“Sasha!” Kjell called to the woman who hid herself behind his men. “Come forward, woman. Show them you are well. They must have been concerned when you didn’t return last night. The wolves were out.” He felt his men shift and part, but didn’t turn his head. He heard Sasha come forward and saw her presence noted on the faces of the elders of Solemn before him.
One of the six, a white-haired man with great jowls, drooping eyes, and a sorrowful air, spotted Sasha and gasped visibly, his chest lifting beneath his yellow robe, his hands tightening on his reins. The animal he rode felt his tension and backed up obediently. The man wanted to bolt, and he wasn’t the only one.
“She is a witch,” a fat elder jeered. “She has lived among us for three summers. She brought evil with her. Fires and floods. Pestilence and disease. We ran her out at the end of our spears, but she flew from us.”
Kjell regarded him darkly, seeing the crumpled body of the woman in his mind’s eye, her body broken and bleeding. She had not flown. If she could have flown, Kjell would not have had to heal her bones and sing her spirit back to her flesh.
“It is against the laws of Jeru to harm the Gifted,” he rebuked.
“She made our people sick. She will make your men sick too. Your horses will die, and your bones will turn white on the plains of Quondoon. Now she sits among you, and you will suffer like we did.” This from Syed, his eyes dancing between Kjell and Sasha, who stood before the elders, inexplicably alive and well. She said nothing to defend herself—she didn’t speak at all—and Kjell followed her lead. He’d learned there was little that could be said to change a mind. Especially the minds of those so convinced of a woman’s guilt they would run her off a cliff as punishment for her crimes. He would let her decide the fate of those who had condemned her. It was something King Tiras would have done.
“What should we do, woman? Do the people of Solemn deserve healing?” he asked, his hand on his sword, his eyes on the men who wished him gone. So be it. He wanted to go. He would leave the village in their misery.
“All people deserve healing,” Sasha answered immediately, and Kjell’s heart sank in his chest. The man on the right, the man with the sagging jowls, retreated farther.
The leader of the elders raised a trembling finger and pointed it at Sasha. “You are not welcome in Solemn,” he hissed.
“Prepare your people, Syed,” Kjell said, dismissing him. “We’re coming to Solemn.” He waved the elders off, and his men closed ranks around him, swallowing him up protectively, herding the elders backward at the end of their lowered spears, quartering no further argument or conversation. Kjell waited until the elders had turned, spurring their camels back toward Solemn, their gifts rejected, their fears realized.
“Jerick, take a dozen men. Go to Solemn. Make sure the elders don’t stir up trouble. I will not be far behind. And Jerick?”
“Yes, Captain?”
“You do not speak for me. Ever. I choose to heal whom I will. You volunteer that information far too freely. Do not do it again, or I will send you back to Jeru City.”
“Yes, sir.” Jerick’s shoulders tightened defensively, but Kjell wasn’t finished. “Do not drink the water in Solemn. Any of you. Drink only what is in your flasks. And wait for my arrival.” Jerick’s brows rose in surprise, but he nodded, turning his horse and yelling orders to the soldiers already mounted around him.
When Jerick and the first group of soldiers had departed, Kjell instructed the men who remained to fill their carafes, break camp, and prepare their horses. When they rushed to do his bidding, he dismounted and turned to the silent Sasha. She did not look at him. Her gaze was blank and fixed in the direction the elders had gone.
“You do not have to go into Solemn. I want only to see what is happening there so I can ascertain the risk. Then I will be taking my men and moving on. I have no wish to remain in Quondoon any longer than necessary. I want to fight beasts . . . not small minds.”
“I do not draw evil to me,” Sasha whispered, as if she hadn’t heard him at all. “I do not bring pestilence or fire. I do not cause suffering. But sometimes I know when it is coming.”
Kjell grimaced but didn’t silence her.
“I only tried to warn. But warnings unheeded often become . . . tragedies. And I was easy to blame. My master—Mina—told her brother, Byron, an elder who is well-respected among the people, about my visions. He told the other elders, and they started to blame me for causing the things I saw. When Mina grew ill and Byron came to see her, I told him what I’d seen . . . about the water.”
“This Byron—he didn’t believe you?”
“He acted as though he did. He told the elders. But he didn’t warn the village. Or if he did, they didn’t believe him either.”
“And he did not try to stop the villagers last night?”
“No. Maybe he didn’t know. But he was with the elders here, though he didn’t speak.” Her throat worked against the emotion lodged there, her betrayal evident, and Kjell guessed the “well-respected” Byron was the elder with the trembling hands and drooping skin.
“I don’t see everything. I don’t see most things. And I rarely see good things. I see pain. Fear. Death. Anger. Maybe because love isn’t as . . . dark, it’s harder to see. The terrible things put off a scent. A signal. Or maybe they send ripples through time.”
“Ripples?”
“Like ripples in a pond. You throw a stone into the water, and the impact sends waves outward in every direction. It is like I am on the shore, yet the ripples still find me, far as I might be from where—or when—it all occurs. I cannot control it. Most of the time, I can’t change it. I can only see it and do my best to warn of its arrival. Some ripples are just that . . . ripples, but some are huge waves. Sometimes we can catch the wave and ride the current. Sometimes we can dive beneath the churning, but we cannot keep the wave from coming. Sometimes it only brushes my feet, and sometimes I only observe, but the wave still comes.”
“And you saw me?”
“Yes. Many times. More times than I can count. I saw you, and I saw death.”
“Your own?” he asked. She saw him, and she saw death, yet she wasn’t afraid of him.
“Yes. And no. I saw the moments that came before. I felt the anger of the villagers. I saw my fear . . . and falling. I knew I would fall.”
“And you want me to help these people?”
“Some of them,” she whispered, and she tried to smile. “Maybe not all.”
“They will still hate you,” he replied grimly.
“Some of them. Maybe not all,” she repeated, nodding. “But not asking you to help them . . . when I know you can, would be like knowing the water is bad and not telling anyone. It isn’t about me. It’s about responsibility. The Gifts we are given are not given for our benefit but for the benefit of mankind.”
Kjell groaned inwardly, his dread growing by the second. This slave woman, this red-haired paragon of virtue and long-suffering, would be his undoing, and it would not be a sweet unraveling.
***