Chapter V

Premonitions

Hammet– and therefore Ivan– stayed in Xian for two more weeks. During that time, Ivan seemed to take a liking to Xian. It was unsurprising: Xian was tranquil, peacful, the villagers were polite and kind. He came to the martial arts school about once every three or four days and watched in near-silence with his new friend, Mirielle. He helped Hammet with his work and managed to give the entire town a good impression of him.

It was the most nerve-wracking fortnight of Hama's life. To his credit, she never saw him read anyone's mind while he was there, although she was still careful to guard her thoughts around him. She spent a great deal of time pretending to be sick in her home or injured from practice. So on the day when she saw Hammet and Ivan leave the town through the Silk Pass, it was one of the biggest reliefs of her life. It didn't last long, though.

Hama left the school and headed for her home, enjoying not having to look over her shoulder the entire way, a little disappointed that she didn't have to. Whether she'd been able to talk to him or not… it was good to know he was well.

Thunder crashed overhead, making Hama shiver, oddly enough. Storms usually didn't make her nervous or uneasy. There wasn't anything unusual that she could feel about this one, though; it was a typical storm. Lightning, thunder, rain and wind, none of them bad things, at least, not to Hama. They had comforted her since before she could read or write, possibly since she'd been born. Now though… It was sending a chill down her back.

She went inside and changed for bed. The uneasy feeling in her stomach was building by the moment, although she couldn't put a name to it. It wasn't sickness, although it was like it. It was… like nervousness or worry, an unsettled feeling. She took down a scroll and began to read. For the first time in her life, she didn't absorb the information on the page; she only skimmed the words without knowing what they meant. Eventually she replaced it in its alcove without finishing it. She simply could not concentrate. She lay down to sleep, found herself too distracted again, and had to meditate for twenty minutes before she relaxed enough to fall asleep.

She was woken the next morning by a dream– one of a landslide on Silk Road. When her eyes snapped open and she sat up (a little too swiftly) waves of dull pain, similar to the feel of an overworked muscle after rest, assailed her head. It was the feeling that accompanied the use of Psynergy; she was as accustomed to it as to the feeling of hunger or fatigue. Her headache did not bother her; her dream did.

Covered in cold sweat, she threw her covers off of herself, crossing the room and dressing– not bothering to remove her nightclothes first– in the space of about ten seconds, before racing out the door, startling several villagers. After a few moments of running madly for the gates, she realised the picture she made and rushed back inside, dressing more thoroughly this time. Her shoes half-on, she paused. …If she went to them in this much haste, she would have a few questions to answer, questions she was not equipped to answer. …What was more, her rushing there could be the thing that delayed them, kept them in the pass, cost them time…and their lives. If she were caught in the pass, she might not survive, and that would render all of her training and research useless and deprive her brother of an ally, when he and his future companions would need every one they could get.

Focusing her mind with some difficulty, she reached out for Ivan, trying to see where he was, what would happen to him, what had happened to him. She found nothing, only a handful of conflicting, scattered images and a vague sense of his presence to the west of Xian. She rubbed her temples and got a drink of water, trying to refresh herself, thinking she was merely tired, and tried again. Still she saw nothing. All she could percieve was a vauge sense of danger, and an equally vague sense of his presence. She sighed and lay back down on the bed, forcing herself to remain where she was.

This was proving very hard indeed… Just as Nyumpa had said it would.

It was an uneventful trip, for the first two or three hours. The horse walked, Hammet sat on her and held the reins, Bunza walked beside them and chatted, Ivan dozed in the wagon. It was perfectly and totally uneventful.

The events started when, halfway through the pass into the Lamakan Desert, Hammet checked on Ivan and Ivan wasn't there. Bunza went back for him. He came back an hour later, his normally friendly face showing signs of extreme displeasure. Hammet suppressed a feeling of nervousness; whatever Ivan had done couldn't be that bad.

The boy had climbed up a tree and refused to come down. Muttering curses under his breath, Hammet turned Ana around and went back for Ivan. He was, indeed, up a tree.

"Ivan. Get down now," Hammet ordered him, seeing a patch of blond hair between the leaves. The boy leaned outward so that the rest of his face could be seen.

"Only if I don't have to go into the pass," he replied. Hammet thought he had heard wrongly. What objection could the boy have to the pass? Yet, Ivan was not the sort of boy who misspoke; he was impressively coherent for his age.

"Why not?" Hammet asked, wondering how long this would take. The boy had a nightmare or some such, or he'd turned out claustrophobic. Either way, he was going through that pass; the only other way was around the eastern edge of Angara, through Kolima. That was too far to go on a whim.

