Starfell Willow Moss and the Lost Day (Starfell #1) - Dominique Valente Page 0,54
one in Wolkana knew about the rebellion I was planning. Only the Brothers I trusted with my life. And I was right. No one here did know. I hadn’t factored on a witch a thousand miles away, who would foresee it … or how she was afraid of what it would mean … that with these spells I could become as powerful as the last magicians of Starfell … so she tried to warn you by sending a raven. At first you didn’t believe her … But then you found me with the box, and you locked up your own son …’ His eyes were dark with hatred at the memory. ‘You are no father of mine. Take him,’ he instructed, and the High Master was dragged away screaming.
20
Enough to Make a Kobold Explode
‘Moreg,’ breathed Willow when Silas turned to face her. ‘She was the witch who saw what you were planning, wasn’t she?’
Silas cocked his head to the side and seemed to almost smile. ‘You are a clever witch.’
Willow shared a look with Essential. Perhaps there was a way they could still escape and find Moreg. She knew it was important to keep him talking at least.
‘But how did you get the spell to take away the day – if he’d locked you up?’
‘My father didn’t have the heart to take me to the dungeons, not his only child. So he locked me in my room under guard. But that guard was a Brother who was faithful to me and my cause. I persuaded him to help me escape and I retrieved the spells so that I could have a second chance. But first I had to get rid of the memory of my first attempt and lure Moreg here so that she couldn’t thwart me a second time. And I have – and this time I will do it right. Whatever it takes.’
There was a noise from the floor. Sometimes was finally coming round. He sat up, his face as white as a sheet. ‘What have you done?’ he asked Silas.
‘What was necessary. My father wasn’t the only one who had to be stopped …’
Just then two Brothers came inside the cell carrying Moreg Vaine. Her body was still, her eyes closed.
‘NO!’ shouted Willow, racing towards her. One of the Brothers seized her by her middle.
‘She’s dead?’ gasped Willow, feeling her stomach twist in fear and remorse.
‘No – alas,’ said Silas. ‘Though I did try my best. She’s managed to put herself into some kind of protective sleep … though death is what she deserves.’
‘Why? Just because she told your father what you were planning? How you had taken the spells?’ asked Essential.
He shook his head. ‘It is more than that. She was the one who brought me here to Wolkana in the first place. Even when she knew that I would have magical ability. How could I not – being the child of her sister? Yet she left me here anyway, knowing, perhaps better than anyone, how the Brothers and my father feel about people with magic – and how he would raise me to believe that everything about me was wrong. For that alone she deserves to suffer, but most of all for getting in my way again – and trying to thwart my plans.
‘I hoped that when I cast the spell and stole last Tuesday that no one, including the great Moreg Vaine, would remember the day and its events. I knew, though, for Moreg it would be a temporary thing. Even if the spell caused her to forget the past, even if it changed the fabric of time, it couldn’t stop her eventually seeing the future and working out what I had done – not with her magical abilities …’
Willow blinked in sudden realisation. Of course. Moreg, who seemed somehow able to do anything … ‘She’s a seer.’ It made sense. The way Moreg seemed to plan ahead and know things – like how she would be captured, and how Willow would find an unusual garden in Nolin Sometimes’s old childhood home, or that she would need to find Essential Jones … Willow thought back to how occasionally the witch’s eyes had gone hazy, almost the way Nolin Sometimes’s eyes did …
She thought too of how the witch had scoffed at the sorts of people who called themselves fortune tellers and got information from the dead … like maybe she knew how it really worked.
‘The only real seer in Starfell, I’d guess.’ Silas smirked