She gazed at Akella as though waiting for a response, a slight smile still on her face.
Finally Akella asked, “What am I doing here? What is it you want from me?”
“I want you to do the right thing,” the woman said. “Not because anyone is forcing you, but simply because it’s right.”
Akella narrowed her eyes. “And what right thing is that?”
“I think you already know.”
The words seemed to hang in the air once the woman said them.
“You’re a sorceress,” Akella said flatly. “Aren’t you?”
The woman shrugged again. “If that is the word you prefer. Personally, I call myself a seer – and, more frequently these days, a dreamwalker.”
Akella drew the shape of a fishhook in the air with her pinky finger, Preyla’s ward against evil. “Then I shouldn’t believe a word you say. For all I know, you’re one of the black-cloaked women from the white city.”
“Actually, I think you know I’m not,” the woman said, voice calm. “If you thought that I was, you would have woken yourself from this dream already.” She took a sip from her cup. “What I do is no different from what your grandfather does.”
“He’s a priest of Preyla,” Akella said. “It is different.”
“And if you had a chance to talk to him right now, what would he say is the right thing to do? Look inside your heart, Akella. Would your Preyla really want you to leave your sailors imprisoned in Persopos?”
Akella rubbed her temples. The woman was right about one thing – Akella should wake herself from this dream. “Stop trying to manipulate me, witch.”
“I’m not manipulating you.”
“Even if I went back now, it wouldn’t matter. It’s been two years. They’re lost.”
“And if I told you that there’s still a chance you could save them? At least some of them?”
“Then I would call you a liar.”
“Well, Uncle Q’Util,” the woman said lightly, setting her cup back down and spreading her arms, “study me carefully. Do you, chief of all liars, know me as a liar?”
Akella stared at the woman. She took in the mischievous smile, the opened arms, the brown eyes that were almost black.
“No,” Akella said at last, reluctantly. “You’re not lying. I believe that you believe I can still save my men. But even if you’re telling the truth, it doesn’t mean you’re right.”
The woman dropped her hands. “Looking into the future is an imperfect art. Humans sometimes act in ways that even the shadows cannot accurately predict. But I will tell you this. There is a prediction – a very old prediction, made not by human seers, but by the small men – that an Empress of the House of Dorsa and the warrior who fights at her side will prevent the mortal realm from being swallowed by the shadow realm. I believe that you can help that prediction come true, and I believe you will rescue your lost crew in the process.”
Akella studied the witch’s face. “There’s something you’re not telling me. Something you’re leaving out.”
The seer’s face grew grave. “As I said, foretelling is an imperfect art, but… You will die if you go back to the Kingdom of Persopos. But your death will pay for the passage of others. Do the right thing, Akella. Do it just because it’s right.”
The dream ended without warning and all at once. One second Akella was sitting on cushions across from the Terintan sorceress, in the next she was lying on a dungeon floor, ratty blanket wound around her torso.
#
“Oi, wake up, Adessian shite,” the jailer said. “Get yer food.”
Akella sat up. She knew the jailer’s voice by now, but the lantern’s brightness made it impossible to make out his face. She found that ironic to the point of amusing – she’d been in the dark so long that the light of a lantern was painfully blinding.
He’d set down the bread and the clay cup, and had already turned to walk back down the tunnel when Akella called after him.
“Wait,” she croaked. One cup of water per day wasn’t enough to keep it from being so dry that it cracked when she finally used it. She reached through the bars and drained the cup in one long gulp, then tried again. “I want to speak to the Commander of the Palace Guard. The Terintan woman.”