PROLOGUE
Tersa drooped on the stool in front of her worktable. Her brown hands trembled as she pushed her tangled black hair away from her face. Her gold eyes, dulled by fatigue, stared at the latest tangled web of dreams and visions that she had woven in an effort to understand the uneasiness that kept scratching at her. It would go away for days, sometimes weeks, and then it would return. Scratching and scratching. Daring her to remember a life best forgotten for everyone’s sake. For her own sake most of all.
With this latest web, she could almost see . . . something. But the truth of it eluded her, as so many things eluded her. Simple things. Ordinary things. Some days her body and most of her mind were present in Halaway, the village where she lived. Some days she looked at the decorated cakes in the bakery window and saw cakes. Then there were other days when she saw fragmented memories of other windows, other cakes full of sharpness and pain and screams.
Perhaps the cakes had held those things. Perhaps not. Sometimes it was difficult to tell one thing from another because she was a broken Black Widow—and a shattered crystal chalice.
The breaking had been done to her, the savage rape destroying her potential and turning her into another witch whose power had been broken by a man’s spear. But the shattering that had fragmented her mind and left her forever wandering the roads in the Twisted Kingdom? That had been her choice in order to regain the Hourglass’s Craft. She had done it in order to see, to give warning and hope to her boy and the winged boy.
So many years had passed since the night when she had told Daemon Sadi and Lucivar Yaslana that Witch was coming. So much had happened—joy and pain, sorrow and celebration.
And now . . .
Tersa closed her eyes and let herself slide away from the border between sanity and the Twisted Kingdom. There was often clarity in madness.
She followed a familiar road, stopping when the road began to fragment into paths that might hold the answer—or might hold some terrible memory. As she stood before those paths, knowing she could lose her way and never find the road back to the border, back to her boy, she wondered if all the pain and sorrow, if all the prices that had been paid, had been for nothing.
*I am Tersa the Weaver, Tersa the Liar, Tersa the Fool.* She spoke the words she’d said once before, sent those words into the Darkness on a braided thread of power and madness.
A midnight voice, rising from deep in the psychic abyss that was part of the Darkness, replied, *Not a liar, and not a fool.*
*Something’s coming, but I cannot see.* She wondered if her ability with the Black Widow’s Craft, the ability she’d paid for with her sanity, was fading. Failing.
*Even if you can hear the sound of a man’s feet marching on the road, can you see him when he’s still on the other side of a hill?* Witch asked.
She considered that for a moment. *Not until he reaches the crest of the hill and becomes visible.*
*Well, then?*
Tersa looked at the fragmented paths that would fragment into more paths that would fragment into even more paths. So easy to get lost in the fragments, where yesterday might be tomorrow. So hard to remain close to the border and its noisy, everyday living.
But her boy needed her. The winged boy needed her. Even the girl, the assassin, needed her.
*You will help the boy?*
*I will help him.*
Turning away before she couldn’t resist the lure of following just one of the fragmented paths, Tersa began the climb back to the border of the Twisted Kingdom.
She opened her eyes and grabbed the edge of the worktable as she swayed on the stool, adjusting to the harsh return to the tangible world. As soon as she felt steady enough, she disposed of the tangled web and cleaned the wooden frame that had anchored all the threads of spider silk. Then she locked her tools and supplies in their trunk before tidying up her worktable. When everything was in order, she left the workroom she’d created in the attic of the cottage she shared with the Mikal boy, locking the door before going downstairs.
Because of the vision in this tangled web, she’d heard the warning sound of footsteps, but it wasn’t time yet to see. She had to believe there would be enough time to see.
That night, Tersa dreamed she was standing in a place full of mist and stone—a place with a chasm that held an enormous web of power that spiraled down, down, down into the Darkness. As she stood there, feeling the weight of that place pressing on her skin, Witch whispered, *Keep watch, Sister. Listen for those approaching footsteps.*
*What will you do?* Tersa asked.
*I will make sure that, when the time comes, all the weapons are honed for war.*
PART ONE
Weapons Forged
ONE
Using Craft, Daemonar Yaslana called in a ball of twine and then considered the puzzle in front of him. After adjusting a couple of pieces for a better fit, he began lashing together the fallen branches he and his cousin had gathered for this harebrained, idiotic, get-their-asses-kicked-for-this idea—an idea that sounded intriguing enough that he might have tried it on his own at another time if he’d been able to talk Jaenelle Saetien out of building a raft today and testing it on the river.
It was a warm summer day, and floating on a raft sounded like fun, but there were rapids downriver and a waterfall. Testing himself against those things on a raft made out of branches and twine appealed to him. After all, he was an Eyrien Warlord Prince, and until he was old enough to test his strength and skill by making the Blood Run, this could be considered practice. Right?
That almost sounded like a reasonable explanation for doing this. He’d have to remember it if—okay, when—his father found out about this adventure. And he’d have to figure out a suitable reason why he wasn’t alone on the raft. Maybe Auntie J. could help with that—if she didn’t give him a whack upside the head before his father had a chance to do it.
Jaenelle Saetien set the next load of branches beside the ones he’d laid out. Then she sighed. “Why can’t we just use Craft to hold the branches together? Tying them is going to take forever.”
“You afraid we’re going to get caught before we get this thing in the water?” he asked, lashing two more branches together.
“Maybe.”
He looked at her. Jaenelle Saetien SaDiablo had the straight black hair and gold eyes of all the long-lived races, but her skin was a lighter, sun-kissed brown and her delicately pointed ears were a sign that some of her bloodline had come from the Dea al Mon, a race of warriors often called the Children of the Wood. She was smart, usually sweet in a feisty kind of way, and she sometimes had more backbone than sense.
Then again, so did he or he wouldn’t be out here helping her build a raft that most likely would break apart when they hit the rapids and waterfall.