Ivan frowned, looking at his feet. "I don't know… but I don't want to go in. It makes me feel sick, almost. Nervous." Bunza shook his head.

"Nonsense," he said. Privately, Hammet agreed, although he was digging through his memory, trying to remember all that he could about the boy's powers. Not that he was going to mention any of that to Bunza; he didn't want to be thought insane.

"Ivan, come down. You're holding us up. It's just the cliffs bothering you, it's that they're so high. You'll get used to it." Ivan shook his head.

"The cliffs aren't the problem… now… but there's something bad in there. I can feel it," he replied. "Master Hammet, I am serious. This is serious."

Hammet looked up at the sky. It was getting late, and wild animals liked to lair in the mountains; being caught in there after dark was not a prospect he relished, and it was looking inescapable now. In all fairness, they hadn't had much of a chance of it in the first place. They wouldn't get far at all now, if they started going, and there was obviously something wrong with Ivan. What in the names of the gods did he mean by 'now'? They weren't yet? They had been but it was something else now? Ivan was plain inscrutable sometimes. Hammet turned away from the tree and reasoned with Bunza. He was an easier target, at least, than Ivan at his most recalcitrant, as he seemed to be now.

"It's nearly suppertime anyway, Bunza. If he has something to eat, and gets a good night's sleep, he'll forget all about it. Either that, or we stick him in the wagon while he sleeps and go through the pass then. Agreed?" Bunza nodded, still reluctant.

"It's a lot of trouble just for the boy. …But I'm not going through that pass at night," he added. Hammet nodded.

"In the morning, then," he replied, before calling up to Ivan. "Alright. We'll stay here for the night. Alright?" Ivan nodded slowly and began to descend the tree, dropping from branch to branch and sliding down the last portion of trunk with an almost complete lack of fear. Hammet began making the supper for that night while Ivan set up the camp with Bunza. Bunza gathered extra firewood periodically, and Ivan tended to the horses. They set up camp, then abandoned it for the wagon's covered space when the first drops of rain started to fall as lightning flashed across the sky.

Hammet and Bunza wrapped themselves in spare bedrolls; the one's they'd been using were already wet and had been left in a heap in the corner. Ivan curled up in his own spare and fell asleep quickly, although the two men were kept up for quite a while by the crashing thunder and howling wind.

Because he'd slept more easily, undisturbed by the storm, Ivan was the first up the next morning. He took some food from the packs in the wagon and ate while he looked around the camp. Both the horses were grazing contentedly, although when he asked, both admitted that they had been scared of the storm the previous night. He assured them everything was fine, yes, it had been a bad storm; even he'd been scared. After his breakfast was gone, he walked over to the entrance to the pass.

All of the fear he'd felt the previous night was gone. He was still wary of the pass, though, unsure of what had scared him so thoroughly. He'd had those sort of feelings before, though, once when he'd been in an old building, once when he'd seen two men arguing with the guards in front of the palace. The building had collapsed a few days after he'd been in it, and the men had turned out to be Lunpan thieves. He hadn't told anyone; he'd thought he'd be laughed at or accused of insanity. He climbed up a ladder leading to the higher roads, used by hikers, the adventurous and those wanting a view of the road; Ivan wanted to see the view. He rested against a stunted tree trying to grow in the sparse soil on the cliff– he was tired.

Now, his feeling had been correct again. The entire pass was blocked off by a solid wall, seven feet taller than Ivan himself, of mud, rock and dirt. It had happened about two or three miles down the road; other walls blocked passage further on, but not quite as solidly. All had been caused by the cliffs collapsing; the huge indentations whence the rock and dirt had fallen were easy to see, as if the cliffs wanted to show them off.

Ivan rubbed his eyes. He was having trouble focusing on anything he thought, he was tired, he had a headache. All of these things happened when he used his power, but he hadn't used it lately. Not since they'd gotten into Xian. He wondered when he'd used it, because some of it was missing and that only happened when he used his power.

Suddenly, his thoughts became a lot clearer and more focused, but also more urgent. It was as if his own mind were screaming at itself inside his head. …He was used to this, but not quite so loudly, and he clapped his hands to his ears.

Get down! Off the cliff! Now!! Ivan got the sense of the impulse from the feeling of terror and impending danger easily, and scrambled down the cliff as quickly as he could, jumping down half the ladder- he had never been afraid of heights. As he fell, he felt the earth tremble and raced away from the pass as quickly as he could, stopping well outside it. His haste had been unnecessary- it was a further five or so minutes before the cliffs gave way and blocked the pass again, but Ivan still swallowed nervously, knowing how likely his chances of surviving that landslide had been. Turning, he ran back to camp, not wanting to be anywhere near the pass.

