Stormseer (Storms in Amethir Book 3) (24 page)

"Yarro?"

He jerked, realizing that voice was real, not in his head.

WE ARE REAL, LITTLE BROTHER, said what he thought of as the Wise Uncle Voice. WE ARE VERY REAL. AS ARE THESE TRUTHS WE SHARE WITH YOU.

"Yarro," Aevver said again, her voice very close to him. He swung around to face her and lost his balance, tipping and sliding despite a desperate last-minute clutch at Firefoot's mane. He landed flat on his back, the world graying out as the impact drove the breath from his lungs. He tried to suck in air and failed. Tried again. Again. And finally he managed to draw breath, filling his lungs with a gasping, groaning sound.

"Siren's teeth! Are you all right?" He heard her feet thud to the ground. He closed his eyes, waving a hand feebly to ward her off. He didn't have the breath to speak yet.

It was a good thing she didn't know what he'd seen. She might have her swords drawn. Yarro shivered.

"Are you hurt?" she demanded.

"No," he croaked. He opened his eyes and found her bending over him, her eyes wide, brows drawn together.

"What happened? Did you feel ill?" She pressed a hand to his forehead.

Yarro jerked away from her touch. Even after that he could feel her fingers crawling against his skin. Why did she feel it was her right to touch him?

"Tell me what's wrong," she pressed.

"Nothing." He blinked at her.

TELL HER YOU FELL ASLEEP. That was the Sly Voice. At least it wasn't advocating eating her like it had earlier.

"Nothing? You don't fall off your horse because of nothing!"

"Sometimes you do," he muttered. He pushed himself into a sitting position. "I must have fallen asleep. You woke me up and I fell."

"Asleep?" Her voice was dubious, but she sat back on her heels, giving him more space. "I was afraid you were having some sort of fit."

He shrugged. "I fell asleep." Having found that excuse, he stuck to it.

Aevver rubbed a hand over her face. "I'm glad that's all it was. But we'll stop earlier tonight than last night, if you don't mind." When Yarro made no reply, she added, "It'll give us more time to set up camp and get a meal ready."

She kept looking at him, so finally Yarro shrugged. He didn't feel like talking any more.

Evidently that was answer enough. Aevver stood and walked back to her horse. "Feel like getting on the move again, or do you need a moment to rest?"

Instead of speaking, Yarro pushed himself to his feet and held out a hand to Firefoot. The horse sidled over to him, sniffed his hand, and allowed Yarro to wind his fingers in his mane. Yarro climbed up to the bay horse's back and looked down at Aevver.

The woman chuckled and mounted her own horse. "Very well. Let's get going."

***

Yarro and Firefoot had been traveling with Aevver for three days. Yarro was still unsure of her. She was rather abrupt at times, but she laughed easily and treated her horse well. Her daggers and sword still made him nervous, but she hadn't drawn any of them in all the time they'd been together.

That didn't mean the vision was wrong, though. Yarro was used to his visions not making sense. He didn't ever expect to actually see a dove and a serpent fighting. But in the past month his visions had been startlingly literal, and he knew it was starting to alter his perception. First there had been Firefoot and then Aevver. What had come next in the vision after the red horse and the copper-skinned warrior woman? He knew he would recognize the next thing when he saw it, but he wanted to remember it before he saw it.

I should have written them down
, he thought. But he had never been much for writing anything down. He
could
write. He'd been taught at an early age along with the rest of his family. But every time he got caught up in a vision, he would rouse from it to find his pen had dripped ink splotches all over his paper and eventually dried up. He would have to clean the pen before he could ink it again. It got to be so much trouble he just didn't bother.

He glanced over at Aevver, who was riding a few paces ahead of him. Every once in a while she glanced over her shoulder to make sure she was still going the right direction, and if Yarro was looking, he would nod. But he didn't always notice. He figured she had decided if he was still going the same direction as she was, it must be right.

