. Rule 10.”

The Rook warbled his agreement before reclaiming his spot on my shoulder. Then, in a rare display of affection, he rubbed his beak on my jaw.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” I murmured, and off we went once more.

On, on, on. Cold, cold, cold.

Until at last, the hallways changed shape … then gave way entirely.

I had reached a cavern.

It was like being inside a glacier—I can think of no other way to describe it. Bluish light diffused the space, though where it came from, I could not say. Perhaps Sirmaya Herself, but certainly not the sky. Larger than any floor of the Crypts, the cavern stretched for as far as I could see.

As did black lines. At first, I thought they were cracks. Yet when I stilled my chattering teeth long enough to examine more closely, I found veins of pure darkness wefting through the ice.

I had no inkling what they might be, and I was too cold to much care.

A ledge crooked out from the frozen wall. It did not look safe. A single false move, and I would fall straight down to a death of shattered bones and frostbite.

However, right was the only direction to go, so right the Rook and I aimed. We were achingly slow, too slow, and the quicksilver taunted me with its ceaseless drip-dripping.

I was helpless to move faster, though. So cold had I become that each planting of my foot felt like someone else’s foot. I heard the heel land—and I saw the heel land!—but I certainly didn’t feel it.

All I wanted was to stop. To lie down. To sleep.

In the deepest recesses of my mind, I knew this was a sign the cold was killing me. That to slumber would be my end.

Were it not for the Rook pecking my cheek every few minutes, I probably would have given in to Sirmaya’s final sleep forever.

The quicksilver was halfway through the hourglass when I saw a platform perhaps forty paces ahead and wide as the observatory. I could stop there. I could build a fire and escape these grasping claws of drowsy death.

Moments blurred past. Drip, drip, drip.

I reached the platform.

Tears sprang to my eyes as I stumbled for the center. Fire. I just wanted a fire. The Rook took flight, winging toward a pile of rags against the ice wall. Only with him gone did I realize how much heat he’d been emitting.

My pack fell to the stone with a loud thwack. Dust puffed up, or perhaps frost. I didn’t bother to examine it closely because I could not have cared less.

Fire, fire, FIRE. Nothing mattered beyond getting warm.

I heaped out three Firewitched matches, each the length of my forearm. I’d never used them before, but I’d seen Sister Ute do it often enough in the kitchens, singing, “Smack the dough and pound the dough, hammer it and knead it,” the whole time.

“Ignite,” I whispered.

The magic answered in a flash of light, a crack of sound, and then heat. Blessed, beautiful heat to cascade over me.

Slowly, as the quicksilver gathered in my hourglass, I thawed, all while Sister Ute’s song tickled against my brain over and over.

On the third sing-through I realized I was rasping the words aloud—and I also noticed the Rook making a fuss behind me.

He clicked and hissed, so with my hands still hovering above the fire’s warmth, I glanced back.

And straight into a pair of gray eyes.

A man’s eyes.

I screeched. Then almost tipped into the fire. Arms swinging, I stayed upright just long enough to lurch around … and then hit the floor with a painful thump.

Before me, the pile of rags had unfurled into a very tall, very pale man covered in black oil.

“A fire,” the man said in Nubrevnan. “How excellent.”

A man. Standing in front of me. Filthy skin, pale hair, speaking Nubrevnan.

I would not have been more surprised if Tanzi had suddenly appeared. In fact, that would have been a thousandfold less surprising than this.

My fingers moved for my knife. Poor defense against a man so large—and he was large, all shoulders and long limbs—but I would take what I could get.

His hands shot up defensively. Even his palms were dirty. “I won’t hurt you. I just want the warmth.” His voice was rough as an avalanche. He motioned to my fire. “May I?”

“No,” I said flatly. Then I unsheathed my knife and thrust it out.

He sighed. His hands fell, and for several long breaths, we stared each other down. The crack and pop of the Firewitched matches echoed around us. Even the Rook stayed absolutely still, absolutely silent.

The Rules were very clear about what to do with Accidental Guests of the male variety, and I had seen firsthand how that law was carried out. It had happened the year Tanzi arrived. A hunter had lost his way in a blizzard. He’d managed to pass through the glamour, and he’d ended up at the Convent’s front gate.

Sister Rose had wielded the knife. No questions asked, no hesitation, no remorse.

“It is the will of Sirmaya,” Hilga explained to Tanzi and me later. “And Rule 37 leaves no room for misunderstanding.”

But today—right now—I wasn’t actually in the Convent. I was inside the mountain, and there was plenty of room for misunderstanding.

Drip, drip, drip went the quicksilver. A reminder I did not have time for distractions. For men.

I broke our standstill first. “How did you get in here?”

“A good question. One for which I have no good answer.”

“Meaning you don’t know.”

“No clue.”

