Witch Born(113)
“Is she alive?”
“Yes, Head.”
Senna struggled to open her eyes. It was dark out, and the air stank of death. Krissin lifted Senna’s tattered shift; her face went gray. “You’re lucky we’re the ones who found you instead of the Tartens.” Senna didn’t bother to answer. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. The shore is soaked with it.”
Senna worked her tongue over her dry mouth. “Water.”
Krissin pursed her lips before nodding to one of the Guardians standing over her. He held a waterskin to her mouth. She drank, the cool wetness sliding down her raw throat. She coughed at the foreign feel of the moisture. The Guardian pulled back. She cried out and reached for the waterskin again. He gave her some more.
“Slowly,” he chided.
Krissin shook her head. “Why did you move them? They’ve done nothing but betray you.”
Senna lay back against the rocks, feeling the water spread through her like its own kind of warmth. “The Tartens would have killed them.” Her voice came out thready and weak. “There wouldn’t have been anyone left for me to be a Composer over.”
Krissin stood and brushed off her knees. “You haven’t saved them, only delayed their destruction. Because of our earth senses, we know where you sent them. Why to the Tarten coast, right above Caldash?”
Senna closed her eyes. She hadn’t known where she was sending them. The song hadn’t dictated a location. But it didn’t really matter. She’d sacrificed Joshen to save Haven, but in the end, she hadn’t saved either.
When Senna didn’t respond, Krissin asked, “Is Chavis dead?”
Senna nodded carefully.
Krissin sucked air through her teeth. “She was supposed to convince Haven to join with us. I don’t see how that can happen now. You might have just sentenced them all to death.”
Senna’s heart beat a lonely echo in the hollow of her chest. She willed it to stop, but it went on despite the pain, both inside and out, that threatened to destroy her.
“With that injury, you may never walk again.” Krissin nodded to two of her Guardians. “Take her to the Healer. See that she is cared for.”
Someone made a sound of disapproval. Senna couldn’t see who.
“I won’t have a Creator-touched dying because I refused to treat her,” Krissin responded. Then she turned and left.
“The Creators don’t want this!” Senna cried even as one of the Guardians slipped his hands beneath her. She drew breath to say more, but he lifted her. A hollow ringing sang through her head, and there was only the pain.
35. Burning
Senna remembered waking when they gave her bitter opiates. Though the drugs made her sleep, the pain didn’t recede. In fact, it grew, increasing until she was certain her bones were crumbling to dust. Eventually, even the lure of water couldn’t make her drudge up the will to swallow. When they tried to help her drink, the water ran down her cheeks and into her damp hair.
She heard their worried voices. They knew she was dying. She knew it, too, and she didn’t care. She welcomed the fever, the hot infection that spread its poison through her blood.
She came to her senses suddenly and saw a woman standing above her. She was as beautiful as a sunset over ripe fields. She looked vaguely familiar, but Senna couldn’t place her.
“Do you hear the breeze across your skin?”
Senna thought it an odd question. After all, she was dying. But the answer seemed important. She concentrated and heard the distant sound of woodwind instruments. The wind drifted across her, caressing her and soothing away the fever. The sound of sunlight and wind. She managed the barest of nods.
The woman’s face lit up, seeming to glow from the inside. “Come, dance with me and the Fourth Sister, Sunlight. Let us take you away from the pain and sorrow.” She held out her hand.
Senna recognized her. The Creator who’d gifted her with Espen’s song. She controlled Sunlight. Senna took her proffered hand without question.
The pain was gone as if it had never been. Music rose up around her. She clung to the woman as the sound lifted her. They danced, twirling like a pair of autumn leaves on a breeze until she grew dizzy. They skimmed across meadows and low hills like a rock skipping across the water.
The music shifted from light and playful to darker and more insistent. The tempo increased until she was driving across open seas in a stampede of storms. Finally, they reached mountains, and their frenzy cooled as they rose. They crested the top and drifted down until Senna rested on the baked sand. The desert filled her with a warm and delicious heat.
She slept to the sound of the deep, sonorous song of the earth. When she was rested, she opened her eyes to find another woman—this one with ebony skin and wild hair. She smiled at Senna, her eyes like chips of onyx. Another of the Creators. “Come, and I will show you the beauty of the First Sister, Earth.”