Blaine tugged on her soft leather boots in quick succession, her mind already in the mountains and on the newly arrived traders, the ones no one else had seen yet. Moving quietly in the near darkness of the morning, she divided her hair into sections, fingers flying to braid the insipid brown plaits, damp rawhide laces waiting on the bed to fasten them.
Usually the hills provided her escape from her cousins' taunts. Skin-to-bone! Head-tetched! You been beat with an ugly stick?
But yesterday they had given her mystery as well.
Strangers.
Only her older brother Rand knew of Blaine's frequent trips into the mountains that cradled their hollow; if anyone else ever found out, she'd be denied them. Years ago, her flight from teasing kin had turned into a true appreciation of the woods, even of the steep climbs and often treacherously slippery slopes of damp, humus-covered soil. The ribbon of level ground that wound along the ridges lured her, for there the air was free of wood smoke and the view revealed something besides the opposite hillside of Owlhoot Holler.
And there, she could ponder the remnants of the book. There, she could sit on her favorite rock and gaze at the unfathomable patterns of rock and tree in the well-worn, close-set ridges of the Shadow Hollers community. A deep hollow dropped between each ridge; along with the inevitable silver ripple of a creek, the bottoms held small patches of flat land. Dotted along the creek, crammed onto the flat places and even up against the slopes, sat homesteads like her ownsparse populations that blossomed at the broadened hollow's mouth where each creek met the Dewey River.
Yesterday, drawn down into Fiddlehead Holler by the conversations belowconversations held by men who must not know the mountains funneled noise uphillshe'd found that the bottom of unsettled Fiddlehead Holler held more than a creek.
Strangers. Here to trade? Must be, with the number of wagons they had alongsmall ones, for easier travel through the hills. Maybe they'd have books, or fine riding horses, or pretty ribbons. Maybe there'd even be a family, with a girl her own age. She hadn't had the nerve to find out, not the day before. Not to close in on them, for even her blindermade of sassafras, soaked in a new moon fog and painted with the slick sap of slippery elm, just of the size to fit in her pocketwouldn't keep their eyes from her if she left the cover of the spring rhododendron patch she had found upslope of them.
Hanging onto her braids, Blaine patted the bed quilt, in search of the rawhide stripshidden in the dim, early morning light of the rough-hewn log house. There. Jerking them into tight knots around the ends of her braidsknots she'd no doubt regret when it came time to turn her hair loose againand pretending not to hear Lenie's sleepy question, Blaine pulled on her jacket and hurried out onto the porch, her footfalls ringing hollow on the old planks
Where she stopped short in dismay. How had her daddy gotten out here before her? And gotten old Prince harnessed, to boot?
But there he was. Cadell. Short and wiry, already topped by Rand's sturdy height, and blessed with a pair of blue eyes sharp enough to spot a child in mischief through a barn wall.
There would be no sneaking off into the mountains today.
Their stout-limbed horse stood by the post at the edge of the chicken-scratched yard, and she knew Cadell had decided to break spring ground today. It was her particular job to hold the lines while he steadied the plow, mostly because she had the patience to deal with the horse, who occasionally played like he was stupid and had forgotten what plowing was all about.
Blaine looked at the white clouds scudding across the crisp blue sky. A perfect day for plowing; there'd be no talking him out of it. And the wind picking up the edges of her ragged bangs would do a fine job of drying the overturned earth so disking it the next day would be less of a chore.
No, no mountains today, nor the morrow. By the time she worked through all the phases of plowing, those visitors would have passed by and been long goneor if they had trading, their goods would be picked clean through. She sighed, suddenly feeling the chill of the frost that rimed the porch rail. Cadell jerked his chin at the horse, never of a mind to tolerate her fits of melancholy or her dream frights or even her sighs. Work to be done.
She sighed again anyway.
Dacey shifted his shoulders beneath his pack, hesitating below the modest log house. He'd followed its chimney smoke down out of the mountain and walked the creek to approach it from the bottom, but now that he was here, he wasn't so sure of his course. So far, none of the Shadow Hollers locals knew of his presence. It was probably wiser to keep it that way . . . nor was he ever inclined to socialize on his own.
