Mulling all this over instead of getting the sleep she needed, she would have tossed and turned, had there been room to do so. In her cramped space she could only grind her teeth and consider the fact that most of their journey remained in front of them. Marquez would offer them only a brief respite, even if they stretched their stay there into three or four days to get much needed rest and to allow Zauna to shop for a new crystal ball. Zauna’s gift was seeing both present but distant and future events in a crystal ball, but hers had been broken, and for her this trip was above all an opportunity to find and purchase a new one as well as the only way she could make herself useful without her crystal ball.
The wealthy merchant who was generously financing their trip would not be pleased to see them return to Port-of-Lords without achieving their goal. That consideration as much as anything else kept them going. The others must have doubts just as Renni had, although they hadn’t expressed those doubts to her any more than she’d expressed hers to them. Maybe it would help to discuss frankly the difficulty of the trip and the doubts about its purpose. Or maybe it would make everything worse. Renni couldn’t decide.
She longed to stretch or turn over or something, but every movement made the wagon creak, and if she could turn over, she’d be face to face with Zauna, breathing in the old woman’s rancid breath. She could do nothing but clench her fists and wish for morning.
Zauna let out a spectacularly loud snore that ended in an equally loud snort, followed by rustling and a mumbled, “Whassa matter?”
Renni lay quietly, not answering.
“I know you’re awake,” Zauna persisted maddeningly. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Renni said shortly. “I just woke up and I’m trying to get back to sleep.”
“No, I sensed something. Is Kyla all right?”
“Oh, for—No, she’s dead, or something near it, and safely sealed in her coffin. You must have been dreaming.”
The wagon’s floorboards creaked and from the other side of the coffin came Lore’s sleepy grumble. “Can’t you hens be quiet? It’s the middle of the night. Save the chatter for morning.”
“It was more than a dream,” Zauna harrumphed. “I sensed danger. Strongly. If I had my crystal ball it would show me the danger, but without it—”
“Oh, by all the gods, woman, will you stop harping about that crystal ball and let us all go back to sleep!” Lore’s patience, limited at best, had grown increasingly short the past couple of days.
“You don’t have to be so cross with me. These presentiments I have may not be specific, but they are real. You’d be foolish to discount them.”
“Both of you, be quiet,” Renni whispered. “You’ll wake Camsen. If you haven’t already.”
“Somebody ought to get up and check outside around the wagon,” Zauna insisted.
“Do it yourself,” Lore shot back. “You’re the one that’s worried.”
“Zauna, we’re out in the middle of nowhere,” Renni said softly in an attempt at reasonableness. “I’ve been awake for some time, and I haven’t heard a sound outside. I’m sure you just had a bad dream.”
“No. Even if I dreamed the warning, it meant something. Something serious either is happening or will happen soon. I know it. Listen! I think I heard something just now.”
“I didn’t hear anything at all,” Renni said, making no effort to keep her disgust from registering in her voice.
“There’s no way I could hear anything, with you two yammering like that,” Lore sounded even grumpier.
“Someone ought to go outside and check,” Zauna insisted.
Renni silently cursed the woman’s stubbornness. Aloud she said, “It’s too dark to see anything out there. We’d just be wasting what little time we have left for sleeping.”
“Well, I can’t go back to sleep without knowing,” Zauna declared, sitting up.
“I’ll go and check,” came the offer in Camsen Wellner’s deep and now sleepy voice. “We’re all awake, and there’ll be no getting any more sleep unless we relieve Zauna’s fears.”
With much creaking of the wagon a shadowy figure rose, pulled open the canvas flaps and leaped down.
“Well, you’ve done it now, Zauna,” Lore grumped. “We’re all wide awake, and for what?”
Camsen’s footsteps could be heard circling the wagon. They paused at the sound of snorts and a whinny.
“Oh, wonderful! Now even the horses are awake.”
Camsen must have paused in his circuit to calm the horses. They settled down, and his footsteps resumed their march. If a person or an animal had come near the wagon, Camsen’s stomping about would obliterate their footprints or tracks, so now they’d never know whether Zauna’s dream held any real substance.
Renni might have expressed that gloomy thought, but at that moment the canvas flaps opened once more, and the gap revealed a ghostly figure illuminated by moonlight. Zauna let out a loud gasp, and Renni forced back the scream that fought to pass her lips.
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A Mix of Magics (Arucadi: The Beginning Book 3) Page 25