Seer's Blood

by Doranna Durgin

  At least it kept Blue attentively at her side.

  No way to hide this trail. She used the deer path, walking further along the ridge where the slope down was more acute. There she hesitated, wondering if she’d gone too far. It would never do to try coming up here, but...maybe she could slide down without too much trouble. She dropped the rawhide rope and paced the edge of the slope, finally choosing a good, steep but smooth stretch of hill that was devoid of rocky outcrops. Taking up the rope, she made her way off the crest of the ridge, then dug her heels into the ground and allowed herself to slide.

  Relief. It would work. Every so often her butt bumped the ground and slowed her down, and even the meat caught on enough roots to keep it in control. Maybe hauling the haunch wouldn’t be so bad.

  She wasn’t counting on Blue. Suddenly the rawhide loop tightened around her hand and jerked her to a stop, throwing her around on her face. She came up spitting dead leaves, her progress slowed but not altogether stopped — and the haunch was directly above her, bearing down on her — gaining on her.

  Not for long. “No!” she yelped in futile protest, as the temptation of the moving haunch again proved too much for Blue. He charged it, playful and delighted, and grabbed the thigh bone.

  Astonished at his strength, Blaine gaped, horrified, as he lifted the meat off the ground. Horrified, because he couldn’t possibly be strong enough, not to hold his leverage —

  She clawed the ground, fighting to stop her progress, to move aside, to — Blue, no! Off balance, upended, the hound flipped onto his back and tumbled down the hill with his prize.

  Securely tethered, Blaine plunged after him, wildly out of control.

  Bump, spin, tumble, her arm jerking near out of its socket, a wild mash of images assaulting her eyes, bump, spin, tumble — are we stopped? Blaine couldn’t quite tell...her limbs had ceased moving but her head wasn’t sure. As she propped herself up to brush the hair from her eyes, Blue climbed to his feet next to her. He gave an ear-popping shake and regarded the meat with a puzzled but respectful stare. For an object without teeth or legs, it had somehow gained quite an advantage over him.

  “Blue,” she groaned. Dumb, dumb dog. He only transferred his puzzled gaze to her, his ears cocked into floppy, inquisitive black wings. Spirits! Blaine added up her bruises and plucked futilely at the twisted rawhide biting deeply into her hand.

  Blue’s decision to stumble over and nudge her was not a wise one. Her temper flared; she dealt him a slap that resounded against the opposite hill, and ignored his surprised yelp. The rawhide was unyielding and painful; her trapped hand had turned a funny blueish color. She wasn’t even sure she could get a knife between the rawhide and her skin. Did she even still have her knife?

  Yes, it was still there. Relief. Carefully, mindful that Dacey had just sharpened it for her the previous day, she sliced at the rawhide until it gave way and spent several pained moments simply massaging the abused hand. Blue, cowed and tentative, crept up to her.

  I’m not speaking to you. “No good,” she grumbled at him, struggling out of the pack so she could shift the jumbled contents, pushing him away again and again until one more solid smack gave her peace. Bruised and aching, she tied the pack closed and shouldered it, taking the rawhide in her unmangled hand as she continued her resolute trek back to the new camp.

  Blue slunk behind her as she dragged herself to the pines, clearly the worse for wear — her shirt torn, one of the makeshift seams in her skirt unraveling, and a fat lip blooming on her face. When Burl met her to take the meat, he wasn’t slow to notice.

  “Did you run into another bear?” he teased, not unkindly.

  Blaine went haughty on him, not answering in the least. Shrugging, Burl moved out of her way as he hoisted the haunch to his shoulder with an ease that made her all the more vexed. Blue stole into the pines ahead of her and curled up into an abject ball beside Dacey, whiffling a sigh out through his flews. Lowering herself to the ground across from the cold ashes of the fire, Blaine struggled out of the pack, an awkward process better undertaken on foot. If I could’ve stood up even another minute...

  Burl plunked the meat down outside the pines and untied the rawhide. The hounds jumped to their feet, whining, and casting quick glances from Dacey to the meat.