I rubbed at my throat with my free hand. Either my Nubrevnan was bad, or he had a roundabout way of speaking.

Likely both.

“Stop that,” I snapped.

“Stop what?” His hands lifted higher.

“Whatever you’re doing with your face.”

“This is my attempt at a smile. To calm you.” He smiled even wider, and I shuddered. The stretching of his lips and crinkling of his eyes made him look like he wanted to eat me.

He sighed. His face and shoulders drooped. “I suppose I’ve forgotten how to smile along with everything else …” He trailed off. Then he flung up a hand, eyes widening. “Um, there’s something behind you.”

“I’m not stupid.”

He gulped. “No doubt that’s true, but I’m not lying. A shadow is rising behind you. Very snake-like in shape—and very large.”

At that moment, the Rook erupted in a warning of feathers and howling.

So I turned.

I saw.

Ink spilled across the ice. Darkness slithering in two distinct columns, each with a thousand feathery legs on either side.

“Shadow wyrms,” I said at the same moment the man said, “Hagfishes.”

I flinched. He was right beside me, and this close, there was no ignoring how much he stank.

Of course, my awareness of his stench was a cursory, background thing compared to the approaching wyrms.

I had seen pictures of shadow wyrms in Tüll’s Compendium of Creatures. Though nothing in that tome had prepared me for their size—easily as long as the Convent—nor for the sound they made.

If it could even be called a sound. It was more a punch of surprise in my chest. Of hunger in my belly.

It was, in all ways, the opposite of the spirit swifts’ gentle call. This was visceral. This was hard. This was deadly.

“I think maybe we should run!” the man shouted, voice distorted by the shadow wyrms’ cry.

“I agree!” I shouted back, pivoting for the fire. “But not together!” I grabbed for the Firewitched matches. I couldn’t leave them behind. They were all I had for warmth. “Douse,” I commanded, and the flames snuffed out.

A half breath later, the wyrms stopped screaming. Somehow, the silence was worse. An echo to jitter down my spine and knock inside my organs.

The beasts were coming this way. Crossing over the glacier ceiling, they would soon reach the path behind us.

“I know you specifically said ‘not together,’” the man said, “but I don’t have a choice. You’re running this way, I’m running this way, and if we don’t do it at the same time, then one of us is going to die—”

“Enough!” I shrieked. “Come on!”

Another scream knifed over us, but we were running now. No time to dwell, no time to look back.

For the second time that day, I ran for my life.

The wyrms didn’t like it. They let loose another cry that hardened in my belly and tangled in my limbs.

I stumbled. My pack listed sharply forward—had it always been this heavy? But the man steadied me with a grip.

“Don’t touch me,” I snapped, an instinctive reaction. Even with the shared enemy of the shadow wyrms, I still did not know who this man was or what he wanted.

He released me, and the air around us seemed to gust colder.

The wyrms stopped screaming right as my feet slammed off the platform onto the ledge cutting forward. My escape was an overloud gallop, made all the louder by the pack’s jangle and clank.

“Maybe … they won’t … hurt us,” the man said between gasps. Already he wheezed, and we’d barely begun our escape. “Maybe they’re just curious!”

“Curious how we taste,” I barked back. “Faster!”

I don’t know why I added that command—it wasn’t as if he could move any faster. I blocked his way, and the pack slowed me down. Plus, my legs were half the length of his.

Ahead, the walkway cut left, curving with the ice before vanishing around a bend.

Please, Sirmaya, please be a tunnel on the other side—

A thud rattled through the earth. It shook right up to my knees, and a blast of cold seared over me from behind.

“Don’t look back!” the man roared.

I looked back.

A mistake, for the shadow wyrms had landed on the ledge, and with the flat, smooth stone beneath them, they were accelerating.

By a lot. Shadowy legs tendriled back and forth. Centipedes of pure darkness with no distinguishing features. Simply silhouette and hunger.

Briefly, as my gaze flew forward once more, I met the man’s eyes. They bulged and shook, the whites swallowing everything. I could only assume that mine looked the same—

I tripped. My left heel slipped over icy scree. My pack tilted toward the abyss.

This time, though, when the man grabbed the pack and yanked me upright, I did not say a word. I just pumped my legs faster.

I also did not dare look backward again.

We reached an inward curve in the ice, and the outward bend was approaching fast. So were the wyrms, though. Their hundreds of legs kept an endless vibration running through the stone, and with each breath that ripped from my throat, the vibrations shook harder.

“You called them shadow wyrms before!” the man shouted.

I offered no reply because by the Twelve, I did not understand why he was trying to speak. I could barely breathe and run at the same time, and he was panting much harder than I.

Yet still he continued: “So this isn’t Noden’s Hell, then? And those aren’t His Hagfishes?”

“No,” I huffed.

