Windwitch (The Witchlands 2)

Vivia half walked, half ran after her, catching up as Stix ducked into the kitchen. Steam and heat and the dull clack-clack-clack of knives washed over Vivia. People paused to smile at their princess, to bow or curtsy or salute. Stix wasn’t slowing, though, so Vivia didn’t either.

They passed the billowing stoves, then the racks with the day’s supplies. Then, finally, they reached the cellar door in the darkest corner. Two soldiers stood sentry.

“Has the boy come back out?” Stix called.

“No, sir!” barked one, while the other shouted, “No one’s come through, sir!”

“Good.” Stix bent through the archway. Vivia followed, the stones grazing atop her hair. Shadows blanketed her eyes.

“The boy went down here,” Stix whispered as they crept, quieter now and slower too. “Might be we can corner him. Use him as bait for the Fury … There’s no one here.” Stix hopped off the final step. Then spun. “No one at all.”

She was right. The square lantern-lit cellar was empty, the space too small for anyone to hide. There was nowhere on or behind the shelves sagging against the walls that could possibly fit a person.

“I swear,” Stix hissed, more to herself than Vivia, “that the boy came down here. My men must’ve missed him.” She lurched back for the stairs.

“Wait.” Vivia walked, neck craned, toward a shelf straight ahead. It was tipped askew, and in the crack between it and another shelf, spiders crawled. One by one. A centipede too.

In seconds, Vivia had her fingers wedged behind the wood. She yanked. The case slid easily forward—too easily. As if small wheels were tucked beneath its pine planks.

An archway yawned wide in the stones, water dripping from its ancient keystone. A roach scuttled out.

“Holy hell-waters,” Stix whispered, moving to Vivia’s side. “Where do you think it leads?”

“Darkness is not always a foe,” Vivia murmured. “Find the entrance down below.”

“Entrance to … where?”

Vivia didn’t answer. She couldn’t, for at the moment something burbled in her chest. Something hot that might have been a laugh, might have been sob. For of course, the answer to the under-city would be here. Right under her blighted nose—and right under her mother’s blighted nose too. All these years, they had believed the city was lost, and all these months, Vivia had wasted her time searching.

Tears prickled, but Vivia ground her teeth against them. She could laugh, she could cry, she could feel all of this later. For now, she had to keep moving.

“Grab the lantern,” she said thickly. Then she entered the darkness.

* * *

Vivia led the way, though Stix held the lantern behind. Vivia’s shadows drifted long across the limestone tunnel, which ran in a single direction: down.

Aside from her first questions, Stix—ever the perfect first mate—asked no more, and Vivia offered no explanations.

Each step they moved deeper, the more a familiar green glow took hold. Until Vivia and Stix no longer needed their lantern. Foxfire illuminated everything, trailing ever onward, a constellation to track across the sky. Then the tunnel ended and a stone door waited, cracked ajar.

Hewn from the glowing limestone, six faces peered out from the door’s center. One atop the next, smoothed away, yet unmistakable all the same. Noden’s Hagfishes.

Vivia paused here, swallowing and breathing and swallowing again, for a black whirlpool had opened in her belly.

All she had to do was push through. Then she could have her answers. Then she could have what she’d been hunting for all along.

A steeling breath. Vivia pushed through. The stone gritted against its frame, the faces darkened as the green glow fell away.

Then she was there. The under-city. It spanned in the cavern before her, narrow roads radiating outward, with buildings—three stories tall—rising up on both sides. Some jutted out of cavern walls, others rooted up straight from the limestone floor. Windows and doorways gaped empty, save for the cobwebs strung inside.

All of it was lit by foxfire. The fungus climbed cavern walls and the jagged ceiling, wound up columns, and fanned over doorways. Some even shimmered from within the empty homes.

Empty. Habitable. Vivia could fit thousands—tens of thousands—of Nubrevnans in here. The spinning in her belly resumed. Twice as fast. A happy pain that swelled in her lungs and pressed against her breastbone.

Stix clapped a gentle hand atop her shoulder. “What is this place, sir? It’s as big as Hawk’s Way.”

“It’s bigger.” Vivia gripped Stix’s hand, towing her forward. “Come on.” She had to keep moving. She had to get answers.

They explored further, passing signs of life. Footprints through dusty webs or smears in the foxfire, as if people had dragged clumsy hands through. The houses were all the same, one after the other. Tenements built identically to the oldest structures aboveground. So much space—finally, finally.

Yet just as Vivia and Stix crept through an intersection, a clank! sounded through the city. Like iron on stone. Like an old blade fallen to a distant floor.

Vivia tensed. Stix froze. There they waited, breaths held, while green light and cobwebs whispered around them.

Then came a voice. Yelling and near—much too near. Vivia and Stix dove for the nearest house. Just in time, for the shouting speaker was soon dragged past.

Vivia peeked around the ancient doorway she and Stix hovered behind. A boy, short-haired and lanky, fought against the two people who hauled him down the road. He was bound at the wrists, yet he kicked. He pulled. He spat. And over and over he hollered, “It doesn’t have to be like this! It doesn’t have to be like this!”