Blightborn by Chuck Wendig Page A

it.
    Pain, electric and sharp, shoots from his skin. Same kind of pain that comes from pulling a scab. The stem won’t give, though. The leaf stays.
    And by the balls of Old Scratch, it sure does itch.
    He tries not to make any sound. Tries not to show the fear that is crawling through him like a colony of termites.
    Lane catches his eye. “Hey, you all right? Looks like you just saw the Maize Witch.”
    I have the Blight .
    “I’m fine,” Cael lies. I have the Blight. He forces a smile. “Just worried about Rigo.”
    And then a thought that isn’t his own enters his mind like corn shoots prying apart floorboards or pushing up asphalt—
    Come to me, Cael .
    “You’re not gonna die,” Lane says, mussing Rigo’s hair. “We won’t let you, because life just wouldn’t be as much fun without you to kick around. Ain’t that right, Cael?”
    Come to me, Cael .
    He swallows hard.
    “Totally right.”
    “Then let’s go hitch a ride,” Lane says, and whoops with glee.
    Cael nods and tries to smile, helps Rigo along.
    But that one thought keeps turning and flipping in his head, jumping around like a bird with a broken wing trying to fly: I have the Blight .

PART TWO
    BLACK MIRRORS, BROKEN KEYS

THE MAN FROM WHEATLEY
    THE MIRROR ISN’T MUCH. A shard of reflective glass sitting between two corners of old frame, held there as if by divine providence. The bottom of the glass is blackened from smoke and soot—this whole house is burned up, and the mirror is one of the few things left.
    He’d laugh, but it hurts too much. Every twitch of his lips sends sparks of pain jumping as the skin breaks and blisters pop.
    His face looks like a shuck rat turned inside out.
    Cael McAvoy .
    That name. That boy. At first he thought that was the divine providence—he’d been looking for Arthur McAvoy for a good long while, waiting for that snake to pop his head up so that Eben could cut it off. And then what should happen? An alert on the visidex he stole from that Empyrean guard—before he broke the fool’s neck—that said Arthur McAvoy was some kindof “terrorist.” And that his son was wrapped up in it, too. Well, gosh-and-golly.
    At the time Eben had been far west, toward the squealer town of Baird’s Furnace, pretending then to be just another hobo looking for work but doing his own work in the meantime, the work of the Lord and the Lady. The first thing he did was pack up everything and start heading east. McAvoy was in a town called Boxelder, so that’s where Eben figured he’d go.
    And then there, across the trestle, he’d spotted them.
    The fat one with the raft— sploosh . Into the slurry.
    An easy introduction.
    He thought he had them.
    Eben lashes out, kicks a burned-up chair into char-dust. The rage rises inside of him, and he growls and then whimpers in pain as the burned mask that is his face stretches and pulses and just plain hurts .
    Back to the mirror. His forehead is still smooth except for a lone blister. His eyes were blessedly untouched, though the brow-hair burned. But the lower half of his face is pitted and pocked with red, raw flesh. The ash stuck to him like tar. Burning and burning. He has some lesser burns on his forearms where he tried to wipe away the ash, but those aren’t too bad. His face, though, his face . . . will never be the same. Not without some of the voodoo they got on those Empyrean flotillas, and he doesn’t see himself going back to one of those anytime soon.
    Another spike of rage pounds heavy into his heart. The Empyrean.
    The Empyrean people want to be like the gods. And the Heartlanders want to be like dogs. Both disgust him, and theydisgust the Lord and Lady, too. He knows, because they tell him things. Sometimes Jeezum Crow comes to him in visions. Or Old Scratch even, who’s evil as anything but a part of the plan just like he is. Sometimes he’s visited by the Saintangels, like Agnes or Bethesda or Hypatia or Lyria, and they tell him things, too, whispering the