She wasn't looking at him now. She was relaxed in the saddle, her head turning slowly as she watched the horizon. She was always watchful. It made Yarro tired. He wondered if she even noticed the pretty pink flowers that spread low to the ground along the path they were riding. Did she notice the deep blue of the sky? Did she enjoy the feel of the cool breeze in the heat of the sun?

The vision hadn't started with Firefoot. What had it started with? The desert. Sweeping sand dunes and harsh cliffs casting shadows over the land. He closed his eyes, picturing it. To his surprise, it jumped with vivid clarity to his mind's eye. Then there had been a valley with an entrance hidden from all those who weren't worthy. And Firefoot, looking straight at him. Aevver Balearic, with her brown skin and the sword on her hip and her daggers hidden everywhere. And then—what?

A magic user. He remembered her just as her face swam into focus with her moth-green eyes and dark hair streaked with white. Her skin was unlined, her expression unhappy. She was too young for that white hair, barely older than Yarro. He didn't know why he was sure she was a mage. But he could see the power in her somehow.

He gulped and opened his eyes. Maybe he shouldn't have remembered her. He had never met anyone with magic. Orya had told him stories with magic in them. He had always wondered what it must feel like to have magic. But the actual idea of it was frightening.

And what about the vision from a few days ago? He had been seeing that man in his dreams at night, and he didn't understand why. The man hadn't been in the first visions, but he kept coming back now. He must be important for some reason. Most of Yarro's visions weren't that persistent.

Was the man someone who knew Aevver? Maybe they were friends. Maybe it was a warning of something. The man and Aevver might be planning something together. He had looked dangerous. Yarro remembered the sadness in his eyes, though.

He shivered suddenly and looked up. The sun had gone behind a cloud. That was unusual. It had been unrelentingly sunny ever since he left Meekin. Meekin got a lot of sunshine, but he knew there had been gloomy days earlier this year. But out in the dry scrub lands they were traveling through, the clouds seemed wrong.

Yar looked down at Firefoot's mane. He kept waiting for the Voices to give him new directions, but so far they seemed pleased with his progress. One impatient Voice often urged him to hurry, but Yar thought he was traveling as fast as he could, so he mostly ignored that Voice.

YOU ONLY IGNORE ME BECAUSE I ALLOW IT, the Voice said. IF I WANTED TO, I COULD SEIZE YOUR ENTIRE ATTENTION AND KEEP IT ON ME.

You'd better not
, Yar told it.
If you do that, Aevver Balearic will notice something is wrong. She'll start asking questions. I don't want to tell her about you.

SHE WOULDN'T BELIEVE YOU ANYWAY, the Voice agreed. NO ONE BELIEVES IN US ANYMORE. ONCE WE WERE REVERED AS THE ELDEST AND WISEST. NOW WE ARE FORGOTTEN, THOUGHT OF ONLY IN HERO TALES.

I believe in you,
Yarro assured it.
Not that I have much choice. But I have always believed in you.

The Voice didn't answer in words, but Yar felt a warm humming in his mind that told him it was pleased with him. The humming was a comforting sound, lifting up to surround him, almost like an embrace. He sank into it, feeling the sway of Firefoot's walking pace but relying on the Voice's humming to hold him up.

Aevver's voice, when it broke in, was jangly and discordant. "Do you hear that?"

Yar opened his eyes, only then realizing they had drifted closed. A moment later he realized he
had
heard what she was asking about. He frowned. "Thunder?"

In answer, the sky rumbled at them. The sound sent a shiver of apprehension through him. Yar drew his cloak over his shoulders and around him.

"I think we should start watching for shelter," Aevver said. "Have you been looking at the sky?"

Yarro shook his head and looked up again. The sun was hidden by not one cloud, but several that were building in the west and had finally reached tall enough to cover the sun.

"It looks like we're in for a storm," Aevver said. "We don't want to be caught out in the open if that's the case. We should be getting close to that village marked on your map. I would think we'd start seeing houses here and there. I've noticed goats and sheep grazing in the distance."

"People?" Yar asked, his gut tightening.

"You don't like people? Meekin is full of them." She had fallen back to ride next to him. The trail they were following wasn't really wide enough for that, but she let her horse pick his way around obstacles, so it worked.

