The Knight and the Seer Read Free Page B

Such a fool.”
    “My fault.” Andrew rocked the lifeless body in his arms. “If I hadn’t been so quick to leave. But how could I stay, knowing what you were about to do? How?”
    There was a long moment of silence, followed by a deep sigh.
    “Ye must help me help him, lass. Will ye do that?”
    Again the whisper, louder this time, and Gwenellen looked over, seeing the look of shock and grief in Andrew’s eyes. Why was he grieving, when his father was still here? Could he not hear what she heard so clearly?
    “Don’t ye see, lass? I can no longer speak to him. But I can speak with ye. And ye can be the bridge between my world and his.”
    When the realization came, Gwenellen was so startled, she could do nothing more than stare in stunned surprise. Andrew was grieving because his father was no longer here. The old man truly had slipped away to that other world. As her own father had, before she was born. And yet this man, like her father, could communicate with her. Unlike others, she felt no barrier between herself and that other world. His words were as clear, as plain, as the one who held him in his arms.
    Her grandmother’s words came to her. Everything in life happens for a reason. Even when things are seen as problems, they are merely lessons which must be learned.
    This, then, was one of her true gifts. Hadn’t her grandmother said as much? But because it had seemed so natural to talk to her father, she’d dismissed her grandmother’s words. Now, after all these years of uncertainty, it was being brought back to her more clearly than ever.
    “I’ll…do what I can, sir.”
    Andrew didn’t hear her as he lifted his father’s lifeless body in his arms and carried it through the rubble to a distant corner of the garden, where he began digging a grave.
    Setting aside her bucket, Gwenellen imitated Andrew Ross by digging through the rubble, in search of others who might need her gift.
    A short time later she heard Andrew cry out and looked over to see him unrolling a parchment that had been affixed to the center of a table by the blade of a knife. After reading it he gave a snarl of anger and crushed the parchment in his clenched fist.
    Gwenellen hurried over to stand beside him. “What is it? What have you found?”
    He seemed almost dazed, as though only vaguely aware of her presence beside him. “It’s as I’d suspected. Fergus Logan. There has been enmity between his clan and ours from the time of our ancestors. And now he’s taken his vengeance by not only boasting of killing my father, but of taking his wife as hostage.” His black mood darkened with every word. “This time his vile deeds will not go unpunished.”
    “What will you do?”
    He turned away without another word.
    In silence he returned to the rubble with a renewed sense of urgency.
    The setting sun cast the land in deep purple shadows. Gwenellen sat on a log, and watched as Andrew smoothed the dirt over the last grave and knelt to whisper a prayer. Around them were a score of fresh mounds, each of them marking the grave of one of the beloved members of his household.
    Each of them had spoken to her. An introduction. A request to carry words to family and friends left behind. Occasionally an apology for some hurt they’d failed to heal before leaving this world.
    So many voices calling out to her. Filling her mind. Touching her heart. At first it had seemed a babble of voices, until she’d begun to sort them out, giving each a bit of her time before moving on to the next. She’d listened to all, and had given her word to do what she could to ease the pain of those who were grieving. But the one that had touched her the deepest had been Andrew’s father, who expressed a fear that anger and bitterness would cloud his son’s judgment.
    Andrew knelt a moment longer in prayer before getting to his feet. When he turned, he seemed surprised to see her.
    “Why are you still here, woman?”
    “I thought…” The fierceness of the