“And if Dayamar didn’t agree with you befriending Hope,” Blayne said, “I have no doubt you’d have been firmly encouraged to stay away from her.”
“Oh! I’m glad I measured up then.”
“Me, too,” Hope said.
Another knock on the door. “Sehan Hope?”
She hid her grin. “Could you give me a moment, Willem? I’m just finishing up breakfast.”
“I was, um, looking for Varaya.”
“What could you possibly want me for?” Varaya’s question was couched in such blatantly flirtatious tones that Blayne groaned.
“Shay sent me to find you,” Willem said, either oblivious or choosing not to respond. “Something about some dress you’d ordered. You know what Shay’s like—impossible to refuse. I’d only called in to see if she wanted more cured hides and next thing I know, I’m her errand boy.”
“Oooh. I’ve been waiting for Shay to finish that dress. It’s for a very special occasion. Perhaps you could come to the dormayre so I can show you what it looks like on? I’d value your opinion.”
Hope struggled to keep a straight face when Willem blurted, “You would? Uh, thanks. But do you think—? I mean, it’s not that I don’t want to see— Um, it’s just that—”
Before Willem could get his head together, Varaya had dragged him out the door.
Blayne snorted. “What’s the bet they’re Joined by year’s end?”
“I don’t see any point betting on a sure thing.”
~~~
The morning progressed into one of those rare days when she had the whole afternoon to herself. Dayamar was mediating some disagreement between the elders and the dormayre overseers. Blayne was busy with a patient. And Varaya was off torturing Willem.
It was a beautiful sunny day and she had decided to take full advantage of it by exploring the intriguing area beyond the washing pool stream. She’d coaxed Degan into accompanying her on the pretext that a particularly tasty type of mushroom grew in the region. It wasn’t quite as good as exploring on her own but it was the next best thing—blissfully quiet, with only the gurgle of water and birdsong and Degan’s off-key humming to contend with.
Degan was unaware she hadn’t told anyone else of her intentions, and Hope knew Blayne would be unimpressed if he found out she’d gone exploring with only Degan for company. She told herself she didn’t care. This constant concern for her safety was stifling. She was a Sehan, after all. What possible harm could she come to?
To salve her conscience, she helped Degan picked a large bag of mushrooms to take back with them. And in the process, they wandered quite a distance from the settlement. Best head back as soon—before anyone noticed she was missing.
She’d just called out to let Degan know they had to head home when the fine hairs on the back of her neck rose to attention. Someone was watching her.
Somewhere to her left she could hear Degan humming to himself. She stood and casually brushed down her clothing, fine-tuning her senses.
And then Degan shrieked, high-pitched and scared. She rushed toward the sound, her heart in her mouth. She’d never forgive herself if she’d put him at risk.
A gruff male voice yelled, “Grab him!”
Degan’s fear infected the air. Hope released the anger surging inside her—a tangible force that smacked into Degan’s attackers.
“Run, Degan! Run! Get Blayne!” She sent the young man a boost of energy that helped his feet fly over the uneven ground. She swept the area with her seer-senses, identifying the men she’d struck down. Damn. She’d missed a couple. Where—?
She heard a choked off gasp. Ah. There was one.
She could taste his fear, See it too, in the crimson-drenched black swirls infecting his aureya. She separated his energy signature from his surroundings and gauged distances so she could pinpoint his position and render him powerless. She locked on to his energy and paused. He didn’t want to harm her—none of them did. What were their intentions? Why—?
A blinding pain caught her by surprise and the world blanked.
~~~
So far as Blayne could ascertain, Degan had collapsed in a heap at the feet of the first group of people he encountered. The young men had tried in vain to get some sense out of him, but he was borderline hysterical and could only gasp Hope’s name. Finally someone thought to call for Blayne.
By the time he’d calmed Degan enough to coax the full story from him, it was early evening. He immediately sent word to Dayamar about Hope’s abduction. The old Sehan could sense she’d been injured, but forbade Blayne to go after her on his own. He understood Dayamar’s caution. He didn’t have to like it, though.
Night had closed in with a vengeance by the time the search party were ready to depart, and Cayl finally forced him to admit they’d not get far. If they used torches to search for tracks the flames would be seen for miles by Hope’s abductors. They couldn’t risk endangering her. Blayne could only wait for first light.
Chapter Eighteen
The rough material of the blindfold smelled musty. Her feet and hands were bound with cord—not tight enough to be painful or affect her circulation, but enough to restrict movement. She was slung over a man’s shoulder and he was moving at a rapid pace. She groaned and choked on bile.
“She’s awake. Put her down, but watch her.”
Hands lifted her from his shoulder. She sank to her knees and vomited. Her stomach performed a sickening a somersault and her skull throbbed. Clutching her midriff, she toppled onto her side and curled into a ball, in no condition to protest her treatment.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“You hit her too hard.”
“Didn’t have much choice. She was about to—”
She retched again. Thankfully this time someone supported her and held back her hair while she emptied her stomach.
“Ask her yourself what’s wrong,” she heard another voice say.
And then, “Sehan? Are you ill?”
