Windwitch (The Witchlands 2)

* * *

It was nearing midday before Vivia had a chance to return to the underground. Time was short; she had much to do. Check the lake, search the tunnels. The words recited, a beat to jog by. Her lantern swooped and sputtered. Check the lake, search the tunnels.

She was sprinting by the time she reached the lake, and she gave no thought to her uniform as she tore off boots and coat, breeches and blouse. There was something wrong—she could see it rippling over the shimmering lake surface.

“Extinguish,” she murmured. Then in she dove.

Too much water. That was the first thing she felt as she kicked beneath the surface. There was water she’d never met before, twisting and twining through the rivers and into the Cisterns. Vivia needed to find out why. She needed to find out from where.

While yesterday’s tremor might not have left significant surface damage, Vivia feared the same could not be said for below.

She hit the lake’s center, where the crystalline waters were cold enough to grip. Where the rocks were keen enough to cut. But only here could she wholly connect with what the lake wanted, with what the lake felt.

Deep, deep beneath its waters, where the plateau’s roots fed into the Sirmayans and grew up from ages past, Vivia sensed new water dripping in. It wasn’t from the recent storms but from the tremor, and it wasn’t limited to the plateau but rather had wormed its way under the valley and into the mountains.

There, currents leaked up from a crack in the earth. A new spring, icy and fresh, it was adding volume to these tunnels and to the River Timetz as well—abovestream. Above the dam.

Up, up, the water moved like bees humming in a hive. Out, around, and under too. If it wasn’t diverted soon, the dam would overflow. The city would flood. It would be a slow thing. Months, perhaps even years, in the making, for these new springs were small. Mere fractures in the rock. Yet if these fractures ever became rifts, if another quake rattled through the Stefin-Ekart valley, then the water might expand too quickly to counter. The city could flood in days.

Or worse, if the dam finally broke, it could flood in hours.

At that thought, Vivia’s latest Battle Room argument with Linday echoed out: Our people could be safe, even beyond Nubrevna’s borders, if the need arose.

No. Vivia couldn’t do it. Binding Nubrevna to the Purists was not a solution.

Yet … Serrit Linday. Why did everything keep circling back to him? Since the crack had first appeared in the dam three years before, he was the one who had resisted fixing it. Now he was the one treating with Purists, and he was the one with a door to the underground hidden in his greenhouse.

That door was what had brought Vivia here today. She intended to find it from the underground, and she suspected it was just on the other side of the cave-in.

By the time Vivia dragged herself from the lake, she was frozen to the bone. Her breaths were harsh as she shivered back into her clothes. Yet as she turned to snatch up her dark lantern, a quivering glow caught her eyes.

Like a cloud rolling across the moon, the nearest stretch of foxfire blinked out.

Three of the six glimmering spokes were now dead.

Whatever happens over, happens under too. Fast on that thought’s tail came another: The Fury said I must find the missing Origin Well.

Vivia swayed. No, no—Linday couldn’t be right. Except … each Well had six trees around it, and here instead were six stretches of burning foxfire. Each Well was also a source of magic, and Vivia couldn’t deny the immense power thrumming through these waters.

Long ago, Vivia’s tutors had taught her that the five Origin Wells chose the rulers of the Witchlands. It was somehow connected to the Twelve Paladins, and though she couldn’t remember precisely how, she did recall that the Water Well in southern Nubrevna was what had kept her nation autonomous for so long, even in the face of three growing empires.

Perhaps, though, the history books had missed something. There was, after all, one Well not accounted for. One well for an element no one believed existed.

The Void Well.

Vivia wasn’t a Voidwitch, though—nor had her mother been, nor her grandmother before that—so how could their family’s power stem from here? It couldn’t be an Origin Well.

It couldn’t.

But if it was … Then she could heal her father. That was the ultimate power of the Origin Well. The power to cure any ailment. Why, she could bring him down here to test it. If he healed, then she’d know.

At that thought, the empty space behind Vivia’s breastbone filled. Clogged. Almost as if she didn’t want to bring her father down here.

No regrets. Keep moving.

Vivia grabbed the lantern, snapping, “Ignite,” and squinting into the sudden light. There were too many questions, not enough time. She would have to mull all these ideas, all these possibilities while she searched—for the under-city wouldn’t find itself.

Nor would the over-city save itself.

* * *

Alone.

Iseult was alone again and wondering what could possibly be worse than Bloodwitches in the Contested Lands. Aeduan had left her beside an overgrown gully. It was decent terrain, in case anything unexpected arose. The sight lines were good; the cover was better, with fat mossy trunks and thick upthrusting slabs of dark granite.

After finding a flat crag to stretch out upon, Iseult dropped her gear and finally turned her attention to the rabbit she’d caught that morning. All day, it had flopped limply from the satchel on Aeduan’s back, and each time Iseult had glanced at it, its dead eyes had stared right back.