World Weaver (The Devany Miller Series Book 4) (24 page)

“I’m sorry.”

And she disappeared into the forest, leaving Sorgen standing alone by the fire, the crackle of flames on logs the only sound.

***

“What happens next?” I asked despite myself, my eyes on Sorgen as lust and hope and yeah, maybe love too, faded, leaving only need, a desire to own.

“What always happens next. He follows her and forces her. Uses her own body against her. Lies to her. When she wakes, she will be someone else entirely. Come. That’s something I don’t wish to ever see again.” She snapped her fingers and we were outside Valley’s Head, on a road that disappeared into a great forest to my right and led to the king’s palace to my left.

“What happened with the Riders? How did they manage to trap them all on Ketwer Island?”

People packed both sides of the road, three, four people deep, and they weren’t very interested in allowing us—well, Mom—to squeeze to the front. Weird that they could see her and not me.

“It wasn’t until after Sorgen stole the Omphalos that he managed to drive the Riders out of witch lands. The Wydlings and the witches gathered up the infected and pushed them through the Red Gate Hook, and when the last Rider slipped through, Sorgen used the Omphalos to break the hook.”

“The Wydlings helped him? After what he did to Sephony?”

Mom nodded. “They had to. Once Sorgen had the Omphalos, his people were protected from the Riders. The Wydlings were falling hard to the parasites and it would have been only a matter of time before all the clans were infected.”

I thought back to Sephony’s parents, so fiercely proud. It must have killed them to lose their daughter to the king, to believe she’d broken her vows and turned her back on them, and then have to accept Sorgen’s help to save their people.

It was probably a mile and a half before we found a spot not occupied and claimed it. Mom was agitated and her skin kept rippling.

“Are you okay?”

“Don’t you feel it?”

I confessed I didn’t. I opened my Magic Eye and saw a nuclear blast of power down the road. Gasping, I slammed my eyelids shut and said, “What the hell is that?”

“Sephony and Sorgen.”

I cautiously opened my eyes again, as the king’s guard came into sight.

The crowd went wild and magic, lots of it, zinged across my skin, pricking the bottoms of my feet, and making my scalp tingly. “What is going on?” I asked, but Mom shushed me.

I didn’t take offense because the sight robbed me of words.

Sorgen was in full battle gear, astride his horse, the conquering hero. Sephony was walking, naked at his side but for the metal ring around her neck.

I surged forward, but my mom caught my arm. “You can’t do anything about this. This is the past.” Her words echoed my own, sounding bitter.

If I could kill him, I would. All pity for the burned man on Sephony’s hill vanished in a spark of anger as white-hot as the power exploding off the two figures coming toward us.

“Devany, you need to calm down. You’re leaking almost as much power as they are.”

I didn’t want to calm down. Something itched between my shoulder blades, and I spun.

“Do you feel it?” Ravana asked, her cloud-filled eyes on the figures too. “Such power. And he doesn’t even know what he’s giving up, the fool.”

I lunged at her, but she vanished, her laughter scattering on a puff of wind. Panting, I turned back to the road, sick to my stomach, my nerves on edge as I waited for Ravana to return.

“Calm down.”

“Stop telling me to calm down. Didn’t you see her?”

“Who?”

“Ravana.”

Her eyes went wide and she spun in a circle, searching. “She was here?”

“Yes. What’s going on? Why can’t you see her?”

Her face pale, Mom said, “Because this never happened. She never showed up at the grand procession before, not any of the times I’ve watched it.”

Mouth dry, I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting Ravana to sneak up behind me and snap my neck. It was only when Sephony and Sorgen got closer that my entire attention was caught on the pair making their way toward the palace. “This is sickening.”

“It is, but you need to really look. Look.”

I did. The Witch King’s magic was pouring into Sephony like a waterfall. She glowed with it from deep inside, as if someone had turned on a golden light in her belly, and still the magic poured in and in, filling her. I knew what that felt like; I’d experienced something similar when I’d killed Ravana.