But the dogs needed food.
Dacey's hand fell to Mage's head, rubbed the dog behind his long, soft ears; he smiled when the hound leaned against his leg. There was no denying a hound his dinner.
On the nearly level ground to the side of the house, two figures worked a plow. Too soon to plant anything but early lettuce and peas, but a smart man got those into the ground as soon as he could. In the yard, two little ones hung on the porch, and Dacey caught the brown swish of a skirt disappearing into the house. Then the youngest, his steps still unsteady, scooted out to the rough-logged barn. A moment later, a young manalmost old enough to have his own family, but still some years younger than Daceycame out carrying the child.
Dacey had no illusions about the meaning of that little tableau. The older boy was heading for the house, and would probably have a bow at the ready.
He glanced back at the two in the garden, close enough to see that the slighter figure was not a boy, but a girl, a young woman. Her woven straw hat tipped down against the sun, and two hip-length braids wrapped into one halfway down her back. Her legs were too long for the skirts she worehe saw a flash of calf above her boots. Scrawny, he thought, and then tried to chase the unfortunate word away. It wasn't kindly.
He stopped and watched father and daughter for a moment, seeing in their economic movements the evidence of a long partnership. They reached the end of the row, where the girl hesitated just long enough for her daddy to flip the trace chain over so it wouldn't twist, and then directed the horse in a tight turn that brought Dacey right into her field of view. She stopped, startled, and it was enough to bring her daddy's attention Dacey's way. They both glanced at the house, thenlooking to see if the others had noticed.
It was his cue.
He walked up to the edge of the garden, meeting the man's slightly challenging look but distracted by the girl's open curiosity, and by the bemusement on her face as she considered Mage. Crippled hound. White, spattered with brown freckles, big handsome blocky head, long, angular legs. Good breeding, fine dogexcept for the stiff hind leg, and the peculiar gait it forced upon him. A wry smile crooked Dacey's mouth; he couldn't help it. Mage. Bred from a line long owned by his family, ever loyal, always by his side.
The girl looked away, like she knew she'd been caught staring, and then couldn't seem to help herself; she looked back from beneath lowered lids, watching them both with poorly disguised interest on her lean features.
"Hey," Dacey said, a mild greeting the man returned with a nodlikely all he would get, in these hills where few strangers walked. "My name's Dacey Childers. I was wonderin' if you'd be in the mind for a little tradin'."
"All depends on what's to be traded," the man said after a moment's studied deliberation of Dacey and his pack, his gaze piercing and unapologetic. Aside from the stubborn-looking chin, his square features held nothing of his daughter's. "And who's doin' the tradin'."
Who had nothing to do with the name he'd already been given. Who meant Dacey's people, his place. "My daddy's folks took us south from here after the Annekteh Ridge fight."
The girl's head lifted, a quick, direct stare with surprise behind it; she caught herself and looked away again. Dacey added, "Not many people there now. I been huntin' something and it's took me to your hills." He shrugged. "Once I get what I'm after, I'll be heading home."
"Cadell Kendricks," the man said, a friendlier tone in his voice. He gave a nod at the empty porch, a mere lift of the chin that Dacey might have missed if he'd blinked wrong, then looked at the girl. "My daughter Blaine. What're you needin'?"
A shadow at the window rose; Dacey pretended he hadn't seen. "We've been moving so fast we've had no time to store up on food, especially meat for the dogs." Dacey garnered another sharp, cryptic look from the girl. "I've got some skins here, though, and we could do without them."
"We?" she asked, stepping on whatever her daddy had been about to say and earning herself a frown.
"Me an' the dogs, of course," he said. It didn't seem to be the answer she expected, although her father showed no such awareness of other strangers in the area. His response elicited a quiet sort of smile from herthe smile of someone who is keeping some thoughts to herself, and intends to continue doing so.
