Occasionally she struggled, as if trying to break the grasp of some unseen monster. Occasionally she cried out. Sweat ran in thick rivulets into her hair though she shivered with cold.
“I see the old man with the lantern,” she reported at one point. “His light shines on a forest. He is so very lonely-he wants a kiss.”
Malden glanced up at Coruth. The old witch shook her head.
“No, I understand now,” Cythera said. Malden had a feeling she wasn’t talking to anyone in the room. “His vigil can’t be interrupted. I’ll go down to those woods, in case he tries to follow me- Oh. Oh! The trees are-the trees are alive. They’re so… alive.”
“Where is she?” Malden whispered.
“It’s not so much a place,” Coruth told him. “It’s a path between two places. It only exists in a relational sense.”
“Ah,” Malden said, as if that explained everything.
“There are two paths through the forest, but which is the right one?” Cythera asked. “The path on the left is so straight. It goes right to the end of the forest. It’s paved with gold, with… with power and… fame.”
Coruth leaned close to Cythera’s ear and shouted, “What of the other path?”
“What? Someone… someone is whispering… I- Oh, the path on the right looks so hard. It bends and curls back on itself, and there are so many thorns. I don’t think it even goes where I want to go!”
Malden would have told her to take the easier path, to get out of those woods as quickly as possible, but Coruth silenced him with a glare.
“Choose wisely,” the witch shouted. Then she nodded at Malden.
This was the moment. The moment when she would tell him to stab his lover through the heart. He couldn’t-there was no power in the world, not god or man or witch, that would make him do that.
But then he understood exactly what was at stake. It was like he gained the second sight himself, if only for a moment. Cythera could choose the path of sorcery, the path of demonology and pure will, which way lay madness and deformity and evil, but also great power. Or she could choose the path of the witches-magic that she herself could not control but only influence, magic that came from the world around her. Magic with rules.
If she chose sorcery, he would be asked to kill her on the spot.
And still he knew-he would not do it. Even if she was to become like her father Hazoth, wicked and cruel and utterly without sympathy, he would still rather have her alive.
Coruth disagreed.
Luckily for them all, she chose the path on the right.
Her suffering was terrible. “The thorns tear my skin! My feet are bleeding,” she moaned as she writhed on the pallet. “Where am I headed? I can’t see anything-I’m blind! I’m dying!”
There was more-much more-and Malden could understand none of it. There were trials for Cythera to face, gates for her to pass. She met every trial with fear and pain but passed them all because she’d been trained how.
Eventually her voice trailed away into raving syllables that failed to form words at all. Malden worried that some deadly test had been failed… but Coruth sank back in a chair and closed her eyes. Soon she began to snore.
He threw the dagger on a table and knelt by the pallet, clutching at Cythera’s hands. Her fingers were limp in his and he doubted she could even tell he was there, but still he clung to her. For hours he waited by her side. He understood now that Coruth hadn’t just wanted someone to hold the dagger. She had brought him here-though he thought he’d come of his own will-to comfort Cythera. To comfort himself.
The day wore on. Once, Malden heard a great stone crash into the city, but for the first time he didn’t care where it landed. He had no thought but for his love.
Who was his no more.
Eventually Cythera’s eyes fluttered closed and she slept. She stopped shivering and her body relaxed. Malden pulled the sheet up over her form. It was cold inside Coruth’s shack. It was wintertime.
When she woke, her eyes were bleary and she lacked the strength to even sit up. But she smiled at him and placed one warm hand against his cheek. They began to whisper to each other, saying nothing at all, really. He didn’t ask what had changed, because he already knew. She made no promises, nor did she need to.
They let Coruth sleep.
In time, when Cythera rose from the pallet, she wrapped her arms around herself, hiding her nakedness. Malden rushed to find one of her velvet gowns so she could be clothed, but she shook her head. Instead she took a shapeless robe from a chest in Coruth’s bedchamber. The robe of a witch. She pulled it over her head and lifted the hood over her sweat-greased hair.
When she kissed him, it felt wrong. Like being kissed by a statue, perhaps.
“Marry me,” he begged. Desperation overcame him and it felt just like fatigue. “It can’t be too late. Give this up and marry me.”
She placed a hand on his cheek. She neither smiled nor frowned. “It’s forbidden of a witch,” she told him.
“By whom, damn it? Is there some council of covens I can appeal to? Is there a witch queen somewhere who makes these decrees and tells you all what to do?”
She shook her head. “Hardly. There are so few of us in the world
… no, Malden. We have no laws, only vows that each of us must take. A witch can’t marry because she must remain above worldly concerns, that is all. She has to make decisions on the behalf of other people. She must not be attached to one person-not when so many others depend on her.”
Malden cast about for any way to save what they’d had. To keep the love he’d found, even though he knew it was already gone. “Your mother and Hazoth were lovers,” he pleaded. “There is no rule of celibacy that binds you now, is there?”
“Their union was all about power, not love,” Cythera said. “Nor did my mother consent to it.” Her smile was so sad. “I can’t belong to you, Malden. I can’t belong to anyone, anymore.”
“You never did,” he told her, his voice very small.
Chapter Ninety
The rider had come very close now. He could descend upon Croy and Bethane in the space of a moment and run them through with his lance. A quick death might be the best they could hope for.
“Your majesty,” Croy said, “when I tell you to run-run fast, and do not look back.” He drew Ghostcutter from its sheath. He could hear Bethane gasping for breath already. She must be terrified.
If he could, he would spare her what was to come-but not yet. Not when they still had some slim chance. Croy had been in this position before, on foot and facing a man on horseback. He knew how it was done.
He only wished he could see the others.
He knew he was being guided by the horseman, driven toward some ambush up ahead. There would be footmen there waiting for him, ready to encircle him, to stop his flight. He did not know how many there would be or how well armed they would prove. He would have to improvise and use his best judgment.
Croy could barely walk. His feet were numb, his legs just blocks of wood that he could still command but not rely on. His left arm was useless, and the wound in his side had stopped throbbing-always a bad sign.
But he was an Ancient Blade. He could still fight.
“Var!” the horseman called. Croy didn’t recognize the word. “Var uit!”
Was he calling to his prey, or to his fellow predators? It didn’t matter. The rider had driven them along a high ridge, a rocky escarpment with only one clear way down. Up ahead on the path the rocks fell away from a narrow cut, perhaps the remnant of some long dry creek bed. Walls of stone rose on either side. It was the perfect place for a trap.
Croy looked to his left, away from where the horseman ambled toward him. That way lay a treacherously steep slope of broken rock. He could break to the side and run that way but it meant hurtling down a hillside of loose scree. The grade was too sharp for him to climb down-at best he could manage a controlled fall down the slope. A few withered trees stood up from the slope, little more than skeletal bushes. Even if he could get Bethane safely to the bottom of the hill, there was precious little cover there.