The Last Witch Queen (Outlaws of Interra Book 2), page 45
Copyright 2021 by Allison Carr Waechter
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to real persons, living ordead, is purely coincidental.
Cover illustration and map by Christin Engelberth
Cover Typography by Emily Wittig
Editing by Kendra Olson and Kenna Kettrick
Contents
Dedication
1. Raven
2. Raven
3. Echo
4. Morgaine
5. Echo
6. Miyala
7. Miyala
8. Sarka
9. Echo
10. Morgaine
11. Miyala
12. Sarka
13. Echo
14. Morgaine
15. Morgaine
16. Echo
17. Echo
18. Echo
19. Echo
20. Echo
21. Echo
22. Miyala
23. Miyala
24. Morgaine
25. Echo
26. Echo
27. Sarka
28. Echo
29. Morgaine
30. Echo
31. Miyala
32. Raven
33. Echo
34. Echo
35. Morgaine
36. Echo
37. Echo
38. Miyala
39. Miyala
40. Raven
41. Echo
42. Echo
43. Morgaine
44. Miyala
45. Echo
46. Echo
47. Raven
48. Sarka
49. Echo
Thank You For Reading
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Limited Glossary
Dedication
For anyone walking through their darkest night, may you always walk with luck and a lantern bearer.
This book is for the survivors. For the victims. For the ones tossed aside or left behind in this world determined to snuff out what is dangerously different.
My fervent wish is that this book makes you feel seen.
You always have a place on Interra.
Chapter 1
Raven
Lyonesse | The Third Day of Mae
Somewhere the stars must shine. Somewhere, but not here. Raven floats in the eye of a celestial storm. In the distance, red lightning crashes behind menacing clouds of smoke that presses against her, tangible as fingers trying to find a way inside her body. As the storm of smoke and fire breaks over her, she sees a massive figure, writhing in the murk.
A red wyrm of unfathomable size slithers in and out of sight, its dozens of mouths opening and closing as it seeks something to consume. The malice of insatiable hunger comes off it in sickening waves. At first Raven thinks it has no eyes and then they open, blazing hot. The clouds of smoke clear long enough to allow her to see what the wyrm has trapped: a human girl with a familiar face.
Echo! Raven cries out, but no sound escapes her form.
Here, she is nothing but a wisp of smoke, a bit of consciousness before the tableau of infernal horror before her. Here. Raven’s mind reminds her that though this feels real, so real she can feel the torturous heat of the storm, she is not actually here, if this is even a real place at all. Somewhere else, she is cold and wet and something sharp scrapes at her bare feet. Here she burns. She struggles toward her friend, meaning to help her, but she has no body, no way to save her. Raven can only watch as the wyrm writhes, delighting in the agony it inflicts.
Echo’s hair is dark as a cynae’s wing, and she is dressed in a flimsy white gown, looking much as she always has, but her soul is pulled asunder in the wyrm’s hold. She struggles against the coil of its grip, screaming in the fiery darkness, begging for help. Raven is sure Echo will come apart before help comes—even now, she is dissolving, parts of her scattering slowly in the windless storm, the fires of deep space burning her soul away.
Echo’s eyes fly open, as Raven watches the rest of her body disappear. Raven is suddenly in two places at once, floating formless in the murk of the cosmos and barefoot on a sharp stone surface, somewhere else. Her vision flickers as the wretched heat of the wyrm’s corner of space fades. Rain lashes her body as wind roars around her, thunder crashing as lightning strikes the roiling sea.
Raven’s shoulders shudder involuntarily as she pushes rain-sodden hair from her eyes, squinting into the darkness, trying to make out where she is. She has no idea why she is not in her bedroom, asleep next to Bori. Fear grips her when a lightning strike on the rocks below reveals her unsteady position at the precipice of the rocky promontory. A frigid gust of wind knocks into her, driving breath from her lungs. Desperately, she tries to step back, away from the edge.
Her bare feet slide on the slick, wet rocks and then there is nothing solid beneath her. No sharp rocks driving into her back, though she braces her body for impact. Only the horrifying lurch of falling, knowing that when she hits the waves below she will not survive—she has fallen off the cliff. Her arms flail as she twists through the air, searching for anything to hold onto, but find no purchase.
When she makes impact, it is not with the angry sea, or the sharp rocks below the cliff face, but with something both hard and flexible. Her mind works quickly enough to determine that she is no longer falling, and that she has not fallen onto anything, but has been snatched from her fall. Now she is rising, face and body oriented towards the dark churn of the water below. A colossal wave crashes against the rock face that is all too close, even as she moves away from it and the salty mist stings her eyes.
Raven’s heart beats so loudly that she cannot discern what is thunder and what is her own body. There is movement above her and behind her, but she cannot see what holds her, what force lifts her out of the livid waves. Somewhere in the distance, her peripheral vision catches sight of something silver and reflective far behind her, as lightning flashes, but she cannot make it out. Is whatever lifts her being followed? The effort of trying to understand what is happening overwhelms her conscious mind. Raven is wise enough to be afraid.