Cadell nodded toward the house. "Lottie'll be putting the noon meal on. We might do some tradin', but only iff'n you'll join us."
"I'm glad to." Dacey dropped his hand to Mage's head and said, "My dog won't be causin' any fights, should you have your own around."
"Mine's tied. Don't have much patience for a dog hanging around the yard," Cadell said, though he quickly added, "I didn't mean nothing by that. I never had the time to fool with a critter so's it'd behave as well as your'n."
Dacey nodded at the horse and plow. "Why don't you let me take those lines. It'll make me feel better about eatin' at your table."
Blaine looked to her daddy for guidance, and he gestured to Dacey. "Give 'im the lines, Blaine, and go help your mommy with the meal."
Blaine's expression did not indicate she thought this was any great trade. But she handed over the lines with a warning that the horse liked a light touch, and walked the furrow to the edge of the garden. Mage followed, knowing enough to get out of the way, and sat at the corner of the garden, patience in his very posture. Dacey gave him a half grinaffection for the dog, an acknowledgment to the watching girl that he did indeed set such store by the animaland turned to the work at hand.
He knows there're strangers here. Other strangers. He calls it Annekteh Ridge. Not Anneka Ridge, as everyone in Shadow Hollers named it, even though the long-abandoned ridge lay just north of them and they should know better. But then, they didn't have her book to read from . . . not even the incomplete remnants of her book.
Blaine hesitated on the porch and watched the man plow with her daddy, handling the tight turns on the sloped ground almost as well as she did. And my, did he care for that dog. And that last smile he'd given her . . .
Five-year-old Sarie eyed Dacey shyly from the house, then came out onto the porch and tugged Blaine's skirt. "Mommy says t' get taters from the springhouse."
Blaine made the exaggerated face that always gave Sarie the giggles. "That nasty old place." But she quickly disentangled her skirt from Sarie's clinging fingers, leaving the child on the porch while she hastened to do her mother's bidding. Lottie would be harried enough, what with another mouth to feed and them at the end of their winter rations, and no new crops save the greens.
She selected the least wrinkled of the potatoes, even if they were going to be cut up and fried, and ran them back to the house where she was set to work peeling and slicing them. Three womenLottie, Lenie, and Blaine herselfworked in the too-small kitchen alcove while Sarie ran in and out with table things, imagining herself important as she set and reset the table.
Though the heat of the cookstove warmed Blaine after the cold yard, she quickly found the house oppressive, and didn't waste any time finishing her task. Unlike Lenie, she hated being shut indoors; she found the fuss with stove dampers and cook surface hot-spots tedious instead of challenging. Setting the potato fry pan on the cookstove where Lottie could keep an eye on it, she escaped to the porch, where she lowered herself into the swing. She pushed herself back and forth on her toes and watched Dacey handling the workhorse. Prince had gone to playing dumb, and she smiledhalf amusement, half sympathy.
Soon after, wiping her face with her apron and pushing stray wisps of hair back into the knot at the back of her head, Lenie joined her. Hers wasn't a severe bun like her mother's, but a loose imitation thatas she had explained to Blainegave her maturity while at the same time didn't look too old. "Grow out of those braids and try it," she told Blaine, far more often than Blaine cared to hear it. If Blaine wanted she could make plenty of comments about Lenie's age and single status, but it wasn't Lenie's fault her intended had been killed in a logging accident, and it certainly wasn't seemly to tease her about it. Besides, Lenie, with her rounded curves and eye-catching blonde hair, was a pretty sight and there was no arguing that.
Lenie sat next to her, uninvited. "Never thought I'd see the day you were makin' eyes at someone."
Blaine's smile disappeared. "Not hardly. I'm watching he doesn't hurt ole Prince's mouth. And you mought not primp. He's from the south and he aims to get back as soon as he can." South. The seers had gone south after the Takers were killed. Everyone knew that.
