Rebecka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 16 of 66

Rebecka closed the compass. The heavy cluster on the ridge had not moved, but a second, smaller mark had blinked into being closer to the cave mouth. One rider. Alone. Sitting still. "A mage," Marcus said. He kept his voice low so the refugees in the deeper chamber would not hear. "Set apart from the war party. Scrying." "For what?" Lark asked. He had come in from the mouth, sword still in his hand, wings folded tight against his back so they would not scrape the stone. "Magic," Rebecka said. "Any spark we throw. He'll draw a line straight to us." Ninka was still sitting on the blanket under the hoop of feathers and crystals. The violet spider crouched by her knee. Katia stood behind her granddaughter with a hand on the girl's hair. "Then Ninka drops the connection," Rebecka said. "Now. Anything humming, we kill it." "She has already let go," Katia said. "I felt it go quiet." Ninka nodded. "The coast is closed." Rebecka looked at the hoop above her daughter. The crystals were still faintly lit. She looked at the spider. She looked at the walls, veined pink and violet, glowing on their own. "The cave itself," she said. "The stones are lit." Lark set his palm against the wall. "They've always been lit. Old magic. Slow. Not the kind a scryer reads. He's listening for a spike. A cast." "Then no one casts," Rebecka said. "Not the hoop. Not the spider. Not a single ward. Not until Gran's riders come or the mage moves off." Katia lifted the dreamcatcher down from the spur of rock. She wrapped it in cloth from her pack, layer over layer, until the crystals stopped throwing color. She tucked the bundle into the deepest fold of her robe. "Send him away," she told Ninka, quiet. The girl bent to the spider. She pressed her forehead to its. The spider stepped back once, twice, then was gone between one blink and the next. "He walks where I walk," Ninka whispered. "He'll come when I call." Rebecka opened the compass again. The lone mark on the ridge held its position for a long breath. Then it drifted. Then it turned north, back toward the heavy cluster. "He lost us," Marcus said. "He lost the noise," Rebecka corrected. "He knows a ridge went silent that was humming a minute ago. He'll mark this ridge on a map and bring the whole band to walk it stone by stone." Lark met her eyes. "How long?" Rebecka watched the cluster on the compass. It was already moving. Not fast. Steady. "Before Gran's riders," she said. "A day. Maybe less." She closed the compass. Twenty-two people behind her in the dark, no wards, no potions, five arrows, and a daughter she had just ordered to stop being magic.