Rebecka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 4 of 66

Rebecka came off the ridge at dusk and knew before she dismounted that her horse was done. His head hung low. His flanks shook. When she led him to the stream he drank a swallow and stopped. She pressed her hand to his neck and felt the heat under the hide. One more hard mile would kill him, and one more hard mile was not enough. She still had a full day's ride north to the cache, and the raiders were marching. She unsaddled him by a stand of pines and rubbed him down with a fold of her cloak. Her hands worked while her mind ran the numbers. Walk, and she lost two days. Ride him, and he foundered in an hour. Either way she was late. Either way Marcus would be alone at the wards when the raiders came, and he would break his oath to save her mother, her sister, her daughter. She sat against a tree and pulled a bundle from her pack. Ninka had tucked it in the bottom the night she left. Rebecka had not opened it until now. Inside was a folded silk with a pinch of dust, a small carved token, and a scrap of paper in her daughter's round writing. *Say my name three times and lie down. I'll come.* Rebecka almost laughed. Her daughter's psychic tricks had been a game at the kitchen table. Guessing cards. Finding lost spoons. She had never asked the girl to reach this far. But Ninka had known. Ninka always knew. She cleared a patch of needles and lay back. She said the name three times. The dust warmed in her palm. The air above her folded. A hammock shape hung between two pines that had held nothing a moment before, woven of rope and tassels and a light that was not firelight. On the pillows sat her daughter, cross-legged, barefoot, flowers still in her hair. Beside her crouched a spider the size of a dog, black and violet, eight eyes steady on Rebecka. "Mama," Ninka said. "You're breaking your horse." "I know." "I brought you one that won't break." Ninka lifted her hand. Between the trees, a white mare stepped out of nothing. Her mane was braided with beads. Her coat threw faint color, like oil on water. "She's borrowed. She runs on the between-roads. A day for you is an hour for her." Rebecka stood. "You can do this?" "The spider holds the door. I hold her." Ninka's smile wavered. "Go fast, Mama. The cats are pacing. Marcus is counting bottles." Rebecka kissed her daughter's forehead through the strange, cold air of the hammock. She swung her saddle onto the mare. The mare took the weight like nothing. She left her spent horse tied loose by the stream with grain from her pack. Then she rode north on a road no map had ever shown her, and the trees blurred, and the night ran under the mare's hooves like water.