The Seer by Rowan McAllister (reading comprehension books .TXT) 📕

blue eyes of one of the horses. He shivered and looked away, pulling his patched, threadbare cloak tighter around his shoulders and drawing the hood forward. But when his efforts to rearrange his cloak met with no resistance, he realized something was missing.

“Where’s my bag?” he asked, not even caring that his voice broke.

“In here,” Daks replied, patting a bag strapped to the saddle.

“Give it to me.”

Daks lifted an eyebrow at the demand but shrugged and undid the ties to the pack. The tightness in Ravi’s chest eased a little after Daks handed him his bag. He clutched it to his chest like a lifeline.

Daks gazed curiously at him for a few moments before going back to whatever he was doing without comment, and while Ravi took a few breaths to calm down, he turned his attention to the white stallion with the blue eyes again.

“Why does that horse not have a saddle, and why does it keep staring at me? Is there something wrong with it?” he griped, needing something to complain about.

Daks cast a glance over his shoulder and shrugged. “No idea. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with him other than he only seems partial to me. He doesn’t have a saddle because he wasn’t part of the original bargain. He just showed up last night on the road, but I’m glad he did. We wouldn’t have gotten as far as we did without him. I’ll be sad to leave him behind when we cross the river tomorrow. He’s a magnificent animal.”

The horse arched its neck and whickered as if it knew it was being paid a compliment, and Ravi found his gaze caught by one bright blue eye. Something shivered and stirred inside him as he held that gaze—or the gaze held him—and he was too late to stop the Vision as it rolled over him.

“Shit!” Daks cried, and a horse neighed in distress, but the sounds were far away, muffled.

Ravi barely noted the pain of the back of his head bouncing off the tree trunk. His entire world had filled with a wall of grayness, smothering him. Splashes of light flickered through the gray like lightning in the clouds, and nausea swamped him as the world spun like he was rolling downhill. Almost as suddenly as it came on, the Vision vanished, leaving him gasping and reeling like a landed fish.

When he opened his eyes, Daks hovered over him. “Are you okay?” he asked calmly, gripping Ravi’s upper arms in his big hands.

“I guess so,” he croaked past the nausea.

Out of habit, he shook off the man’s grip and dropped his gaze to his boots, huddling inside his cloak.

He wasn’t okay, not really, and Daks was far too close.

Movement to his left made him scramble unsteadily to his feet, despite the lingering weakness and dizziness. He put the tree trunk between him and the rest of the group, even as he used it to keep himself upright. He couldn’t let anyone else touch him and trigger another Vision. And no way would he let Shura anywhere near him right now. Who knew what she was thinking?

“What was in your Vision?” Daks asked in that same gruff, unruffled tone Ravi was coming to appreciate. For some strange reason, it soothed him more than any reassurances or tenderness would have.

He squirmed. He hated talking about his Visions, because most of the time they didn’t make any sense until it was too late. This one had been so much worse. How could he explain a wall of grayness that left him feeling terrified? Normally, he at least saw something useful: a face, a place, some detail he could recognize later.

“It was nothing,” he replied miserably.

“It can’t have been nothing. I felt the magic,” Daks continued, under his breath. “You definitely had a Vision. Tell me.”

Ravi just shook his head, his anger and that feeling of helplessness and frustration rising again.

Daks growled and closed the distance between them. “Look. I get that you don’t trust us. I get that you’re angry with me and our methods. But I need you to get that if anyone was scrying, or if there’s a Finder nearby, the Brotherhood and the Guard will know what direction we went in now, so if you have any information that might help us, we need to know it.”

“And I’m telling you there was nothing!” Ravi shouted at him, all his frustration and fear spilling over. “Not a gods-damned thing! I saw a big swirling wall of gray. If there was anything on the other side of that, I couldn’t see it. Something was blocking me.”

They stood staring at each other for several beats, Ravi panting after his outburst and Daks seemingly trying to decide if he should believe him or not.

“We need to get going. Now.” Shura’s lips and eyes were hard when Ravi broke free and glanced in her direction. She’d already moved to one of the horses and was checking the straps on the saddle.

Daks let out a long sigh and dragged a hand through his already wild brown hair. “We don’t know for sure if they even have scrying abilities… but she’s right. It’s best to be on the safe side. The sooner we get out of this Rift-blighted kingdom, the better I’ll feel.”

“We’ve had no reports of any such forbidden magics within the Brotherhood,” the small blond woman, Mistress Sabin, said, frowning.

“I bet you haven’t had reports of summoning stones either, but two nights ago a brother used one in front of me,” Daks responded dryly.

Mistress Sabin’s pale eyebrows lifted. “You saw this?”

“Yes.”

“That is most worrying. Does Maran know?”

“I told her,” Shura replied, still busily tugging on saddle straps.

Part of Ravi wanted to apologize for forcing them to rush, but he held his tongue and moved to join the others by the horses. Realizing there were only three horses for four people, he eyed each in turn and shifted from foot to foot.

“Where do I go?” he asked.

“Shura and Fara will switch