The Drowned Woods (73)

Mer turned her attention back to the spymaster and the boar.

Ysgithyrwyn had three more crossbow bolts embedded in his flesh. Blood streamed down his face, but it was like trying to take him down with bee stings. It might irritate and hurt him, but the boar would survive every one of those wounds. They would only delay the inevitable. Renfrew had his back to a tree, the jars of black powder still heavy in his cloak, pulled up tight to his chest like he was cradling an infant. He fired another shot at Ysgithyrwyn, then his weight canted forward. He was preparing to move, probably to find a safe place to set off those explosives. Something metal glinted between his teeth, and she realized it was firesteel. All he had to do was set off a single spark, and the Well would be destroyed—and Gwaelod with it.

She couldn’t let him do it.

She raised her arm, fingertips reaching out as if she might take his hand from afar. And she called to her magic.

Renfrew stumbled—half his body tried to move while his feet sank deep into the muddied earth. He crouched and dug his fingers into the mud, trying to free himself. When his fingers met ice, he went still. He was ankle-deep in frozen mud. Ysgithyrwyn stepped toward him, snorting. Renfrew was trapped, unable to run or defend himself.

Renfrew met Mer’s eyes. And for a heartbeat, it felt like they were back in the Scythe and Boot.

Will you kill me? he had asked.

No.

But her answer had changed since that night.

Understanding dawned in Renfrew’s eyes. And he smiled.

Mer’s gaze blurred with tears; the last she saw of him was that smile.

She threw herself into a sprint, tearing through the undergrowth and away from the Wellspring. Branches whipped at the bare skin of her neck and face, but she ignored them and pushed herself harder. All that mattered was escape.

Grief throbbed up through her throat, catching in the hollow spaces between her teeth. She felt it in her mouth, in the arch of her cheekbones, in the curve of her brows. It hurt to leave him to this. But she did not have the luxury of choices.

She stumbled over fallen branches and through brambles, across another stream, and then suddenly there was a dog barking nearby, and arms were flung around her. Ifanna’s voice was in Mer’s ear saying, “You’re alive, thank goodness.”

Fane stood a few strides away, Trefor beside him and the cooking pot at his belt. His shoulders sagged with something that might have been relief.

Mer opened her mouth to reply.

But then the world ripped apart.

It was as if a giant had reached down and walloped her. Pressure and force slammed into Mer’s back, knocking her from Ifanna’s grasp and slamming her into the ground. Everything faded away for a few heartbeats—sight and sound, breath and time. Mer blinked once, found herself looking at a tangle of buckthorn. Tiny orange berries gleamed in the morning sunlight. The world was utterly silent but for a strange ringing in her ears.

She pushed herself up onto the palms of her hands. Her lip felt swollen, and when she licked at it, the tang of blood filled her mouth. She spat, then glanced around. Acrid smoke filled the air, a plume twining toward the sky.

Fane was on his feet, checking Trefor. The corgi was whining softly, his gaze on the smoke. Ifanna rattled off a string of rather creative curses—and that was when Mer realized she could hear again.

“—was that?” Ifanna was saying. “Did the boar do something to the magic or—”

“No,” Mer breathed. She turned to look at the smoke, her heart hammering. Swallowing hard, she pressed her bare fingers into the forest floor. She reached for the water that ran beneath the earth, tried to call out to the magic of the Wellspring.

The magic did not answer.

“No, no, no.” The whole world was shaking—or perhaps that was Mer herself. She tried a second time, stretching out that other-sense, trying to find the deep thrum of the Well’s magic.

It was gone.

“He did it,” said Mer. “Renfrew managed to set off the powder before the boar could kill him.” Mer squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. She should not have grieved Renfrew. She’d been the one to kill him, as surely as though she’d put a blade to his throat. It had been her choice.

Or had it? Had it really? Renfrew must have known she would never go along with his plan. It was why he’d shrouded the cost in half-truths. He would have realized that to speak it plainly would be to send Mer running. But then why had he brought her? He had killed the other water diviners when he could have used them instead. Maybe he had brought Mer because some part of him knew she would try to stop him.

She did not know what was worse: that Renfrew had taken her into this forest knowing that she would kill him or that he’d thought she would go along with his plan.

She wanted to talk to him. She wanted to tell him that she’d loved him and resented him, that he’d been the only real parent she’d ever known—that he’d shaped her in ways she still was only figuring out.

The tragedy of death was distance. Death cleaved the world in two, leaving the living and the dead standing on either side of some impassable chasm.

No more words would ever pass between them. And Mer had to find it within herself to be all right with that.

Someday she would—but for now, she had other worries.

The breath sawed in and out of her in painful heaves. She licked her lips and tasted salt water. Her own tears, although perhaps a taste of what was to come. Because the ocean was coming—she could feel the shifting of the world beneath her feet. It was a subtle thing, the winds changing direction, whispering through broken branches and stirring tall grasses. The ocean was beginning to nudge at the edges of its magical constraints, pushing at them. Soon, they would give altogether.