Page 51 of The Seeker
“But you didn’t,” Rhys said.
“I did. But I found someone else first.”
Meera offered, “The Wolf?”
“No.” Sabine shook her head. “There was someone else.”
Meera sat up straight. This was new information. “Who, Sabine?”
“Humans.” The word came in a painful whisper. “Men. They were human and they took me farther into the swamp. I lost track of where I was. They put a gag in my mouth and they…” Tears rolled down her face. “They didn’t know what I was. Eventually they took off the gag. The minute I could speak, I killed them, every one of them. I’m not sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Rhys said. “Don’t ever be sorry.”
“I’m not. But I was really lost then. I was in a shack in the bayou. A hunting shack, I think. Completely turned around. I knew the rivers a little, but nothing about the swamps. I took one of their boats and some supplies, but I wandered for days, singing out every night and hoping to hear something back. I think I went a little mad.”
And then it had only gotten worse. Meera’s heart hurt for Sabine, but other than the new information about abusive humans, there was no new information. Meera tried not to be frustrated, because it looked like this episode of clarity would pass with no new answers.
But then Meera hadn’t counted on Rhys.
Chapter Nine
“Give me your hand and close your eyes,” Rhys said. “I want you to imagine yourself back in the bayou.”
“When?”
“When you’d taken the boat and were searching. Just before the Wolf found you.”
He leaned in and took Sabine’s outstretched hand. This was a memory spell he could only use on other Irin. It didn’t work on humans, and it didn’t work on a reluctant subject, but Sabine was open to sharing. She’d shown no reluctance to answer their questions. He cradled her palm in his and spread her fingers, using his other hand to write a spell into her palm.
“Do you see yourself there?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He touched his owntalesm prim,activating the spells he’d written over his life. He searched for those his father taught him and those his mother helped him with. Angharad the Sage was known for her empathy, but when the subject was willing, she could extend that ability to all her senses, not only feelings. Rhys carried her blood, and his mother had taught him how to access the same power through written spells instead of spoken ones.
“Picture it in your mind,” he said.
The memory that Rhys caught hints of wasn’t clear in any sense, but it gave him impressions. Scents, mainly. Water carrying a faint essence of rotting wood and salt. Cypress and pine trees. He could hear the swishing sound of a tail moving in the water and a woman humming an indistinguishable tune.
His hands hurt. He’d blistered them poling through the water, ducking under branches, and following narrow pathways through the flooded forest. He was hungry. Desperately hungry.
He could hear birds in the distance, calling through the trees. A distinct bugle that cut through the dense tapestry of insects in the early morning fog.
“Rhys.”
He blinked his eyes open, his finger still tracing the spell over Sabine’s palm. Meera had her hand on his shoulder.
“Was I speaking?” he asked.
Meera looked confused. “Yes, in the Old Language.”
“What did I say?”
“You were singing an Irina song. An old children’s rhyme.”
“Which one?” He tried to reorient himself from the vision. “It was likely what Sabine was singing or thinking in the memory just now.”
Meera said, “Anya niyah, mashak tamak.”
