Sightwitch by Susan Dennard (16)

2(?) hours left to find Tanzi

Captain tried to apologize. It was the only time we spoke for the rest of our trek on the Way Below—and also the only words we shared in a tunnel carved entirely through ice labeled The Future.

Seventeen times Captain declared he was sorry, and seventeen times I ignored him.

It was childish of me. I see that now, but responding meant I would have to consider why his words upset me.

And that was something I was not ready to do.

The Rook nestled on my shoulder the whole journey, and each time my teeth started chattering, he cuddled against my neck.

Like before, in the cavern with the shadow wyrms, the ice seemed lit from within. It glowed so bright I had to squint to see.

And also like before, black filaments and patches hovered deep within the frozen blue. Too far away to distinguish real shapes, but they were there all the same and impossible to ignore.

“What do you think they are?” Captain asked as we hurried past one dark expanse that was faintly human in shape. Lines radiated out from it in all directions. “It almost looks like the ice is … is cleaving.”

“You remember what cleaving is,” I said flatly, speaking to him for the first time in at least half an hour, “but not your own name?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t understand it either. I know how to hold a knife properly and I can sing all the words to ‘The Maidens North of Lovats.’ But what my name is or how I got here or why I’m covered in this foul gunk”—he swatted at his sleeves—“I cannot recall at all.”

A beat passed. Two. Then he added hastily, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you before.”

Apology number eighteen, and this time I offered a grunt in return.

Ninety-three steps later, we left the Future and reached a new spot on the map: a long, dark room labeled The Past.

“Strange names,” Captain whispered as he read the map over my shoulder. “Sort of morbid, don’t you think?”

“The Sightwitches love their symbolism,” I replied—also a whisper, for this space demanded quiet. Then, because I didn’t know what else to do, I murmured, “Ignite.”

A small puff sounded, and a lone torch burst into life on the wall beside us. It was the only one like it. So I crept over, Captain just behind, and hauled it out.

The Rook didn’t appreciate the bouncing of my shoulder, so after an ornery hiss in my ear—even he stayed quiet in this room—he hopped back to Captain’s broader roosting spot.

The torch fit perfectly in my hand. Exactly the right size for my fingers to grip comfortably, exactly the right weight for me to hold without my arm tiring.

“What do these marks mean?” Captain asked, and when I swung the light where he pointed, a stark relief came into view.

It was the same motif from the tunnels, but carved above every tenth stone was a new design.

“They’re … mason marks,” I said slowly, the memory of a lesson with Hilga unfurling. “Which means this room was built before the time of Earthwitches.”

“I didn’t know there was a time before Earthwitches.”

“Because people have forgotten. It was a time before magic existed everywhere in the Witchlands.” Keeping the wall at my side, I resumed our walk onward. This time, Captain stayed next to me and I didn’t stop him. The darkness in this room felt alive. It breathed and prowled, and the only weapon we had was the torch’s weak flicker.

If not for the map, I would have had no way to know the room’s shape was rectangular or that an exit waited at the room’s opposite end.

“When the Sightwitches hid behind the glamour,” I explained in soft tones, “all the records and memories we’d kept were soon forgotten, for history is all too easily rewritten and the past is all too easily erased.”

Just as I had done in the Way Below, I slipped into my role of teacher. Reciting lessons and sharing what I knew—something about that simple task made the endless black around us seem less threatening.

And just as I had memorized every rule word for word, I had memorized this lesson exactly as Sister Hilga had taught it to me.

“Once, there were only twelve people in all the Witchlands with magic. Known as the Paladins, they were gifted their powers by the sleeping Goddess Herself and tasked with protecting the land. When a Paladin died, his or her memories and magic were reborn in another. Over and over again, this cycle continued for as long as the Witchlands existed. Until one day, the Twelve disappeared.”

Cold whispered over me—a gust from Captain’s magic. “Where did the Paladins go?” he asked.

