“What? Where?”
“I… don’t know,” he replied, frowning with confusion. “One moment, I was standing here, looking at the watchfire, and then the next…” He told her what he had seen. “It was like a dream, only I was awake… or was I?”
“You had a vision,” said Ryana.
He frowned. “How can that be? I am not villichi. I do not have the gift of Sight.”
“One does not have to be villichi to have the Sight,” Ryana said. “Anyone can have the talent, but it is very rare, even among villichi. I have never had it, nor did any of the other sisters, but Mistress Varanna said she had it sometimes, though she could not control it. She said no one can. It simply comes upon you. You saw something that has happened somewhere else… or is about to happen.”
“I tried to warn the man,” he said, “but I could not speak.”
“You were not there,” she said. “You couldn’t have warned him. It was a vision. You were right here all this time.”
He shook his head. “But it makes no sense. How could something like this happen all of a sudden? I thought people who had the Sight were born with it.”
Ryana shook her head. “No, it comes when a child starts to mature.”
“But I am not a child.”
“No, but you have changed. The spell that took away your inner tribe may have left something of them behind… or perhaps given you something else. We both know what you were, but there is as yet no way of telling what you have become.”
Sorak frowned with confusion. “Perhaps, but if my grandfather had bestowed the gift of Sight
upon me, why wouldn’t he have told me? How long was I… gone?”
“Only a moment,” she said.
“It seemed longer.” He rubbed his forehead. It ached slightly. “I don’t know what it means.”
Ryana’s eyes grew wide, and she gasped. “Sorak…look!”
She was staring at him, pointing at his waist. He looked down.
Galdra.
The broken blade was tucked into his belt. He drew it out, staring at it with astonishment. As he touched the silver wire-wrapped hilt, a faint, sparkling aura of blue thaumaturgic energy crackled briefly around the blade.
“How can this be?” he said with wonder. “You saw me throw it into the pool back at the oasis!”
She nodded.
“We both saw it sink!”
She nodded again. “It has come back to you,” she said. “It is an omen.”
“Of what?” he said, with dismay. “I don’t want the cursed thing!” He tossed it aside on the ground.
Ryana picked it up. “That won’t do any good,” she said. “You threw it into a bottomless pool and it came back to you. What makes you think you can simply throw it away now?”
“I don’t understand any of this,” said Sorak. “I thought the spell was broken.”
“Broken it may be,” Ryana said, “but there is still magic in the blade. Apparently, much more than you knew.” She offered it back to him.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t want it.”
“Take it,” she insisted.
“You take it.”