After Zanja had spread the damp blankets out to dry in the sun, she joined Emil, who was drinking a cup of the bitter bark infusion that eased the pain in his knee. The water witch and a few others sat with him, sipping with some astonishment from porcelain cups of green tea. Zanja bowed to the water witch with her hand on her heart, as his people had done to Karis earlier, and he gravely bowed to her in return. Emil said, “What will you have, green tea or willowbark or both?”

She took both, and when Annis and Medric returned they shared the hot fish, flaking the meat from the bones and wrapping it in the warm flatbread. Medric said, “These people live on one of the islands out there, and hardly ever set foot on ground at all. I wish I knew the language; there’s so much I want to ask!”

Zanja already thought of them as Otter People: a lithe and small and playful folk. She taught Medric the words she had already learned involuntarily while listening to the Otter People talk. She knew “water,” “fish,” “boat,” “bread,” and the word by which the Otter People referred to the five of them, which she supposed meant “guest” or “stranger.” The verb patterns would take longer for her to grasp, but she expected she would be speaking simple sentences in a day or two. All of them, Otter People and stranger alike, engaged in the game of word exchange, and soon the Otter People roared with infectious laughter. The water element had something to do with time and weather; very little else was known about it. Apparently, it made a people of great merriment.

Zanja found that humor difficult to endure, and finally she excused herself to check on Karis. Tucked within her womb of stone, Karis lay curled upon her side, with a hand resting palm down upon the rock. Sweat plastered the hair upon her face. She opened her eyes at Zanja’s touch, but her gaze remained dull and blank.

Medric had come in behind her. “She has a fever,” Zanja said, and added in frustration, “Despite all the elemental talent gathered there on the beach, she is our only healer, and if she could heal herself we would not be in this predicament.”

Medric said quietly, “And the smoke will not easily let her go. There’s a reason why my father’s people use it to enslave.”

“What does the future hold for her? Have you no idea?”

“I feel that we’ll be safe here, at least for now. I cannot see beyond that, because Karis’s life is in the balance.”

“There must be a way to tilt the scale.”

“Zanja, I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”

*

Though Zanja sat beside Karis that night, waiting for just a word or two with her before she slipped away again, Karis went directly into convulsions without ever leaving her stupor. It was all Zanja could do to get some smoke in her, and afterwards she paced up and down the length of the stony beach in a bitter rage, unable to endure the fact that she was losing a battle she did not even know how to fight. She did not sleep at all.

All night and all day Karis burned with fever, and not even water remained long in her stomach. She had already gone thirteen days without food, and could not survive much longer. Zanja could not endure watching her starve to death like every other smoke addict, and, in desperation, withheld the drug from her one night. After a long while, the violence of Karis’s seizures began to alternate with a death‑like stillness. Zanja finally lit and smoked a pipe herself, breathing the foul‑tasting stuff into Karis’s mouth and lungs for her, one mouthful at a time, until Karis opened her eyes and stared at her in bleak horror. At least, Zanja thought, she seemed to be conscious for once.

Then her wits deserted her entirely, and the gift of smoke was thrust upon her willy‑nilly, if a complete cessation of rational thought and physical sensation could be called a gift. Later, she would remember that she had become like a worn‑out child, who curled where she was upon bare stone and shut her eyes to sleep.

She awoke puzzled, heavy‑bodied, tortoise‑slow. A big hand smacked her cheek, and the dull shock of pain and surprise brought her upright. It was morning, well past dawn. She dimly smelled the cookfires’ smoke, and heard the laughter of the Otter People as they gathered up their nets. A fist caught her braids and she was jerked back down onto the pallet beside Karis, and a muscled arm embraced her throat.

Karis’s voice rasped in her ear. “You will not smoke again. Swear.”

Clawing at the blacksmith’s muscles, Zanja choked, “No.”

“Swear!”

Black spots swam before Zanja’s eyes. “Only–to save–your life,” she gasped.

“My life is not worth such a price!”

And then she was shoved irresistibly away onto the bare stone, where she lay until her vision stopped swirling and she dared sit up, rubbing her neck and testing the hair at the back of her head to make certain it was still attached. “It’s good to see you feeling so well,” she said, speaking with some difficulty.

Karis lay upon her back, breathing convulsively, tense with rage, as though she was about to leap up and wreck the cave and all its contents, like a berserker. Zanja got up and went to the door. Emil and Medric lay in each other’s arms on the stony beach, groggy with love and sunshine. She shouted imperiously at them to bring some porridge, and they both stared at her.

She went back in, and knelt at Karis’s side, and begged her pardon for taking a risk she’d had no choice about and had every intention of taking again should the need arise. Her patent insincerity was enough to make Karis smile weakly. “I guess I didn’t make much of an impression.”

Zanja rubbed a bruised elbow. “You made an impression all right.”

As Emil came in with the porridge, followed by Medric, they each in turn blocked the sunlight and cast the cave into shadow. Emil still limped badly. He bowed ironically as he handed Zanja some porridge. “I had checked on you just minutes ago.”

“I was rudely awakened and it made me ill‑mannered. I am sorry.”

“Well, you’ve been under a strain,” Emil said more kindly. “How is she?”

He looked directly into Karis’s face and recoiled with surprise.

Zanja remembered then what it had been like to meet Karis for the first time, to feel the shocking, palpable presence of her intelligence, like a handshake that leaves the hand aching. Emil, whose talent made people’s hearts transparent to him, dropped heedlessly to his knees. Karis gazed at him in some puzzlement, then at Medric, who had crouched, wide‑eyed, beside him, and then she turned to Zanja and said, “I should know these people.”

“They helped in your escape and have been with us ever since. These are my friends, Emil Paladin and the seer Medric.”

“How could this be?” Karis said blankly.

Much to Zanja’s relief, Emil’s look of astonishment gave way to a genuine smile. “Well, Karis, Medric had a dream that Zanja needed us, and so as soon as we could we traded our dray horse and wagon for a couple of riding horses, and nearly killed them coming here cross‑country, rather to Zanja’s surprise. But for us it was very simple, really.”

Karis looked from him to Medric.

Medric said, “Karis, you are the hope of Shaftal.”

There was a silence. Karis said, “So I see that, like all seers, you are mad.”

Zanja convinced Karis to eat while she explained where they were and how they had gotten there. Before she finished the tale, Karis’s tremors began again, and Medric and Emil delicately took their leave. Karis set the mostly empty bowl aside and lay back upon the plain pallet, wan and hollow‑eyed. She said, “I didn’t want and never would have chosen the ancient office of G’deon. But your fire blood friends seem enchanted by the glamour of it.”

Zanja said, “Oh, yes, it is quite glamorous. I myself am struck dumb by the glory of it.”

Karis shut her eyes, and said heavily, “I know I should laugh. But the truth is too bitter. For fifteen years I have carried this weight within the flawed receptacle of my flesh and bones, and as if that weren’t enough, have also borne the burden of Mabin’s unremitting censure and Norina’s overbearing solicitude. Mercy could only be had from the secrecy that allowed me to be a mere earth witch and metalsmith of modest ambitions. Now that mercy is gone.”