World Weaver (The Devany Miller Series Book 4) (25 page)

I couldn’t watch him take her eyes.

He disappeared into the tower for a long time, long enough for me to ask Mom if she could move us forward, but she told me no. “I don’t know where he hides it, or how. We must watch.”

A midnight sun transcribed a fiery arc across the sky, its nuclear yellow comet tail brilliant against the blood red dome. Then night fell over the thousands of dead and shadows crawled out of deeper shadows to ransack the bodies. Mom and I stayed in a protection bubble and I shivered as unseen monsters gobbled flesh and crunched bones.

The sun scattered the night beasts, and the carrion birds came, with their blousy wings and dainty steps, tugging at long ropes of intestine, dining on cheeks and eyes, gorging themselves, and still we waited. It wasn’t until that mutant sun was high in the sky that Sorgen ventured forth, magic blazing behind him. He wasn’t carrying the Omphalos, it was all around him in a brilliant white-hot orb of light. He glittered and glared with power, enough to stir the dead. He could have raised his army, but he did not. He instead climbed upon the back of the Spider Queen and forced her to carry him home.

Mom and I kept up, barely. I couldn’t risk hooking to Valley’s Head because I didn’t know if that’s where he would go. For all I knew he’d stop and drop the Queen’s eye in a lake and I’d miss it.

He did not stop, but did not return to Valley’s Head either. He used the magic to build a new city, one of brick and stone without any of the beauty or whimsy of Valley’s Head. He sent the Spider Queen away with a contemptuous swat of her own magic when he’d finished using her.

Sorgen installed the Omphalos in what would become the Council House and witches flocked to see it and bask in its glow. His grand plan to conquer the wild magic and bend it to his will unfolded. The borders went up, the Wilds came to be, and the magic of Midia began to twist.

We never saw the eye.

“What am I going to do? Can we go back in time and enter the tower with him?”

“Be patient,” she said. “Watch.”

His obsession with Sephony never abated and finally he took an army and marched with them to the ruins where the young Wydling woman had lost her sanity—Tempest Peaks. He threw his magic at the barriers between him and Sephony and his son. If anything, it strengthened her will and rendered his null. On and on it went, until his soldiers deserted him, until it was only Sorgen standing at the barriers.

“Sephony!” he roared.

A tempest rose out of the ruins, a big black cyclone that blotted out the sun. The ground shook as the earth rose around her sanctuary—and prison. The earthquake knocked Sorgen to his knees and when the dust settled, a gleaming ring of rock encircled the storm.

A crack appeared in the rock, inviting him.

Sorgen struggled to his feet and staggered for the passageway. The moment he entered the magic swirling around, he caught fire. Flames engulfed him and he screamed.

Screamed.

I turned away, hunching my shoulders against the noise, not wanting empathize with the man. He’d done so much to earn my disgust. “We didn’t see it.”

“Didn’t we?”

“Mom. If you know where it is …”

She turned me and pointed.

“I don’t want to watch a man die.”

“Look.” She shook me a little and pointed again.

I opened my Magic Eye. His stomach glowed with light, rays of magic shining through his burning flesh. “He ate it?”

“He absorbed it, knowing there was no way the Queen could take it from him. He was channeling the Omphalos and its power was too strong.” Her expression was worried. “I don’t know where you will find the eye.”

“I do.” The idea of going up the hill in Sephony’s temple and cutting open Sorgen made me ill. “Shit.”

“Then, it’s time for you to go.” Her face was composed, her eyes bright with tears.

“Do I have to leave you?”

She hugged me, tight, and I held on to her for all those years I’d missed having her hold me. When she pulled away, I was crying. “I love you,” she said. “Take care of yourself and my grandkids. Your brother. Your dad.” She sighed. “Tell him I miss him.”

“I will.” My feet weren’t on the ground anymore. I was floating upward, away from her. “Can’t you come with me?”

She shook her head, sorrow in the tears that swelled on her lashes. “This is where I belong now. Goodbye sweetheart.”

