The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [134]
“Had any of them seen it?” Aryn said. “The tangle in the Weirding?”
Lirith nodded. “Some of them. But only those with the gift of Sight, according to Thesta and the others.”
Aryn’s lips pursed in a frown. “But then why have you seen it, Lirith? You don’t—oh!”
Lirith sighed. She still doubted Thesta’s words, yet what other answer was there?
Those among us with the Sight have glimpsed the knot you speak of, the witches had said, sometimes speaking with Thesta’s voice alone, sometimes speaking in shimmering chorus. It first appeared two moons ago, and it has been growing larger ever since. We know not its source, but we fear what it portends. Some of the others have had dreams such as yours, the dreams of the golden spiders, and the one in the shadows that seeks to devour everything caught in its web.
Lirith had gasped at this, for she had not told the witches of her dreams. Now she forced herself to meet Aryn’s gaze.
“I don’t know, Aryn. I suppose maybe I do have some small shard of the Sight. I suppose I’ve always known it, although I never could bring myself to admit it.”
“But why in Sia’s name not?” Aryn said, gripping Lirith’s hand. “It’s wonderful!”
Lirith stiffened. Could she tell Aryn the other words Thesta had spoken to her?
Yes, I see it. You have kept it hidden, like a curtain drawn over a window. But now the curtain is unraveling. The Sight runs strong in you. Those who suffer sometimes gain such power, and your past is marked with sorrow.
As is my future, Lirith had said, thinking of the old Mournish woman’s card, and then she had left the strange witches in their secret grotto.
“There’s something I don’t understand, dear,” Melia said, and Lirith was glad for the lady’s question. She didn’t know how to answer Aryn, and Durge looked positively queasy at the direction the conversation had taken. “Are there not witches in the Dominions who possess the Sight? Why have none of them seen the unraveling of the Weirding?”
“I’m not sure,” Lirith said. “But Thesta made some mention that the knot in the Weirding was a thing of the south, and that perhaps the south ran in my blood. But I’m not sure what she meant by that.”
“Really, she said that? Of the south?” Melia’s eyes grew distant. “Perhaps it is so.…”
Did Melia understand Thesta’s words? If so, she offered no further explanation.
“You weren’t the only one who did a little investigating today,” Falken said. “Durge, why don’t you show Lirith what you found?”
She drew close as Durge unwrapped something contained in a bit of cloth. It shone dully on his palm: a flattened piece of gray metal. Something dark and sticky stained the thing; Lirith’s gorge rose as she realized it was blood.
“What is it?” she managed.
Durge set the piece of metal on the table next to the unfinished game. “I returned to the Etherion today, to the place where the priests of Vathris fell. I hoped to find something that might help us understand how they died. What I found was this, embedded in one of the walls of the corridor. I believe this was one of the objects that pierced the bodies of the priests.”
Lirith remembered the fallen men, the pools of blood. “I don’t understand. Surely such a small piece of metal could not be driven through a man’s body and into a wall of stone.”
“It might, if it was somehow propelled fast enough.”
“But what could do that?”
However, even Durge’s scientific mind had produced no answer to that question. Despite what he and Lirith had learned that day, their investigation had been stopped as surely as the bit of metal in the marble wall of the Etherion.