“Not here, Saoirse,” the king warned, noting the attention she had begun to draw. “We will speak of this privately.”
“No Volgar bones. Not in Caarn,” Sasha said slowly, still lost in her vision.
The people within hearing distance exclaimed in fear, and the word trickled down the tables.
“The queen has seen the Volgar!”
“She is a Seer. The queen is a Seer and she says the Volgar will return.”
“We will have to hide again!”
“We will have to leave Caarn.”
The panic became a thrumming murmur as one person spoke to another, seeking comfort in conference, until the king stood, and with a booming voice, demanded quiet.
“The queen is weary. We are all weary, and sadly, we are still afraid. What the queen was speaking of is not a vision but a terrible memory. Sit. Eat. Be merry. We have much to celebrate. No one is in danger this eve.”
The people nodded, some laughing at their own fear. Others looked unconvinced. Kjell didn’t return to his seat but stood with his back to the wall, directly behind the queen’s chair, standing guard. Sasha said no more, but bowed her head, lost in her own thoughts, and the temporary uproar was tamped down and smoothed more. But the mood had changed and soon the guests began to depart, blaming the late hour and the long day, their aching heads and their weary wives.
The king had lost his good humor as well, and sat woodenly beside the frozen queen, bidding adieu to bowing guests with a flutter of his hand and a tip of his head, until no one remained in the hall with him but the queen, Padrig, Kjell and the members of the guard still stationed at the doors.
“What did you see, Majesty?” Kjell asked quietly.
The king tossed his crown onto the table in front of him. It clattered heavily and Sasha flinched, but she answered Kjell.
“Wings. Talons. The eastern hills. Pounding hearts,” she listed. Her voice was flat, cold even, but her eyes swam with distress.
“And what do you think it means?” Kjell pressed.
“The Volgar will be drawn back to Caarn. We are food. They smell our blood.”
“There could be another explanation for your vision!” Padrig wailed. “We don’t have to assume the worst.”
“Padrig,” the king warned wearily. “Don’t be a fool. It is one thing to be optimistic. It is another to be blind.”
“I can’t leave Caarn again. I won’t,” Padrig said, shaking his head.
“And we cannot hide,” the king agreed. “If I spin again, I won’t be able to come back.”
“Spinning is not meant to be permanent. It is one thing to change straw to gold. To change air to fire, to pull food from the soil. These things are not living. But when a man becomes something he is not, for any length of time, whether he be a beast or a tree, it dulls his spirit and represses his very self. We must use our gifts . . . but we can’t hide behind them,” Sasha said.
“So we will use what we have,” Kjell said with finality.
“We cannot fight birdmen with leaves and roots, Healer!” Padrig cried.
“Maybe . . . we can,” Kjell said. “If you can pull plants from the ground with the palm of your hands, King Aren, you can cause vines to grow. We will set snares. We will make traps.”
Aren shook his head like he couldn’t believe it was all happening again.
“We will fight back,” Sasha urged. Her jaw was set and her color was high. She’d wanted to fight back once, and she’d been sent away.
Padrig moaned, but he didn’t protest.
“When are they coming?” Kjell asked.
“When the leaves are vibrant on the hills,” Sasha whispered.
The king and Padrig gasped, and Kjell’s heart sank.
Summer was already waning. The leaves on the trees above Caarn were still green, but the light was shifting, the air smelled different, and the days weren’t quite as long.
It seemed the village had been brought to life only to die a quick death.
The following morning, the gifted man with the bellowing voice stood on the highest tower in the castle keep, and with his head tipped toward the sky to avoid blasting the people below, he called the villagers to the castle keep. The people of Caarn trudged into the courtyard, bleary-eyed and yawning, drowsy from too much drink and drained from too much dancing. The celebration had barely ended, and the king was summoning them back.
In grave tones and sober words, King Aren told his people to prepare. There was shock and denial, anger and fear. Some asked why and how, others raged that fate was cruel. Many demanded answers and all demanded hope.
But no one wanted to hide.
The men were adamant. The women refused. The children trembled at the mere suggestion. Kjell began the work of drafting a battle plan based solely on Sasha’s premonitions, calling on his guard and the Gifted to assist. The Spinners worked long hours, harvesting and storing, creating stock-piles for the cold months ahead, praying that Caarn would live to see them. The king spent his days among the growers, convinced that his gifts would be better used preparing for winter than preparing for war. He left that to Kjell and everything else to his queen. He wore the dejected air of a man defeated, and though he worked as hard as any man, his eyes strayed to the forests, and he listened with only half an ear when Kjell sought his counsel.
“In Jeru City the Volgar surprised us. In Caarn, we know they’re coming.”
“How did you defeat them?” a young recruit asked.
“Queen Lark made them fall from the sky,” Kjell answered, remembering.
“How did she do that?” the Sea Changer marveled.
“With words. But we don’t have words,” Kjell mused.
“But we have wind,” Dev’s mother spoke up. “My son could make a great gust to knock them down.”
“We have earth,” Jedah added.
“We have sound,” Boom bellowed, trying to whisper but making the glass in the windows shake instead.
“And we have vines,” Jerick reminded.
“We will spread vines from the castle walls to the turrets. When we are finished, the Castle of Caarn will look like a giant tent, covered in green. And we will stand beneath, spears raised, waiting for the Volgar to fall into our pit. When they do, their wings will tangle in the vines, and we will kill them.”
They would use everything they had, and Kjell would continue to pray that the Changer, who still lurked somewhere in the woods, would wait her turn to come against him, or give up altogether. Even Changers were not safe from Volgar bloodlust. The thought encouraged him.
Kjell was awakened by a shake to his shoulder and a reluctant voice in his ear. It was the cat-eyed Gaspar, and his irises gleamed above Kjell in the dark.
“Captain, there is someone at the gate who seeks entry.”
Kjell was awake immediately, shooting up from his bed, images of the Changer pleading sweetly with the watchman playing through his head.
“He says he is King Tiras of Jeru. But he is . . . unclad. He insisted you would want to see him. D-do you want to see him, sir?” Gaspar sounded doubtful.