“They died forever. No more reincarnation.” I ran my hand over the motif as I walked, its grooves surprisingly warm to the touch. Then I recited:

“I’ve heard that before,” Captain murmured. He rubbed at his brow. “It’s from … something.”

I nodded. “‘Eridysi’s Lament.’ Though I’m surprised you’ve heard that part. Most people only know one tiny verse.”

“About a broken heart, isn’t it? For some reason, I remember that song too. But don’t worry. I won’t sing it.” Captain scratched at the Rook, who didn’t offer his usual croon at the attention. “But the lines that you quoted—what do they mean?”

“They mean that the Paladins turned on each other. After millennia of watching leaders rise and fall, of maintaining peace and living on the fringes of society, half of the Paladins decided they wanted power. They wanted to lead. So six killed six, and then one final Paladin betrayed them all …” I trailed off as Captain vanished from the torch’s light.

He had stopped walking.

“What is it?” I angled back. Light washed over him. “What’s wrong?”

His head was cocked to one side, his eyes thinned. A breath passed before he whispered, “Do you hear that?”

My fingers moved for my knife. “Hear what?”

He surveyed the center of the room, but there was nothing to see beyond shadows.

“Voices,” Captain said at last. “Do you hear them speaking to us?”

“No,” I said, “and you probably shouldn’t listen.” Already he’d set off, though. With no worry at all, his long legs carried him away and the darkness pulled him in.

My stomach hollowed out. My mouth went dry, but against all reason or logic, I pushed into a scamper after him.

He took one loping step for each of my three. Soon enough, though, I and my torchlight caught up. He was planted before a marble pedestal, on which a hilt rested, almost as long as my forearm but with only a jagged fragment of steel to jut above the cross-guard.

And beside the broken blade was a square frame with a long handle. It reminded me of a reading glass used to magnify small text, except that this frame was larger and most of its glass had been shattered and lost.

Before I could stop Captain, his fingers had curled around the glass’s handle. He was lifting it high. I grabbed for his arm, but I was too late. Too slow.

Then I saw him. Through the shards still clinging to the frame’s edge, I saw him. I ripped my hand back and clutched my throat.

For it was not Captain’s face that appeared through the glass. It was a scarred face, a furious face. A man with his lips curled back and teeth bared in violence.

I reeled back two steps, and the face changed to a woman’s. Then another man’s. Then too fast to tell, I saw one person blur into the next—each as vicious and wrathful as the last.

Then Captain dropped the glass, and his hands clutched at his face. “Stop,” he snarled. “I can’t understand you—”

He broke off, whipping around. Then he shouted into the darkness, “Who are you? Show yourselves!” He spun again, louder and louder with each cry. “Stop shouting at me—who are you? Stop, stop, stop.”

He fell to his knees in a great crunch of bone that rattled through the tiles. His movement turned jerky and frantic.

I did not know what to do. My feet were stuck to the floor, and my mind had shrunk down to a useless pinprick of thought: What is happening to him?

I got my answer mere moments later when he lurched right for me.

“Kill me.” The words razored from his throat. His eyes bulged, glittering orbs in the dim circle of light. “KILL ME.”

Black lines radiated across his face and into his eyes. One black bubble built at the edge of his jaw.

I didn’t think—there was no time for it. All I could do was react. He was cleaving, his magic was burning through him, and if I didn’t do something right now, he would kill me.

I had not seen cleaving before, but I had read about it often enough to know death was the only outcome.

I flung the torch at him. It shuddered through the air, and before I saw it land, I was at the pedestal and hauling up the massive hilt. It took both my hands to grip it, but that shorn steel jutting up was still long enough to slice.

And long enough, I hoped, to kill.

I rounded back toward him. On his hands and knees, he had already crawled past the torch. It burned behind him, silhouetting him in flame.

He looked like Skull-Face from the Crypts.

I attacked. I had to—he was too large for me to fight if I didn’t get him while he was low. So I aimed for his face, and I charged.

