Page 17 of Witchshadow

Cold, but not bone-gripping. Clear, but not overly loud.Again,the Emperor said in her mind.You will dance again.

Safi bobbed a curtsy, her teeth grinding, her rage rekindling. Moments later, she turned to the pretty young domna now approaching her and she slid into the next dance.

Four Days After the Earth Well Healed

Furry and lithe, silent and feral, a weasel, dressed in its white winter cloak, scuttles over the forested earth toward Iseult. Clasped in its teeth are pages.

Iseult is too stunned to react. She has left the Hasstrel castle while everyone sleeps. Only Safi knows, and she would never reveal. Still, Iseult must be careful. Fon Grieg has placed guards throughout the Hasstrel lands. He does not trust that Safi’s surrender is real, and he certainly doesn’t trust the Nomatsi girl at Safi’s side. Cahr Awen or no, Iseult is not to be trusted. She is different, she is other, and she has a power linked to the Void.

The weasel reaches Iseult. It drops the papers from its mouth. Worn, dirtied, and flattened, they are pale against the frozen soil. No moonlight beams down, but the stars shine and Iseult has been in the darkness long enough to see. To her left are the knotted roots of a winter-bare oak. To her right, a stretch of evergreen hedges that rustle on an icy breeze.

The pages rustle too as the weasel stares at Iseult and Iseult stares back. There is something in the creature’s glinting eyes that is more than mere animal. This is no trained pet sent on an errand; this animal is sentient. And this animal is waiting.

“Who are you?” Iseult asks, though part of her—a deep part, like the veins of ore inside a mountain—already suspects the answer.

Then it comes, like it had in the castle: images to suffuse Iseult’s mind and drape over her thoughts.

Poznin. The Wind Well surrounded by six oaks, surrounded by Cleaved.

A tower workshop with rounded walls decorated in dead flowers and bits of dangling felt.

Iseult’s face, tired and haggard inside a forgotten ruin in the Contested Lands, where Esme had asked, “Are they owls or are they rooks?”

And lastly, a worn diary from which the weasel rips out pages.

Iseult’s breath hisses. Everything inside her has gone cold—colder than the winter against her skin. Cold as the certainty of death and Trickster’s endless games. Because it cannot be. It simply cannot be.

Then another image plays through Iseult’s mind, and she knows it’s true. So very, terrifyingly true.

A knife stabs Esme in the back, thrust by a Northman who used to be her Cleaved. The Prince of Nubrevna has betrayed her. This Northman has betrayed her, and now blood, blood everywhere. Now the world’s Threads fading away.

“Esme?” Iseult whispers, and the weasel purrs. “But… how?”

The weasel does not answer, but instead slithers over the pages. Paper crackles, and Iseult realizes Esme wants her to look at them.

“It’s too dark.” Iseult motions to the empty sky. “I’ll have to take them inside—”

The weasel squeaks, an emphatic no, and stamps across the pages again.Here,she seems to say.These can only be read here.

Iseult glances toward the castle. It is nothing more than pale lights between branches from this distance. No Threads approach, and it will be some time before Safi worries. After all, Iseult has taken nightly walks for several days now.

Her bones need movement. Her soul needs silence.

“Yes,” Iseult says at last, and she takes up the top paper. It is torn in places and slightly damp in the center, where tiny tooth marks pucker. After several moments of squinting, she is finally able to detect a diagram: crude figures on one side, a solo figure on the other, lines stretched between them. Words are scribbled in neat handwriting around the picture, but it takes Iseult a moment to recognize Arithuanian—strange Arithuanian, as if written a hundred years ago…

Or a thousand.Understanding pitches over her; the cold inside her deepens. “This is Eridysi’s diary,” she says, and Esme nods her weasel head.

Suddenly, the night’s darkness means nothing to Iseult. Suddenly, she cannot stop reading. Devouring each word, each illustration, each stroke from a pen wielded a thousand years ago. Here is a description of cleaving. Here a description of releasing Threads so they do not become ghosts to haunt the mind. Here is an explanation of how to hold Severed Threads and control them, and here is an introduction to cleaving from afar.

There’s a guide to dream-walking, and even a small snippet about failed attempts at reanimating the dead. They’re all observational notes, of course, for although Eridysi had been able to touch some magic, she had not been a Weaverwitch.

But that doesn’t matter to Iseult, for the person Eridysi had observed had been the Void Paladin of a thousand years ago. Portia had been her name, andshehad been able to cleave and weave and break and bind. She had even made the first Loom, binding people who would eventually become the Hell-Bards.

And she’d forced Eridysi to watch every step of the way, to record every detail. Now all her methods, all her experiments, all her thoughts on the power of the Void—the power that lives inside Iseult—are written out for Iseult to read.

Except that this is only part of the diary. Only a few stolen pages.

“Where’s the rest?” Iseult asks when she gets to the final damaged paper. Her nose is going numb; her fingers already are.