Seer's Blood Read online

  A mountain community under siege rediscovers its lost roots — and its magic — in the grit of an outcast girl, the heart of a stranger, and the mystical touch of lost seer’s blood.

  When Blaine Kendricks discovers strangers in Shadow Hollers, she thinks they’ve come to trade. She couldn’t be more wrong.

  When Dacey Childers comes to Shadow Hollers, Blaine’s family thinks he’s there to hunt game. They couldn’t be more wrong.

  When the Annekteh come to Shadow Hollers, they think the isolated community living there has no way to resist their invasion.

  They’re pretty much right on target.

  But the last man of the lost seer’s blood has returned, and is about to draw Blaine into his magic, his adventure...and the most dangerous hunt she could ever imagine.

  SEER’S BLOOD

  Doranna Durgin

  Blue Hound Visions

  Tijeras, NM

  “With this book, Doranna Durgin displays her customary precision in plot (tangled yet plausible, with tension that fairly hums from the page), setting (richly rendered and full of fresh, original details that truly delight), and characterization (thoughtful, layered, and well able to drive the plot).... Seer’s Blood is low fantasy at its very best, showing how great events affect people on a small scale.”

  — Hypatia’s Hoard

  “The author creates high adventure with a subtle touch of romance here. Durgin’s writing is full of mountain flavor, and her characters, both human and canine, are strong and clear.... This is an intense story that should appeal to...fantasy fans.”

  — VOYA

  “Readers will find themselves immersed in a world where self-reliance and resilience is brutally interrupted by evil in men's clothing and the return of magic to the lonely hollows.... [A]complex picture of love and loss. And the hounds, oh, my! Right along with Blaine, I fell in love with the hounds. This is a delicious read!”

  — Cynthia Felice, author of Downtime

  Copyright & Dedication

  Copyright © 2011 by Doranna Durgin

  ISBN-13: 978-1-61138-583-0

  Published by Blue Hound Visions, Tijeras NM, an affiliate of Book View Café

  Cover: Doranna Durgin

  Original Copyright © 2000; first published by Baen Books

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously — and any resemblance to actual persons, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  License Notes:

  Even with a professionally edited book such as this one, typos and other errors can make it through to the finished manuscript. If you notice such an error, kindly bring it to the author’s attention by emailing [email protected] so that it can be corrected. Thank you! (With permission, those readers will be added to the acknowledgements of the corrected edition).