Sephony’s eyes were haunted though, the Witch King’s betrayal written all over her face. She wanted to scream, but she kept her head high.

Did the Witch King know he was losing all his magic to her? Did he care?

As she neared, she tugged on my magic too and it spooled through me into her. Her eyes went wide and she turned to stare right at me. She didn’t hesitate in her stride, but she saw me.

How was that possible?

“Block it off. Now.”

“What?”

My mom gripped my arm tight. “Block off your magic. You’re making things worse.”

I did, though how my magic could affect something that had already happened, I didn’t know. I put down a bubble, cutting off the magic. This time Sephony did stumble and Sorgen slowed his horse to see if she was okay.

I wanted to knock him to the ground.

She did not answer him, just recovered and kept walking. A cheer rose from the crowd, loud—louder than possible. They were buoyed by magic, but Sephony was siphoning that, too.

She was taking all the magic the witches had and they didn’t even realize it.

“So that’s why he takes on the Spider Queen,” I said. “When Sephony runs from him, she takes all his magic. He has nothing left.”

“It makes them both mad. She, filled with too much magic to handle, and he left with a gaping black hole that he was desperate to fill.”

It all made sense now, why he would take such a gamble in stealing from the Spider Queen. And it had paid off, hadn’t it? Except. “How the hell did he manage to defeat the Spider Queen without magic?”

“That’s why he defeated her. Without magic, she couldn’t see him. He went in with an army and came back alone, but he came back triumphant.”

Time jagged forward. Valley’s Head crumble as Sephony ran from the Witch King. Sorgen rode out after her, fear and anger and desperation flying around him like a cloak. Their absence left a void into which Valley’s Head tumbled.

Parts of Sephony’s story came back to me and I grabbed Mom’s arm, opening a hook before she had time to understand. Ravana would grab Ty before Sephony got to Tempest Peaks. If I was going to screw around with the future again, I might as well do some good while I was at it.

NINETEEN

I delved into my mother’s head to figure out where I needed to hook. She would be furious with me if she noticed, but I was in too much of a hurry to care. I grabbed Mom’s hand and pulled her along with me.

The road was dark and lonely, quiet but for Sephony on horseback, pounding away from Valley’s Head as if demons were chasing her. And, I supposed, they were.

“How will we keep up with her?” I shouted.

“Change,” Mom said, and in seconds she was a raven, flying after Sephony.

Dammit, I didn’t have time to figure out how to fly. I fixed on a spot behind Sephony and hooked, then hooked again, following her in leaps. My mother fell further and further behind.

Ahead, an ancient and dangerous magic loomed. Sephony was almost to safety, which meant Ravana would be waiting. I hooked ahead and came out in front of the Wydling woman in time to hear a baby cry. Tytan. She had him bundled up tight against her chest and he sounded terrified.

The air thickened. Ravana stepped from her own hook, her gown, tattered white and made of soul-stuff, billowing behind her. She shouted, her voice filled with power. Magic exploded around me. I threw up a protective bubble, but she hadn’t been trying to kill me. No. She’d trapped me in a ring of blue and silver fire with her. Sephony was outside it, frozen in mid-gallop.

“This is familiar,” she said, stalking toward me. “I seem to recall us in a similar situation not long ago.”

It seemed like forever, but the old fear came back. Not as strong, true, but there, a stale odor in the air.

“This time you have a problem, don’t you?” She flicked her hand and her power slammed me up against the barrier she’d erected. I slid to the ground, unhurt, but trembling. “No soul to use against me. Clever girl, for you to figure that out.” She slammed me into the wall again and this time pain shivered through me.

“Maybe I will take pity on you. Help you defeat me. What do you think?” She gestured and a black bird fell into the ring with us. My mom.

“No!” I shouted, unable to help myself. The bird shimmered and then my mother was laying there in the dirt. “Mom! Are you okay?”