“It’s the way you were carrying me, I think.” Her words were the barest croak through a dry scratchy throat. She was pleasantly surprised when a water-bag was thrust beneath her nose and one of the men helped her to drink from it.
“Shikari’s hairy paws it’s a fine mess we’re in.” He sounded savage.
“I’m blind, so if you let me go now, I won’t be able to identify you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true.” Of course she’d be able to identify them from the unique pattern of each man’s aureya but they couldn’t know that. She hoped.
“Take off her blindfold. But be ready in case she tries anything.”
Cautious hands untied the cloth around her eyes.
She sensed movement. A pause and then, “She’s telling the truth. She didn’t even blink.”
“Untie her feet and let’s get moving.”
“Aren’t you going to let me go?”
“Sorry, Sehan. We need you too much.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
Huh. Doubtless the irony of that statement was lost on him.
The hands that dragged her upright were forced to steady her. It was no easy task to find her balance with her hands tied behind her back. One man either side of her, each grasping an elbow, they urged her forward. Her head swum. The nausea was so intense she had no choice but to stumble along and pray for an opportunity to escape once she recovered.
Escape proved wishful thinking, for by the time they halted a couple of hours later, she was in no fit state to walk any further. Another bout of vomiting was compounded by the thumping headache and weird spots dancing before her eyes. She lay on the ground, miserably concluding she was concussed… and in deep trouble.
One of her captors came to the same conclusion. “She’s got a concussion. Vomiting, nausea—and look, she can’t even focus her eyes properly.”
“She’ll have to make do until we reach the settlement.”
“How? She can barely walk for Wisa’s sa
ke!”
“Make a stretcher. We’ll carry her the rest of the way.”
They were taking her to a settlement? Why hadn’t she been told there was another settlement nearby?
Before she could reason it through her self-healing ability lurched to life, sinking her deep into a coma-like sleep.
~~~
Hope fought back to full consciousness. She lay on a stretcher made of what she guessed was clothing bound to two sturdy branches. Her hands were still tied—in front of her this time—but her ankles were free. Her headache and nausea had vanished. Thank the gods for small mercies.
She did a quick sweep of her captors’ aureyas. Hues indicating worry, fear, anxiety and concern—not for themselves so much, but for others close to them—wove through their usual colors. The primary emotion she could detect was hope—that she could somehow help them. They hadn’t meant to cause her harm. The blow to her head had been the unfortunate result of their desperation.
She came to a decision. “No need to carry me. I can walk on my own.”
The stretcher bearers skidded to a halt and she scrambled to her feet.
“Watch her.” That cautionary voice again—the one who seemed to be in charge.
“Oh, for gods’ sakes. Yes, I’m recovered, and could probably do you some damage before I make a run for it. But I’m not going to—try and escape, I mean. So relax.”
Profound silence while her captors digested this information. Finally the one she thought of as their leader asked, “Why?”
“Because I See there’s an important reason behind your attempt to abduct me. You need my help and I’ll do what I can. But I have a couple of conditions.”
“And they are?”
She stretched the kinks from her spine and brushed hair from her eyes—difficult with bound wrists. She puffed a few sharp breaths to shift the remaining strands of hair from her face. She must have appeared comical because she sensed the men relaxing. Good. Striving for a reasonable tone, she made her demands. “First you can untie my hands. Then you can do me the courtesy of introducing yourselves. And finally, you can tell me why you need my help.”
“We haven’t got time for this,” someone protested. “Tie her up and gag her.”
“You can certainly try.” Power filled her. She knew her eyes were glowing when she heard the shuffling of booted feet as the men backed away.
She directed a thread of power to the leather thong around her wrists. It disintegrated. She rubbed her wrists. “Now I’m well again I won’t be held against my will. You can try to bind me but we might end up killing each other in the process—and then I won’t be much help to anyone, will I? I’m going to start walking.” She took a few tentative steps. “Is this the way you want me to head? And perhaps when you’re ready, one of you might care to explain what’s going on.”
She increased her pace, stumbling a little over the unfamiliar terrain. She heard her “captors” muttering amongst themselves before they decided to make the best of a bad situation. One of the men jogged up beside her. “Sehan. I’m Daryon, co-leader of the Usehani.”
Usehani meant “Seerless Ones”. Interesting.
“And I’m Hope. It would be easier for me if you would take my arm and lead the way, Daryon. It’s hard to keep to a decent pace when I can’t see the terrain.”
He grasped her arm beneath the elbow, and when he matched his strides to hers she allowed herself to relax minutely. At least now she wouldn’t fall on her face—hard to act the badass when you were smeared with dirt. “Thanks. Now tell me what’s wrong, and why you didn’t simply ask for help. Surely kidnapping me was a bit drastic?”
“Under the circumstances, no,” he said. “Some of the people in our settlement are very sick and we need your help as soon as possible.”
“Surely a healer would be more appropriate? Blayne, our Panakeya, would have come.”
“They don’t suffer from a physical ailment.”
“Then why not ask Dayamar to help you?” She sensed his surprise at the question.
“You don’t know,” he said.
