Witch's Pyre (Worldwalker 3)

Gift me, Rowan called out in mindspeak.

The heat began to build until Lily was shrieking. A hurricane wheel of her own began to form over the creaking redwoods until a boom sounded out and light shot up from Lily’s smoke willstone.

It’s nearly time, Lily, Lillian called. When the Hive has committed all its forces to fighting my soldiers in the center, send yours out of the grove on all sides to surround us.

I understand, Lily replied. Lily could feel Lillian’s exultation in the throes of battle with her army, but her body was weak, and she was burning more than she should. Lillian. There’s something you need to know about the bomb.

You can’t convince me not to use it, Lillian replied.

I know. That’s why I had Carrick dismantle it.

Lily felt Lillian’s dismay, and then she Gifted her army and sent the screaming horde of men, women, and Woven onto the battlefield.

Toshi jerked to a halt when he heard the boom. He saw a third beam of light shoot into the bruised sky and knew that Lily’s army had taken the field. Dread consumed him. They wouldn’t last long if he didn’t kill the Queen.

Toshi could feel echoes of agony and ecstasy from the rest of Lily’s claimed as they hurled themselves into battle, and his feet turned on their own and started running. Feeling Lily’s power in him, Toshi reached Hearing Hall in moments.

He ran through the forest of columns, a petrified echo of the redwoods surrounding Lily, and went to the door that opened into nothing. He tied the climbing ropes together and used them to ease himself down into the darkness. When he reached the end of his rope he let himself drop.

His magelight blazed out as he fell. When he finally hit the floor, he picked himself up and started running again.

Lily exulted.

She bounded across the field with her fearless Pride. She soared through the air with her fierce raptors. She swarmed across the ground with her frozen-souled insects. She led the charge with Rowan onto the field, thundering toward the struggling and dying Walltop soldiers, delirious with mad joy, and almost went back on her word. As Rowan tore into the leading edge of Warrior Sisters with his battalion of queens, Lily felt herself sliding toward taking all of him.

There was a part of him that wanted it, too. He wanted to know what it was to burn on the pyre. It was for this reason alone she resisted, even when he wouldn’t have. She couldn’t let Rowan burn.

Warrior Sisters cracked their cat-o-nine-tails whips, and when they couldn’t use their whips they fought with their bare hands. Their movements were blindingly fast and brutal. They did not fight with punches and kicks, but rather they grabbed on to an opponent’s limb and tried to rip it off or they’d fly up as high as they could, let go of their struggling victim, and let gravity do the killing for them. They attacked in concert with their Sisters, but they were as brutal with one another as they were with their victims. If one was losing a fight, the others did not waste their efforts on a lost cause. If one was winning, others joined her to end it quickly.

Workers swarmed, and they were felling Lillian’s uninoculated soldiers by the dozens. Their swollen bodies hardly looked human, and the sight of them angered Lily. She contacted Tristan, who was engaged in an aerial battle with the Warrior Sisters.

Tristan—fly into the city, she ordered. Gather rebels with crossbows. Shoot the swarms from raptorback.

I’m supposed to stay over you and protect you, he argued.

Get that pesticide. Kill the swarms. My fire will protect me.

Lily wrapped her hands around her iron chains and held on as the logs beneath her turned to crumbling red coals. She called out to Breakfast for more wood and his team piled her pyre ever higher. She drew the heat into her crucible of a body and changed it faster and faster until all of her claimed were overflowing with power. Lily’s army basked in her mounting strength, throwing themselves at the Warrior Sisters in frenzy, while Lillian’s army began to falter.

Lillian! How can I help you?

I’m dying, Lily, and when I die it won’t be quietly. You must take my claimed from me or they’ll die with me.

I don’t know how.

I’ll give you everything I am. Everything but one part—the worst of me. That I’ll take with me to my grave.

Lily’s vision scoped out from her pyre, pulled up into the air, swirled over the battlefield, and spiraled down into Lillian’s.

Clawing agony assaulted her. A thousand regrets rained down on her head. Every memory Lillian ever had, every mistake she ever made, every willstone she ever claimed, every love, and every hate she harbored in her heart transferred from Lillian to Lily in an instant.

All but one. Lillian kept Carrick for herself.

Watching as if from a great height, Lily saw Lillian lying atop her smoldering pyre, the fire nearly extinguished. Her skin was black with soot and streaked red with blood.

Come, Carrick. Carry me to our grave, Lillian called.

Toshi was lost.