  “All right,” he told them, and they charged for the haunch; Chase leapt right over him to get there. Mage, never anything less than dignified, stalked over, lifted an eloquent lip, and claimed his spot. Only Blue stayed where he was, whiffling out another sigh and twitching his tail so it lay over his nose.

  Dacey gave him a concerned look. Blaine said, “He got his fill before we left camp — made a lighter load for me.” She rotated her shoulder to ease some of the soreness, and noticed Dacey had eaten as well, and that his face was closer to its normal healthy complexion — lightly tanned, a bit darker than her own thin-skinned and freckled countenance. “You look a mite better.”

  “Guess I was just hungry,” he said, still looking at Blue. He laid a hand on the dog’s back and gave him a few gentle pats. Blaine divined that he was not in a talking mood, and that suited her just fine. She lay back to regain some of what the hike from the camp had taken out of her.

  When she opened her eyes, the pine shadows had stretched up the hill to meet the woods above the clearing. She sat up. Ow. Ow-ow-ow. Moving more carefully, she rubbed the bleariness of a late afternoon’s sleep from her eyes.

  Estus was nowhere in sight, a pleasant surprise. At the edge of the pines, Trey watched her stiff, fuzzy-brained movements with amusement, and beside him, Burl and Dacey seemed to be discussing trapping; Mage and Blue lay at Dacey’s feet, and the other dogs were nowhere to be seen.

  “Where’s Estus?” Blaine asked, the words barely beating a yawn out of her mouth.

  Trey jerked his chin toward the woods. “For all the Takers know, we been out hunting every day. Yesterday Burl and I had to make stories about bad luck. And excuses for Estus — said he’d stayed the night, laying out new traps and double-checking the snares. He’s got to have something to show for it.”

  Blaine massaged her sore arm. “If he doesn’t get anything he can always lay it on the big cat Dacey made up for tomorrow. Those plainsmen won’t know the difference, they’re hill-blind. I heard ’em talking once and they didn’t even know for sure that we have deer here.”

  “You listened in on ’em?” Trey asked, surprised.

  “I heard a lot more’n that, too, but it weren’t fit for my ears nor your’n.” She grinned at him. “Thought you’d learned to quit judging me by how I ought to be, Trey.”

  He shook his head, apparently at himself. “Have to keep learning it all over, I guess. Might need Estus’s rock, to pound it right in there.”

  Blaine looked at him in disbelief, and discovered he’d gone to grinning. Teasing her, he was, and not in a mean way. In a way that made her feel that she’d earned something. She snorted and lifted her chin, but it was just as much teasing him back as anything.

  “Trey, you ready to move on?” Burl asked, turning from his conversation with Dacey. “We need to, we’re gonna talk to the others afore curfew.”

  “Ready enough,” Trey said, and picked up the bow he had leaned against a tree.

  Burl caught Blaine’s attention with a gesture at the pack he’d brought. “I know you got some of your own stuff now, but keep that. There’s more food and blankets at the bottom.”

  “I thank you,” Blaine said, envisioning the luxury of a blanket both above and below for the night’s sleep. “Don’t seem like you’re mad anymore, then, about yesterday?”

  “Oh, I got over that quick,” Burl said, cheerfully enough. He got to his feet, letting Trey take the lead. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall, and I’ve had to take that to heart.”

  Blaine laughed at that, watching as they walked the switchbacks down the hill and into the woods below the clearing. Dacey watched, too, no longer looking as though the ground might fall out from
beneath him. When he turned and caught her eye, his look was a searching one, and she couldn’t quite interpret it. “You look better,” she said. “Wish I could get a fourth steeping from that bark, but there ain’t no use to trying.”

  “It’s done what’s needed,” he said, looking down at Blue with a small frown. Blue whiffled a sigh, and refused to meet Blaine’s eye when she caught his gaze.

  “What’s wrong with Blue?” she asked, taking a step for him, reaching out —

  But a new, ugly sound intruded upon the clearing, stopping Blaine in mid-step. Mage stood in his usual spot at Dacey’s side, staring at her, his upper lip slightly curled. It was, she realized in surprise, more of a comment than a threat, but it was astonishing all the same. “Dacey, what — ?”

