Witchlanders Read Online Free Page B

work.
    A year ago Ryder had been just days away from leaving home, days away from setting out for Tandrass or one of the other port cities. Somehow he’d always known he wasn’t meant to be a farmer like his father. He was supposed to do something else, be something else. He could never put his finger on what, exactly—but he’d resolved to go to sea to find it. Then one afternoon he came back from a trip to the village to find his father in bed in the middle of the day. There was something wrong with his face—only halfof it was working. Mabis sat in a chair beside him, staring straight ahead. She had a jar of dried herbs in her lap, but it was unopened. Pima lay next to Fa, trying to push the slack side of her father’s face up into a smile. What’s wrong, Fa? What’s wrong, Fa? she kept saying until someone shushed her quiet.
    Fa had seemed so ordinary when he was alive, but everything held together then. He would have pulled a sixtyweight out of these rocky planting hills, Ryder thought. He would have known what to do about Mabis. For one brief moment, it didn’t seem silly to bow and bend to the Goddess or believe that the lucky man guarded the fields. Skyla had a connection to their father that he would never have.
    When he came up to the top of the hill again, Ryder saw the lucky man differently, as something almost precious, an artifact of his father. The helmet at the top had tilted to one side, giving the figure a quizzical look. It was an enemy helmet, with one long slit for the eyes and a perfectly round hole for the mouth. Ryder had never thought to ask his father if he had killed the soldier who wore it.
    â€œI never laughed at Fa,” he said to the lucky man. “He didn’t really think I did, did he?”
    â€œDo you think he can answer?”
    Ryder wheeled around, startled.
    â€œThe bone. Give it to me.” Mabis stood in front of him. Her dress was clean, and her hair was brushed and braided, but there was something greedy in her eyes. Ryder looked for the telltale stain of maiden’s woe on her lips and fingers, but he found nothing.
    â€œYou told me not to.” He glanced up to Skyla on the prayer hill, but his two sisters couldn’t see him. They had begun the earth position and were kneeling in the grass with their foreheads touching the ground.
    Mabis grabbed him by the wrist. “I want to ask the bones why the witches don’t come,” she said. Her grip was surprisingly strong. “You can watch me. You can make sure—”
    â€œNo!” He clutched the pouch to his chest and stumbled backward into the lucky man. It fell over, and the helmet went bumping down the hill, disappearing into the rows. “There goes our luck.”
    He said it as a joke, but when the words came out of his mouth they seemed ominous. He backed away farther, rubbing his side where the pole had scraped his skin.
    â€œI need it,” Mabis insisted. She was talking about the bone, but was that really what she craved, or was it the flower?
    Again, Ryder felt that strange feeling of loss for his mother, although she was standing right in front of him. Her disdain for witches and their prophecies had alwaysbeen such an important part of her. Who was she now that it was gone?
    â€œIt’s time to put out that fire, Mabis,” he said, suddenly feeling awash in frustration. “The witches didn’t come because you have nothing to tell them. It’s all nonsense. There’s no stranger in the mountains, no assassin. You’re just a farmer’s widow gone mad on maiden’s woe!”
    Mabis stepped back, her face crimson, and Ryder winced, knowing he’d gone too far. He braced himself for an angry torrent of words, but his mother pushed past.
    â€œMabis!”
    Without looking at him, she fled off toward the cottage, hicca tassels brushing her arms as she went. First Skyla, now Mabis, he thought, shaking his head. And