Foretellers (The Ydron Saga Book 3) (18 page)

They came to a stop alongside the stream and the trio climbed down to assess their surroundings. The smell from the fires was unnoticeable here. The brook flowing through the grove ran, as best Roanna could tell, northwest to southeast, disappearing both upstream and down as it coursed through the surrounding thickets. Lace flies flitted above the water, their wings flashing copper as they reflected glimpses of sky through the gray-green canopy of leaves. The surrounding lushness extended outward more than one hundred feet in every direction. From inside, the grove seemed larger than it had when viewed from above. And though the hillside down which they had come was clearly visible through the tree trunks and branches, Roanna believed that here, amid shadows beneath the leafy boughs, they would be difficult to spot.

To the west, the way they would take if they chose not to return, a gradual slope ascended. It would take them, from Sylene’s account, in the general direction of danTennet. The thought almost brought Roanna to her knees, for it seemed every step took her farther from her daughter, while drawing her nearer the place she dreaded most.

A hand on her shoulder brought her back from her reverie.

“Are you alright?” Simo asked.

Roanna gasped, then sighed when she recognized his voice, nodding as she turned to face him.

“No, you’re not,” he said, wiping a tear from her cheek.

Simo was almost two feet taller than Roanna, and he bent so they could meet eye-to-eye.

“Something’s bothering you,” he said. “And I don’t believe it’s Maryam. Would you care to tell us about it?”

Feeling exposed, she attempted to turn, but Simo caught her arm. Gently, he brought her around to face him, peering first into one eye, then the other, as if by so doing he might see what she was hiding.

“I’m not your enemy,” he assured. When she offered no response, he asked, “Are you sure there is nothing you’d like to share?”

Sylene was beside him now, and Roanna looked from one to the other, wondering how much she could safely disclose. She started to shake her head, to deny there was anything, when the emotions she had been damming inside her erupted. Her mouth opened and a sob emerged like no sound she could recall and it struck her, as she listened to herself, that it was like the howl a wild animal makes. As if she were watching someone else from outside, helpless to assist, tears began streaming. Her body shook and her knees buckled as her strength evaporated. She knew she would have fallen if Simo hadn’t been holding her.

She sobbed for what seemed like forever while Simo and Sylene watched. Neither tried to interrupt, but waited patiently for the outburst to end. Eventually, when there was nothing more left inside and she began to quiet, she felt warm arms encircling her and only then did she realize she was standing in Simo’s embrace.

Suddenly self-conscious, she took a step back, grateful when he released her. She was wiping away the tears when she noticed he was holding out a handkerchief. Unaccustomed to such kindness, her initial reflex was to refuse it, having always been the caretaker. She caught herself. Embarrassed by her rudeness, she accepted the offering with the best smile she could manage.

“Thank you,” she said as she dabbed at her eyes.

Sylene cocked her head.

“I hope you’ll eventually trust us enough to tell us about it.” She paused and added, “Maybe later.”

Roanna nodded. As she continued to return to the present, she rubbed her arms and turned in an effort to heighten her awareness of where she was standing. When she was facing them again, she replied, “If we are going to travel together, I need to explain everything. Now. Before we leave.”

“Please don’t feel that you must,” Sylene said, “Perhaps tomorrow, after we return to the house… ”

“We’re not going back,” Roanna said in a much stronger voice.

“Why not?” Sylene asked. “I don’t mean to sound rude, but I still am inclined to believe you might have been mistaken.”

Roanna wheeled on her.

“I am never mistaken, not about my visions,” she said and pointed up the hillside.

Sylene began to reply, then stopped, staring at the column of black smoke rising over the ridge top.

“By the gods!” she gasped.

Roanna turned and stormed off as she heard Sylene say, barely louder than a whisper, “I’m sorry.”

Roanna halted by the wagon, angry with herself for having exploded, angrier still at the circumstances that had led her here. She was chiding herself for being rude, trying to decide how she might make amends, when Simo came beside her.

“Perhaps you are right,” he said. “You’ve done something I don’t understand and neither does Sylene. Let’s talk.”

He glanced over his shoulder and, with a tilt of his head, invited Sylene to join them. Once she had arrived, Simo lowered the wagon’s rear gate and the three boosted themselves onto it.

