The Dragon's Path

salute. Geder had met Haavirkin before when the elected king of Hallskar sent ambassadors to court, but he’d never seen one as old or with the same sense of utter dignity.
    The guards walked before the woman as she approached the prince. Geder couldn’t tell from the noise of the crowd whether they were mocking her or celebrating her presence. Her eyes swept over Geder, sizing him up.
    “This is my seer,” the prince said to him. And then to the woman, “This man is our guest. His travels the Keshet on a spiritual matter.”
    “He does,” the woman agreed.
    The prince grinned like she’d given him a present. He put his hand on Geder’s arm in an oddly intimate gesture.
    “She is yours for tonight,” the prince said. Geder frowned. He hoped that this wasn’t a question of having a bed servant, though he had heard stories about that kind of thing from old stories about the Keshet. He coughed and tried to think of a way clear, but the seer only lifted her hand. Another servant hurried forward with a wooden stool, and the Haavirkin sat on it, staring at Geder’s face.
    “Hello,” Geder said to her, his voice uncertain.
    “I know you,” she said, then turned and spat on the ground. “When I was a girl, I had a dream about you.”
    “Um,” Geder said. “Really?”
    “She is very good,” the prince said. “Very
wise.
”
    “My uncle had an illness,” the seer said, “only it had no signs. No fever, no weakness, nothing, so there was nothing we knew to cure.”
    “But then how can you say he was sick?”
    “It was a dream,” the seer said patiently. “He ate bitterherbs to cure himself, and afterward the water he drank tasted sweet. But there wasn’t anything in it but water. The sweet was in him, and it wasn’t sweet really. Only that it wasn’t bitter. It didn’t have the power to cure anything.”
    The seer took his hand, her long fingers exploring the joints of his fingers as if she were searching for something. She lifted his palm to her nose and sniffed at it. Geder’s skin crawled, and he tried to pull away.
    “You will see her thrice,” she said, “and you will be different people each time. And each time, she will give you what you want. You have already seen her once.”
    The seer lifted her eyebrows, as if to say,
Do you understand?
    That was supposed to be about me?
Geder thought.
    “Thank you,” Geder said, and she nodded as much to herself as to anyone else. The dancing torchlight made the black marks on her skin seem to shift with a motion of their own.
    “That’s all?” the Jasuru prince said.
    “That is all that I have for him,” the seer said mildly. She rose to her feet, the chains leading from her neck jingling. “You and I will speak, but later.”
    She made her obeisance, turned, and walked back out through the low scrub and dust, the wooden tables of Keshet warriors and shadows. The chain bearers followed her as if she were leading them. The silence was broken only by the sound of the chain and the mutter of fire from the torches. Geder thought he saw surprise, even shock, on the faces of the knights, but he didn’t understand it. Something had just happened, but he couldn’t say what.
    The prince scratched at the scales along his jaw and neck like a Firstblood stroking a beard. He grinned, sharp dark teeth like a wall.
    “Eat! Sing!” he called, and the knights’ voices and clamor rose again as they had before. Geder took another sausage and wondered what he’d just missed.
    T he feast left Geder’s stomach unsettled. He lay in his tent listening to the soft summer wind moving through the desert, and failing to will himself to sleep. He heard his squire’s soft snores, smelled the fine Keshet dust that seemed to get into everything, and tasted the spiced meats from the feast, the pleasure of them long since gone. Moonlight pressed in at the edges of the tent, turning the darkness silver. He felt restless and torpid at the same time.
    The sweet was in him, and it wasn’t sweet really. Only that it wasn’t bitter. It didn’t have the power to cure anything.
    Of all the seer’s ramblings, those were the words that gnawed at him, as troubling as the spices. It seemed to him now that the Haavirkin woman had been talking about Vanai and Camnipol. If he thought about it, he could still feel the scar healing in his leg where the bolt had struck him. In exactly the same way, the smallest shift of his attention could remind him of the black knot in his