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Chapter 903: “The Demons Are Coming”

Inside the City Hall, the man named Posack was brought before them.

He was approximately forty years old, with the look of a farmer who had spent those forty years outside: swarthy, broad, substantial. Dry mud clung to his trouser legs and bits of grass still caught in the hem. He rubbed his roughened hands together and looked a little nervous when his eyes found Scroll.

“I—I know you.” He bowed carefully. “You’re the minister. My daughter studies in your school. She’s a very slow learner.” He lowered his eyes. “I hope you can bear with her.”

“Don’t be nervous.” Scroll laughed and laid a hand briefly on his shoulder. “I used to fish for a living before I came here, and the sea was far more unpredictable than any field. As for knowledge—it doesn’t care where a person comes from. Given enough effort and time, any learner finds their footing. Your daughter will graduate without any trouble.”

Posack’s whole frame relaxed. He grinned. “I gave up the fields for grazing two years ago—His Majesty said the new industry pays better.” He turned and bowed to Wendy. “You must be the head of the Witch Union. I didn’t think I’d have the chance to meet you today.”

Wendy was not as widely known among the common people as Scroll, but she appeared at enough public events—and her bright red hair and solid frame made her recognizable. “Call me Wendy. I heard you found a heavily injured girl covered in blood. What made you think she was a witch?”

“Because…” Posack scratched the back of his head. “An ordinary person can’t have an animal’s body parts, can they? At first I thought it was a bloody rag and went to pull it away. But it was attached to a girl. I looked again—and it was a tail. An actual animal tail.”

An animal tail.

Wendy’s heart seized.

The memory surfaced at once—a strange witch who had come to Neverwinter more than two months ago, someone Wendy had never met directly but had heard about repeatedly from Nightingale. A peculiar girl with a wolf’s ears and a long tail. His Majesty praised her beauty, Nightingale had said, more than once, with a particular expression that suggested she found this assessment personally annoying. The girl was a princess of one of the tribes from the Southernmost Region, and she had not joined the Witch Union or sought any intimacy with the sisters there.

Her name was Lorgar.

Could it be her?

“Where is she?” The urgency was already in Wendy’s voice. “Take us there. Right now.”

Posack had not brought the girl home. He had left her in a temporary rest shed on the edge of the pastoral area.

Wendy’s stomach dropped the moment she saw her.

Lorgar lay motionless on the bench, dressed in clothes that were barely distinguishable from the dried blood soaked into them. Her wolf’s ears, disfigured and crusted dark, confirmed what Wendy had already feared. The injuries went beyond what she could take in steadily—in some places the blood had dried to brown stains, in others it still seeped slowly from wounds wrapped in rough bandages from head to toe. She could not see the wounds directly, but the bandages themselves told the story. No one looked like this after a few days. This had been going on for much longer.

“My lady—she is a witch, isn’t she?” Posack asked quietly.

Wendy was too stunned to answer. Scroll said, “Yes. Your first aid was done well.”

“That’s a relief.” He let out a long breath, then worry crept back into his face. “Can she… still be saved?”

The question shook Wendy back into herself. “I don’t know,” she said, low and even. “But we will try everything we can.” She turned to Scroll. “Help me watch over her. I’m going to find Her Highness Tilly.”

“Leave her to me.”

Wendy was already moving.

Neither Nana nor Lily was in the city. Leaf’s herbal knowledge extended only to lesser injuries. To be this badly hurt in Neverwinter right now was nearly a death sentence—except that the first batch of witches from Sleeping Island had just arrived, and among them was someone Wendy was already thinking of.

If she’s here, she might keep the Wolf Girl alive.

Wendy ran faster.

Every second was a second Lorgar might not have.

Lorgar was not a member of the Witch Union—had not sought membership, had made no effort to fold herself into the sisterhood. But something about the fact of her arrival, bloodied and barely breathing, felt to Wendy like a kind of wordless claim. This girl had made it here. She had found the city. Wendy did not know what had driven her across whatever distance she’d crossed, but she was not going to let her die without a fight.

She would not lose another sister.

Three days later, Wendy carried a basin of hot water thick with the smell of medicine into the sickroom.

“How is she?”

“Alive.” Ashes shook her head. “Beyond that…” She didn’t finish. “Injuries this severe are far outside what her self-healing capacity can handle. It’s a miracle she made it to the city at all. Anyone with less will than she has would have died in the wilderness without anyone ever knowing.”

The Extraordinary had taken charge of the emergency treatment—she was the most experienced among them when it came to wounds, and she had stripped off Lorgar’s ruined clothes and done a full assessment. When the bandages came off, every witch in the room went still. Some cuts went deep enough to show bone. Cleaning the wounds alone had taken most of a day.

“But there’s no need for too much worry.” Ashes pointed toward the bed along the opposite wall, where Nightfall lay. “She looks considerably better than she did yesterday. Don’t you notice?”

“Do I?” Nightfall asked in a thin voice. “I don’t feel it.”

“Steamed chicken, fried eggs, salt-roasted Bird Beak Mushrooms, and a bottle of Chaos Drink for dinner tonight.” Ashes’s expression was faintly smug. “So. How are you feeling?”

Nightfall’s mouth drew together. ”…Actually, I think I’m feeling a little better.”

“Good.”

Wendy exhaled and nodded toward Nightfall. “Thank you. Truly.”

“My pleasure.” Nightfall managed a weak smile. “You all helped Iffy—so you’ve helped us. Just please don’t let this girl die. Otherwise I…”

“We won’t. You can rest easy.”

Nightfall was the person Wendy had gone looking for among the newly arrived Sleeping Island witches. This former member of the Bloodfang Association carried an ability she called Symbiosis: she could plant a magic seed in another person—her Symbiont—and through the connection share that person’s pain and suffering, accelerating their recovery. More than that: half the nutrition Nightfall absorbed during the symbiosis period passed directly to the Symbiont. It was presently the only thing keeping a person on the edge of death from crossing it.

Roland himself had proved this. He had lain unconscious for months after the Battle of Souls against Zero, unable to drink or eat—and the only reason he had survived was Nightfall.

But Nightfall was not the only one.

Tilly had sent another witch alongside her: Pandora, the primary healer for the Sleeping Island witches, who had been at work since the first day stanching Lorgar’s internal and external bleeding. Pandora’s ability had already proven itself during the campaign against the Bloodfang Association. Leaf’s herbal preparations kept the wounds from worsening. The Cleansing Water stored in the castle’s basement—kept alongside the ice blocks for exactly this kind of emergency—held off infection.

Everyone had given what they had.

Whether Lorgar came back from it would depend on Lorgar.

Animal Messengers had been dispatched to the Northern Region three days ago. In the days ahead there would be nothing to do but wait—and waiting, Wendy had always found, was its own particular kind of work.

She was wiping down Lorgar’s arm when the girl’s finger moved.

Wendy went still. She told herself it might be imagination. Then she saw Lorgar’s lips tremble.

She leaned in without thinking—brought her ear close to the girl’s mouth.

The words were barely there. A breath, shaped into sound.

”…Demons…”

And again, just as faint.

“The demons are coming.”

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