Chapters (70)
- Title Page
- Copyright Notice
- Dedication
- Map
- Epigraph
- BEGINNINGS
- PART I
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- PART II
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- FORTY-SIX
- FORTY-SEVEN
- FORTY-EIGHT
- FORTY-NINE
- FIFTY
- FIFTY-ONE
- FIFTY-TWO
- FIFTY-THREE
- FIFTY-FOUR
- FIFTY-FIVE
- FIFTY-SIX
- FIFTY-SEVEN
- TRICKSTER
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Also by Susan Dennard
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- Newsletter Sign-up
Ever since his cursed arrow had failed to kill her in the Midenzi tribe, he had hunted her. He’d sent raiders after her in the Contested Lands; he’d sent Aeduan after her too. And now he’d finally found her in the Hell-Bard Loom of all places.
I will be waiting, he’d said, and Iseult couldn’t help but laugh at that. A huffy, broken sound—because he would be waiting for all eternity if he expected her to come to him.
With no grace and limbs that roared in protest, Iseult hauled herself back onto her stool.
“I think,” she told the weasel, “I was in the Hell-Bard Loom.”
She felt Esme crawl up her leg. Then suddenly the creature was digging her cold nose into Iseult’s face. Images erupted in Iseult’s mind, not so different from what Iseult had just seen: a gray world filled with darkened souls.
“Yes.” Iseult nodded. Her eyes hurt too much to keep them open. “It looked just like that. But how did you navigate it? The Severed spirits overwhelmed me.”
This question seemed to puzzle the weasel. She curled around Iseult’s neck, clicking in her throat as if saying, I did not have that problem.
And Iseult sighed—because of course the weasel hadn’t. She had had an entire diary to learn from and years of practice. Iseult had only a handful of pages and two weeks.
“There was someone else there,” she went on, finally lifting her head from her hands. “I saw Corlant. The Purist priest you knew by a different name.”
At first, the weasel offered no reaction. Silence filled the hut for several moments, and Iseult thought perhaps the creature had forgotten their conversation from a month and a half ago. Then suddenly the creature leaped off Iseult’s shoulder and darted for one of the diary pages. With tiny teeth, she chomped down and dragged it to Iseult.
It was a description of making the first Loom—the Hell-Bard Loom Iseult had just fallen into. Incomplete, but with a basic illustration of the Threads binding each Cleaved soul to a person at the center of it all: Portia. She had built the first Loom by cleaving the other Void Paladin, by binding that woman’s powerful Threads to stone.
At the Loom in Poznin, Esme had been the person at the center of it all. She had made the Loom by cleaving the very Air Well itself and binding hundreds of souls to her own. She had controlled them, and upon her death, those Cleaved had been left behind.