Page 63 of The Moorwitch
He inclines his head, looking as weary as I feel. “Very well. Can you walk?”
He leans on me, and we begin the journey. My shawl is still draped over him, but his breath is ragged with pain. Halfway to the house, Mrs. MacDougal and Sylvie meet us, fussing and frantic. The housekeeper helps to bear his weight, and Sylvie tells us Bell and Ariadne arrived safely back at the stables, but that their empty saddles had given them both a terrible fright. She hugs Captain tight and stares at Conrad’s burned hands, but the bandages I wrapped around them hide the worst of his wounds.
In the house, Conrad insists he is not that bad off, but lets Sylvie pat his sooty face clean with a damp cloth. He tells them of the burn gone out of control, but I see Mrs. MacDougal’s lips purse, just slightly, and I knowsheknows. Of course she knows. She’s run this house longer than he’s been alive. She’s complicit in all of this, whatever it is, however deep it goes.
Later that night, I pace my room, as tense as a cat in a cage. Is there more to Conrad North? Perhaps I’m wrong about all of it, leaping to foolish conclusions. My suspicions could be nothing more than heightened nerves.
I should just ask him.
Blunt and to the point.
What do you know of faeries, Mr. North? Are you in league with their murderous queen?
A few minutes more of this, and I’ve summoned the courage to open my door—
Only to duck in again, as Conrad goes stalking past, the manor creaking around him.
I hold my breath until he’s gone down the stairs, and then, snatching my cloak, I follow.
Because no matter what explanation he might give, I know now that I could not trust it. I can only discover for myself who Conrad North really is, and what he is hiding.
And why he wove that mighty wind spell with spider’s thread.
Chapter Nineteen
Conrad moves with sure-footedness in the black night and does not light his way until he is well away from the manor. I see a knot of fire bloom ahead and hang back; it is no lantern, but a fire spell, the conjured flame twisting gently over his hand.
“Oh, you disingenuous bastard,” I mutter. “You bloody-minded, lying hypocrite!”
I am still grappling with the revelation that he’s not onlyhadmagic, he’s been actively Weaving this entire time—after forbidding me, much lesshis sister, from so much as summoning a thimble across a room.
He has a great deal to answer for. But first, I must know where he is going.
His route is winding, following no path, but his direction seems assured. He pauses only a few times, and then I crouch low, melding into shadow until he begins to walk again.
The further he goes, the deeper my dread becomes, and the firmer my certainty. This is no idle wander, though he moves slowly, his limp and injuries paining him. He knows exactly where he is going.
It is a different wood into which I enter tonight than the one I first explored nearly a week ago. The trees are the same, the rise and flow of the land has not changed, but the spirit of the place has shifted. Before, I walked through it in awe, feeling small and intrusive, but notunwelcome. I was a mouse creeping along in fleeting insignificance, of no consequence to the wood’s much vaster existence. It admitted me with indifference and let me go my way.
But tonight, the woodpushesat me. The wide spaces between the trees teem with festering shadows. It makes me think, insensibly, of the man who’d stood on the corner in Devil’s Acre with his python wrapped around his arm. He would feed it mice and the children would gather to shriek as the lump of mouse slid down, down the snake’s gullet. Now I am that mouse, being squeezed on every side, pushed deeper and deeper into the darkness, with only the distant flickering light of Conrad’s fire charm to guide me. My thoughts tumble in a panic, and I wildly imagine that if his light were to go out, I would be swallowed up forever by this dark wood.
Not a long time later, Conrad comes to a stop, and I take up position behind a tree to watch what he will do.
The stone circle waits below, as I had known it would the moment Conrad walked past my room over an hour ago. As perhaps I’d known the moment I saw him raise his spell high and command the fury of the northern wind.
Conrad is connected to the fae. He may even be the “Gatekeeper” Tarkin mentioned—a servant to the faerie queen herself.
He steps precisely through the spider-thread wards, his movements calculated. As if he knows exactly where each one is stretched. And then, once he stands in the center of the circle, he puts out his light and begins to Weave.
The stones are, as I’d imagined, a great pegboard. He twines thread around and between them, but it is too dark for me to see the pattern he makes, though I can see that he does so with instinctive movements, working slowly but methodically. It is a pattern he knows well, has walked many times before.
I watch him carefully and hear nothing but the low, clattering wind. Conrad is lit only by the faint illumination of starlight reflectingoff the stones. The moon is veiled behind a knot of black cloud; a storm brews in the east.
It takes him twenty minutes or so to complete the spell. I am half crouched by the time he finishes, my legs cramping from the effort of holding so still. My earlier panic has been replaced by bitter resolve. I am closer than I’ve ever been to my goal, closer than Fiona got in forty years. I feel like a predatory bird waiting high in a tree, immobile, all-seeing, waiting for the opportunity to strike.
Suddenly, the threads begin to glow. Conrad has finished and is channeling into them.
I pull behind a tree, heart in my throat, and watch.