Therisia's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

The growl stopped. Something heavy struck the tower door. Wood cracked. Therisia jerked back from her silent glass. The hunter had come for the mark, and one thin plank stood between them and its teeth. She thought fast, the way she once thought reading fine print to a cornered buyer. "Sable. The cattails. From the reeds outside." Sable, the young scribe who had once been cheated by Therisia and now traveled with her mark burning under her sleeve, dumped her satchel open. Rot-dark reeds spilled out, stalks flecked and torn. "I cut them near the water," she whispered. "They mask the glow. It only lasts till morning." Her ink-stained fingers shook as she crushed the stalks against the stone floor. Another blow. The door split down its center. A snout pushed through, black lips peeling off long teeth. The wolf smelled the mark and wanted it. Tomas Cray, the old wanderer who had warned them the seal came too late, jammed his ribboned staff across the broken frame. He braced his boots and held. His voice split, two men snarling in one throat. "It won't hold long. Whatever you mean to do, do it." Therisia grabbed Sable's wrist and shoved it into the crushed reeds. The glow flared bright against the pulp, then dimmed. The wolf snapped at the gap. Its head thrashed, nose working the air, searching for a light that was fading. "Smear it on her. All of it," Therisia said. Sable rubbed the wet mash over her sleeve, her wrist, her collar. The tower went dark. No glow. No trail. The wolf froze. Its nose dragged left, right, over cold stone. The scent was gone. It backed off the ruined door, chest low, a long whine climbing out of it. Then it turned and slid back into the reeds. The staff clattered as Tomas let his arms drop. Therisia leaned on the broken frame and breathed. She had bought them until morning. But she looked at Sable, at the dark pulp dripping from the girl's sleeve, and the cost landed cold. The reeds masked the glow. The glow was the compass. Without its light pointing north, Sable had no way to read the road to the shrine. "You put out my needle," Sable said. Not angry. Just quiet, staring at her dulled wrist. "By morning it wakes again. By morning that thing smells us too." Therisia turned to her sealed reflection in the glass. The painted eyes stared back, dead and fixed, owning their own silence. She had trapped that face so she'd never have to answer for it. Now she needed the map's hidden road more than ever, and the debt she'd bound onto Sable was the only thing that could reveal the path forward. "Then we don't wait for morning," she said. "We use the debt. Tonight."