  Dacey softly cleared his throat at the dog. Mage settled down to the ground, laying his chin across Dacey’s foot. “Not sure,” Dacey said, and he didn’t sound happy. Like he’d listened to something that Mage had to say, and it weren’t any too good for Blaine. He frowned at Blue again, and lifted his head to look at Blaine more sideways than straight on. Darkly thoughtful.

  Blaine frowned. “Iff’n there’s something wrong, I sure wish you’d let me in on it.”

  He matched her expression with one of his own, one a little more narrow-eyed. “I’m thinking you ought to know.”

  Blaine looked helplessly back at him. Suddenly, the one person who had accepted all her odd ways was questioning her, judging her — and she felt it clutch at all the long-pained parts inside her. “Dacey, if I did something, just tell me!”

  “Blaine, I don’t know just what’s wrong. When you got back, Blue come creeping into the pines like a whipped pup. That dog’s sulking, an’ he’s doing it big. You’re the one was with him — you tell me.”

  “He fell,” Blaine said. Her hand still bore signs of the rawhide, too. “Dragged me down with him. Just dumb.”

  Dacey shook his head. “He don’t care none about stuff like that. It’s all play, to him.”

  Uncertain, Blaine said, “I smacked him over it...surely that ain’t it. He had it coming, the way he almost killed us both.”

  She’d seen his anger directed at Trey. She’d never felt the force of it herself, and it hit her hard, even though he didn’t so much as raise his voice. “Do you think that Blue’s got the wits to figure what would happen?”

  Blaine blinked back at him. “I —”

  “Blaine,” Dacey said, and his hazel eyes were dark and serious — uncompromising — “Blue’s just a dumb ol’ hound, but he’s a good fellow, and don’t want nothing more than to please who he loves. For some reason he’s chose you to dote on. You dislike it that much, I’ll see to it he don’t bother you no more. You just return him the favor.”

  Blaine gulped, surprised to feel tears welling. “But — I didn’t know it would bother him so — I didn’t mean nothing...”

  “Neither did Blue,” Dacey said evenly.

  “Oh.” Blaine found that her voice was very small. She’d gotten used to her father’s disapproval, and the way Lottie never stood up for her, though she did seem to understand a little better. A dull, chronic ache of disapproval. This was sharp and piercing and made her throat hurt too much to swallow. She went to the dog, uncertain, and knelt by him. “I’m sorry, Blue,” she said, and hugged him — all bony legs and floppy ear, a bulk that filled her arms.

  His tail stirred and he tilted his head toward her, eyes rolling white in trying to see her face — but he, too, was uncertain.

  “Please, Blue?” Blaine laid her cheek on the top of his broad head. His tail thumped the ground, more assertively this time. He rolled over, forcing her aside with his weight, and assumed a totally absurd position on his back, waving his forefeet in her face. She drew back to smile at him.

  Dacey set his hand on her shoulder — gentle, and with a little squeeze. “I knew once you understood how it felt you would never let it pass.”

  She found herself suddenly able to breathe again at that touch, that forgiveness. Better yet, acceptance. And a little surprise. “You mean you — you did that on purpose? You made me feel so bad on purpose?”

  “Don’t mistake me, Blaine. I meant every word I said. Blue’s give over his heart to you — he did right from the start. That ain’t to be took lightly. I know your daddy’s taught you a dog has a certain place — but try to do Blue right.”

  “Daddy don’t think a girl’s got any place walking the hills, neither,” Blaine said soberly, then slid into a sly grin as Dacey took her meaning. He stroked his hand lightly over her hair and turned away, his thoughts leaving his face to move inward.

  Annekteh, Blaine knew. It was always Annekteh when he had that face on, that being-alone look. She looked down at Blue and shook the paw he offered from his supine position.

  Here was someone who needed her.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 16

  Annekteh magic...in the plains, limited to their natural abilities to Take their vessels, to inflict certain kinds of pain — a skill developed by their craving for anne-nekfehr — to sense other magics flowing nearby. In the mountains, with magic running through the ridges like veins of gold, the Annekteh remembered old skills, worked to develop new ones.