In two leaping steps, I was to him. He tipped back his head, as if offering me his throat.

“Kill me,” he repeated. No longer a rasp, but a clear, insistent command that coursed straight to the center of my mind.

I stumbled. I slowed. I hesitated.

And in that moment, the Rook dove between us. Feathers and howling and talons to slice. The attack he had threatened in the workshop he now gave in full force.

His claws slashed my face, his power drove me back. The blade fell from my hands in a clatter of metal. I rocked back, arms flailing—but not enough to keep me from crashing to the floor.

Then everything stopped. The Rook flapped to Captain, who now lay sprawled across the tiles, and for several booming heartbeats, I sat there and did not move.

My wrists ached from breaking my fall. My face burned with lines of throbbing heat, where each of the Rook’s talons had torn skin.

Meanwhile, the torch flickered on and on, shadows to undulate over Captain. Darkness thrummed around me. I was outside the light’s reach; I could hear nothing but my own shallow breaths and slamming pulse.

“I’m sorry.” The words slid over the tiles to me. Captain rolled to his side, the movement stiff. Pained. With the torch behind him, I couldn’t see his face. “I … am so sorry, Ryber.”

The Rook nudged Captain’s leg, purring with concern.

“What are you?” I breathed, my body still as stone.

“I don’t know.” With a harsh exhale, he pushed into a sitting position.

The light behind him shrank even more, and the Rook hopped around to Captain’s leg.

Twice now, the bird had chosen this Nubrevnan man over me. Yet I was neither upset nor angry.

The Rook did nothing without reason, so the question was: What was his reason?

“You cleaved,” I said, finally drawing in my legs as if to rise.

Captain nodded slowly. It sent the light bouncing. “But then the cleaving stopped.”

“That’s not possible.” I knew it wasn’t possible. Sister Hilga and Sister Rose both had taught me that, and I’d read it in Memory Records too.

“But it did.” He mimicked me, pulling in his own legs. “A voice told me, ‘Not yet,’ and then the … the fire in my veins went away.”

Though my wrists groaned in protest, I pushed myself to my feet. “The voices you heard before the cleaving—who were they? What were they?”

“I don’t know.” He wagged his head, and as he continued to speak, I approached him, one measured step at a time.

I kept my hand on my knife the whole way.

“They used words I didn’t understand, Ryber, and they screamed and screamed and screamed. They were hurting. Someone had … had betrayed them. That much I knew—that much I could feel. Except that it also felt like me. Like the voices were my memories and I had been betrayed.”

I reached Captain’s side, and as one, he and the Rook lifted their gazes to me.

The Rook bristled, a challenge glittering in his eyes.

Captain, however, looked so deeply ashamed, so deeply sorry, I thought he might ask me again to kill him.

We held each other’s gaze, his chest unmoving. Mine bowing in and out. Three breaths I took. Then he said, “I don’t like this place, Ryber. I want to leave. After we find your Sisters, please: I want to leave.”

It took me a moment to gather my words. The truth was that I didn’t know how to leave. I didn’t know what would happen once I found Tanzi and the others. For all I knew, I would join them.

And at my core, that was certainly what I hoped for.

So I answered simply, “We’re almost there, Captain.” Then I extended my hand to him.

He tensed at the movement. Then he seemed to realize what it meant—that I was not only allowing him physical contact, but I was offering it.

The edge of his lip twitched upward, but he didn’t take my hand in his. Instead he lumbered to a stand on his own—which I appreciated. After retrieving the torch, I found him hunched, a pillar of shame with the Rook resting on his shoulder.

“If it happens again,” he said. “If I cleave again, please stab me with your knife, Ryber. I don’t ever want to frighten you, and I don’t ever want to hurt you.”

“Hye,” I said, though I stared at the Rook as I said it.

For we both knew he would never let me kill Captain. There was something special about this Nubrevnan man, and I had my suspicions of what that might be.