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

a song or tell a story to lift everyone’s spirits, no matter how hard things got or how empty their bellies were. Ravi was usually the storyteller. Every night the littler ones would beg him for a tale before bed. He hoped Vic remembered enough of the stories to take his place.

“Not far now,” Daks called over his shoulder, stirring Ravi out of his threatening melancholy. “Urmat should be just over that next rise, if I remember right.”

Ravi took a breath and straightened in his saddle. He gazed at the road ahead, but he couldn’t see anything beyond the hill Daks mentioned and trees to either side of them. As he squinted against the sunlight, hoping for his first look of Urmat, a sudden odd tingling sensation shivered along his arms, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

“Uh, Daks?” Ravi called shakily as his stomach twisted in fear.

Not now. Not again.

He couldn’t be having a fourth Vision in less than two days. He refused to believe it was possible.

Daks turned to look at him over his shoulder and was nearly pitched from his horse when the stallion carrying the two women suddenly stopped in the middle of the road right in front of him, forcing his mare to startle and dance. Daks scowled at his mount as he dropped Ravi’s reins and struggled to get her under control.

“Shura, what the hells? Why did you stop?” Daks growled.

“I didn’t,” she growled back as she tugged on her reins and nudged the stallion with her knees. “This damned horse of yours won’t budge.”

Ravi’s tired mount seemed perfectly content to rest when its lead was no longer being tugged on. She calmly ambled to the side of the road, dropped her head to a tuft of bright green spring grass, and started grazing, ignoring everything else. Still feeling shaky and afraid of passing out if he did have another Vision, Ravi swung a leg over his saddle and slid awkwardly to the ground. He realized his mistake as soon as his worn boots touched the road, but too late to stop his numb legs from crumpling and dropping his ass in the dirt, knocking the wind out of him. His erstwhile mount swung around to eye him for a few seconds before returning to her grazing.

Silently cursing his legs, the horse, Daks, and anything else he could think of, Ravi struggled to his knees. The tingling still shivered along his skin as he fought tears of frustration. Not bothering to try to get to his feet again, he closed his eyes and prepared to fight the threatened Vision as best he could, remembering Daks shouting “push it back” at him before. He didn’t exactly know what that meant, but he’d try.

Except the strange shivery feeling wasn’t followed by the rush of a Vision. In fact, it faded all on its own, leaving him only a little cold and disoriented.

He blinked. Had it really been a Vision or something else?

His old granny on his mother’s side used to say she caught the “chills” sometimes before bad things happened. As a small child, Ravi had dismissed her ramblings as superstitious nonsense, because that was what the rest of the family did. They told him she was harmless, just a little addled, but he was rarely allowed to spend much time with her. Was this what she’d felt? He’d sometimes wondered if she was like him, only the family had protected her instead of—

“Why are you on the ground?” Shura’s harsh voice cut through his reverie, and he felt himself flush.

He glanced around and caught all three of his traveling companions staring at him with varying degrees of exasperation, disquiet, and curiosity. He narrowed his eyes and huffed out a breath as he struggled to his feet.

“I felt something before the horses stopped,” he admitted reluctantly, tugging his hood back in place and slapping road dust from the folds of his cloak.

“What did you feel?” Daks asked sharply.

Ravi winced. No way was he going to mention his granny’s chills. He turned away from Daks’s intense stare and shrugged. “I don’t know. Just, something feels wrong.”

He winced at how stupid that sounded and gave another helpless shrug. If he ever hoped to win a cushioned seat at some lord’s high table as pet prognosticator like the ones he’d read about in old tales, he was going to have to practice a more theatrical flourish with regards to any “feelings” he might have, but right now he just felt ridiculous.

No one spoke for several seconds, so Ravi cut a quick, reluctant glance back to Daks. Instead of appearing irritated or dismissive, the man was watching him even more intently than before.

After another few beats of silence, Daks said, “Let’s get off the road.”

Shura quirked an eyebrow at him, but shrugged and nodded to Mistress Sabin to dismount.

“Are you all right? Do you need help?” Daks asked him neutrally as he also climbed down from his horse.

“I’m fine. I just need to get a little feeling back into my legs.”

Daks pursed his lips but said nothing. He spun on his heel and headed for the stallion. “You take the mares. I’ll take this stubborn brute,” he called to Shura as he moved to collect the stallion’s reins. At Daks’s urging, the horse decided to cooperate and moved into the woods without hesitation while Shura glared at the animal’s swaying rump.

“Now what?” Shura snapped once they were off the road. “We were almost there.”

Daks pursed his lips as he scanned the area around them. “I don’t know what’s wrong with Horse, but we can walk from here if we need to. You know as well as I do that ignoring a Seer’s bad feeling is not a wise move. It could be nothing. It could be something. A little caution won’t hurt. We’re all tired, and even I would love to be in a boat crossing the river right now, but we have a few hours