Now, all she did was take occasional walks to the beach after every lesson with Shewit. Somehow, the journey down to the seaside cushioned her mind, keeping it from falling totally apart. Sometimes, she sensed the presence of the Camin and Lowus afar off, unwilling to come closer.
Today, she sat close to the water, crossing her legs. The waves from the sea lapped at the under of her, but Eldana stared long and deep into the distance.
She missed her friends. So much. She shut her eyes, and with each breath delved deeper and deeper into her thoughts. Like in a dream, Eldana found pictures welling up into her mind. She did not know where it was, or how it appeared to her, but she looked on anyways. She was looking at a room, dark, but for shafts of light that came in through the little openings close to the roof. The roof itself was low, because just then a face came into the shaft of light, and its head was almost touching the roof.
Eldana gasped.
It was not just any face. It belonged to Hermon. Eldana almost screamed out to him. But she was frightened of shattering the vision. The little part of his face illumined by the shaft of light revealed the amount of suffering he had undergone. Eldana’s heart burned for him. For Siem who she could not see. For Mikko and D’rmas. Tears slid down her face and dropped onto her lap.
Without warning, the scene changed. At first, Eldana had thought that the vision was over because for moments it was just darkness. Exactly as it was before she had seen this one. Then, suddenly she heard the sound of a voice, singing. The song was so soulful, its lyrics unintelligible because they were sung in another language. However, the voice and the language of singing had the halo of familiarity.
“Mother?” she whispered, the ghost of a smile on her face.
Eldana did not bother trying to cry out. She knew it would not help. Fraweyni would not hear her. Eldana had been surrounded by so much gloom and sourness lately that she felt choked. Unable to see past the murky darkness that enshrouded her. As she listened to Fraweyni’s voice, losing herself into it, she began to feel a trickle of refreshment. Like cooling summer rain.
Suddenly, Eldana’s eyes snapped open, and her mind was reinvigorated. There was purpose, there was intent, there was hope.
She got to her feet and stepped back from the edge of the water...
Thokk!
Just as an arrow stuck into the ground in front of her. Eldana turned alarmingly to her side. And saw a native of the island. A man, short, and thin. He nocked another arrow and shot. Eldana had to twist this time around to evade the shot. The man was good.
As the man reached for the quiver strapped to his hip, Eldana enclosed herself with a ball of air, and then knocked the man into the ground with air. She heard a shuffle behind her, and then turned to see a woman coming at her with an axe held high. Eldana took control of her mind, and ordered her to drop the axe, and return home. The level of hatred Eldana felt in the woman was enough to make her suck in air through her teeth and lean back in alarm. It was not the intensity of the hatred that baffled her most of all. It was the fact that the hatred was geared at her.
But why? Eldana asked herself. She had gone into the woman’s mind too sharply and had come out almost in the same manner, and because of that had not had enough time to go through the woman’s memories to determine the cause of the things she felt.
It occurred to Eldana that the man struggling at the beach floor was also a native.
There had to be a pattern here, she told herself.
She walked up to him and poked into his mind. She searched through his memories until she found what she was looking for. Scheming heretics, she thought when she was done with the man.
Sinto and Lord Taboon had spread propaganda concerning her through to the entire Toas. Using their skillfull tongues, they had subtly roused the people against her. And it did not require too much effort. The people were already weakened, and with already so much lost. They were battered by battles and natural disasters. They could only overlook so much when they were fed information about the girl responsible for their plight. Information magically spread by birds singing atop the trees, or of winds whispering in the ears of people. She knew now that the natural disasters and the disastrous yields of crops, the nations battling nations and brother turning against brother were pretty much the gods throwing tantrums.
Eldana cast her eyes around the beach. Having made certain that no one else was present, she stood and walked hurriedly back to Shewit’s. As she walked, she felt a psychic presence nudge at her mind.
One of the things Eldana had done during her stay with Shewit was to fortify her mental defenses. That way, she could keep intruders out of her head. But this presence nudged at her in a cryptic manner that she found familiar. She lowered her defenses, and she heard Shewit’s voice.
Do not come back to the house, Shewit said. Stay where you are, I am coming to get you.
Eldana looked around. She had just left the beach. There were palm trees all around her, spaced equidistantly from each other. The surrounding did not offer a proper hiding spot. Eldana walked close to a palm tree and leaned on it. She stayed at a vantage point that offered her a wider sighting angle for any person coming into the beach.
Run towards the river, Shewit commanded.
Shortly after Shewit’s instruction, Eldana heard the roar of a boat, growing louder by the moment. Eldana sprang from off the trunk of
