Rebecka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 22 of 66

The horn above the cave died. In its place, a sound came from inside Rebecka's own skull. A voice she knew. A voice she had once shared a house with. Let me in, Rebecka. You are going to lose her. She grabbed the crystal wall to steady herself. The bow warmed in her other hand. Marcus was still behind her, watching the slot. He had not heard it. Only she had heard it, and Ninka, somewhere behind the sealed stone, would be hearing it too. "Dirk," she said out loud. Marcus turned. "Where." "In my head. Through Ninka." His jaw set. "Shut him out." "I'm trying." The voice came again, closer, warmer, the way it had been when she was young and stupid. Say yes. One word. I will burn the ridge for you. She saw it then, a picture pushed behind her eyes: a stitched doll bound in cord, pins driven in at the shoulders and the gut, her own name scratched on a patch at its chest. He was showing her what he held. Her draw hand shook. An arrow slipped from her fingers and rang on the stone. "Rebecka." Marcus caught her elbow. "Eyes on the slot." "He's using her as the door. If I answer, he walks in through her." Marcus looked at the sealed chamber wall, then back at her. "Then we close the door." He reached into his belt and pulled a small glass vial, the last of a set she thought he had already spent. He broke it against the floor. A pale eye opened in the air between them, wide as a shield, its iris blue and gold. It turned to her without blinking. "Report," Marcus said. "A man is pushing on the girl's mind from the north slope," the eye said. "He is not with the war party. He stands alone under a black tree. His right hand holds a doll. His left hand is empty." "Range?" "Four hundred paces. Above the cave. He is why the horn sounded." Rebecka's bow found the note before she did. She did not need to see him. The eye had marked him, the way the crow had marked the mage. "Tell my mother," she said to the crow on the ledge. It lifted and slipped through the crack toward the sealed chamber. Then she spoke into her own head, hard, the way she had learned to speak to him years ago. Get out. She drew a red-fletched arrow, angled the shot up and over the crystal, and loosed on the eye's line. The pressure in her skull cut off mid-word. Not gone. Cut. Like a hand pulled off a door. Fourteen arrows. The slot was still hers. Above, on the ridge, something heavy fell against stone and did not get up. But the doll, she knew, had not burned. He had only let go of the rope.