Page 3

CHAPTER 3

Innes threw the bloody sheets into the bonfire roaring outside the village house.

She curled her hands into fists, nails cutting half-moons into her palms.

This was the second baby she’d lost this week.

The second baby to cross the Bridge of Endings before drawing breath, and she was so, so tired.

The evening was silent, save for the mother’s sobs echoing into the night.

Many of the houses around the square had a candle in the window, a simple gesture to honour Aurelia, God of Beginnings, although she doubted the grieving family behind her would notice.

She stepped closer to the bonfire, reaching her hands towards the warmth before she realised that they were covered in blood.

Closing her eyes, she tried to calm the grief threatening to burst forth.

When her heart rate settled, she strode across the town square to the well and drew a bucket, washing her hands until they were clean.

Innes had been the midwife to three mothers in this village over the past few years, but she knew this death would sour the relationship.

Midwives were easy to blame in the blight.

Witches, even more so.

She wanted to shout logic at the villagers, but the propaganda from the ruling gods villainised her people, so she swallowed her anger and filled the bucket again, winching the rope down and back before tipping the freezing contents over her head.

She inhaled sharply and leaned back so the cascade of water trickled down her neck, making her shudder, waking her up.

She wiped the sweat and grime off her face and threw the bucket onto the ground.

She wished she could stay longer and offer more support to the mother, but knew from experience her presence would be unwelcome.

Her leather healer’s bag remained in the house and she couldn’t afford to leave it behind, not when so many of the herbs she used to weave wreaths of magic were becoming harder and harder to find.

She made her way back across the town square to retrieve it, her gaze drifting to a hunched figure now standing by the bonfire.

The child’s father turned at her approach, his silhouette blinking with the movement of the flames.

‘He didn’t even cry,’ he choked.

Innes loosened a breath.

‘No. He’d already crossed the Bridge of Endings.

’

‘We know about the blight, but I never suspected, I had hoped...’

‘I know,’ Innes said.

‘It’s not your fault.

’

He jerked as if she’d hit him, eyes narrowing in anger and she took a step backwards, dread pooling in her stomach.

‘Why didn’t you save him?

’ he asked, moving closer.

Innes took another slow step backwards, gauging the distance between herself and the house.

‘There was nothing I could do. His life had ended before it began.’

His face sagged, and she backed up another few paces, nearly at the door when his broken voice called to her again.

‘Is there a cure for the blight?’

Innes didn’t break eye contact as she stepped across the threshold into the house, her voice calm despite her hammering heartbeat.

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Maybe the Seacht are right.’ He took another step towards her, tone promising violence.

‘This is your fault.’

The fire cracked and sparks billowed into the night sky, the father’s attention jerking towards the sound.

As soon as his back was turned Innes bolted and grabbed her bag, then slipped into the night without a backwards glance.

Innes tucked her loose pants into her socks and adjusted the laces of her boots.

She hauled her pack higher on her shoulders and grabbed the piece of willow she’d found to use as a walking stick.

Making sure she was alone, she took a running leap and jumped onto the first boulder that sat on the edge of the river, then quickly hopped across, traversing the water with ease.

The sparse shrubbery on the Vettonian riverbank faded, revealing the lush trees and evergreens of the Eyelet Forest proper, the colours moving from olives to emeralds in a soft wash as the border melted away for her.

She jumped off the last boulder and landed on the soft banks of Telorne, a rush of pure Ever pulsing under her skin at the contact.

She inhaled the scent of her homeland, mossy and fresh, and breathed a sigh of relief.

While she could access Ever in Vettona, her connection to the magic was weak.

The full might of Telorne’s well of Ever was obstructed by the enchanted border, and the well of Ever in Reathas was nearly unreachable due to the Seacht’s chokehold on the magic.

Ever was still available throughout the land to those who could harness the magic, but the wells were pure fountains, places where the source bubbled undiluted.

She tilted her head to the dappled light and allowed herself to fully enjoy the feeling of being home.

The magic that thrummed through Telorne was unsullied by the gods’ touch and she inhaled, feeling the world’s vitality seep into her marrow.

She wondered what it would feel like to experience Ever with all three wells unbroken.

Since Breon’s well had been decimated during the Great War nearly three hundred years ago, the world’s magic had been waning, exacerbated by the gods’ selfish uses of it.

The farther she moved through her homeland, the more she relaxed.

It didn’t matter how many times she left, there was always a small part of her that thought the Seacht would find her before she could return.

Crossing the border meant safety, it meant home.

She trudged past a small hut the witches used as a guard post and poked her head inside.