Roanna recounted the events that led her here, deciding to spare nothing. Simo and Sylene both stared incredulously, but without comment, when she recounted Pandy’s confrontation with Lord Cargath, then related how she had subsequently led her daughter to Sandoval, eventually evading their pursuers by boarding the ship. When she arrived at the point in her account where Pandy had shoved her overboard, the two exchanged glances. Roanna suspected they did not think her entirely mad at this point because of the evidence still rising behind them.

When she concluded her account, having taken them through her injury and the impact the rock had made, not just in terms of the physical damage, but as it also affected her gift, she concluded, “Until we were leaving Maryam’s, I thought I had lost it forever. In fact, I’m afraid I may never be the same. Even though I saw the man and his warriors with such clarity—more clearly than I had ever experienced anything like it before— now, when I try to look ahead, I cannot.”

“Perhaps it is just starting to return,” Sylene offered. “Who knows? Maybe, given enough time, you will heal and everything will be the way it was before.”

She offered a tentative smile and placed a hand on Roanna’s knee.

“Except I still don’t have my daughter,” Roanna grumbled. She stopped herself, then added, “I’m sorry. I’m still being insensitive. You don’t deserve it.”

Before she could contain it, the pain of her loss returned and she broke down again.

“Perhaps your daughter foresaw your eventual reunion,” Sylene suggested.

Roanna nodded and used the kerchief, glancing from Sylene to Simo.

“That’s what keeps me going,” she said. “Without that hope to sustain me, I would probably kill myself.”

“Don’t say such a thing!” Sylene exclaimed and Simo changed the subject.

“You said that, in your vision, there was a man leading the riders. Was he the one you saw earlier? Was he Hath Kael?”

“The same as before,” she said, “except this time I could see the men riding with him. They were carrying orange banners crested with a lion.”

Simo nodded.

“Those are his.”

“Why would he be so bent on destroying this land?” Roanna asked. “ I would think he would do better by trying to win people’s hearts. This is no way to gain their loyalty.”

“Kael earns loyalty through fear and this part of the country is perfect for creating widespread intimidation. There are no sizeable farms and the few widely spaced houses have gardens sufficient in size to sustain households, but not so large that they can produce enough food to sustain his supply lines. And unlike the cities, from which he recruits his armies, those who die in these local attacks are too few to affect his military strategy. Even so, their deaths are sufficient to serve as examples. He loses nothing of value when he torches these houses, while those who do own large farms or live in the cities cower in fear of what he might do to them if they refuse him.”

As if on cue, the three turned in unison.

After a few silent moments regarding the smoke, Sylene asked, “What do we do now?”

“I intend to find my daughter,” Roanna replied without hesitation.

“Do you know where to look?” Simo asked.

Roanna withdrew for a moment, attempting to do what had, until recently, been her customary reaction to such a question. To her surprise, this time she saw clearly. Startled by the vision’s vividness, she put her hands to her lips and declared, “I will find her in Obah Sitheh’s fortress in Liad-Nur.”

Had her ability returned? If it had, it had done so with unprecedented clarity. She was envisioning the fortress in detail, from the stake pits surrounding it to the banners flying from its walls. All around, men were either making repairs, or else were bringing provisions. On the battlefield beyond, the charred skeletons of what appeared to have been funeral pyres jutted above a churned and ragged terrain. She wondered how many thousands had struggled there to have gouged it so. A short distance outside the battlements, an army was amassing and erecting tented pavilions. The plain’s opposite extent was where she expected Kael and his allies would arrive eventually.

Realizing how far away she was straying, she returned to the fortress. There, within its walls, she saw a girl clad in animal skins, not the sandiath clothing in which she had dressed her daughter. Even so, Roanna recognized the girl’s auburn hair and also her walk. Although she could not see her face, the girl moved like Pandy.

The aspect that troubled Roanna, she realized, was that she was not part of this scenario. Was this, then, a glimpse of Pandy’s present, or where she would eventually arrive? In fact, this did not feel like her customary future glimpses, but rather, it had an indefinable, yet decidedly different feel. The question that followed was, while Pandy would certainly be within that fortress, would Roanna be with her? She backed away from the thought, afraid that lingering might somehow alter the event.

“Are you alright, Roanna?”

Simo’s hand was on her shoulder and he was shaking her. Returning to the present, she looked at him.

“I’m fine,” she said, forcing a smile.