  The author has provided this ebook to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. You may not print or post this ebook, or make it publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce, or upload this ebook, other than to read it on one of your personal devices. If you would like to share, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this efiction and it was not purchased for your use, then you should purchase your own copy. Thank you for helping the ereading community to grow!

  ~~~~~

  Author Note:

  I’m so glad you’re here with me and this book. Seer’s Blood is one of my heart books — for nearly a decade, I lived in several deep Appalachian locations, soaking up the amazing grit and heart of its people. I left not by choice, but because Life Happened and took away my ability to stay, and lo these many years later, I still miss it terribly. There’s a certain song and rhythm of life in the region, and I hope this book conveys some sense of it to those who might never have the chance to experience it in person.

  Without readers like you, I wouldn’t be able to write these books. I appreciate your letters, emails, blog comments, and Facebook posts more than I can ever express, and I love your reviews. It’s amazing to be a part of such a large circle of friends through a mutual love of books!

  — Doranna

  Dedication:

  For Darlene, Albin, Gloria and John, who taught me much and gave me much...

  For Strider, who gave me everything...

  And of course to Boomer, Esther, Goofy & Fred — for the ten o’clock howl!

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  For the Curious

  (For the alarmed, be reassured that aside from a few oft-used terms that become self-evident in the text, you don’t really have to know this. It’s here for the Curious and for the author.)

  Annekteh Terms:

  Anne-nekfehr: The vicarious experience of emotions via humans.

  Annekteh: The Takers’ name for themselves.

  Annektehr: The Annektah unit within a nekfehr.

  Nekfehr: A "Taken" or possessed being, also called a vessel.

  Nekfehr Death: The death of an annektehrwhen trapped within a dying Vessel.

  Nekfehrta: A device used for linking nekfehr and Vessel.

  Nekteh: A single unit within the Annektah whole.

  Suktah: Sassafras wood.

  Shadow Hollers Terms:

  Takers: The Annekteh. Most don’t distinguish between the Annekteh conglomerate and the individual units, AKA nekteh.

  Taken: One possessed by an Annekteh nekteh, AKA nekfehr

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 1

  The world spread out before the nekfehr, the slight curve of its horizon partially obscured by hazy clouds. Unlike the flat plains directly before the vessel — a raven, black, sleek, and intelligent — this horizon rose in a nubbled, broken line.

  South.

  The Annekteh would go south.

  It hadn’t worked out well, last time; so many years earlier. The hill folk had been waiting and ready, forewarned by the seers once grown thick in that nurturing land.

  The Annekteh had lost that fight — but they had prepared the way for the next. They had burned the generations of seer wisdom, lore, and observations — every one. They’d ransacked houses, stripping all charms, all the protections that could be copied and used without a seer’s understanding.

  Every one.

  And the seers themselves had died readily enough. Or fled.

  The raven’s wings caught a thermal; the bird adjusted — a shift of feather, a tilt of wing — and the annektehr within barely noticed. That was what the nekfehr, the Vessels, were for: to do the things the Annekteh could not. To see, to fly...to feel. The annektehr — one of many, so consumed by the whole it didn’t even understand the concept of individuality — stared at that bare hint of the southern mountains, sharing the image among the Annekteh even as it maintained awareness of each of its fellow annektehr at work in other vessels. Human bodies, mostly, supervising the insignificant, unTaken servants.

  Yes. South. Where the abundant lumber was imbued with the natural magic of the mountains — the same subtle magic of the plains, distilled and amplified and then submerged to run deep along the ridges. Magic that would protect the Annekteh, so quiet that the humans barely knew it was there.

  But the Annekteh knew.

  And the Annekteh intended to have that magic, and that land, for their own.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 2

  Blaine tugged soft leather boots into place, her mind already in the mountains and on the newly arrived traders — the ones no one else had yet seen. Moving quietly in the near darkness of the morning, she divided her hair into sections, fingers flying to braid i
nsipid brown plaits, damp rawhide laces waiting on the bed to fasten them. The hills called to her, always; they provided escape from her cousins’ taunts. But yesterday they had given more — they had given her strangers.

  Only her older brother Rand knew of Blaine’s wandering; if anyone else ever found out, she’d be denied the ridges, and it would break her heart. Her flight from teasing kin had long ago turned into a true appreciation of the woods, of the steep climbs and often treacherously slippery slopes of damp, humus-covered soil. The ribbon of level ground that wound along the ridges lured her, for there the air was free of wood smoke and the view revealed something besides the opposite hillside of Owlhoot Holler.

  And there, she could ponder the remnants of the Book. There, she could sit on her favorite rock and gaze at the unfathomable patterns of rock and tree in the well-worn, close-set ridges of the Shadow Hollers community. A deep hollow dropped between each ridge; along with the inevitable silver ripple of a creek, the bottoms held small patches of flat land. Dotted along the creek, crammed onto the flat places and even the up against the slopes, sat homesteads like her own — sparse populations that blossomed at the broadened hollow mouth where each creek met the Dewey River.

  Yesterday, drawn down into Fiddlehead Holler by the conversations below — conversations held by men who didn’t seem to know the mountains funneled noise uphill — she’d found that the bottom of that unsettled hollow now held more than just a creek.

  Strangers. Here to trade? Must be, with the number of wagons they had along — small ones, for easier travel through the hills. Maybe they’d have books, or fine riding horses, or pretty ribbons. Maybe there’d even be a family, with a girl her own age. She hadn’t had the nerve to find out, not the day before. Not to close in on them, for even her blinder charm — made of sassafras, soaked in a new moon fog and painted with the slick sap of slippery elm, just of the size to fit in her pocket — wouldn’t have kept their eyes from her if she’d left the cover of the upslope spring rhododendron patch.

  Hanging onto her braids, Blaine patted the bed quilt, hunting the rawhide strips hidden in the dim, early morning light of the rough-hewn log house. There. Jerking them into tight knots around the ends of her braids — knots she’d no doubt regret when it came time to turn her hair loose again — and pretending not to hear Lenie’s sleepy question, Blaine pulled on her jacket and hurried out onto the porch, her footfalls ringing hollow on the old planks.

  Where she stopped short in dismay. How had her daddy gotten out here before her? And gotten old Prince harnessed, to boot?

  But there he was. Cadell. Short and wiry, already topped by Rand’s sturdy height, and blessed with a pair of blue eyes sharp enough to spot a child in mischief through a barn wall.

  There would be no sneaking off into the mountains today.

  Their sturdy-limbed horse stood by the post at the edge of the chicken-scratched yard, and she knew Cadell had decided to break spring ground today. It was her particular job to hold the lines while he steadied the plow, mostly because she had the patience to deal with the horse, who occasionally played like he was stupid and had forgotten what plowing was all about.

  Blaine looked at the white clouds scudding across the chill blue sky. A perfect day for plowing; there’d be no talking him out of it. And the wind picking up the edges of her ragged bangs would do a fine job of drying the overturned earth so disking it the next day would be less of a chore.

  No, no mountains today, nor the morrow. By the time she worked through all the phases of plowing, those visitors would have passed by and been long gone — or if they had trading, their goods would be picked clean through. She sighed, suddenly feeling the chill of the frost that rimed the porch rail. Cadell jerked his chin at the horse, never of a mind to tolerate her fits of melancholy or her dream frights or even her sighs. Work to be done.

  She sighed again anyway.

  ~~~~~

  Dacey shifted his shoulders beneath his pack, hesitating below the modest log house. He’d followed its chimney smoke down out of the mountain and walked the creek to approach it from the bottom, but now that he was here, he wasn’t so sure of his intent. So far, none of the Shadow Hollers locals knew of his presence. It was probably wiser to keep it that way.