It was empty, but that didn’t surprise her.

The hut was only used in the evenings for those too tired to make their way home.

The witches on duty would be prowling the border, maintaining the incantation with woven wreaths of Ever.

She’d attended three births in Vettona, and the number of stillbirths was increasing at an alarming rate.

She couldn’t help but wonder if this was somehow connected to the fact that Ever was becoming harder and harder to pull from.

How these two things intersected, she didn’t know, but she couldn’t shake a sense of unease.

Innes carried on.

The sun peaked and began its reach across the land.

Birds chattered in the trees, their gentle chirps a melody around her.

She kept walking, eager to get home and discuss the past week with her cousin, Briony.

Before the Great War witches could imbue objects with magic to fly, but they’d lost the ability when the danann’s city of Breon sank, destroying the third well of Ever in its collapse.

Hiking didn’t have the same charm as flying.

An eerie quiet brushed through the woods and Innes slowed her pace, alert for signs of danger.

A prickling sensation danced over her neck.

The feeling intensified, as if cold silk brushed her skin, and before she could think she jumped over a fallen tree branch to crouch in its shadow, forcing back a gag as sylphs grazed her face.

Sylphs were nearly invisible creatures, and she could only tell where they floated from the way light hit their translucent bodies, like the shimmer of air above flame.

Nobody knew where they came from.

Her grandmother Tabita said their numbers had increased after the Great War, but so much of the witches’ knowledge had been lost during that time it was impossible to know for sure.

Sylphs normally congregated near the wells of Ever – they were drawn to the magic, and she’d never seen a murmur of them so close to the border.

She scurried backwards under a branch of the fallen tree and forced herself to remain calm.

She opened her pack and brought out a half-woven wreath of rosemary and lemon balm.

With trembling hands, she quickly began plaiting the loose ends, pulling threads of Ever from the air to weave between the leaves of the plants.

She panted at the effort it took to coax the magic into the wreath, but she held her nerve and kept working.

Witches weren’t able to channel magic through their bodies the way the gods did; instead, they used offerings to channel Ever, moulding the magic with their craft rather than their will.

Beads of sweat dotted her forehead as she worked.

It shouldn’t have been so hard – she was only weaving a wreath of distraction, and yet it felt like she was weaving a summoning.

She pushed aside her worry and focused on the task at hand.

The sylphs glinted in the sunlight, and it would only be a matter of time before they sensed the disruption in the Ever she was causing.

She needed to finish the wreath now , otherwise they would descend, their hunger insatiable until they had drained her being, leaving her husk to rot in the pine needles.

Her fingers stumbled over the last knot, and she sent a prayer to the Ellarch, willing the magic of the Old Ways to protect her.

Drawing one last strand from the Ever, she chanted an incantation in the Old Language and stood, raising the wreath in her hands as she did.

Small stabs of pain burned across her arms and back – marking the path of the magic – and the wreath caught alight.

She threw the flaming offering into the cloud of sylphs before her, and felt more than saw them descend on the wreath, their hunger pulling it apart in strips of flame and magic.

The only way to escape a murmur of sylphs was to submerge oneself in water or to provide an offering they couldn’t refuse.

She turned on her heel and ran.

Her feet pounded into the earth, pack bouncing on her back in a melodic thunk as she raced through the woods.

It was only when the chirps of birds surrounded her again that the forest resumed its natural rhythms.

She sighed in relief – the offering had been enough – and slowed, her vision swimming as she braced herself against a nearby tree.

The new markings on her shoulder itched but scratching them would offer no release.

The Ever marked all who used it, and nothing she did would ease the toll.

All non-human Ever Blessed beings of the land had to pay the price.

Witches were marked with constellations inked across their skin, and could only use magic through imbuing objects.

The gods – and their offspring, the demigods – looked human, but had longer lifespans, and lost their natural hair pigment until their heads became white shrouds.

Their magic worked differently from witches’; the gods each had one specific calling.

Caius was the God of Elements, his prowess with gemstones renowned across the lands.

Aurelia, as the God of Beginnings, was able to spark new life, while Avalon, the God of Endings, could ease the journey across the Bridge of Endings.

Each of the Seacht had an area of speciality: Elements, Beginning, Ending, Foresight, Hindsight, Agitation and Tranquillity.

Their offspring’s powers were less potent but could still be devastating if wielded correctly.

The danann made up the trio of non-human beings, and their connection to the Ever was rumoured to function through symbols and runes, which were marked on their skin, not unlike the witches’ constellations.

Of course it was impossible to verify this.

