THE FIRST GIFTED – 4 – The Old Seer of the Maw
Caylinn sat by the window, looking out at the flurry of activity. It had been several long months since Riccar and his brother Dichel had set out in search of Azmith, and no news of them had reached her ears. She wondered if the old seer Hareen, who served the village council on occasion, had seen what was to come. Her father had been quiet, as of late, not speaking to her. And her mother, bless her, was still trying to convince Caylinn that Fromir was the right man for her.
"Ho! Watch where you're going!"
The sudden shout brought Caylinn out of her reverie. Blinking, she turned back and looked out the window, watching as Fromir, strong and tall, glared at the little scampering children as they darted around him. He was handsome, she'd grant him that much, but he was not a kind spirited man. His brawny chest, bronzed by hours of hard labor out in the sun, glistened with sweat as he stretched and continued the woodcutting.
Fromir, Jagen, and Lokin, had all been assigned the task of building the stand for the ceremony that would soon announce the selection of the new First of Council. Her father, Taygen, was stepping down soon, and Garth was about to assume the role. Riccar had told her that Garth was neutral towards him and their idea of a union, and had believed that the man would bless it, whereas her father would not. Now that her father was stepping down, Caylinn was beginning to wonder if Riccar's quest into the forbidden zone had been premature.
"Quite a specimen of manhood, is he not?"
Startled, once again, from her thoughts, Caylinn turned to see her father standing in the doorway of the room. She frowned and gave a noncommittal nod, averting her gaze and continued with combing her long raven hair.
"Soon it shall be time for you to take a husband, my child," Taygen said, stepping more fully into the room. "Fromir will make a fine husband… strong, and brave… and very dedicated to his work."
"Yes, dedicated to his work," she concurred, not disputing any of the qualities that her father spoke. "But he lacks the sentiments of a kind man. Look how easily he is provoked by the playful scampering of the children."
Taygen shrugged, looking at his daughter with cunning eyes. "How he tolerates the young matters not in the production of strong healthy offspring."
Caylinn gasped, and jerked her head up, not bothering to hide the disgust in her eyes. "Is that all your thinking of… the quality of offspring that shall be produce from a union between myself and Fromir?" she asked, incredulously.
"It is a wise to think of the future, Caylinn," Taygen countered. "I want only what is best—"
"For the village!" Caylinn interrupted, finishing his words easily. "But not for me." She huffed and crossed her arms, turning away from him.
"Can they not be one and the same?" he asked, his voice soft and hopeful.
"No," Caylinn shook her head. "Fromir… he… he may be pleasing to the eye, all muscles and brawn, but where it counts, in the mind and heart, he is sorely lacking."
Taygen chuckled. "Are you still pinning away for that fool Riccar?"
"Riccar is no fool, father," Caylinn countered. "Unlike Fromir, Riccar has all the qualities most women would want in a husband."
"He is a troublemaker," Taygen said. "Rebellious and contemptuous of authority."
"So were you, before you became the authority," she spit back, angry.
Her father raised his eyebrows and glanced out the window, watching as Fromir cruelly mocked Jagen, who had inadvertently hit his hand with the hammer. Caylinn followed his gaze and scowled.
"See how he mocks Jagen show cruelly, he whom he calls friend?" She shook her head. "That is not the sort of man you want as the father of your grandchildren, nor the kind of man you want to bed you only daughter."
Taygen blinked and looked back at her. "Wait… please tell me you have not given yourself to him?"
"No," she shook her head. "I am still pure, father. He is an honorable man, noble and virtuous. He would never have forced himself on me. And I shall remain as such until Riccar returns to me."
"Then you might have to wait a long time, my daughter," Taygen replied, shaking his head. "You will wither and grow old, turning into an old crone, never to have felt the touch of another."
Caylinn's eyes grew wide. "What?"
Taygen sighed and looked away for a moment. "Riccar and Dichel shall not be returning, Caylinn," he answered. "The forbidden zone is forbidden for a reason. Demons and fierce creatures that no living man has ever seen plague the White Mountains. Even if he makes it to Azmith, which I doubt he will, Riccar will not be returning. He is probably already dead. So please, Caylinn, my daughter… do not grieve for a fool."
"No," Caylinn shook her head, tears forming in her eyes. "He is not dead."
Sitting down on the bench beside her, Taygen tentatively placed a hand on Caylinn's shoulder. She stiffened and shrugged him off, scooting away. Looking up, her eyes glared with anger.
"You did this on purpose," she snapped. "You knew… didn't you? You knew the likelihood of his quest, and you still let him go!"
"Riccar is nothing," Taygen said. "He was going nowhere, making nothing of himself. He would never have been the husband you wished."
Caylinn shoved her father away, bolting up and burying her head in hands as she cried, terrified that her father spoke the truth of her beloved's fate. Darting out of the room, her hair flying behind her, Caylinn ran, wanting to create as much distant between herself and her father. He was a cruel man. Only thinking of a future he wanted, and never—never—upon what his own flesh and blond hoped for her future. No. He had to have things his way. So he had sent the only man Caylinn had ever truly loved away to his death, hoping that his absence would make Caylinn's love fade.
He was wrong. Caylinn's love did not fade. It grew stronger. Riccar was risking so much for her… for them. So much, that her love for him grew in leaps and bounds. She owed everything to him, and nothing to her father. Nothing. Her father, who only thought of himself and never of her.
As she ran, Caylinn was oblivious to the shouts and cries of others, and soon, when she came to her senses, found herself lost in the wild forests that surrounded their village. For a moment, she stopped, standing starkly still. The Maw was not a place to get lost in. Dangerous predators still roamed the forests, and the sun was close to sitting. Her heart pounded in her chest as the fear dying alone and lost in the woods overtook her.