“That’s a relief—”

“STOP. TALKING.”

He stopped talking.

We hit the bend. The Rook had already swooped around—I took this as a sign that there was nothing dangerous ahead.

I was wrong.

A third shadow wyrm crawled over the ceiling, just like the one from before, and at its current pace, it would intersect with our one and only escape.

But there was a bit of gold to coat all the chaos: a doorway, almost identical to the one in the Crypts, waited a few hundred paces ahead.

If we could just get there before the wyrms got to us.

The Rook seemed to think the same, and, blessed bird, he gave a vicious screech before flapping right for the shadow wyrm on the ceiling.

A moment later, the wyrm screamed.

And its brethren behind us screamed too.

There it was again—that gut response. The urge to vomit welled hard in my throat, and I had to slow … then stop entirely, a hand planted on the wall to keep from losing my balance.

“Your bird is going to get itself killed!” the man said. He latched his hands firmly to my pack to keep me from toppling headfirst over the ledge.

“He knows … what he’s doing!” I answered between gasps for air, though I wasn’t entirely sure if that was true. What had worked in the Crypts might not work here.

I couldn’t dwell on it, though, just as I couldn’t stay stopped for long. The Rook had bought us a precious few moments with his sweeping and swinging.

I shoved off once more, picking up speed with each step, even as the wyrms’ shrieks pierced louder.

If the Rook could just keep that wyrm from crossing the ceiling for a few more moments, then we could reach the doorway.

So long as the ones behind us didn’t catch up.

As if on cue, the wyrms’ screams broke off and the man called, “Weren’t there two wyrms behind us?”

Oh, blighter.

“There was definitely a wyrm behind us,” he went on, but I didn’t make the mistake of looking back this time. If one wyrm was gone, then maybe that was a good thing.

Besides, the doorway was closing in. I could make out individual planks in the wood, and there at eye level was a slot for my knife.

Fifty paces and we would reach it.

Of course, the ledge on which we raced was also narrowing with each pounding step. Worse, the wyrm on the ceiling now scuttled toward us.

It was right as I groped the knife from its sheath—forty paces, only forty paces—that the earlier shadow wyrm catapulted from the ravine beside me.

All light winked out. In the space between one moment and the next, the world shrank down to me, the wyrm, and the sense of endless free fall.

This close, I could see what the creature truly was: a skeleton of black speckled with embers, as if bones had been dropped into a fire and left to burn. Smoke coiled off it in vast, eternal plumes of frozen darkness.

Then the sense of free fall hitched higher because I actually was falling.

Found in only the deepest, darkest places of the Witchlands, shadow wyrms are creatures of the Void. Few have entered their lairs and lived to tell the tale.

Something clamped—hard—onto my shoulders, and my fall ended as suddenly as it began. At first I thought the wyrm had reached me, had bitten.

Then I realized I was dangling, the ice wall at my back and a long, long drop before me. At my side, the wyrm still clambered upward.

Cold scored off it in vicious, mind-numbing waves.

I had no time to find out where it aimed before a strained voice called down, “I’m sorry! I know you told me not to touch you, but it was life or death—”

“HAUL ME UP,” I screeched. The shadow wyrm had not yet changed its course, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t.

“About … that,” the man panted, blocked from view by my pack, “with your bag and my angle … I’m not sure I can.” As if to prove the point, he jolted forward.

And I jerked down.

“Sorry,” the man called, his voice muffled by a steady boom that now drummed through the ice and stone. “The wyrms are … fighting each other … and … they’re tumbling this way.”

I had no choice—though fool that I am, I tried to think of some other way. This pack was all I had to sustain me. It was all I had left of the surface. Without it, I was truly on my own.

Another drop downward, and the man’s face appeared above the pack. Which meant he was about to fall.

That was it, then. This was my path and I had to stay firmly gripped upon it.

I wriggled free from the pack. One strap, two, and it was off. I had just enough time to watch the bag plummet downward—so, so far—before my vision wrenched upward and ice scraped across my back.

Something cracked against my belt before I reached the ledge, where the Nubrevnan helped me to my feet. He was panting, I was panting, but as one, we launched into a sprint—and just in time, for one of the wyrms was angling back toward us, emitting a scream that sent my vision whirling.

I had to keep one hand flat against the ice as I ran, not caring that the cold sliced.

Those screams that were not screams were getting closer, and the stone beneath me trembled.

Twenty paces shrank to ten shrank to five.

I reached the door, and in a frantic movement that sent the button flying off my leather sheath, I had the knife free.

I slammed it into the eye-level hole.

The door creaked wide.

The Nubrevnan grabbed my biceps and threw me inside, right as black cold and knee-shaking screams swallowed all my senses.

Then we were through the door, running—still running—as it thundered shut behind us.

The wyrms had not followed. We were safe.