Every last danann had perished during the Great War, their history remembered only through folklore and the scant history books that survived the Seacht’s cleanse after their rise to power.

The few humans who could access Ever were outliers, killed by the Seacht because they didn’t fit into the natural order of things – and because the origins of their Ever were unknown.

When her panting subsided, Innes set off again.

Why had the sylphs been roaming the forest?

Yes, they were drawn to magic, but they were unable to feed from the border the way they could feed from a well.

Was it purely coincidence?

On and on she mused, logic warring with impulse as her thoughts circled around one another in rapid succession, sifting through the last few weeks, trying and failing to find some connective tissue between the sylphs, the blight and the fading Ever.

Innes crested the final hill, and the green trees of the forest gave way to the endless expanse of the east coast before her.

Behind her, the final rays of sunlight sank over the horizon, casting long shadows as she moved down the track towards a small cottage that rested in a field which bridged the forest and the shore.

A sea breeze kissed her face, bringing with it the scent of smoke and salt, and she grinned, relieved to have finally made it home.

She followed the path through the field to the front yard of the red clay house.

The garden was a mess of flower beds.

What had started as neat rows of plantings had morphed into a warren of herbs and flowers that Innes and Briony used for their practices.

She tried to ignore the empty beds to her right.

They were usually full of rosehips, mugwort and clary sage, but none of the seedlings had begun.

The bare dirt seemed to stare back at her, full of unspoken warnings as she traipsed towards the front door.

She didn’t bother knocking; she shared the cottage with Briony, and her cousin had a sixth sense when it came to knowing who was nearby.

She kicked the mud off her boots and opened the latch, stepping into the familiar embrace of home.

‘It’s me!

’ she called into the quiet.

The red clay walls of the cottage cast an orange hue over the space, amplifying the gold flicker of the candle flame along the walls.

A worn carpet ran down the hallway, which opened into a living room stacked with books and paintings.

‘Food’s almost ready,’ a muffled voice answered her, and Innes followed the smell of melting butter down the hallway to find her grandmother Tabita standing over a chopping board in the kitchen.

‘Tabby! I didn’t know you’d be here,’ she said, giving her grandmother a tight squeeze.

Tabita despised being called Gran, so she and Briony had grown up calling her Tabby.

They had joked it was because she had nine lives, but somewhere along the way the joke had stopped being funny and started being prophetic.

Tabita was a head shorter than Innes, but her presence was tenfold.

Long black hair fell past her shoulders, which were broad and roped in muscle.

Her skin was weathered, covered in freckles and small black dots; an entire galaxy’s worth compared to Innes’ few inky constellations.

These tattoos were the markings of their heritage; a tapestry on their skin, indicating their power and history.

Only High Witches had the ability to read what these markings signified – which meant Innes never got away with anything .

‘I’m so tired of hiking,’ Innes said as she shucked off her pack and flopped into the soft cushions of her favourite armchair by the hearth.

Her grandmother chuckled and handed her a glass of wine, which she accepted with a tired smile.

She took a long drink, and when her thirst had disappeared she took off her jacket, noting the handful of new dots along her shoulder blade.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Visiting my favourite grandchild,’ Tabita said.

‘And which one of us would that be?’

Tabita flicked a tea towel in her direction and Innes laughed.

As the most powerful High Witch since Mabel – the first High Witch of Telorne, who had died during the Great War – Tabita lived in the capital city, Neart.

However, since Briony announced her pregnancy six months ago, she had been visiting them more frequently.

If her grandmother had her way, Innes and Briony would move to Neart tomorrow, but neither were inclined to do that.

The cottage was close to the border, which meant Innes’ work as a healer and midwife could be utilised in both Telorne and Vettona.

Briony similarly needed to be near the border, as she was currently the most skilled witch maintaining the protection spell.

Not to mention the fact that Neart was too busy for Innes’ liking, and she didn’t want her grandmother breathing down her neck more than she already was.

She preferred the recluse of the cottage, away from people.

‘Where’s Briony?

’ Innes asked after a minute, having realised her cousin was nowhere to be seen.

‘Napping. The baby has been keeping her up.’

‘Is she okay?’

Her grandmother nodded and padded to the hallway, listening for Briony’s movements.

Satisfied her other granddaughter was still sleeping, she gently closed the kitchen door and looked pointedly at Innes, who sat a little straighter.

‘Another two babies died,’ she told Tabita, who sighed heavily at the news.

‘Does Briony know about the increase of stillbirths?’

Her grandmother shook her head.

‘I haven’t been updating her as often as I usually would, but she’s smart.