  Just now they sensed something amiss. Something with a seer’s feel, just as there had been on the day the plainsmen brought in Dacey Childers, the day the Blaine-child had somehow freed him and fled with him from these hills.

  If he was back, he’d been more circumspect.

  But the Annekteh grew more attuned to the ridges. And when Nekfehr sifted through the input of all the local annektehr, he liked it not. Needed more, if he was to find any conclusion in the nebulous taste of seer’s magic on the hollow-twisted breezes.

  He had magic and men at his disposal. Perhaps it was time to go looking.

  ~~~~~

  Rain drizzled through the early dawn, obscuring the landscape with a grey mist that drifted as randomly as a school of fish. First veiling Blaine’s entire field of view, then suddenly lifting to reveal the small gathering before her, it painted the Shadow Hollers boys unnaturally clear in the crystal pockets of dry air. She sat quietly on the log at the top edge of the clearing and studied the assembly as the boys waited for Trey and Burl to tell them why they were there. Some, like Trey and Burl, looked on the edge of manhood, while some hardly seemed old enough to be hunting on their own. All were dirty and tired, and shooting covert glances at Dacey where he stood next to Blaine.

  She counted twenty all told, and thought it was a mighty poor force to be setting up against the Annekteh.

  “I know you thought you were here after big cat,” Dacey said. The boys stopped milling about and stared at him, only then realizing that Burl and Trey, rather than organizing them for a hunt, were simply sitting and waiting. “But you’re after something much bigger, something that’s already got its claws in you.” He spoke with the quiet, comforting assurance she was used to hearing from him, and the boys’ murmuring reaction quickly silenced. “My name is Dacey,” he told them. “And I’m your last chance against the Annekteh. And now you already know enough to get everyone in a pack of trouble, you choose to go back and tell it. Even so...if you ain’t up to this, you better go now.” The expression he gave them was neutral and far from accusing. Statement of fact.

  But Trey got to his feet and glared at the youngsters assembled before him. “I second that,” he said. “Go if you can’t take the thought of what we aim to do. But any of you let word of this leak and the rest of us’ll —”

  Dacey’s quiet throat clearing — the very same noise he used to quell Mage — stopped Trey short, and he settled for giving them all a hard look before sitting again. No one else moved. No one else spoke. Several of them looked to be on the edge of bolting, and some of the others — the youngest ones — were about ready to cry from relief.

  Someone had come to help stop the nightmare.

  “There’s two things we got to d
o,” Dacey told the apprehensive youngsters. “The first is get your families free, out from being hostages. The other is to drive the Annekteh away. In order to do them things, we got to kill every last one of them that’s Taken.”

  Their hope grew, shining through as determination; they nodded, jostled one another, muttered rebellious phrases.

  It was Dacey’s next words that turned them all back into scared children. “Now think on this. As soon as the annektehr — the Takers inside — realize we’re killing them, they’re gonna start Taking more vessels — ones you won’t want to hurt. But you’re going to have to keep right on at them — trying to kill people you know and maybe some you love.”

  The silence that followed was complete, down to the wind that should have been moving through the trees and the birds that had been quarreling over nesting areas. It was Whimsy who broke the gap, finishing a yawn with a loud and ridiculous squeal.

  Dacey gave her the briefest of affectionate glances, and looked back at his young warriors. “We’ll use the bulk of you fighting in the woods, part of you as runners to the men, and the last of you to take back the meeting hall,” he said. “We’ll go for the known Taken, first — be easy to start with, as you all know who they are. Once they have a chance to spread, to Take others, I’ve got a way to tell you who to go after. You’ll be using bows and slings and whatever throwing rocks you can find — nothing up close — and if you hesitate to aim where I say, you’ll be turned on as one of them. I want you to think about what that means.”

  “But how c’n you tell?” The question came as a plea, from one of the youngest children there. The stricken look on his face showed that he, at least, realized he might be ordered to kill one of his own.

  “I do know,” Dacey said, flat statement. “If they ain’t nekfehr, you won’t be pointed to ’em. You got to accept that right now or this won’t come off.”