Honor among thieves

Chapter Ninety-Four

“They’re scaling Ditchwall now, and there’s no one to stop them!” Cythera sent her consciousness winging over Ness, trying to watch in every direction at once. “There are two more ladders at Wheatwall. One just fell, but- No! Malden!”

“He’s not your lover anymore,” Coruth growled. “This is why you had to renounce him. Do not tarry with him-tell me where else the barbarians are attacking.”

Cythera watched as Malden hurried toward Ditchwall, shouting for forks and archers. If the barbarians reached the top of the wall and surrounded him, even Acidtongue wouldn’t save him from “Tell me what you see, girl!”

Coruth’s voice was tinny and small, as if she were very far away. Even though she sat directly next to Cythera in the main room of their house on the Isle of Horses. It was so hard to stay aware of her body, to keep talking even while her eyes saw things in a hundred places at once. How could anyone do this? How could any witch bear seeing so much and not slip free of her body altogether?

“You may be one of the initiated, but you’re still learning,” Coruth told her, and suddenly the older witch’s voice was much louder. Cythera felt like her being was yanked sideways, pulled away from Ditchwall, as if she were a kite whose string had been tugged. “Look, daughter. Look everywhere-we must know what they’re doing.”

“But why?” Cythera demanded. She couldn’t see Malden anymore-was he overrun? Was he already dead? “What’s the point? Just knowing where the barbarians are doesn’t help anyone. We can’t tell them where to concentrate their forces. We can’t fight them ourselves.”

“Do as you’re told!”

Cythera tried not to think of Malden, to spread her consciousness wider. It was so hard-she’d just learned how this was done a few hours before. “Mother, the city will fall in the next hour-there are so many of them!” At Ryewall a barbarian climbed up on the battlements, only to be struck down by three arrows fired from different directions. At Westwall a fork pushed away another ladder, even as the barbarians raised two more. “We have to stop this. We have to do something, not just watch!”

“And what would you do?” Coruth demanded.

“Cast a spell. Set the ladders aflame, or-or call down a storm, they can’t climb if the ladders are too slick with rain to hold onto.”

“You think those things are in my power?”

Cythera couldn’t bear it. Ness was about to be overrun-the siege broken. The barbarians were about to take the city and there was nothing she could do. “They’ll kill everyone, Mother. They’ll kill every single person in this city.”

“So now you’ve seen the future?”

“I’ve seen enough to know how much blood they’ll shed once they’re inside the walls,” Cythera insisted.

“So the time has come,” Coruth said.

“What time? Mother, we have to help!” Cythera said. She felt as light as a scrap of silk floating on the wind. Her head reeled and her senses were on fire.

A slender thread snapped somewhere, and twanged like a broken bowstring. Cythera felt as if she were being pulled through the air faster than a trebuchet ball, and then she was falling, falling so fast.

With a start she lurched forward and found herself sitting in her chair, back on the Isle of Horses. Her consciousness was firmly back inside her body. She tried to extend her vision again, to see farther, but she could not. It was like she’d never been trained to be a witch at all.

Beside her, Coruth sat, her eyes rolled up in the back of her head. “You’re done for the day,” she said.

“What? But the attack-the barbarians-”

“There’s supper to get ready,” Coruth said, as if it were just an ordinary day. “And you need to sweep out the grate. There’s a week’s worth of ashes piled in there. I expect it all done by the time I return.”

Cythera couldn’t believe it. The siege was about to be broken and her mother could only talk of chores? “Wait-when you return from where?”

“I had hoped there would be more time to train you before things came to this dark pass,” Coruth said. “I can only hope you’ve learned enough.” And then her body erupted in a welter of blackbirds that winged around the room, smashing against the walls and ceiling as they desperately tried to find their way through the open window.

The chair where Coruth had sat was empty.