Turning to flee back, hopefully in the direction of the village, Caylinn came to a sudden halting stop when she came face to face with a crinkly old maid.
The woman had once been tall, but bow in old age she'd developed a hunched back, and stood slumped against her walking staff. The wood was just as old and gnarly as the woman, with a large scarlet diamond embedded into the head of the staff. The worn robed, draped over the sharp shoulders of the old woman, was mottled with mud and dirt, moth-eaten, with holes and loose threads.
A tangled string of colored beads made of glass, stone, and metal hung from the long hollowed sleeves and when the woman opened her arms wide, it appeared like she had rainbow colored wings. Feathers, from various birds, but mainly those of a carrion nature, were sewn along the cowl covering her head, mixed in with dried leaves, various coins, and some tiny bones form perhaps a small rodent of some kind.
Slowly, a weathered hand came up and pulled back the cowl covering her face. Her features were equally as weathered as the rest of her. Feathers and various strings of the colored beads cluttered her long gray hair, unkempt and tangled. Her eyes were a mottled with silver streaks and she appeared blind, though her eyes were as sharp as ever, as evidence by the fact she was staring straight into Caylinn's.
It was this strange attire that gave away the old woman's identity. Caylinn did not need to see her face to know who she was, but when she had pulled the hood down, it had merely confirmed what Caylinn had been suspecting. This hunched, old woman was none other than the Seer Hareen.
"Caylinn, Daughter of Taygen… you are far into the Maw, late as it is," came the woman's voice, still firm and resounding in its old age. "Pray tall, what brings you out here into wilderness, my child?"
"My father," Caylinn answered in a shaky voice.
The Seer stuck on her jaw and gave a curt nod. "He intends to marry you to the strongman… to Fromir, son of Dromir. Yes?"
Caylinn nodded weakly. "Yes, Mistress Seer."
Hareen tilted her head slightly, the beads strung to her robe jangling as she adjusted her hold on the staff. "Lie with the strongman, and you shall have many healthy sons, enough to carry on the legacy of the House of Taygen."
Caylinn gulped and starred at the Seer, the woman who could see the future, gifted, as such, by the Creator. Hareen turned again, her brow furrowing.
"Is that my future?" Caylinn asked. "Am I destined to marry Fromir?"
Hareen stared at her for the longest moment. "The future is not written in stone, my child," the old Seer said. "What I see are possible outcomes of unfolding events. If things proceed as they are, you will be wedded to Fromir, and the strongman will seed you with many strong sons."
Caylinn shuddered, not liking the imagery this line of conversation placed in her head. She only ever wanted to be with Riccar. "And the other possible future?"
Hareen scowled, "A dangerous and dark path that it is, though still a possibility."
So Riccar was still alive. Her father had been deceiving her, hoping to push his own agenda and get her to marry Fromir.
"Should you follow that path, sons are not for you," Hareen continued, her voice turning raspy. "A see man, a man destined for great, yet terrible things. You will lie with him, and the seeds shall be planted, yet now son shall grow… only daughter shall you bear."
"Who?" Caylinn asked, willing it to be the man she longed for, the man she loved. "Who is this man?"
"The troublemaker," Hareen frowned. "He walks a path outside the line, makes his own trail, his own future."
"Do you know his name?" Caylinn questioned, not even hiding the desperation in her voice.
Hareen turned her silver streaked eyes back to Caylinn. "If you marry him, your two souls shall be linked… for all time. Forever searching for one another, and always finding each other. The path shall not always be easy, and many trials and tribulations will mark the way."
"His name, please?" Caylinn begged, having already dropped to her knees before the old woman. She was not ashamed of the tears that welled in her eyes as her hands reached up and clutched at the mottled old robe.
The Seer heaved in a deep breath that rattled her old frame. "The timeless one, is he… boundless and unimaginable. Gifted in ways that only the very first, in a time before remembering, have been."
"Please? Hareen… Mistress Seer… does he have a name?"
"Father of the Slaver, they shall call him, of the great evil all men and women fear," Hareen spoke, almost as if in a trance, her eyes staring off into nothing.
With a sudden move, the old woman grasped Caylinn by the wrist, roughly pulling her up to her feet. She cried out at Hareen's fierce grip, as the old seer slid a palm against Caylinn's abdomen and below her waist, laying it flat above the plane of her pelvis where her womb was.
"If you follow your heart, giving yourself to the man who owns it, a child shall be born from the womb… a child like none other," Hareen hissed, her yellow teeth and decaying breath suffocating Caylinn. Turning back to Caylinn, the Seer stared into her eyes. "The fates will grant you but one son with the Father, and that son shall be a plague upon the world, the bane of all existence… a monster."
Hareen's hand moved up from Caylinn lower stomach and she grabbed Caylinn's head, her eyes boring into hers. "You shall loathe your son," the Seer continued, "despise yourself for bearing him into this world. And for a time, you will cease to love this man you love… and you will tell him… command him... to kill the demon child you bore. And he shall do as you command, fore he loves you with all his heart and soul, more than life itself."
"No… no," Caylinn sobbed.
Hareen's hold on her head increased and Caylinn felt the pressure tightening to an unbearable level. The old Seer's gaze bore hard into hers like a fiery blaze.
"You will remember nothing of this. Nothing."
It all went black.
When Calyinn woke up, she found herself lying alone and unmolested on the dewy moss of the ground before a tall wayward pine. She blinked and sat up, groaning as she brought a hand to her forehead. She had a terrible headache. Shifting, she pushed off the ground and looked around, curious as to how she had come to be here. The last thing she remembered was running out of her home, her father saying that Riccar was dead and that she would marry Fromir.