Leaving her wasn’t as painful as when she died because now I knew she lived on, even if it was in a place of memories. But I didn’t want to leave her and I bawled the whole way to the door, pitch black with only a thin white outline to show where it stood. I pushed through the door, sobbing with the pain of entering my body, of being weighted down once more by worry and pain, fear and time.

I settled into my flesh with a sense of suffocation, and flailed for a too-long time before my lungs remembered how to breathe and sucked in a large, painful breath. I was alive.

The burden of the story I’d witnessed sat heavy on my shoulders and I felt bowed by its weight.

I now knew where the Spider Queen’s eye was, but at what cost?

***

I pushed myself off the floor, hanging onto the wall for support as I eased myself to the door. My legs were awash with prickles as if they’d been asleep for a year. Dear lord. I hoped I hadn’t been gone for a year.

I missed the first step and would have fallen, but Krosh was there. Strong, wonderful, kind Kroshtuka. He wrapped his arms tight around me and buried his nose in my hair. “You’re alive.”

“Yes.” For better or worse, I was alive. “I know where the eye is,” I said, breathing in the warm, musky aliveness of him. Then my stomach gurgled and ruined the moment. “I think I need to eat first, before we go get it. And maybe sleep.” The room was empty but for him and I. “Do we have a ride back down?”

“The Queen left a few nights ago and said she would be back when you emerged.”

“A few nights?” When he nodded, I said, “What have you been eating?”

He laughed. “The little ones have been taking care of me.” He whistled and soon a tiny army of spiders the size of apples came rushing through the door. They climbed on the walls and ceiling, converging on Krosh. “They are quite the energetic bunch.”

“I can see that.” I realized that what I’d taken for bug tracks in the dust had been spider tracks. Apple-sized spider tracks. Dear lord.

“We are warriors!” one of the spiders said, his voice reminiscent of the arrogance of Neutria.

Neutria. I felt a pang of loss. To the spider, I said, “Are you now? Well, it’s very nice to meet such vicious warriors.”

They scurried underfoot with glee at this—at least I thought it was glee. With spiders, it was hard to tell. When they were done showing off their speed, they filed out of the room until the one who’d spoken said, “Come, we will take you to await our Queen.”

We followed them down a smaller staircase that ran along the outside of the tower. When we got to the bottom, the spiders led us to a grand table covered in a hodgepodge of offerings. Half-eaten apples. Lots of bugs, some still wiggling. Worms. A bird, wrapped in silk.

Kroshtuka leaned into me and said, “I’ve found that eating is best done when I am my hyena.”

“No doubt.” My nose wrinkled as the spiders skittered excitedly about the table, crawling over the food and up the walls in general spidery mayhem.

My life was insane.

Also, there was no way I was eating bugs. “I’m not waiting around for her. I’m hungry and tired and I want a shower.” I had my voice pitched low, unwilling to insult the little guys. A part of me wondered why I wasn’t screaming at the sight of hundreds of apple-sized spiders and another part wondered why the hell that would be the thing to freak me out.

“We could leave a message with her minions.”

“We aren’t minions,” one little spider cried. “We are warriors!”

“My apologies,” Krosh said. “Leave a message with her warriors.”

We told the little spiders what we planned to do and where the eye was. I made it clear that I didn’t think the Spider Queen could get to it herself. I wasn’t sure if I could get it, but I left that part out. Despite Sorgen’s perfidy, Sephony would probably have a thing or two to say about me digging around in his ashy belly to retrieve the eye.

“Oh, I wonder, is there something in here I could use to hook to?”

“Hook? Hook?” little voices repeated all over the room. “What does this mean?”

I stifled a yawn. “I need an object that personifies the Spider Queen’s tower. Something that will allow me to return here without walking.”

The spiders ran about, bringing me one thing after another: a helm, an arm bone, the tooth of a monster I didn’t ever want to meet in a dark alley. None of them felt right, though. Nothing held the essence of the tower. I wanted to cry I was so tired. It was Krosh who took things into his own hands and said, “Perhaps the Queen’s eye will work as a focusing object.”

