Page 11 of Sightwitch
Y18 D168 — 16 days
Twenty-two more Sisters were Summoned.
Hilga and I are the only ones who remain.
Y18 D171 — 19 days
I know what is coming. Soon, Hilga will be Summoned, and I will be the only Sister left.
I dare not utter these words aloud, though, and Hilga holds her tongue too. In fact, we have exchanged no words in days.
She scarcely looks at me. Her gaze, her mind—they are in another realm. Lost inside the Memory Records she combs from the Crypts. Or perhaps claimed by whatever prayers she offers, unanswered, to the scrying pool.
Y18 D174 — 22 days since Tanzi was Summoned
Hilga was Summoned today.
I knew it would come as surely as if I had the Sight.
It came. It passed.
I am alone.
Two spirit swifts swirled up from the scrying pool to Summon her. They landed on the observatory floor so close to me that my heart surged into my eyeballs.
But no—of course not. Of course they did not come for me. They skipped urgently past and dove straight for Hilga. One even nipped at her gown.
Then Hilga’s eyes focused on my face for the first time in weeks. She spoke to me too.
“You do not need to follow me to the mountain, Ryber, nor hum the Chant of Summoning.”
It was strange to hear my name on her lips. Strange to hear her voice at all, husky from underuse.
Somehow, I did not collapse to the floor at her words. In fact, my knees had locked so tightly, I barely moved at all.
“Listen to me, Ryber.” She reached for the bell-pouch at her hip and untied it in a single, practiced movement. Carefully—frightened even, as if she worried the spirit swifts might disapprove—she approached me.
The birds did indeed disapprove, for one chittered in that shrill, ghostly way of theirs. More sensation inside my skull than true sound.
But Hilga was already to me at that point and offering me the bell. “I have no answers for what is happening beneath the mountain. I do not know why Sirmaya Summons us, and I do not know what the future holds. No clues are hidden in the Crypts, and none of my prayers to the pool have been answered.
“All I can guess is that she needs us for … something. And it is our duty to protect her, just as she has protected and provided for us over all these centuries.
“You are alone now, Ryber. The last Sightwitch Sister. This bell must pass to you. Take it.”
I took it. My hands did not shake.
Inside, though, I was screaming.
“There are two kinds of Sight,” Hilga tried to say, but the swifts cut her off, fluttering their starry wings and hopping toward us.
My lungs closed up; I rocked back a step. Please—was it already time?
Quick as a fighter, Hilga grabbed my wrist and tugged me close.
Then her silver eyes bored into mine. “There are two kinds of Sight, Ryber. The kind that lets you see the future, relive the past, and catalog the world around you in a detail you never knew possible. That is the Sight that I and the other Sisters have.
“But there is another Sight, a simpler Sight—one that is rooted in clarity of purpose. An ability to see the path that matters most and stay firmly gripped upon it.
