Karavans Read Online Free PDF Page A

Ilona sipped more tea. “Not often enough to concern me.”
    “Then what brings you to me?”
    Ilona drew in a deep breath. “What I saw last night … the images seemed to be of a
future
time and place, not a jumble of memories or suppositions. I felt that clearly. They were vivid, disturbing, and they awakened me from a sound sleep.”
    Lerin nodded. “A presentiment.”
    “This is Jorda’s last trip of the season,” Ilona explained, “and he’s late departing. You would think I’d dream of all the tasks that need to be done hastily, instead of what Isaw.” With effort, she drank down the dregs of the bitter tea. “The dream felt—different.”
    The dream-reader reached out and took the cup from Ilona’s hands, smiling slightly. “Well, we shall discover what you saw, and what it means. I see the tea is working; do you feel relaxed?”
    Ilona was aware of a lassitude sweeping through her body. “I feel as if I might sleep for months!”
    “Oh, no. Sleep comes after.” Lerin made a gesture. “Lie down there, if you please, on your back.”
    Ilona followed instructions and settled upon the pallet made comfortable by cushions and blankets. She stretched, hearing subtle cracks of tense muscles. “If nothing else, my back will be improved before we rattle it to pieces again upon the karavan roads!”
    Lerin set the cup aside and knelt at the head of the pallet, settling long, dark skirts. “I will place my hands on your brow, like so.” Ilona felt the cool fingers resting against her skin. “I will draw the dreams out from hiding, but you will have to guide me, Ilona. Find the images you saw, those that disturbed your sleep. Place them at the forefront of your awareness. If they are mixed with other dreams of no consequence, I won’t be able to give you an accurate reading.”
    Ilona wasn’t certain she could unwind the pertinent dreams from the others, particularly since she had been told to do just that. Her subconscious was recalcitrant that way. But as the tea worked through her body, she let it also invade her mind.
    “Good,” Lerin said softly. “Call up the dreams, Ilona. Remember them as clearly as you can.”
    “They’re just fragments,” she murmured, eyes drifting closed.
    “Fragments are merely pieces needing someone to put them together into a whole. As you read hands, so I read dreams. Trust me, Ilona. Let go, and bring those fragments forward.”
    Crimson lightning. Steaming rain. Howling wind. Hecari. A karavan, turning back. A woman in profile.
    Fragments. Moments. Nothing more.
    “Let go, Ilona.” Lerin’s voice was soft. “Let them become
my
memories.”
    Ilona exhaled. She let the memories of the dream, the tangled skein of images, leave her mind and enter Lerin’s.

Chapter 3
    “
I WANT TO GO HOME,” Torvic announced, leaning out of the high-sided wagon so far his elder sister snatched his tunic and yanked him back down.
    By rote, Audrun answered, “We must go on, Torvic.”
    “I want to go home,” Megritte echoed; as she would, as expected, because she followed Torvic’s lead in all things. She was four. He, at five, had the sagacity of age.
    Torvic also had the stubbornness of their father. “I want to go
home.
”
    And it was Ellica, fifteen, the eldest girl, who said what her mother longed to: “There
isn’t
any ‘home’ anymore, Torvic! The Hecari stole it all!”
    “Hush,” said Audrun. “Not here.” The enemy’s ears were everywhere.
    Gillan, the oldest son, heir-in-waiting to whatever they might make of the new land, knotted a sixteen-year-old fist into a hank of Torvic’s tousled fair hair. “Be still, sprat. Do you think Mam needs to hear such talk? Da said to wait here, and be still. So—
be still.
”
    “I
am
still,” Torvic retorted, very carefully not moving at all so he wouldn’t actually be lying. “But I can talk. Da didn’t say I couldn’t talk!”
    Ellica muttered, “Da should have.”
    Megritte, whose braids were loosening into