Her vision blurs at the edges as fear takes over, but she manages to dip her head towards her belly just enough to see part of what grips her around the waist. Two wicked black talons curve around her, at the end of enormous silvery blue reptilian toes. Some creature is lifting her out of danger, but for what purpose? As she loses consciousness, she hears Echo’s last words reverberating in her mind: Find me. Find me. Find me. Somewhere, Echo is in great peril and Raven has no way to help her, or herself for that matter.
Chapter 2
Raven
Lyonesse | The Third Day of Mae
Outside the arched, leaded-glass windows, the storm continues to rage on the open sea, angry, violent and without remorse. Lightning flashes, lighting the bedroom Raven shares with Bori in eerie flares. Confused and frightened as she wakes, Raven drinks in Bori’s familiar scent of clean soap and cedar, and the slight wolfish musk that drifts just under her consciousness. She inhales deeply, comforting herself with his sturdy bulk. This is real. His warmth. Their bedroom.
She sits up in bed, wondering if the memory of falling was another part of the dream she had about the wyrm and Echo. It was only a dream after all, wasn’t it? She stretches her fingers out in front of her, to reassure herself she has a body. That much is still real, but the rest is not what she expects. Though she wears a dry, clean nightgown, it is not what she wore to bed. She’d worn nothing to bed, having stayed up in the wee hours making love with Bori, as they often do these days. She glances at him now, his heavy arm draped over her lap. It dislodged a bit when she sat up so suddenly, but he is a deep sleeper and does not wake at her movement.
Her fingers drift to her hair and her breath catches. It is drying, but still damp. She smells a strand, and sure enough it smells of the sea. She was on the promontory—that was not part of the dream. Nor was the taloned creature that saved her. Raven fell, and something caught her and apparently returned her to the fortress. Panic threatens to overtake her at the thought of it. She’d left bed and made it outside with no one knowing. She’d fallen. She could have died. This line of thinking is too big, too frightening.
Raven begins to count backwards, slowly drawing breath in through her lips and letting it out through her nose until she is calm enough to think. She’s never been a sleepwalker, but true dreams have nasty side effects, of which sleepwalking is only one. It is the only thing that might explain the unsettling realness of the dream, combined with the force of her very real fall off the cliff. In many ways, she is probably lucky she only walked in her sleep. Many terrible deeds have been done by those who dream true, their bodies moving and acting outside of their control as they dream.
Air fills her lungs, bringing her out of fear as she tries to remember everything she can about the dream. The fall is too disturbing to think of now, so she does her best to remember just the dream: the feeling that what she was seeing was not truly Echo’s situation, but deeply representative of something she must be enduring.
But what could it mean? Raven tries to meditate, grounding herself a number of ways, but still, the dream and all its disturbing implications haunt her. Something has gone wrong at the Leopardis winter settlement. Something Raven worries cannot be put all the way right again. The memory of her fall threatens to return, tries to dominate her thoughts, but she lets it float away. The true dream needs her attention first. Her mind is methodical, and she must obey its attempts to order thoughts.
Raven rises from the bed, pulling one of Bori’s sweaters over her long nightgown. Bori makes a small noise and she brushes a kiss to his forehead, hoping he will explain the fall and how she got back here when he wakes. Though he is a sound sleeper, it’s unlikely he wasn’t involved with her rescue in some way or another—Bori is nothing if not her greatest protector. Whatever her trip outside has put him through, she hopes he’ll rest now, but she cannot stay in bed and fret. She needs to do something.
There is a lamp still burning in the little workroom that adjoins their bedchambers. When she slips inside, she finds Bori’s wet clothes drying by the fire. She was right in assuming he was outside as well. She wonders if he saw what carried her to safety.
Raven ignores the wraith hovering next to the chair where damp towels are spread out to dry. It tries to get her attention, spilling phantom beetles from its hollow mouth, but she simply shakes her head. “None of that, please.”
It looks annoyed, its hollow eyes narrowing in frustration, but it closes its mouth and the beetles disappear. This one is more shriveled in appearance than some of the others that have appeared to her since last Yulmain, though it’s easy to make out that once it was human. Raven isn’t sure if the state of decomposition the wraiths appear to be in are representative of their true bodies, or if their appearance has more to do with their auric energy, their spiritual composition. Nearly all of them fade in and out of their translucent states. The more attention she pays them, the more they seem to manifest in this reality, so she tries her best not to give them what they want.
This is difficult to do, as they’ve taken to trying to shock her into noticing them. Though ghastly, she’s grown used to this one’s favorite tricks. It only ever does the same thing, spilling various ghostly insects from gaping holes in its body in an attempt to elicit a reaction from her. The others have more gruesome talents. Some of the unquiet dead have begun to speak, though she cannot make out what they say, not yet anyway.