The crash of the landslide rached Hammet and Bunza, waking them and frightening the horses all over again. Hammet looked around, eyes blurry from sleep, for the source of the disturbance. Something was wrong with the scene in front of him, but he couldn't quite see what it was… or maybe what was wrong was something he couldn't see…

"Hammet, I will bet you anything that boy has something to do with this," Bunza muttered, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, his voice tinged with annoyance.

Ivan. Hammet sat bolt-upright in a second, all thoughts of fatigue gone. He scanned the camp with certain eyes; that had been the thing that was wrong. Ivan was not in the camp. Again. The boy just would not stay where he was supposed to be. Hammet got up and trotted over to the horses; there were his footprints. He'd gone off in the direction of the pass. Hammet stared stupidly to the west for a moment and wondered why he would put up such a fuss the previous night, only to disappear in the direction of the pass that morning.It was not right.

He stood up and set off for the pass at a trot until he saw a small, blue-clothed shape topped with blond coming toward him at a dead sprint. Slowing to a halt, Hammet caught Ivan as the boy collided with him, shivering and clutching him tightly. Hammet pulled Ivan away from him– with some effort– for a minute or so.

"What happened? And where were you?" he added, as an afterthought. Ivan pulled free of his hands and looked up, eyes wide with fright.

"In the pass, at the entrance… The cliffs fell. There was a landslide," he amended, after a moment, looking down. Hammet blinked.

"A landslide? How big of a landslide?" Ivan looked at Hammet closely, finally replying.

"As tall as you and Bunza." Hammet frowned. About ten or eleven feet, then, possibly closer to ten; everything looked tall to Ivan. Bunza came up behind them, his voice quiet.

"So, Hammet, if the road's blocked, what are we going to do? We can't get back to Kalay that way." Hammet thought for a moment.

"We'll see. We'll go back to Xian and tell them of the landslide, and we'll ask when the road will be cleared. If it's too long, we'll go the long way. If it's not, we'll wait and pitch in with the cleanup effort."

"Speed things up?" Hammet nodded, adding:

"And offer a little extra recompensation to them. Most of their trouble with this will come from our own hurry." Bunza nodded and Hammet patted Ivan's head. "Come on, you two. Let's eat something, pack up the camp and get back to the town. They'll need to hear about this." Bunza nodded and went to find food from the packs for them. Ivan went over and sat next to the horses. Hammet sat down on a rock, sighing. How did that boy know those things… and how did he manage to keep surprising Hammet? It seemed that every year he came up with a new ability… how many could he possibly have?

Hama's relief at seeing the three travellers re-enter the town was immense. So was her exasperation at hearing they were going to be staying until the landslides on the road were cleared up. Hiding from them was becoming harder by the day… She went home that night in no mood to socialise.

Monks were in her house. Those bloody… monks… A slow smile grew on Hama's face. The question was on their tongues, she could practically see it, but she beat them to it.

"Yes, alright. I've had a change of mind. I'll come along with you. Where was your temple again?" she asked them politely, hoping to get out of Xian as quickly as possible.

"It is past Altin, on Silk Road. We cannot get there now. We will go when the road is unblocked."

…She needed some tea. Right. Bloody. NOW.

Okay! I know that this has taken a while to come up, but this time I have a good excuse. Sorry to everyone reading, and thank you to all my reviewers. Both of them.

Right, I am REALLY sorry that you've all waited so long for what… 2,500 words? Jeez, that's my daily quota for NaNo. 'Cause I'm behind. But Guilt and RnK took longer to type up than I'd expected, and of course there were tests and then it was NaNo and…

…I'm just lazy. T.T Sorry. Really sorry. I had major writer's block with this one too: I didn't know what to write. I wanted to have the event in, but I didn't really want to write it, do you know what I mean? Heheh…But I just didn't have time in the past week or so when I suddenly wanted to write non-NaNo stuff again (which always comes at about 30,000 words). Between tests, housework, homework, and NaNo I'm surviving on four hours of sleep a night as is. The next chapter should be early February, and should be better, and almost definitely longer. Okay? Will that make up for this…disgrace of an update?

And don't get your hopes up: I did not get my laptop fixed. I'm smuggling a USB drive into the IT room at school during class. Don't you love it when teachers don't give a damn what you do?