“There now. You can use her to kill me. Again.” Ravana’s face was lit up with glee. “All this will be over. Kill me and I can’t get to the little baby. Kill me and I won’t make him hate you.”

“All this is already done,” I said, working hard to keep my fear out of my voice. “Stopping you won’t fix the past.”

“Won’t it? Your mother seems to think it will.”

I hooked to Mom and slammed a protection bubble around us both. “No, it won’t,” I said, ignoring the niggling worry that I was wrong and this was real and even as we spoke, we were changing everything. “This is death. You are dead, like it or not. Get over yourself.”

Ravana ignored me, her crazy eyes gleaming. “Kill me now. Destroy your mother. Or I will make sure that Tytan knows who is the cause of all his pain.”

Mom’s hand slipped in the dirt when she tried to push herself up. “Use me to kill her,” she gasped. “It’s all right. Do it before she slips away like the snake she is.”

I debated hooking Mom away. Snatching a villager to bring back here to … what? Was I really contemplating killing someone? Would it even work? They were dead too, just memories. Memories didn’t have souls and a memory wouldn’t kill the beast before me. “This is ridiculous. I don’t know how you can see me, but you’re stuck here. You can’t do a damn thing to change what’s already happened.” I waved my hand at her. “Go on, do what you have to do. I won’t stop you.”

The rage in her face made my knees weak, but I kept my wits about me and continued to feed power into my protection bubble. Ravana banished the flames she’d erected around us and tore through the air after Sephony. The Wydling’s horse reared, throwing her and Tytan to the ground. He screamed louder and I lunged forward, only to be stopped by Mom’s hand on my ankle.

“Don’t. It’s what she wants.”

Heart aching, I could only watch as Ravana ripped Tytan’s soul from his body. She held him by a leg as he shrieked in fear. Sephony screamed, her hands outstretched, begging. Ravana laughed and flung his soul to Sephony almost as an afterthought.

Turning to me, she held him aloft, his tiny body so small. So delicate. “Every bruise.” She shook him. “Every cut. Every drop of blood will have your name on it, Devany Miller.” She shifted, becoming me, down to my hiking boots. “There won’t be a moment when he doesn’t think of you and curse your name.” She shook him again, hard, and the broken cry tore me up inside. I dropped the bubble and ran for her, forgetting I needed a soul to kill her again, forgetting everything.

She laughed, the bitch, laughed at my pain and vanished.

“Please no, please no, please no,” I chanted, yanking my fingers through my hair. “It can’t be real. It’s not. It’s not, right Mom? Right? Please say I’m right.”

Her arms went around me and I collapsed against her as Sephony screamed her son’s name and her sanity broke.

***

I did try hooking to the Slip, but it didn’t work. It wasn’t there for me to go to. Mom put up with my panic attack/meltdown for about a minute, then she said, “Devany Anne Miller. Knock it off.”

“She’s hurting him.”

“She’s gone.”

“You said—”

“I know what I said,” she shouted at me. “And I’m sorry for it. I don’t know if anything she does will affect the future. I don’t know anything at all.” She lowered her voice, sensing my near-hysteria, perhaps. “I’m sorry. He obviously means something to you.”

He was just a baby. It hadn’t ever really sunk in until now. She’d taken him as a baby and broke him over and over again for centuries.

I threw up, or tried. Nothing spilled from my mouth, but my stomach heaved anyway. Mom’s hands pulled me upright and into her arms where she hugged me for a long while.

When I stopped shaking, she pulled away from me, her expression bleak. “We need to keep going.”

I didn’t want to, but I didn’t stop her when she raised her hand and snapped her fingers, leaving behind the broken young mother who would become a goddess.

We stood watching an army march on the Spider Queen’s tower. The sheer number of witches in armor stunned me. No wonder Sorgen had been successful. He’d thrown everyone he had at her until she stumbled and fell.