Chapter 77: Morning Walk
The gate was ten feet away when she said it.
Darion didn’t respond immediately. They walked the remaining distance and through the gate, past the two guard knights, back into the courtyard, and he let the silence sit for a moment before he spoke.
"Not a good one?" he repeated.
Seren looked at the courtyard ground.
"It means she used what she had when it suited her and didn’t much care what it cost other people. She was never powerful enough to be dangerous at any real scale. Just powerful enough to make things difficult for the people near her."
They had slowed without deciding to, walking in a loose circle around the courtyard rather than going back inside.
"My father died when I was six," she said. "From hunting, actually. Nothing significant. He just didn’t come back one day." There was a pause. "There were three of us. Me and two sisters."
"Older or younger?" Darion asked.
"One of each." She looked at the wall. "Both awakened something useful. My older sister could read the weather, not control it, just read it, days ahead and accurately. In a farming region that’s worth real money. My younger sister had a healing ability." She said it without bitterness. "They did well. Found places to be useful that people were willing to pay for."
Those were really useful abilities, Darion noted. The reading of weather might look ordinary and not a great ability in battle, but it was something that could fetch the user lots of money.
Imagine going to a kingdom and predicting the weather accurately for them. They could use it to know when to farm, when not to, when to organize outdoor occasions, and when not to.
The same applied to the healing ability. Being able to heal made one a magical doctor.
"And you?" Darion asked.
"I didn’t awaken anything for years. My mother thought I might be ordinary. She wasn’t cruel about it, just kind of worried. If I wasn’t going to have an ability, I needed to be useful some other way, so she taught me what she knew. She taught me about soil treatment." She glanced at him.
Darion said nothing. He understood that as daughters of a sorceress, they were supposed to have abilities relating to magic.
Though perhaps the reason she didn’t have an ability like her siblings was because she was more like her father—ordinary and without magic?
"How did the ability actually show up?" he asked.
"Well, I touched soil. I was maybe twelve, in a patch of ground behind the house that my mother had been trying to grow something in for years without success. I put my hands in the dirt and something... shifted. I can’t describe it better than that. The soil responded to something in me and I responded to it." She looked at her hands briefly. "It grew from there. Small things first. A dead patch coming back. A struggling plant finding its feet. I didn’t understand what it was for a long time, until my mother did and taught me how to actually do it."
"I left home eventually, like my sisters did to a faraway kingdom to stay alone. There I tried to take up my abilities as a profession, but..." she sighed. "I haven’t been exactly successful. Most people just wanted to exploit me, which I’ve refused, and that has led to incidents like what happened with Gonnb."
"Gonnb’s men took me in the middle of a road. Four of them. I was traveling between two towns and they just took me. Apparently their fields had been failing for two seasons and someone had heard about a Soilsinger operating in the region."
"Even if I might not seem happy that you took me, I owe you my gratitude. I eat well here, and sleep somewhere soft, unlike Gonnb, where I barely ate and slept on the ground."
Darion absorbed that, looking at her, not knowing what to say.
They walked in silence for a moment.
"The dusts," Darion said, changing the subject slightly. "You said your mother taught you. She made them?"
"She developed the formulas," Seren replied. "The combinations, the ratios, and which minerals do what to which soil conditions. That part she was good at. Whatever else she was, she understood the theory completely. The dusts were her contribution. She couldn’t use them herself, her ability didn’t work with soil, but she understood enough to prepare them." Seren looked at the bundle under her arm. "These are the last batch she made before I left. I’ve been careful with them."
"Do they run out?" Darion asked.
"Eventually." She considered how to explain it. "They refill, but slowly. The ability that lets me use them is connected to the supply somehow. When I use a lot in one session, the dusts take longer to restore. A small session and they’re back faster." She shifted the bundle slightly. "If I pushed too hard every day, I’d eventually be working with nothing."
Darion scratched the back of his head, not knowing what to say but trying to say something.
"I see," he paused, then said: "I just want to let you know you’re not a prisoner here. It might seem like it, but it’s not. If you’re done with the farmlands and you’re paid, you’re free to go. I can assure you you’ll be paid well."
Seren was silent for a few seconds.
"Alright," she said. "I hope you stick to your word."
She glanced at him. "And thanks for the walk. It’s been a long time since I spoke to anyone like this."
Darion nodded slightly. "Same."
They kept walking.
The courtyard was quiet, the morning going about its business around them. From the stable came the sound of Wulfric feeding the horses.
Then boots on stone, fast.
A knight came around the corner of the gate at a pace that wasn’t running but was close to it, saw Darion, and came directly toward him.
"M’lord."
Darion turned fully. "What?"
"A messenger has arrived."
"From where?"
The knight looked at him steadily.
"Valdenmoor."