"There ain't no harm to it. You could use the practice. Get your hair out of those silly braids and put it up like a woman, or you'll be Daddy's despair when it comes to matchin' you." Lenie plucked at the wrap that kept Blaine's braids together for the plow work.
Blaine snorted, easily drawn into the same argument she'd argued uncountable times before. "I ain't in no hurry to have a brood like ours. Mommy's not hardly got the time to sit an' draw a breath for herself. Don't seem right a body should have to live that way, if you ask me." Besides, she didn't say, my face is too thin to wear my hair your way. Two braids, weak brown in the winter and sun-kissed in summer, did best by her.
Lenie frowned. "Daddy keeps us safe here. It's only right he should have us carin' for him."
"That's not what I meant. Don't you ever" she broke off and looked at her sister, then shook her head. "No, I don't guess you do. Get a man to keep you home, and you'll be happy enough."
"I should say so. And you'll be sayin' the same, ten year from now, an' you still a maid."
"I can take care of myself," Blaine mumbled, knowing that wasn't a complete truth, knowing that at seventeen, she alone among her peers was unspoken fora prospect that horrified her but did not yet worry her. Lenie had to be paired again, and she would go first. Besides, no man was wont to cast a longing eye on hershe'd been told that often enough. The men of these hills liked some substance to their womenvisible proof of ability to withstand the rigors of mountain life.
Lenie snorted, unaware of Blaine's musings. "Wise up, Blaine. This one's family may be too far off for Daddy's likin', but it wouldn't hurt none to practice giving a man a kindly eye."
For once Lenie's advice was meant to be helpful, but Blaine was having none of iteven if her gaze did wander to Dacey again, to the way he'd shed his jacket to take up the plow, and to remember how his eyes, intense blue and green and brown mixed up into a bright kind of hazel, had been so thoughtful. Not dismissive or pitying of her. And his hair, a dark mix of ashy blonds, reminded her of the heartwood of white oak. He wore it longer than the short, bristly cuts of her family's men; she liked that.
But he was going back home, far from here, and something made her glad of it.
"Blaine, Lenie!" Her mother's call, with a pleased note in her voice telling that the meal had turned out well. "Come help put the food out. And give those men a holler to wash up for dinner."
Blaine pushed out of the swing with vigor, setting Lenie to swinging harder than she liked, and leaving her to speak to the men. Let Lenie practice.
And practice, Lenie did. Over fried potatoes, bacon and greens, she braved Cadell's scowls as she smiled and chattered, and Blaine was free to let her thoughts wander. Not, as they generally did, to whatever strange dream she might have had recently, or to what she'd seen in the mountains or along the creek that day, but to the south, and the seers that had moved there.
And to her book, the badly damaged partial pages of which she nearly had memorizedand from which she had learned to make her blinder. The smooth-worn chunk of wood kept her hidden from the casual eye, as long as she carried it against her skin; it fit perfectly into her palm. She hadn't tried anything else from the bookthe healing teas and poultices, the protective charms, the warnings . . . she'd had little opportunity, and counted herself glad that no one else knew she had found the book at all, jammed in the cellar corner of a burnt-out house in Fiddlehead Holler that she shouldn't even have been near.
Cadell would no doubt throw it out as trash. She'd heard his opinion of seers and seer things. The Takers are dead, he'd say when someone got him started on the subject. The Takers are dead, and the seers done left us. We don't need none of theirs, not any more.
Blaine did. Blaine wanted to know the things the book couldn't tell her, with its thick, hand-inked pages and faded drawings. Mouse-nibbled, stained by dampness, bound in charred and cracking leather . . . she kept it well hid in the barn. Dacey came from the south, where the seers' kin had gone; maybe one of his people had made that book.
Her gaze wandered to him, found him making some polite smile at Lenie's words. She had first thought that he was closer to her daddy's age than to her own, just from his manner, the confident way he'd walked up to their yard and introduced himself. Now, as the waning light from the open door slid off the angles of his cheeks and the high-bridged, barely curved line of his nose to be lost in the shadows beneath dark brows, she realized that age had not yet left any great mark on his features. Six or seven years older than she, perhaps . . . the light spilled into his eyes as he turned his head and caught her staring.
