“Jedah,” Padrig supplied. “He turned the soil and prepared the ground for planting. In one day he accomplished the work of a team of laborers. He is in the southern fields today. Tomorrow he will travel to the east, the next day to the north. The growers will follow behind.”
The king took a kernel of corn from his pocket and walked to a furrow. Bending his long back, he pushed the kernel into the dirt and covered it gently. Without explanation, he placed his hand against the freshly-churned soil, curling his fingers into the dark softness, his palm down and his fingers cupped. Slowly, as if he measured the height of a child from toe to crown, he coaxed a green shoot from the ground and made it climb, reaching for the sun, the stem plumping and the leaves unfurling. Around Kjell, other spinners began to do the same, the plants flowering and flourishing around him. They sowed the seeds only to cover them and immediately call them forth. Corn, carrots, and tomatoes so red and fat the vines couldn’t hold them. They pulled bounty from the earth the way Padrig had pulled stars from the heavens.
Children poked the knotted roots of potatoes into mounds and patted them down. A woman walked behind them, placing her hands atop the rises. Green foliage would spill from the mounds, and she would move on to the next one. Several children followed behind her, digging into the earth she’d just touched, uncovering fully grown potatoes like they’d been there all along.
Ten spinners stood in a fallow field, and within the hour, had coaxed forth rows of waving wheat.
Kjell remembered the fruit trees in Sasha’s garden—all the bounty and the variety. With the right seeds, Aren could have built it in a day. In a matter of hours.
There would be plenty to eat.
“Walk with me, Healer. You and I have much to discuss.” When Padrig and the king’s counselors fell in behind them, the king waved them off. “I wish to speak to the captain alone. Stay.”
Kjell fell into step beside the king as they moved away from the growers, from the miracles spilling from their hands, and from the fields not yet sown. They climbed into the forest formed not of spinners, but of the towering trees of Caarn. Kjell could easily see the difference now.
“I am accustomed to looking down on men. You are even bigger than I am,” the king commented, moving through the trees as though he belonged among them.
“My brother—King Tiras—is tall as well. We get our size from our father,” Kjell answered, repeating what he’d always believed.
“As did I. We are a tall people. Maybe it is an outward manifestation of our gifts.” The king stooped to pick up a sturdy, long stick and weighed it in his hands before he jabbed it into the ground, using it as a staff to climb the rise.
Kjell was silent, waiting for the king to say what he was bound to say. He had little doubt that much had been discussed and revealed while he slept. Sasha would not have withheld the entire story from King Aren. It was not her way.
“I am not a young man. I haven’t been young for a long time. I was not young when Saoirse became my queen. Ours was a marriage designed to unite people and blend nations, but we were suited. And her gift was desirable to me. So many of us are Tree Spinners in Caarn. We have tried to bring in other gifts, but the gift to spin is a highly dominant trait. My father was a Tree Spinner, and his father before him. Padrig has a unique gift. My sister had a unique gift as well. But she did not choose to stay in Caarn.”
The king had stopped walking and faced Kjell, searching his eyes.
“Saoirse tells me your father, King Zoltev of Jeru, was a wicked man.”
Kjell nodded, denying nothing. And still the king studied him.
“You may have gotten your size from your father. Your strength. But you are very like your mother,” Aren said, his voice flat and heavy, as though declaring a royal edict.
Kjell stumbled back, the air whooshing from his lungs in surprise. That was not the accusation he had expected.
“She told me, Captain,” Aren explained. “Saoirse told me who you are. I didn’t want to believe it. But it is undeniable.” Aren lowered his staff so it pointed at Kjell’s chest. “So you took my queen and now you will take my kingdom?”
Kjell did not step back or lower his gaze.
“If I had taken your queen, Majesty, she would not be here. And if I’d wanted your kingdom, you would not be here,” he said softly.
Aren’s blue eyes were suddenly alight with mirth, and he threw back his head and laughed. Kjell did not join him. His feelings were too turbulent, his thoughts too troubled.
Aren lowered his stick and leaned against it, stroking his beard as his grin faded, his eyes thoughtful and his posture pensive.
“Why did you heal me, Captain?” he pressed. “You could have taken my place beside her.”
“I don’t want to take another man’s place. I want only what belongs to me.”
I belong to you now.
Kjell pushed her voice away.
“I could argue that the kingdom is rightfully yours,” Aren said.
“If my mother was indeed Koorah of Caarn, then she walked away from her birthright. I did not come to reclaim it.”
“Why did you come?” Aren asked.
“To make sure . . . the queen . . . is safe.” He could not call her Sasha in the presence of the king. It was too familiar. But he couldn’t call her Saoirse; it wasn’t familiar enough. He decided not to say her name at all. It was easier that way.
As succinctly as he could, Kjell told the king about the Changer who had dogged their journey, about his fears, and about his certainty that the battle for power had not ended on the shores of Jeru.
Aren listened, his eyes widening at the tale. When Kjell finished, he was quiet for a long time, considering.
“Without you, the walls of Caarn would still be empty. Caarn needs a Healer,” he said, finality in his voice. “I would be a fool to insist that you leave.”
“I’ve healed the whole bloody village. I have nothing to offer anyone here. If someone grows ill or is gravely wounded, I will be useless.”
“What do you mean?” the king gasped. “Saoirse said you healed an entire village in Quondoon. You healed a forest of Spinners. Surely you can heal again.”
“A scratch. A minor wound. A small burn. Those things I can do, over and over again. But the kind of healing I’ve done here in Caarn? I won’t be able to do it again. That kind of healing is a gift I can give only once.”
“But the woman . . . the Changer. She doesn’t know this?”
“No. And I believe that is what has protected the queen thus far. The changer doesn’t know I can’t simply heal her again.”
“Are you sure she followed you to Dendar?” the king pressed.
“No. But if she is here, I led her here. I brought this to you. It is happening all over again, and I can’t leave. Even if I wanted to. Even if it would be easier to go.”
“Then we will wait. And we will watch.” The king sighed.
“I will do what I promised. I will stay until the queen is safe. But you must guard her, Majesty,” Kjell insisted.
“Saoirse is not helpless,” Aren said.
“No. She is fearless, compassionate, and totally committed. But her visions are sporadic and incomplete. And she is not ruthless.”
“This Lady Firi, this Changer—she is ruthless?”