The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [41]
Belira glanced at her companions, who nodded encouragement, then turned toward Aryn with a smirk. “Make us.”
“Very well, if that is what you wish.”
Belira frowned. Clearly these had not been the words she was expecting. The others shifted behind her. Belira opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Aryn lifted a hand—not the left hand, but the right: small, pale, and twisted as a broken dove.
It was so simple; she didn’t even need to shut her eyes. Aryn reached out with the Touch and clasped six shimmering threads in an imagined hand. Then she pinched the threads, squeezing them tight.
As one, the six young women around her gasped and stumbled back, hands fluttering up to clutch their throats. Their eyes bulged in their faces as their mouths opened and closed in silent, airless spasms.
The young witches spun away from Aryn like drunken dancers. After a few moments blue tinged their lips. So easy—it would be so easy to squeeze their threads until they snapped, to end their breathing forever …
Stop it, Aryn. If you harm them, then you’ll be just like they are.
She stared at her withered hand. No—she would not let them make her into a monster.
Aryn lowered her hand, releasing the threads, and the young women staggered, drawing ragged breaths. A few dropped to their knees, gulping in air, and others sobbed as they hung on to one another. Of them, only Belira stood still. She gazed at Aryn, holding her throat, her brown eyes filled with terror. And hatred.
Aryn didn’t care. She had neither need nor desire to win the affection of witches such as these. Unlike her own, their bodies were perfect and whole; but their spirits were more twisted than any limb of flesh could ever be.
Her white robe whispering softly, she strode past the young witches.
“I will see you at the High Coven. Sisters.”
15.
Lirith hastily smoothed the wrinkles from her green robe, then finger-combed the worst of the snarls from her black, coiled hair. A quick glance in a bronze mirror confirmed that the results were acceptable. The gray air of twilight crept through the window; it was almost time for the High Coven to begin.
How she had nearly overslept, Lirith didn’t know. Her head had been throbbing all day, and she had lain on her bed just to rest her eyes. However, somehow she had drifted into sleep—and into another dream of Sareth. This one had been murkier than the last. They had both been naked, and he had been making love to her. Only she felt a terrible coldness, and when she looked at him she saw that Sareth was no longer a living man, but a statue of dull stone. The coldness spread through her, and she tried to scream, but her tongue was already stone.
Thankfully she had awakened then. In some ways this dream had been worse than the one of the golden spiders. The thought of spending eternity like that—alive, aware, but utterly numb and frozen—made her flesh crawl.
Lirith left her chamber and hurried through the castle. Servants and petty nobles looked up with wide eyes and scrambled to get out of her way. She couldn’t blame them; she had a feeling she looked like a mad hag at the moment. It was Ivalaine’s wish that the witches move discreetly in Ar-tolor, so as not to alarm the castle folk. However, she had no time for anything but the most direct route to the gardens. She was lucky she had not been assigned a group of novitiates to guide to the coven that night. She picked up the hem of her robe and quickened her pace.
“It doesn’t matter if you run, you know,” a sibilant voice said. “You’re still going to be late.”
Lirith skidded to a halt. A slender silhouette stood against a fading window.
“Teravian,” she said. “I didn’t see you there.”
“Why should you see me? No one else ever does.”
Lirith hesitated. She should have been at the coven by now. But, as before, there was something about Teravian—a sadness, maybe—that compelled her to speak.
“Perhaps you should consider wearing less black,” she said.
The young man