Only she can hear and see them, as far as she knows, and they seem determined for her to acknowledge them, by any means necessary. Why they’re here is a question she rarely has the inclination to ponder. She is only ever happy that the unquiet dead are strangers, that her own dear Mama has never appeared to her in such a state. But perhaps Mama is at peace. Raven can only hope it’s so, since she did not have a chance to say goodbye to her.
Raven closes the door softly behind her, pushing her morose thoughts of the dead and Mama aside. She has no desire to wake her love with conversations with the dead, or shuffling cards. She raises her eyebrows at the wraith in warning. “No interfering, or I will get the salt.”
If it could look contrite, it would, but it can only wear a countenance of anguish. Still, it bows its head in submission, or at least acceptance of her terms. The salt would only keep it away for a few hours, but whatever it does to wraiths, it bothers them enough that they seem to fear even the threat of it. The wraiths are a constant part of her days, and she fears they are getting stronger, somehow more able to act in the world. Yoonai and Malikai have both tried to help her with this emerging “talent,” as they call it, but she doesn't want it.
Apparently, this was once a much-valued skill amongst the witches of Interra, but Raven doesn’t want to see or hear the unsettled, unwanted dead. She has tried every method of metaphysical banishment she knows, to no avail. These dead are more than spiritual impressions of people who once walked the earth. They are something else entirely, and she wants nothing to do with their anomalous existence.
This one never leaves this room. It is attached to it somehow, and often attempts to interfere with her work. Now though, it is quiet, nearly fading into transparency near the hearth. She sits at the little table near the windows and attempts to focus, trying to narrow down a clear question for the cards. But her logical mind, which knows her tarocchi deck will have answers for her, is at war with her heart. She fears what the cards have to say will be devastating, and she must have the full grasp of it before she tells Bori anything.
Raven does not often dream true, but when she does, she recognizes it and does not question what she knows or confirm it with the cards. This time is different. This time the truth of the dream cuts like the edge of a knife. It cuts too deep, too near her own heart, and the heart of the sleeping man in the next room. This time she needs to know more.
She unwraps the tarocchi deck from its silk scarf and sits staring at it. Rain splatters against the windows and thunder rumbles in the distance. She cannot bear to shuffle the cards, so she rises and uses the little stove in the corner to make tea. The wraith steps aside as she nears the salt cellar near the stove, eyeing her warily. She lights a few more candles and a charcoal disk, selecting a blend of resins holy to Hekate, and sets them to burn, covering the disk with an ornamental lid. Smoke billows out of it prettily, cleansing the air of her disquiet, but of course not of the wraith, which continues to hover near the hearth.
Her breath begins to slow when she sits back down in her chair, the act of making tea and lighting incense a ritual of calm and quiet. The ragged edges of her early morning begin to soothe as the comforting familiarity of ceremony wraps around her. Raven closes her eyes to make contact with the otham on the spiriti valem, hoping to draw strength from its mere proximity.
These days, the otham often behaves strangely. A part of it is too sentient, too aware, too desirous of a control of its own. Some aspect of the otham has separated from the whole, become individual somehow, and each time she makes contact, it clamors through her entire being like a discordant note. Paired with the emergence of the wraiths, Raven worries that the world behind worlds, the spiriti valem, is in graver danger than they previously imagined.
Yoonai has fretted many times over what Echo did at the Cloisters last year. She fears Echo may have created a kind of split in the otham, a fractured self that now operates outside of the stream of energy that runs between worlds. Raven’s lips murmur a prayer to Hekate, patroness of the Ravenni, as she begins to draw cards, turning them over one by one. First Destruction, then Death, followed by Hope. Raven shakes her head and replaces the cards, shuffling them again, clearing her mind, clarifying that she wants to know what happened to Echo, what trouble she is in.
Now comes the Tyrant first, then Destruction, then Death, and she is compelled to pull another card; Hope once more. She sits back in her chair, frowning. The Tyrant clarifies things somewhat: something or someone terribly obsessed with power brought about Echo’s end. Raven knows it may not literally have been the wyrm, which she understands to be representative of the Legionnaire, but one of its agents, perhaps? Or perhaps she is trying too hard to pin down the dream. Like prophecies, dreams are vague, difficult to interpret, with infinite possible meanings.
Destruction is easier to understand, with its depiction of the desolate land, and the figure blowing the horn of despair. Echo’s death will bring about chaos. Her role in the Prophecy of Alcyone was clear, or at least they’d all thought so, especially with the otham’s guidance when it became sentient. Now, after the benefit of observing the fractured aspect of the otham, neither Raven nor Yoonai is sure of anything but what appears to be the most commonly agreed upon truth: in order to keep the first of the awakened Devourers, the Legionnaire, from bringing endless war and conflict to Interra, Echo’s sister Miyala must use the power of the “brimfull” vessel of starfire to destroy the creature once and for all.