In an effort to lighten the situation, she gestured toward the large sack and the pair of crates behind the driver’s seat, noticing soft noises were emanating from one of them.

“What are those?”

“I took time to grab two water skins, as well as some pots and utensils,” Simo said. “They’re in the box on the left. I stuffed three chickens into the one beside it. They will probably be too shaken to give us any eggs, but if you’re not too squeamish and are willing to help clean and pluck them, they’ll provide a few meals.”

“Are those beans?” Sylene asked, pointing at the sack.

Simo nodded and suggested, “We should probably start soaking some tonight, if we hope to eat any by tomorrow.”

They got down and set to work.

They had started the day heading west through the scarred land beyond. But after several miles, they began taking roads with a southern, then eventually a more easterly direction, hoping to circle wide enough to avoid Kael’s forces while moving back toward what they hoped would become the way to Liad-Nur. They also hoped that the numerous carrion feeders winging in circles above them were simply searching for a meal and did not portend to their mission’s outcome.

For the most part, the three rode in silence. Discussions about their greatest concerns—Simo’s freedom, Sylene’s home, Roanna’s daughter—felt pointless, because they knew they could do nothing about them. Numerous efforts to break up the silence with conversations about the mundane seemed forced and awkward and often ended abruptly.

At one point, Roanna asked, “Why did you decide to believe me?” To their questioning stares, she expanded, “You could have stayed with Maryam, yet you chose to come with me. Why didn’t you consider me mad?”

Simo replied, “Aside from the fact the woman was insufferable?”

They all laughed. But when Roanna’s expression sobered, pressing for an answer, Simo finally admitted, “Your description of the warlord suggested something unusual. I thought it unlikely that whatever rumors you’ve heard would have provided all the details. Perhaps it was because in all other regards you seemed rational and not prone to hysteria. Perhaps it was because the urgency in your voice rang true.”

He clucked at the horses when they started to slow. He flicked the reins and continued.

“We’ve all heard tales of folks with psychic abilities. My own mother took me to a fortune teller’s tent when I was small. I remember her nodding eagerly as the woman found ways to wheedle necessary information from her—things my mother wanted to hear—then worked them into responses I am loathe to call prophesies. Even as a child, I could hear the deceit in her voice and sense the situation’s falsehood. The way you acted had a different feel to it, like something genuine. I can’t describe it any better. Whatever it was, I had to come.”

Roanna decided to accept his words at face value and turned to Sylene.

“And you?”

Sylene shook her head.

“I’m not sure. I suppose I agreed with you. If I came along and nothing more came of it, I could go back home the next day—later that night, perhaps—and nothing would have been the worse for my having done so.”

“What if Maryam had tried to prevent you from taking back your house?”

“I don’t believe you and Simo would have let her,” Sylene replied. Her brow furrowed and she looked up and away. “But there was also a part of me that wanted to believe and I suppose there was another that wanted Maryam to be wrong.”

She smiled coyly at this admission, causing Roanna and Simo to smile in return.

“As much as I disliked her,” said Roanna, “I wanted her to come with us. I’m not at all happy she died, especially the way I suspect she must have.” She paused and added, “If it will make you feel any better, I didn’t see that part happen. For all I know, they may not have killed her. She and her husband sided with Kael, so perhaps she was able to tell him that and persuade him to let her live.”

“I doubt he would have taken the time to listen,” said Simo.

Chagrined by her forced attempt at optimism, wondering if the others thought it sounded hollow as well, she was considering how to take the conversation elsewhere when movement at the edge of her field of vision brought her up short. Her heart began to pound at the sound of hoof beats approaching. Fearing they might be Kael’s warriors, she turned and saw two riders tearing toward them across the fields. Hunched forward, leaning well past their saddles, poised in the stirrups on the balls of their feet, they were urging their horses faster using their reins as whips. Roanna released her breath when the riders rode past, eventually vanishing from sight. With a hand on her heart, she turned to Simo.

“Couriers,” he said. When Roanna gave a questioning look, he explained, “They ride for Tai Comer, Pytheral’s ruling lord.”

“How can you tell?”

“I couldn’t see their crests but the blue and gray stripes on their livery and saddle blankets identify them. I suspect they are going where we are. Just before the last battle, Kael prevented the Pytherali cavalry from joining Obah Sitheh. Their direction seems right. We’ll do well to follow as best we can. Let’s hope the road goes that way as well.