I’m sure the babe keeping her up at night is only part of her anxiety.

’

Innes loosened a breath and rolled her neck.

Briony was practically a sister, and the thought of losing her niece to the Ending was a pit of sadness she couldn’t stomach.

‘I saw a murmur of sylphs near the border when I passed through,’ she said instead, watching her grandmother’s reaction carefully.

Tabita hummed, a frown creasing her brows.

‘I haven’t heard of any sylphs near the border.

’

‘What do you think they were drawn to?’

Her grandmother stirred the contents of the frying pan, the sizzle of onions loud in the quiet of the kitchen, but she didn’t answer.

A spark of frustration flared; despite Innes having the early markings of a High Witch herself, Tabita still kept her in the dark an awful lot.

‘What aren’t you telling me?

’

Tabita added a mountain of chopped herbs and chicken to the frying pan, but said nothing.

‘I’ve had two babies greet the Ending this week alone, sylphs are roaming the Eyelet Forest, and the Seacht was nearly called on me—’

‘What?’

Innes cringed.

She hadn’t meant to say that.

‘It was nothing. It was just a threat from one of the fathers. He didn’t actually summon them, it was his grief speaking.

’

‘I don’t understand why you insist on helping humans who have shown no loyalty to the Ellarch,’ Tabita said, tapping the tips of three fingers above her heart in prayer.

The Ellarch was the old governing body bound by the treaty.

The accord, to which its founding members – the gods, witches and danann – had pledged allegiance, was carved into a stone in the Old Language.

Of course, the Ellarch stone had been the first thing to disappear when Caius formed the Seacht and started waging a war on the witches and danann in a bid to acquire more power.

It was still a painful truth of their history that he had succeeded in destroying the treaty, and with it their entire way of life.

The witches had escaped through sheer luck.

No one had expected the borders incantation to work, and when it did, it had been too late for their allies to escape the battle raging on the Arden Mountains.

In the years since, witches had created wreaths that allowed chosen people to cross the border peacefully.

But it was a well-kept secret, one that was only known to those who worked the border.

‘It was different when we only had the fading Ever to contend with, Innes. Humans don’t care about magic they cannot wield.

But the blight affects them, and the Seacht are using anyone who can access Ever as their scapegoats.

’ Tabita spat dramatically and tapped three fingers to her chest again.

‘I know your father was human and you want to help them, but deference to the Seacht is growing, and the humans think handing us over will bless their families with prosperity. The more you cross the border, the more you risk. Do you have a death wish?’

‘No.’

‘I didn’t hear you.

’

‘No,’ Innes said, louder.

‘But what else am I supposed to do? Sit here and let them die without a chance?’

‘The babies died anyway, didn’t they?

’

Innes nodded, her gaze captured by the dance of the flames as she tried to block out the memory of the mothers’ wails.

In all her time working as a midwife, she’d never lost as many babies as she had this year.

‘Then you risked yourself for nothing. You’d do well to realise that now and stop putting yourself in harm’s way.

It’s a travesty the gods’ lies are believed when they are the ones draining the Ever, however, if you came to Neart we could start your High Witch training early and—’

‘Not this again,’ Innes groaned, turning away.

High Witches were marked at birth by the Ever with a small black inking on their left pinkie finger, but they only started official training when they survived their Passage.

According to their lore, the Passage differed from witch to witch.

If the witch survived, the black dot would spread to cover the first joint of her finger – officially marking her as a High Witch in training.

As the High Witch proper, Tabita’s entire left hand was black, the ink spreading up her wrist to end near the joint before fading into the black dots of constellations.

Because the markings didn’t run through blood lines, there were already three High Witches in training, and Innes was not one of them.

She’d never tell Tabita this, but she was secretly glad she hadn’t been forced to undergo the Passage yet.

She prayed she had more time, more freedom, before she did.

‘All I’m saying is to be careful,’ Tabita said.

‘The Ever is hurting. We’d be fools not to wonder why.

’

Innes let Tabita’s words sink in.

She didn’t want to argue, so she murmured the witch’s prayer to let her grandmother know she’d heard.

‘May the Ever keep us whole, and the Ellarch keep us safe.’

Tabita huffed behind her, and Innes turned her attention to the altar above the hearth.

A small replica of the Ellarch stone sat in the middle.

It was surrounded by a spread of candles, wreaths, dried flowers and a tiny clay sculpture of Tassos, the last danann.

Of course, Tassos was long since dead, having been slaughtered at the hands of Caius during the Great War.