She blushed, but realized soon enough that his gaze held appraisal rather than reproach, and that he showed none of the faint pity she often saw in people's faces when she sat next to Lenie. "Do you know much of the seer lore?" she blurted, stopping all conversation and raising her daddy's brow. Well, the deed was done. Likely she'd not have another chance. "Like the northern sky yesterday, did you see the color?"
"An odd one," Dacey agreed, a hint of surprise on his face at the question.
"Blaine," Cadell said sharply, "that ain't table talk."
"Sky was just sky-colored yesterday," Rand said.
"I heard," Blaine saidignoring the darkening expression on her daddy's face, the somewhat startled look on Dacey's"that seers put some meaning to that color sky." Strange, hazy . . . and a hint of purple, quickly swallowed by a normal dusk. She knew Rand hadn't noted it, even though he'd been looking straight at it. She hadn't puzzled that out yet.
Dacey watched her, the light still splashing across half his face, hiding one eye in shadow but showing the shine of interest in the other. "Seers used to call it a Taker's sky."
"What's Takers?" Willum demanded, as only a three-year-old can.
"Somethin' long dead," Cadell said, plenty of meaning in his voice, and in the look he pinned on Blaine.
"Smelly dead?"
Cadell snapped, "Past smelly. And I've said it ain't table talk."
"He's going to hear it sooner or later," Lottie said. Solidly built on a small frame, her blue eyes the exact same shade as Blaine's, tonight she looked less tired than usual, engaged by their company. "Tell him some, Dacey. Save me from havin' to tell it before he'll put down for the night."
Dacey's silence held while Cadell's gaze went from Blaine's studied innocence to Willum's pleading face and Lenie's disinterest. Rand shrugged without taking time out from his eating to consider the matter, and Cadell finally gave a short nod. "Give 'em some on it," he said. "Keep in mind the age of their ears."
As if the children were the ones who really cared. Blaine perched on the edge of the bench seat and stuck her elbows on the table, absently toying with the end of a braid and the loosening tie there.
Dacey obliged. "Some say the Takers ain't tidy with their powers, and it clouds up the sky. They come from the north plains . . . they control things there. They call themselves Annekteh. We've always thought Takers fit them better."
"Why?" Willum said, and his eyes narrowed. "They ain't gonna take my things!"
"They're dead," Lottie murmured. "This is tales, Willum, not for real. Not no more."
Dacey gave a wry smile, one he didn't explain. "They call 'em Takers because they take people over. Slide inside 'em, control 'em, like."
Willum scowled. "No one can c'ntrol me!"
"Ain't that the truth," Lenie muttered.
"Well, maybe not you," Dacey allowed, grinning. "But other people. It's like ole Prince with a bit in his mouth, and me with the reins, if I was a Taker."
"Are you?" Sarie asked, not looking particularly alarmed.
Blaine slid her plate and its leftovers in front of Rand, who winked a thanks. "No, 'course he ain't. Takers don't have no form, Sarie. No bodies. No fat little tummies." She reached over to poke Sarie's belly.
Willum looked at her, already well-infected with his daddy's dismissiveness of Blaine's thoughts and dreams. "How do you know?"
"We all know some, son," Lottie said. "We're lettin' Dacey tell it, tonight, is all; he knows more of it, I reckon, from bein' around seer folk."
"She's right enough," Dacey said. "When they need a body, they up and borrow one. I heard it's like seein' things in a dream. If they want something done, you just watch yourself doin' it, and don't have no say. Or sometimes they Take you just to learn somethin'say you had a secret, and they wanted to know it. One of 'em might Take you just long enough to learn itthere ain't no keepin' anything from 'em when you're Tookan' then let you go again. All they got to do is touch you flesh to flesh, and they got you."
Lenie wound a loose strand of hair around her finger, pretty, bright hair even in the failing light. "How can they tell of which 'em has Taken who? Spirits, how can they even keep their own selves straight about who'd got who?"