"Most people don't seem to like me much. I'm too much of a freak." He bit down on the tip of his tongue as he realized what he'd just admitted to her. He shouldn't have said that! She would ask why he was a freak, and then he might end up blurting out something about the Voices, and—

"I don't think you're a freak," Aevver said. She tilted her head, studying him. "You're different from me, but then I'm different from myself. I'm not the same person I was five years ago. And both mes are different from my brother or my parents. That's what makes this world so interesting. People are different from each other." She smiled at him.

Tentatively, Yarro smiled back.

Thunder crashed across the sky at them, interrupting the moment. Yar ducked. Aevver's sand-colored horse shied. She got it back under control almost at once, but their brief connection was broken. Aevver swore, looking up at the sky again.

"We need to move faster," she said. "Let's trot for a while. Pay attention to the landscape around us. We'll need to find shelter somewhere. We can't sit in the middle of an open field like this while lightning strikes around us."

Yar winced. Had she noticed the way he tended to let his attention wander? "You lead the way," he said. That way she could set the pace and he could just let Firefoot keep up with her. He would look around for shelter until the Voices distracted him again.

Aevver nodded and took off in a ground-eating trot, the sand-colored horse proving his smaller size didn't mean he was slower than Firefoot. Yar squeezed his knees around Firefoot's sides, asking the bay horse to keep up, and Firefoot responded with a snort. He leapt into a gallop until he caught up to the other horse, but fell obligingly back into a trot once they did.

The thunder rumbled almost constantly now, an ominous growl that made Yar's heart pound in his chest. It was like the storm was a great beast that was chasing them, ready to pounce at any moment. He found himself leaning forward in the saddle, his gaze flitting from one rock outcropping to the next. As they topped a rise, Aevver and Yarro found themselves in the middle of a flock of sheep. The dirty-white animals scattered, baaing their distress at having two horsemen suddenly riding through them. Yar looked for shepherds, but he didn't see any.

"There should be a sheepcote somewhere!" Aevver called back to him. The wind was rising. Yar had to strain to hear her.

"Full of sheep!" he protested, but either she didn't hear him or she didn't care. Her horse picked up the pace and Firefoot accelerated to keep up. Yar didn't know what a sheepcote would look like, but he assumed it was like a house for sheep. It ought to look like a building then, right? But the faster they went, the more attention he had to give to staying on Firefoot's back. He gave up on looking for shelter and worried only about following Aevver.

YOU MUST SEEK SHELTER, boomed a Voice in Yar's mind. It was the Wise Uncle Voice, and there was a note of command there that Yar hadn't heard in some time. THE STORM RISES, LITTLE BROTHER, AND YOU ARE VULNERABLE.

"We're looking for it now," he gasped, not caring that Aevver might hear him. It seemed unlikely, anyway, between the pounding of the horse's hooves and the rumble of thunder and the ever-present shriek of the wind.

NOW, LITTLE BROTHER!

But it was too late. The skies ripped open with a flash of lightning so bright it left Yar dazzled and blinking. In the aftermath of the lightning, the clouds let loose with their burden. Not as a slow drip and drop, but as sudden and hard as if someone had upended a bucket over their heads. Yar gasped and squinted as the thunder crashed over him, rattling his teeth and shivering his bones.

"Aevver!" he screamed.

She looked back and waved her arm. Her mouth opened, but he couldn't hear what she said. The rain was too loud. He kept following as she turned her gaze ahead of them again. He leaned low over Firefoot's neck, trying to keep his hood up to shield his eyes from the rain. It was a losing battle. Every time he got the hood tugged forward, it blew down again.

It seemed like forever before they reached whatever Aevver had been aiming for. She led them inside a building, ducking as she urged her horse into a dark opening in a dry-stone-walled building. Yar followed, wondering what had possessed him to trust her so blindly. As soon as they were through the arch, he pushed his hair back from his face, blinking the rain water out of his eyes and peering around in the sudden darkness.