Seer' Blood by Doranna Durgin

Author:Doranna Durgin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 0671578774
Publisher: Baen Publishing Enterprises
Published: 2000-07-07T04:00:00+00:00

11

Dark confusion, dark pain, silent screams—

Dacey stumbled, so taken with the seeing that he lost track of his own feet.

Blaine screaming, Blaine terrified—

He fell, catching himself on his hands, his fingers digging into the rich, cold groundcover. When had a seeing ever hit him so hard?

Blue, roaring to Blaine's rescue, spitted on a sword. The shelter in the background, Blaine kicking it down, struggling between two men . . .

Magic, coming back to these hills. Heritage finding its way home. He flicked a sluggish worm from his fingers and righted himself.

Of course it ain't safe. His own words hung in his ears as he resumed his trek north on the ridge, following Blaine's directions—given her best guess at exactly where they were. He was on the trail of the Annekteh again; last time he'd been here, he'd walked right into them. Of course, he hadn't really been sure they were here, and he hadn't paid close enough attention to Mage's disquiet. This time, he would watch Mage more carefully. He would watch himself more carefully. And maybe he would figure out those intense but paltry seeings before it was too late to avoid the shadows they cast.

Shadow Hollers. Once they had been full of seers.

Dacey gazed out over the hollow to the east of him, finding the double-chimney trail of smoke that Blaine had described to him. Two ridges east and south to the head of the hollow he went, Mage at his heels and the jays crying overhead. When he paused, he looked down the hollow that held the meeting hall. Before him, to his left and right, stretched the ridges that defined the west and east sides of the extremely short hollow; they met at the crooked crotch of ridges where Dacey stood.

He hunkered down behind a young oak and the sparse cover its typically stubborn, clinging brown leaves offered, and inspected the area—slowly, his gaze barely crawling over the cleared flats along the creek, his wood sense fired high. The base of each northeast slope showed signs of hasty timbering, and the contours of the hills there were laid bare to the rain and sun. Another big tree went down as he watched, and the cry of its fall made his eyes glint a little harder. A dust cloud raised from ground that should have been damp and nurturing new growth, not dried-out and scarred.

Dacey turned away from the sight. The men were locals interspersed with dark-clad plainsmen—obvious even from a distance simply by their lack of exertion.

Inaccessible allies and bored enemies. It was the lay of the meeting hall that he needed to understand, the important thing. The hall sat nearly at the mouth of the hollow, nestled in a protective dip between two points of the west slope. It was on one of the biggest flats he'd seen in this region, with the creek fairly wide and flowing into the Dewey River, the bright shine of which he could see from here. Half of the mildly sloping flat was swampy, filled with sycamore and willows and tall dead trees.

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