Seren Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 10 of 26

Seren's mare gave out before the second ridge. The horse was lathered white, sides heaving, and dawn was maybe two hours off. Six gods. Six directions. No animal on four legs could cover that ground. She slid off the saddle and let the reins drop. The owl was somewhere ahead, buying her minutes she could not spend on a dying horse. She knelt in the wet grass and cut her palm on the buckle of her belt. Blood into the dirt. She spoke a summoning her mother had underlined twice and never used. The words tasted like copper. The ground under her hand went cold, then hot, then split open with a crack of white light. A black pegasus came out of the split. Lightning ran under its skin. Its wings were shaped like bolts, sharp-edged and shining. It landed hard and looked at her with one blue eye. Seren had asked for a fast thing. The ground had sent her a storm on four legs. "You'll carry me," she told it. It did not answer. It did not need to. She unrolled the bundle tied behind her saddle. Black robes, purple at the seams, yellow sigils stitched at the collar and belt. Her grandmother's. Her grandmother's grandmother's. She stripped off her ride-stained skirt and pulled the robes on over her shirt. If she stumbled into the gods' court sweating and dirt-streaked, they would rule on her clothes before her claim. In the robes she was a Nightshade priestess. In the robes she was harder to kill quickly. She pulled the staff from the saddle straps. Dark wood, red thorns, the family sigil burned into the head in purple and pale green. She spoke Amber's name into the crystals set along its shaft and then Raph's, because a rite-speaker's word could travel where a witch's could not. Amber's voice answered thin through the wood. "You're late." "I know. Take the staff to the gods' door before I get there. Plant it. Make them see the sigil." Raph cut in, flat. "They'll read it as a claim. They'll move on you before you land." "Good. I want them looking at the door, not the sky." "You'll get one pass," Raph said. "Don't waste it." She broke a splinter from the staff and pressed it to the crystals. The wood folded in on itself and vanished. Somewhere ahead of her, in a hall she had never seen, it would land upright in stone. She swung onto the pegasus. Isaiah's half-seating burned low in her ribs, steady, awake. The wings opened. The world dropped away. She cleared the last ridge as the sky went gray at its edge. Below, six shapes stood around a planted staff, faces turned up, waiting for her. She was not late. She had arrived first.