Page 18 of A Resistance of Witches
The sun had set, but the selection ceremony was still hours away. Lydia thought she would go mad from pacing Isadora’s flat. Books lay in haphazard stacks across the floor where she’d left them, forming a rough circle, like a fairy ring. She sat in the center, feeling like a child in a fort—hidden and safe. She reached for the nearest book, the one she’d tossed aside the day Vivian had come to call.
Warp & Weft: Advanced Warding for Magical Spaces.
How had the assassin managed to get through the academy’s warding? The question had burrowed into her mind like a worm the night Isadora and Kitty were murdered, and she could not seem to dig it back out, no matter how hard she tried. The wall of protection magic surrounding the academy should have been impenetrable, even for the most skilled Traveler. Was it possible that dozens of layers of centuries-old protection magic could be so easily bypassed? Could the high council really be so inept?
Lydia had tried making veiled allusions to the question during those interminably long teas with the high council but had been stonewalled at every turn. She had assumed it was simple pride that made thecouncil so cagey. No one liked to be confronted with their own inadequacies, least of all the most powerful witches in Britain. Now, she looked down at the book in her hand, as another, even more unthinkable possibility began to root itself like a weed inside her mind.
Had someoneallowedan enemy witch inside the academy?
She stared around her at Isadora’s flat—her books and art and carefully curated baubles, the air as still as a held breath—and felt as if somehow, Isadora were there in the room with her. Watching her silently, the way she so often had, waiting to see if Lydia would come to the correct conclusion all by herself.
“Sod it,” she said.
There was only one way she would ever have any peace, and that was to see for herself. The ceremony was still two hours away. She had plenty of time.
She tucked the book under her arm and dashed out into the night.
•••
It was pitch darkwhen Lydia arrived at the academy. The moon had hidden herself away, the night draped across her face like a mourning veil. The streetlights had been extinguished to protect from German bombers, and so Lydia found her way to the back of the academy by memory, running her hand along the brick facade in the dark. She could feel the warding there, like a net of electricity buzzing along her fingertips.
She opened her copy ofWarp & Weft, and from her pocketbook produced a cigarette lighter. She held the flame close to the page, straining her eyes to read the words.
“Wryón iwanan, wryón scylda, scylda lyte, scylda lyte.”She shut the book and moved closer, holding out her hand in the darkness until she was touching the warding itself.“Wryón iwanan, wryón scylda, scylda lyte, scylda lyte.”She could feel the spell collecting in her fingers and moving outward like blood rushing to an appendage. The spell left her body, andas it did, it illuminated the warding like a silver web, moving ever outward from her hand. The spell extended on and on, expanding across the building’s surface, until the entire edifice glowed like a will-o’-the-wisp, the wall of spellwork glittering like spectral cobwebs in the darkness.
“Just like a fairy castle,” she whispered.
She walked the perimeter of the warding, taking note of the depth within it—gossamer-thin layer upon layer of magic. A witch’s magic could never outlive the witch who cast it; the warding was the only known exception. It was the work of hundreds of witches, most of whom had died long before Lydia was born—but not all. In this warding, delicate threads of magic from witches both living and dead existed side by side, braided together in a single wall of spellwork that served not only to protect the academy itself but to maintain the magic of those witches long gone. So long as even one witch lived who had cast her power into the warding, the magic preserved within would exist forever. It was a work of magical cooperation that spanned centuries. And it was beautiful.
Lydia walked the length of the warding, searching as she went for anything out of the ordinary. She came to a place where the spellwork extended past the walls of the shop and into the lot behind, revealing the footprint of the academy hidden beneath the glamour. She knew from the map inside her mind that there was a library here, tucked and folded inside the academy’s glamour like a magician’s silk. She followed the warding, imagining the jumble of ancient books and folios just on the other side of the shimmering boundary. She took one step, then another, and then stopped.
There, cut into the centuries-old warding, was a doorway, not much taller than Lydia herself. She stepped closer, noticing how the mangled warding seemed to sway in the breeze, as if it had been shredded by a knife. There was something violent about the image, and Lydia shuddered to see it. She peered closer, and there, sliced like a tattoo into the top of the doorway was a symbol. A rune.
Othala. Homeland.
Eight
Sybil stood before the tattered portal, holding tightly to Lydia’s arm.
“Great Mother.” Her hand reached out toward the glowing rune, then stopped. She drew a protection sign in the air in a quick, automatic gesture.
Lydia watched, waiting in desperation for Sybil to tell her what to do. “It’s the same rune,” she said. “The same one that was on her knife.”
Sybil turned to Lydia then, like someone just waking from a dream. Lydia didn’t think she had ever seen Sybil look so shaken.
“Right.” She wrung her hands and looked around, as if someone might still be lurking somewhere out there in the shadows. “Inside. Quickly. Before someone sees.”
•••
Sybil puttered about her office,adding wood to the fire, fixing tea, rifling through books and papers as she muttered under herbreath. Lydia had always felt at home in Sybil’s private study. Something about the clutter of threadbare furniture in shades of purple and mauve, the jumbled array of old books and mismatched teacups abandoned on every surface, had always felt comforting to her. Now, it only felt cramped and airless.
Lydia heard footsteps in the hallway. The high council was arriving. The ceremony was less than an hour away.
“Sybil…” Sybil carried on with her fussing.“Sybil.”
Finally, Sybil looked up at her.
“How could this happen?”