“Oh, right. Brilliant. Thank you. I’m so tired.”

Taking Krosh’s hand, we hooked away from the Spider Queen’s tower to Odd Silver. It was dark, fires banked and witch balls glowing softly on their pedestals around the village. Krosh and I visited the communal hall where most of the cooking was done and where the village’s food was stored. We piled meat, cheese, prepared vegetables, and fruits onto a platter that we took with us to his home. There, we ate with a quiet intensity, before stripping down and falling into bed. It didn’t take more than a few moments before he was asleep, but my mind wouldn’t let me rest.

Had Ravana been raving nonsense about Tytan? She’d tortured him, Tytan had told me so, but he’d never said anything about knowing me or my name. And how could he have known my name? I’d witnessed memories, only that. Ravana couldn’t change the past. Right?

Why had she been able to see me? Had she, like Mom, been some sort of psychopomp, escorting me through the land of the dead? Only with Ravana, she was insane and not helpful at all. She was insane, I repeated in my head. So what if she could see me? It didn’t mean she could change anything.

Tytan didn’t hate me. He’d let himself get tortured to protect me. He’d done that several times. He’d saved my parents.

He didn’t hate me.

I fell asleep, but it was a long time coming. My mind wouldn’t stop replaying Ravana’s words. ‘I will make sure that Tytan knows who is the cause of all his pain.’

TWENTY

We didn’t speak to anyone in the village when we woke; instead I hooked us to Tempest Peaks. Better to get the thing done. I spared a thought for Ty and the others still in the Wastes, hoping they were all right. Okay, Kali and Ty would be fine. The Wydlings? I made a mental note to try to hook to them as soon as I could.

“Will you come in with me?” I asked, instead of what I wanted to say, which was, ‘Please stay here out of harm’s way.’

“Of course.” Krosh slipped through the sharp mouth of the entrance without a cut. I put up a protection bubble only after I nicked my arm a few feet in.

The hill was steeper this time, or maybe it was my heavy heart that made every step harder. The warriors lining the paths all stared at me, their eyes following our progress up the hill. I didn’t want to see Sorgen again, didn’t want to remember how he’d died. I didn’t want to face Sephony’s wrath. I was tired of confrontation and stress.

As we neared the top, a high-pitched keening made my ears ache. “Oh boy. I think she knows why we’re here.”

“A rotten tooth hurts when pulled, Devany.”

“Yeah, but the patient usually doesn’t obliterate the dentist.” I topped the hill and stood before Sorgen. Ash sifted from his body to pile at his feet, or what was left of them. His eyes were on me, the Witch King’s eyes. I didn’t know what to say. I’d felt sorry for him before I’d seen what he’d done to Sephony. Truth be told, I still had pain in my chest for him. “I’m here for the eye.”

His gaze stayed steady on me. Behind him, the tree swayed in an unfelt breeze. If I walked over the threshold, the tree would disappear and Sephony’s prison would unfold before me, the tornadoes and lightning a reflection of her rage and the magic she’d stolen from the Witch King. Though, was it really theft if she hadn’t known she was taking it?

I pushed my fingers into the Witch King’s abdomen, yelping at the heat. Still? He was burning still? I formed a protection bubble around my hand, but the moment I did, my hand was expelled. “Shit.” I tried again, and again the same reaction. I would have to put my hand inside him without protection and suffer the pain to get the eye. Lovely.

Teeth gritted, I shoved my hand into Sorgen’s gut. The pain was instantaneous and awful and I almost pulled away again. Then I touched something smooth and I wrapped my fingers around it and yanked. The ball came free with a small gasp of sound, like a sigh of relief. My eyes went to Sorgen’s.

“Thank. You,” he rasped. The tree whipped, leaves flying free of the branches. Sorgen’s form collapsed in on itself, ash flying up around the edges, until all that remained of the Witch King was a mound of embers. Then the wind gusted and even that was gone.