Blaine flipped her mousy brown braid back over her shoulder, out of sight. Away from where it could be compared to Lenie's hair. But in truth it suited her just fine to have Lenie asking questionsto have any of them asking questionsexcept Rand, who always put his mind to eating his fill. Maybe her daddy would forget that she had been the one to start this conversation, when he hadn't wanted it.
Dacey hesitated. "It ain't that simple. They always know. . . . The Takers ain't single beings, like I'm me and you're Lenie. They all know what the others're thinking . . . they all think together. When one is in a body, it acts like a . . . well, like a stream channel, for others. Say I'm Took and they want more of 'em here. So I grab aholt of youit's got to be skin on skin-and channel for another Taker, and that one Takes you. Annektehr, they call the ones inside people, and they're powerful strong. You ain't got a chance oncet they grab on to you."
Silence followed his remark, and suddenly the house seemed too dim, the warmth from the stove not nearly enough. Blaine simply stared at Dacey, never expecting to find so many answers in one personnever expecting to find anyone who knew so much about a menace from the distant past.
Then Cadell cleared his throat. "You've heard some," he allowed. "More'n us in these parts. But these days, the sky tells us no more'n the weather, and that's plenty."
Dacey shrugged. "My kin's fond of a good story."
"Stories is right," Lenie scoffed. "We got so many, old men's tales. Magic in these hillsI'd like to see that."
He gave her a little half grin, one that won him an instant smile in response, while Blaine wondered if she couldn't see the wryness of his expression, that he wasn't agreeing with her at all when he said, "So would I."
"It's a dumb story," Willum declared. "Not a prop'r story."
"I'll tell you a proper one," Sarie said. She slid off the bench seat and ran over to tug Willum off his folded quilt riser next to Lottie. "Come to the porch, Willum, I got one about bug ghoulies."
Bugs and ghoulies together. Blaine hid a smile. As far as Willum was concerned, a body couldn't ask for anything more. She watched out the door to see that the two stopped on the porch, and gave Lottie a nod when they hunkered down to whisper together. "I'll watch," she said, and Lottie nodded, nudging the taters closer to Dacey.
As the conversation between Dacey and Cadell turned to hounds and the best breeding lines, Blaine thought of the strangers she'd seen, and thought again that Dacey might know of them. Not that it mattered. She couldn't ask while her family was there to hear she'd been in the hills, and soon enough the strangers would announce themselves and their trading goods and their needs. Blaine sighed, and swung her gawky leg over the bench. She lit a coal-oil lamp and set it in the center of the table, and headed outside to sit on the swing and attend the lisping syllables of the little ones and their whispered secrets about bug ghoulies.
Dacey stood at the edge of the garden and listened to the pig grunt as Cadell's middle daughter made her way to the barn-side pen with supper scraps; Mage lifted his nose to take in the smell of the scraps, and dismissed them, nudging Dacey's hand for a quick lick. The house door hung open yet, and the smell of supper still hung in the airalong with the sporadic noises of cleanup for both the kitchen and the young 'uns.
Family life in the mountains. He'd been a long time from it.
He heard a man's hard-heeled steps behind him, and cast just enough of a look over his shoulder to be taken as greeting.
"We ain't got no extra room in the house," Cadell said, "but you're welcome to use the barn."
"Clear night," Dacey said. No need for shelter.
"Clear as they come," Cadell agreed amiably.
Dacey hesitated, knowing what he had to say, and knowing it was not likely to be harkened. "Said I come here on a hunt," he started, as Blaine's bucket clattered against the pigpen in her efforts to shake loose the bottom scraps.
"That you did." Cadell moved up beside him, offering him an open pouch of chewing tobacco.
Dacey shook his head. "I reckon you need to know what I'm hunting." It was a cautious game, handing over such news. "No easy way to say it. I've seen signs the Takers are comin' back."
