Page 65 of The Black Witch

I hold the wand in the way Commander Vin instructed, the end pressed against my palm, and point it toward the scraping sound. I can’t recall the words to any spells. I can only remember some magic words from the tales of my youth. I try them all, tears streaming down my face.

Nothing.

I throw the wand on the floor and lose myself to fear’s icy, suffocating grip. The scraping goes on and on late into the night, and I feel myself falling, falling, until everything fades to black.

* * *

I’m running through the North Tower’s upstairs hallway.

It goes on and on so far, I can’t see what lies at the end until finally, I come to my new lodging. This time the door is open, and the room is lit with a soft light that glows unearthly red. Heart pounding, I step inside.

Sage Gaffney stands near the window, a single candle with a blood-red flame beside her, casting the room in long shadows. She has a blank look, her eyes hollowed-out sockets.

“Sage,” I say, confused. “Why are you here?”

She doesn’t answer, only opens her dark cloak to reveal the bundle that’s hidden underneath. Something moves inside the tightly wrapped blankets, and she holds it out to me.

I approach her warily, the bundle full of rippling movement, like a baby lizard about to break out of its soft eggshell, straining to be born. I feel a strong sense of revulsion.

Her baby.

The Icaral.

A macabre curiosity drives me on. After a moment’s hesitation, I reach down and pull back the blanket.

A crippling fear seizes me as I face the monster Sage has given birth to, its head that of the Icaral in Valgard, its eyes white and soulless. The creature unfurls foul, black wings, pulls its mouth back into a snarl and lunges...

* * *

“No! No!”I scream as a woman’s voice cuts through the image before me.

“Wake up, child!”

The dream fades like mist at daybreak, replaced by the face of an elderly Urisk woman kneeling before me, her broad, blue face so deeply lined it resembles a raisin, a brown kerchief holding back her gray hair.

I recoil from the wizened, bony hands that clutch at my shoulders. She releases me and leans back on her heels, her expression one of wary concern. I shake my head hard from side to side, trying to quickly rid myself of the lingering fuzziness.

Did I pass out?

Confused and disoriented, I glance wildly around.

I was dreaming. Was it all a nightmare?

The Urisk woman’s eyes flicker over to something on the floor to the right of me. “You dropped your wand,” she points out.

My heart leaps into my throat.

I grab up the wand and shove it back under the inner lining of my travel trunk, relieved that she doesn’t seem suspicious that I would be in possession of an expensive wand. “I was attacked by Icarals,” I inform her breathlessly.

She doesn’t look surprised. Instead, she tilts her head, regarding me levelly.

“That would have been Miss Ariel, I suppose.”

I shake my head vehemently. “No. They were Icarals. I’m sure of it.”

“Miss Ariel and Miss WynterareIcarals,” she replies matter-of-factly.

I gape at her in confusion. I shake my head at her again, refusing to believe her. “No. That can’t be. The Vice Chancellor told me that Ariel Haven is a Gardnerian and Wynter Eirllyn is an Elf.”

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