Truthwitch (The Witchlands 1)

Below.

He forced his eyes open, forced his witchery to keep him aloft just long enough to gauge what had happened.

Merik was in the clouds above Kullen’s storm. Yet the cyclone was climbing, sucking in the clouds around Merik and, soon enough sucking at him too.

But there, hundreds of feet below, was a dark speck amidst the storm. Kullen.

Without thought, Merik threw himself forward in a painful thrust of his own wind. Then he released his hold on the magic, and he fell. Faster than he had risen through this storm, he now plummeted back to the street. As he flew through a world of hell and witch-storm, he never let his streaming eyes lose sight of his Threadbrother.

Kullen saw him. Crouched on the cobblestones beside a torn-apart … no, a still tearing-apart building. Kullen clutched his chest with his head tipped back, and Merik knew that Kullen saw him.

Kullen’s hands thrust up. A blast of wind knocked into Merik, catching him as he fell. Easing him onto the street. Into the eye of Kullen’s storm.

As soon as Merik’s boots were on the ground, he lurched for his Threadbrother. Kullen was kneeling, facedown now.

“Kullen!” Merik yelled, his throat ripping to produce any sounds over the storm’s endless thunder, the crack of building frames, and the shattering of windows. He dropped to the street. Glass shards bit into his knees. “Kullen! Stop the storm! You have to relax and stop this storm!”

Kullen’s only response was a shuddering in his back—a shudder Merik knew too well. Had seen too many times in his life.

Merik yanked his Threadbrother upright. “Breathe!” he roared. “Breathe!”

Kullen angled his face toward Merik, his lips moving ineffectually, his face gray and bubbling …

And his eyes as black as Noden’s watery Hell.

Breathing could not save Kullen—not from this sort of attack. Merik’s Threadbrother was cleaving.

For a single, aching moment, Merik stared at his best friend. He searched Kullen’s face for some sign of the man he knew.

Kullen’s mouth opened wide, the cyclone screaming with his fury, and the corrupt magic charged through Merik, threatening to cleave him too.

But Merik didn’t cower back or push Kullen away. The storm outside was nothing compared to what raged within.

Kullen’s fingers, black blood oozing from burst pustules, latched on to Merik’s shirt. “Kill … me,” he croaked.

“No.” It was the only thing Merik could say. The only word that could possibly contain everything he felt.

Kullen released him and, for the briefest flicker of a heartbeat, the black in Kullen’s eyes shrank inward. He gave Merik a sad, broken smile. “Good-bye, my King. Good-bye, my friend.”

Then, in a blur of speed and power, Kullen sprang upward and rocketed off the pier. Wind and wreckage crashed down on Merik, slammed him against the street and blanketed all his senses. For an eternity, all that Merik felt and all that Merik was was Kullen’s cyclone.

Until a great crack! split the chaos, and wood and pain thundered down.

Merik’s world went black.

THIRTY-NINE

Iseult sat in the cupboard, her eyes squeezed shut and her senses extending outward, her witchery reaching for some sign of life. Of the Cleaved.

As for the Bloodwitch named Aeduan, she was as blind to his Threads as she had been. Only by looking at his face had she had any idea of what he’d felt—which was nothing at all as far as she could tell. And though Iseult had trusted Aeduan not to kill her—and to probably not feed her to the Cleaved—there had been no verujta there.

Mhe verujta. It was the most sacred of Nomatsi phrases—a phrase that meant trust me as if my soul were yours.

It was what the Moon Mother had told the Nomatsi people when she guided them out of the war-filled far east. It was what parents said to their children when they kissed them good night. It was what Heart-Threads said in their marriage vows.

For Aeduan to know such a phrase could only mean he’d lived with a Nomatsi tribe … Or that he was Nomatsi.

Whatever the source of his knowledge, though, it didn’t matter. He had helped Iseult; now he was gone.

Iseult’s magic pricked up—she sensed a cleaved Marstok stalking by the broken window. Three wriggling strands of death moved with it, just like the ones she’d seen over the corpse in Veñaza City. Just like the ones she’d seen through the Puppeteer’s eyes.

These Threads were bigger, though. Fatter and strangely long. Stretching into wispy tendrils that vanished into the sky, like a marionette on a stage …

Iseult’s breath punched out. Puppeteer. She was looking at the Puppeteer’s work right now. These Severed Threads stretched all the way to Poznin—Iseult was sure of it—which meant the Puppeteer had somehow cleaved all these men from afar.

No, not somehow. She’d done it with Iseult’s help.

All those plans and places tucked away in your brain, the Puppeteer had said, have made the Raider King very happy. That’s why he gave me this grand mission for tomorrow. So, thank you—you made all of this possible.

The Puppeteer had realized Iseult and Safi aimed for Lejna, and she had cleaved whomever she could grab hold of.

Iseult was suddenly boiling beneath her cloak. Suffocating inside this cupboard. Burning inside her own head. She should have fought the Puppeteer harder. She should have avoided sleep and stayed away from that woman’s shadowy grasp.

Iseult was going to retch …

No, she was retching. Dry heaving and hacking because these Cleaved were on her soul now. She had killed them by being weak.