  But the dogs needed food.

  Dacey’s hand fell to Mage’s head, rubbing the dog behind his long, soft ears; he smiled when the hound leaned against his leg. There was no denying a hound his dinner.

  On the nearly level ground to the side of the house, two figures worked a plow, and just about time — a smart man got lettuce and peas into the ground as soon as he could. Two little ones hung on the house porch, and Dacey caught the brown swish of a skirt disappearing inside. Quick enough, the youngest left the porch, scooting out to the rough-logged barn. A moment later, a young man — some years shy of Dacey’s age — came out carrying the child.

  Dacey had no illusions about the meaning of that little tableau. The older boy was heading for the house, and would soon have a bow at the ready.

  He glanced back at the two in the garden, close enough to see that the slighter figure was a girl, a young woman. Her woven straw hat tipped down against the sun, and two hip-length braids were wrapped into one halfway down her back. Her legs were too long for the skirts she wore — he saw a flash of calf above her boots. Scrawny, he thought, and then tried to chase the unkindly word from his mind.

  He stopped and watched father and daughter for a moment, seeing in their economic movements the evidence of a long partnership. They reached the end of the row, where the girl hesitated just long enough for her daddy to flip the trace chain over, and then directed the horse in a tight turn that brought Dacey right into her field of view. She stopped, startled, and it was enough to bring her daddy’s attention Dacey’s way. They both glanced at the house, then — looking to see if the others had noticed.

  It was his cue.

  He walked up to the edge of the garden, meeting the man’s slightly challenging look — but distracted by the girl’s open curiosity, and by the bemusement on her face as she considered Mage. Crippled hound. White, spattered with brown freckles, big handsome blocky head, long, angular legs. Good breeding, fine dog — except for the stiff hind leg, and the peculiar gait it forced upon him. A wry smile crooked Dacey’s mouth; he couldn’t help it. Mage. Bred from a line long owned by his family, ever loyal, always by his side.

  The girl looked away, like she knew she’d been caught staring, and then couldn’t seem to help herself; she looked back from beneath lowered lids, watching them both with poorly disguised interest on her lean features.

  “Hey,” Dacey said, a mild greeting the man returned with a nod — likely all he would get, in these hills where few strangers walked. “My name’s Dacey Childers. I hoped you might be in the mind for a little trading.”

  “All depends on what’s to be traded,” the man said after a moment’s studied deliberation of Dacey and his pack, his gaze piercing and unapologetic. Aside from the stubborn-looking chin, his square features held nothing of his daughter’s. “And who’s doing the trading.”

  Who had nothing to do with the name he’d already been given. Who meant Dacey’s people, his place. “My Daddy’s folks took us south from here after the Annekteh Ridge fight.”

  The girl’s head lifted, a quick, direct stare with surprise behind it; she caught herself and looked away again. Dacey added, “Not many people there now. I been hunting something and it’s took me to your hills.” He shrugged. “Once I get what I’m after, I’ll be heading home.”

  “Cadell Kendricks,” the man said, a friendlier tone in his voice. He gave a nod at the empty porch, a mere lift of the chin that Dacey might have missed if he’d blinked wrong, then looked at the girl. “My daughter Blaine. What’re you needing?”

  A shadow at the window rose; Dacey pretended he hadn’t seen. “We’ve been moving so fast we’ve had no time to store up on food, especially meat for the dogs.” Dacey garnered anot
her sharp, cryptic look from the girl. “I’ve got some skins here, though, and we could do without them.”

  “We?” she asked, stepping on whatever her daddy had been about to say and earning herself a frown.

  “Me an’ the dogs, of course,” he said. It didn’t seem to be the answer she expected, although her father showed no such awareness of other strangers in the area. His response earned a quiet sort of smile from her — the smile of someone who is keeping some thoughts to herself, and intends to continue doing so.

  Cadell nodded toward the house. “Lottie’ll be putting the noon meal on. We might do some trading, but only iff’n you’ll join us.”

  “I’m glad to.” Dacey dropped his hand to Mage’s head and said, “My dog won’t be causing any fights, should you have your own around.”

  “Mine’s tied. Don’t have much patience for a dog hanging around the yard,” Cadell said, though he quickly added, “I didn’t mean nothing by that. I never had the time to fool with a critter so’s it’d behave as well as your’n.”

  Dacey nodded at the horse and plow. “Why don’t you let me take those lines. It’ll make me feel better about eating at your table.”

  Blaine looked to her daddy for guidance, and he gestured to Dacey. “Give ’im the lines, Blaine, and go help your mommy with the meal.”

  Blaine’s expression did not indicate she thought this was any great trade. But she handed over the lines with a warning that the horse liked a light touch, and walked the furrow to the edge of the garden. Mage followed, knowing enough to get out of the way, and sat at the corner of the garden, patience in his very posture. Dacey gave him a half-grin — affection for the dog, an acknowledgment to the watching girl that he did indeed set such store by the animal — and turned to the work at hand.