But he had been the figurehead of the resistance, the linchpin of the Ellarch’s legacy, and the last surviving member of his race – until he met his Ending.

She tapped three fingers to her chest in blessing.

She’d never met any of the danann, they’d all died centuries before her birth.

There were stories, passed down from witch to witch, that spoke of their bravery, of their devotion to the Old Ways.

She felt kindred to them in a way that was missing when she thought of the gods.

Perhaps it was because they had been allies in the war.

Perhaps it was because the only gods who had survived had absconded from the Ellarch treaty and made a sport of hunting her kin.

She kept looking, her eyes jumping over the small Nayt rock which sat at the edge of the altar.

She could barely stomach looking at the Ever-draining stone, but Briony insisted on keeping it on the altar for balance.

‘What’s this for?

’ she asked, pointing to a wreath of fresh rosemary woven in her grandmother’s signature style.

When Tabita didn’t answer she turned, about to ask again when she noticed the faraway look in her grandmother’s eyes.

‘I’ve been praying to Aurelia.

’

Innes must have heard wrong, because her grandmother, the High Witch of Telorne, would never willingly kowtow to the Seacht.

She waited for the punchline, but it didn’t come.

‘Why? Aurelia’s a god .

’

‘I know,’ Tabita said softly, turning to meet her gaze.

A chill bloomed across Innes’ back at the words.

Whatever was happening with the blight must be worse than she knew if her grandmother was invoking the God of Beginnings to help.

A decade ago, they had thought the blight was a symptom of the fading Ever.

Only in the last few years had it started impacting births in a way that suggested something else – something other .

Before she could probe further, a creak from the hallway sounded and Briony entered the kitchen.

‘I thought I heard people talking,’ Briony said, taking a seat at the long wooden dining table.

Innes couldn’t help but smile at the sight of her cousin.

Briony was her opposite in every way; petite, golden and very, very pregnant.

She walked over and placed a kiss atop her cousin’s head.

‘How’s my niece?

’

‘She won’t stop kicking,’ Briony said, rubbing her belly as if the child’s small limbs prodded her as she spoke.

‘Just like her mother then,’ Innes quipped and Briony rolled her eyes.

They’d shared a bed when they were growing up, which had often led to Innes sleeping on the floor to avoid the phantom terrors her cousin fought.

‘How were the births?’ Briony asked.

Innes glanced at her grandmother, who gave a small shake of her head.

‘They were fine,’ Innes said, walking to grab the food Tabita had finished serving.

She took three plates, filled with chicken and buttery potatoes and set them on the table.

‘Define fine ,’ Briony said.

Innes sighed.

A heavy silence filled the air, and as much as Innes wanted to pretend everything was normal, the thought of lying to Briony made her stomach twist.

She turned to get some water, avoiding the question for as long as possible, but Briony’s fingers wrapped around her wrist.

‘Start talking. I know you think you’re protecting me, but you’re foolish to think I don’t know what’s going on,’ Briony said, looking between Innes and Tabita pointedly.

The silence was laden.

When Innes refused to say anything, Briony huffed and stood, striding out of the room without a backwards glance.

A thumping came from down the hallway, then heavy footsteps.

She reappeared a moment later with a stack of books and papers, which she dumped on the table.

‘Ever is growing weaker much faster than predicted,’ she said, looking between Innes and Tabita, her gaze sharp.

‘The witches who maintain the border have noticed it’s getting harder to reinforce the spell, so I’ve been researching.

’

She spread the papers out on the table.

Innes didn’t know what she was looking at: reams of parchment with numbers and calculations stared back at her.

She had no idea what any of it meant.

‘We know the Ever has been fading since the Great War. The two wells have been overworked keeping the world in balance since the third was decimated by the Seacht,’ Innes said slowly, trying to catch up.

‘Correct. But the wreaths we could weave two years ago are taking twice as long now and use twice as much energy. We need more witches to man the wall, but our birth rate is declining.’

The only sound in the room was the crackle of the fire.

Innes stared at Briony, who stared at Tabita.

‘What are you trying to say, Briony?’ Tabita asked, her voice switching from loving grandmother to High Witch in an instant.

Briony pinned their grandmother with a feline stare.

It was a fluke of the Ever that Briony hadn’t been marked as a High Witch; she matched Tabita beat for beat where Innes often held her tongue.

‘If we don’t stop the blight, the border will fall.

’

Innes looked between the two, a sinking feeling settling over her.

This was bad.

Really bad.

If they couldn’t maintain the border the Seacht would erase them as thoroughly as they had the danann, leaving Telorne’s well of Ever in the hands of the gods.