Rebecka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 15 of 66

Ninka sat up on the folded blanket. Her eyes were wide and steady. "Mama. Something is walking in my head. Right now." Rebecka knelt beside her daughter. The crystal veins in the walls threw pink light across Ninka's face. Katia set a hand on the girl's shoulder and did not speak. Marcus moved closer, blade still drawn. Lark stayed at the mouth. "Is it hurting you?" Rebecka asked. "No. It's touching. Like fingers on a door." Rebecka's mouth went dry. A raider mage scrying from the ridge could pin them the way the hooded one had pinned Ninka at the house. One wrong answer and her daughter would draw a knife across her own throat, or worse, guide the enemy straight to this chamber. But Ninka had allies Rebecka did not fully understand. It could be a friend. "Can you tell who?" Rebecka said. "Not yet. It's careful." Rebecka pulled the compass Marcus had given her from her coat. She thumbed it open. The needle spun, then settled toward the ridge behind them, far off. One heavy cluster. No smaller mark near the cave mouth. No mage crouched above the crack in the back. "No one close enough to scry cold," Marcus said, reading over her shoulder. "If it's a raider, they're reaching a long way." "Or it's not a raider." Rebecka looked at Ninka. "Can you meet it without opening the door?" Ninka nodded. She closed her eyes. Her fingers curled in the blanket. Katia lifted a bundle from her own pack and unrolled it on the stone. A wide hoop, feathers, small crystals knotted along the threads. She hung it from a spur of rock above Ninka's head. The crystals caught the cave light and threw soft color across the girl's face. "My mother's," Katia said. "It filters what comes in." At Ninka's ankle, something moved that had not been there a breath before. A jumping spider the size of a cat, dark fur banded with violet, faint rings of light turning around its legs. It set two forelegs on Ninka's knee. "He's with me," Ninka whispered, eyes still shut. "He walks where I walk." The spider's eyes fixed on the empty air above the hoop. Ninka drew a slow breath. Then she smiled. "It's Gran's sister," she said. "The one on the coast. She felt the shield break. She's been looking for us for two days." Katia's hand went to her mouth. "Tell her the ridge. Tell her the caves." "She already knows. She's sending riders." Rebecka let the compass close. Her hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against her knees until they stopped. "How long?" she asked. Ninka opened her eyes. "Three days. Maybe four." Marcus met Rebecka's look. The raiders on the compass were closer than that. Help was coming. It would not come in time.