Doranna Durgin - Seer's Blood

Seer' Blood

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For the Curious

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Author's Note

Seer's Blood

Doranna Durgin

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any

resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-671-57877-4

Cover art by Larry Elmore

First printing, July 2000

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Typeset by Brilliant Press

Printed in the United States of America

For Darlene, Albin, Gloria and John, who taught me much and gave me much

For Strider, who gave me everything

and of course to Boomer, Esther, Goofy & Fred—for the ten o'clock howl!

HOWDY, STRANGERS

Steeling herself, Blaine crept in above the strangers' camp. Those few who were up were crouching over

faded fires, stirring them into new flame. Hunkered in above the slight scoop in the terrain that held the

camp, Blaine became very still as she focused on the flurry of movement just below her. She wasn't

expecting what she found; it took a moment to realize that the lump on the ground between four of the

strangers was a man, that the funny noise was his choked cry of pain.

That the man was Dacey.

She gasped; she couldn't help it. Tied at the wrists and ankles and perched haphazardly against a

rotted-out sycamore, Dacey answered their murmured questions with a single shake of his head, sending

his untrimmed bangs into his eyes. Blaine winced as one of the men backhanded him. The trickle of blood

dripping down his chin followed a path already forged, and his face held a storybook of bruises.

The strangers weren't just passing through. . . .

BAEN BOOKS by DORANNA DURGIN

Dun Lady's Jess

Changespell

Barrenlands

Touched By Magic

Wolf Justice

Wolverine's Daughter

Seer's Blood

Forthcoming:

The Bounding Dark

For the Curious

(For the alarmed, be reassured that aside from a few oft-used terms that become self-evident in the text,

you don't really have to know this. It's here for the Curious and for the author.)

Annekteh Terms:

anne-nekfehrthe experience of vicarious emotions through humans

Annekteh the Taker's name for self

annektehrA unit within anekfehr (taken vessel)

nekfehrtaken being, also called a Vessel

nekfehrdeath the death of anannektehr when trapped within a vessel when it dies

nekferhtalinking box

nektehA unit within the Annekteh whole

suktahsassafras wood

Shadow Hollers terms:

Takers the Annekteh. Most do not distinguish between the Annekteh whole and the units, ornekteh .

Taken possessed by the Annekteh,nekfehr .

1

The world spread out before thenekfehr , the slight curve of the horizon partially obscured by hazy

clouds. Unlike the flat plains directly before the possessed vessel—a raven, black, sleek, and

intelligent—thishorizon rose in a nubbled, broken line.

South.

They would go south.

It hadn't worked out well, last time; so many years, spent just in recovery. The hill folk had been waiting

and ready, forewarned by their seers . . . seers once grown thickly in that nurturing land.

The Annekteh had lost that fight—but they had made sure the next generations of the hills had no such

guidance. They had burned the seers' painstaking records—generations of wisdom, lore, and

observations—every one. They'd ransacked houses, stripping all charms, all the protections that could be

copied and used even without a seer's understanding.

Every one.

And the seers themselves . . . dead. Or fled.

The raven's wings caught a thermal; the bird adjusted—a shift of feather, a tilt of wing—and the

annektehr within barely noticed. That was what thenekfehr , the vessels, were for; to do the things the

Annekteh could not. To see, to fly . . . to feel. Theannektehr —one of many, so consumed by the

Annekteh whole it didn't even understand the concept of individuality—stared at that bare hint of the

mountains, letting the bird mind control their flight.Yes. It shared the image among the whole, among the

Annekteh, even as it maintained awareness of each of its fellowannektehr at work in other vessels.

Human bodies, mostly, supervising the insignificant, unTaken individuals that served the Annekteh.

Yes.

South. Where the lumber was not only abundant, but was imbued with the natural magic of the

mountains—the same subtle magic of the plains, distilled and amplified and then submerged to run deep

along the ridges. Magic that would protect the Annekteh, so deep that the humans barely knew it was

there.

But the Annekteh knew.

And the Annekteh intended to have that magic, and that land, for their own.

2

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 own—sparse 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 below—conversations held by men

who must not know the mountains funneled noise uphill—she'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 along—small 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 blinder—made 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 pocket—wouldn'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 strips—hidden in the dim,

early morning light of the rough-hewn log house.There . Jerking them into tight knots around the ends of

her braids—knots she'd no doubt regret when it came time to turn her hair loose again—and 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 gone—or 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 man—almost old enough to have his own family, but still some years younger than

Dacey—came 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 wore—he 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, then—looking 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

dog—except 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 nod—likely 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'."

Whohad 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

her—the 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 grin—affection for the dog, an acknowledgment to the watching girl that

he did indeed set such store by the animal—and turned to the work at hand.

* * *

He knows there're strangers here.Otherstrangers. 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 theywere 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 women—Lottie,

Lenie, and Blaine herself—worked 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 smiled—half 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 that—as

she had explained to Blaine—gave 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 shouldhave 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 for—a 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 her—she'd been toldthat often enough. The men of these hills liked some substance to

their women—visible 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 it—even 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 Leniepractice .

* * *

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 memorized—and 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 book—the 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?"

Doranna Durgin - Seer's Blood

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