Page 129 of The Moorwitch
At the top of the hill, I reach out and rest my hand on the Dwirra trunk. The bark is as feverish as I am. For too long a moment, I rest there, feeling a sudden and mighty kinship with the ancient tree. I look up and see the great carved face, and it’s as though those blank eyes were looking back at me.
“You and I,” I whisper, my breath a tremble on my lips. “He’s done for us both, hasn’t he?”
Dragging myself to my feet, I lean heavily on the tree and make my way around it, feeling like I’m circling a village wall, its girth is so great. Sticky red sap rolls down the white bark and pools between the roots, smelling of honey mixed with blood. The Dwirra’s heavy branches droop to the ground like tired limbs; it seems that at any moment the entire thing will simply slump over.
As I approach the side of the tree which faces the enclave and the white palace far across the way, I begin to see more of the fae scurrying below, clearly panicking. They run between their root-houses, some of which have already collapsed, piles of white, rotted wood stained with red sap.
There are two figures ahead of me on the hilltop, standing still at the Dwirra’s feet. I limp toward them, with no idea what I’ll say, but certain I’ll never reach Morgaine’s palace on my own.
Then I realize: I won’t have to.
Because it’s Morgaine I see ahead; I can tell by the spiky crown on her head. And with her, on his knees with his head hanging onto his bare chest, is Conrad.
He’s alive.
For a moment, that single thought outshines all others, and I stare at him and feel tears of relief run behind my tears of pain.
The nearer I creep, hidden by the buttress-like protrusions around the trunk, the more I see the horror of his predicament. A thick silver chain is bound around his wrists, tethering him to a stake driven into the dirt. Spiderwebs cling to his hair and skin, spun between him and the Dwirra. They glisten silver, a vast, delicate net. He wears only his trousers, and all across his bare shoulders and back, sweat glistens. His eyes are shut, but he seems conscious, for he flinches periodically and his lips peel back in grimaces of pain.
What in the names of the Fates is this?
Some sort of ritual?
Then I see the light tracing the spiderwebs, so thin and faint that at first it seems a trick of my eyes. But then I realize, with a twist of horror, that she is draining him, feeding his living energy into the spells she’s strung up around him. I study them closer and see familiar patterns intertwining with ones I don’t recognize: sustaining spells, healing charms. And they all twine over a certain section of bark, enough web to form a silken mesh over an ugly gash in the tree, where the wood is blackened and greenish, as if infected. This must be where Conrad cut the branch, the same branch I destroyed in my disastrously ineffective attempt to thwart Lachlan.
She’s trying to mend the Dwirra.
And she’s killing Conrad to do it.
“No!” I cry, but what I’d intended as a shout comes out as a broken sob. I don’t have the strength to reach him, and crumple to my knees halfway there.
But they hear me and look up, Conrad’s face taut with pain, but his eyes growing wider at the sight of me.
“R-Rose? What are you—? How did—?”
“Let him go!” I raise the knitting needle Sylvie gave me, wishing it really were a sword.
“She must have threadwalked here, like a moorwitch of old,” Morgaine says, looking at me with an odd expression and ignoring the pitiful weapon in my hand. “A power I thought long lost. But if the girl could threadwalk into Elfhame, then that means the Dwirra’s protective perimeter has failed. My brother will be here soon.”
She glances over her shoulder, as if he might be marching through Elfhame at that moment. I crawl forward, reaching for the spiderweb spells spun around Conrad, but the queen turns and hisses, stepping in my way. I find myself grabbing hold of her skirt instead; she’s still wearing the gown of scaled red silk; it feels like the skin of a snake. The knitting needle slides from my hand.
“Let him go,” I plead.
“Let him go?” she replies. “He broke his faith with me, failed in his duties, and sentenced my world and my people to destruction. Even now my fae clamor to escape. They will flee straight onto the end of my brother’s sword, and those who surrender to him he will add to his own ranks. And then he will turn his eye onyourpeople, little witch. Tell me, how does it feel to know you’ve started a war that will see the deaths of millions?”
“Conrad didn’t know what would happen when he broke that branch off the Dwirra. If you must do this, use me instead!”
“No,” Conrad rasps.
“There’s hardly anything ofyouleft,” Morgaine comments, without much feeling. She turns back to the tree, putting her hand on the feverish bark. “Human energy is the strongest there is, stronger even than my own. You mortals burn so hot for so short a time ... it is fitting that the one who harmed the Dwirra should be the one whose life would heal it.”
But she looks uncertain, despairing even.
“It’s not working, is it?” I whisper, gazing at Conrad, who watches me through glazed eyes.
A tremor rolls through Morgaine; she stares across Elfhame. “I kept them safe for three hundred years. Three hundred years, and all my work is undone by a mortal man with a common infatuation.”
“Your work was undone by yourbrother,” I retort.