Cadell stuffed a wad of tobacco in his cheek and spent a moment jockeying it into place. "Up till now, you seemed a right sensible fellow."
"It's hard to find a way to go at this so's it does make sense, after all these years," Dacey admitted. "But those that remember best know the Takers weren't kilt at Annekteh Ridge. They were drove off, that's all. Hurt bad, but drove off, not kilt. Ain't nothin' to keep 'em from comin' back."
Cadell spat. "Then we'll drive 'em off again."
Dacey said nothing. If it was that easy, he'd not have bothered to come up here at all, seein's or no. As if he could ignore them. Not this time.
It was Cadell who spoke again, and his voice had taken on an accusing note. "You think you know quite some bit about the Takers, then, don't you?"
"More'n I'd tell over a supper table with children present," Dacey said promptly. "I've told how they Take folks for the use of their hands. But it's more'n that. They like what they can do in a bodythe pleasures it gives 'em, and the pains." Especially the pains, it seemed. "And they don't take no care about keepin' the nekfehrthe Takenwhole, neitherjust use 'em up and move on." No, that wasn't the sort of thing to say in front of babies like Willum and Sarie. He wished he could have told it to the middle girl, though. She seemed to have an interest, as much as she tried to hide it.
Unlike her father. Cadell's silence in the dark did plenty to tell Dacey of his expression, his opinion. Nothing more than Dacey had expected, from the man's reaction at supper.
But Dacey wasn't ready to give up. Not yet. Not with the stakes what they were. "Last time they come, we almost kilt 'em . . . but we didn't. And now they've done come back to Shadow Hollers."
Cadell snorted, all his polite apparently used up. "I ain't no Willum, to suck that one up," he said. "We ain't seen no sign of 'em."
"They're here," Dacey said with quiet conviction. "Or they're coming. And you'd best be thinkin' how you'll handle 'em."
Another dull splat of tobacco juice against the overturned garden earth. "What makes you think so?"
No real curiosity in that voice, but Dacey answered anyway. "Seein's," he said. "From those still of the seer's blood, down my way."
There was a long silence in the darkness. "Don't reckon I can put any stake in what some South-runnin' folk calls seein's."
"Maybe not," Dacey said. "But I've come a certain sure long way because of 'em."
The vessel's single successful act of defiance had been to deny the annektehr his true name, and so the Annekteh called him Nekfehr. The Taken. In the end, the name turned into a title, and only served to further intimidate those under Nekfehr's unwilling command.
They did their best for him, those unTaken soldiers did. They were afraid to do elsewise.
And now, far from home and uneasy with the mountains that filled their sky and denied them the horizon, they had found for Nekfehr signs of a clandestine visitor. Smudges against the hillside, a few damp undersides of last year's leaves exposed to the air. Two days ago it had been, and no more sign; no cry of discovery, no spirited but futile attacks.
The humans, it seemed, had not learned all that these mountains had to offer, and how much the land had recovered from the last conflict waged here.
The magic was here, waiting. Could they but find the suktah they needed, the Annekteh could begin this invasion in full.
Nekfehr's intentiondriven by the vessel's quick wit, the answers and thoughtfulness he provided the annektehr in spite of himselfhad been to find a substantial growth of suktah before revealing Annekteh presence in the hills. But he was no longer so sure that he could accomplish this task, despite the intensive search along this hollow and othersuninhabited hollows that, generations earlier, had held seer families and stands of suktah. But his plains-born men didn't know where to look.
Their clandestine visitor was another matteran incident Nekfehr might have been willing to assign to raccoon as much as to human. Might have been. Had it not been for the feel in the air, a grating sensation of antipathy and intent.
Would that the Annekteh had serious magic to command, magic other than their own innate abilities and a few insignificant tricks. For then Nekfehr might have been able to pinpoint the origin of such deliberate antipathy.
No matter. He'd find it, sooner or later. And he knew, well enough, what it was.
A seer.
Somewhere, in these hollows full of people who had blinded themselves to magic, there was a seer at work.
The first target.