“Don’t know what?” When he didn’t reply she lost patience. “I’m not Dayamari, you know, only adopted by them. I come from… well, a long way from here. I didn’t even know there was another settlement until you mentioned yours. I’ve never heard of the Usehani.”
“How long have you lived at the First Settlement?”
The First Settlement? Quaint. “Not long. Dayamar brought me to the settlement to be his successor and I transformed a couple of weeks after I arrived. I’ve only recently been elevated to Second Sehan.”
His colors roiled. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Surely you mean Third Sehan.”
“So far as I know, Dayamar and I are the only living Sehani. There was another young woman—the sister of a friend of mine. But she died.”
Silence. And then, “How?” The word sounded like it’d been torn from his throat.
“I’m told she didn’t want to be a Sehan and couldn’t cope with the Seeings. Her gifts destroyed her. Her name was—”
“Katya.”
“You knew her.”
“She and I hoped to be Joined. We were denied permission. That’s why I left.”
His voice was flat and empty. She probed his public mind and found he’d buried his emotions about Katya too deep for her to extract.
“I believe my teachers have been neglectful, Daryon. I need all the background you can give me about your settlement.” She sensed his hesitation. “Please. This is important.”
“Very well.”
She learned that aside from the Usehani settlement there were two more Dayamari settlements. The one Blayne had been brought her to was the founding settlement, largest of the three. It was officially known as the Primary Settlement, although most people referred to it as the First Settlement. All three settlements were autonomous, with their own elders, healers, tradespeople and dormayres. However Blayne was the primary healer for all settlements—hence his title of Panakeya—and Varon was the elected head of all elders.
She hid her shock as best she could, inwardly berating herself for being so terribly naïve. Many little snippets of information fell into place. The empty dwellings she’d wondered about must be guest quarters to house other settlement elders and visitors. The incident at her Promising now made sense, too. Dayamar must have summoned simulacrums of the other settlement elders to ratify her elevation to Second Sehan and quell Varon’s objections.
How could she have not known this? Doubtless keeping her ignorant was all part of Dayamar’s grand plan. But…why? She forced herself to concentrate as Daryon continued his explanation.
“Ten years ago, Varon decreed every new Joining had to be sanctioned by the elders—himself, in other words. We were told it was merely a formality to help maintain the accuracy of the main records held at the Primary Settlement. I didn’t think much of it until Katya and I fell in love and were refused permission to Join. When I demanded to know why, I was told a search of the records had found I was too closely related to Katya and it would be ‘inadvisable’ for us to marry.”
“If you were close cousins, that might—”
“We weren’t cousins.” His voice was tight and clipped and carefully neutral, as though he didn’t dare lose control and let his feelings surface—not even for a second. “I wasn’t convinced I was being told the truth. Turned out I wasn’t the only one with doubts. A few of us got a look at the records and discovered Varon was encouraging pairings within a particular group—those who were descendents of the first Sehan. I’d been refused permission to Join with Katya because she had Sehani ancestry but I didn’t.”
Selective breeding? “That’s just… wrong.”
“Indeed. It was a badly kept secret how much it galled Varon for Dayamar to hold sole authority, while he had to cosset votes from the other elders to maintain his status as First. Apparently he was not prepared to wait until Dayamar passed on to make his move.”
He scuffed his boot along the ground and she heard small stones scattering and bouncing. “Dayamar showed no signs of letting age slow him down—still doesn’t, from what I hear. And Sehani are notoriously long-lived. Varon’s aim was to increase the likelihood of newborns with Sehani potential. We suspected he would try to usurp Dayamar’s authority as soon as another Sehan was discovered.”
“That sounds like the Varon I’ve come to know and dislike,” she said.
He snorted. “He’s a sneaky bastard—always out for himself.”
“What did you do?”
“We confronted him at the next annual combined settlement meeting. Many sided with us against Varon. Unfortunately Dayamar backed him.”
“Dayamar did what?”
“His reasons were valid. He was the only Sehan and an aged one at that. It was imperative a new Sehan be trained before all his knowledge died with him. Unlike Varon, he at least had the welfare of his people at heart. So the majority voted to allow Varon his way, with the proviso it was only until the transformation of another Sehan occurred.”
Waves of despair and repressed fury raged through his aureya. Hope squeezed his arm. “Varon will get his comeuppance, I promise you that. My arrival here has caused him no end of headaches. And I’m not about to change my ways and go easy on him now.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“Tell me the rest.”
He took up the thread of his story again. “Even though we understood Dayamar’s reasons, a group of us couldn’t stomach Varon being in charge. We opted to leave and start a settlement of our own. I knew Varon would pressurize Katya to Join with someone soon, and I pleaded with her to come with us. But she refused. She was young, scared to leave her family and everything she knew.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He brushed her sympathy aside. “I’m told six months after we left, the Sehani transformation finally took her. She was unconscious for a week with a dangerously high fever. She was older than is usual for those undergoing Sehani transformation. Maybe that’s why it was so hard on her. I’d hoped to convince her to Join with me once we were settled, but when she transformed I knew I’d lost her. Dayamar would never let her go.”
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