Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

"No, not so. I dream quite clearly, most of the time."

"Aye, I believe you, and you dreamed of meeting me before you saw me."

Her face underwent a sudden, startling change, her eyes narrowing and her colour receding rapidly. I held up a hand quickly to forestall her flaring, evidently frightened anger, feeling a surge of excitement in my breast. "Wait, Shelagh! Before you fly at me, know this: I am not accusing you of anything. I, too, have dreams that come to pass, dreams that come true."

She froze, her eyes wide, staring into mine. Silence settled and lay between us, solid and tactile as a heavy veil of drifting smoke. In the stillness, I could feel my heartbeat rally and slow down, and still she sat motionless, tense and poised as though for flight. Then, when I had begun to feel concern that she might never speak to me or move again, her voice came in a whisper, each word hissed separately.

"What . . . what are you saying?"

Unable to define the tone in her whispered words, I allowed myself to relax and raised my cup to my lips again, drinking slowly before responding.

"I am saying that I dream strange dreams," I answered finally, speaking slowly and without heat. "Prophetic dreams, and frightening. And I have done so all my life. Never, at any time, have I met another person with the same ability."

She was gazing at me fixedly, but the colour had returned gradually to her cheeks. Another silence grew and lengthened between us.

"Why would you tell me such a thing?" she asked eventually. "What attraction could such perilous knowledge hold for me? And why would you even think to entrust it to me?"

"Perilous?" I was confused, caught unprepared by the unexpected answer.

"Why would you say that?" I asked her. "There is no peril involved for me in your knowledge, how could there be? Nor is any need for trust involved. It is simply a thing, an ability—I know not whether gift or curse—that has troubled me throughout my life, although I became convinced of its potency only recently. It's a personal burden, a secret of my own, of which I have spoken to but very few, because it has frightened me for years, but only for my mind, not for my bodily health. There is no danger involved in it, no peril."

Now it was she who looked confused. Her eyebrows drew closer together and her eyes scanned my face, looking for I knew not what, before she pursed her lips and spoke again.

"The power you speak of is sorcery. The Sight, it is called. The known possession of it means banishment from the world of ordinary folk."

"What? Banishment? By whom?"

"By everyone. It is the law."

"But, Shelagh, that is ridiculous!"

"Ridiculous?" Her anger flared again. "Laughable? How dare you mock me, Caius Merlyn! I speak the simple truth. Foreknowledge—the ability to see the future, godlike—is unhuman. No man or woman can possess such powers without being touched by the gods, and therefore without the taint of immortality. The law decrees banishment from the homes of men."

"I see. It is akin to leprosy. Its possessors are unclean." She had begun to frown again and I pressed on. "To where, then, would I be banished?"

"To anywhere you wish to go, so long as you remove yourself from all human contact."

"And if I should refuse?"

"You would be killed."

"In the name of God, that is barbarism!" Even as I said the words, I saw, belatedly, the reason for her earlier hostility. The thought of banishment, of a life of eternal solitude, cut off from her father and her folk for her entire life, must terrify her. I nodded my head in understanding, letting the sympathy I felt soften my voice. "So that's why my questions frightened you so much." She made no move, but I saw gratitude in her eyes. "But tell me, if you will," I continued, keeping my eyes fixed on hers. "Tell me why you would speak of dreams to me at all, even light-heartedly, if you had any fear of being thought to have . . . what was it you called it? The Sight?"

She nodded, a tiny gesture, acknowledging the legitimacy of my question. "You are a stranger, with no knowledge of our ways. I thought I might toy with you, in the safety of your ignorance." Her voice was soft now, reflecting her changing mood.

"You had no thought that I might share your gift?"

"None." She shook her head and then realized what she had admitted, and her alarm flared up anew, her eyes widening in panic. Again I raised a hand, palm outwards, to soothe her.

"Hush, Shelagh, be at peace. You risk nothing with me. It is a gift we share, remember?"

She nodded again, nervously, appearing suddenly and sadly cowed, her hands clasped tightly on her lap, her eyes darting around the room as if in terror of being overheard, so that my throat swelled up with compassion for her.

"Come, girl," I whispered, gentling her as I would a frightened horse. "There is nothing to fear. We are alone. But take heart from the knowledge— and I will swear the truth of this on any oath you care to name—that such laws do not exist in Britain, nor anywhere else save here that I know of. There's nothing wicked in the ability you have, Shelagh; nothing willful either, for that matter. It is something born within you, as it was in me, something over which we have no control." I broke off, thinking of what I had just said. "Can you summon your ability at will?" She shook her head emphatically. "Well, then, in that we are alike, the two of us. But you can recall your dreams clearly, is that not so?"

"Sometimes," she whispered, more strongly this time.

"And do they frighten you, these dreams?"

"No," she looked at me, wide-eyed. "Do yours?"

"Aye, they have, on almost every occasion, although I have no clear memories of them on waking. You can recall the events in your dreams?"

"Yes, clearly." Her voice was growing stronger with every word, her confidence increasing as her fears abated. "But I cannot always understand what I have dreamed. There are times when I can recall a dream clearly and see the pictures in my mind in detailed colours, and yet have no idea of what any part of it means. That happens often."

"Often? How often do you dream such things?"

She shrugged. "Oh, I don't know. It varies. Sometimes I may have several in the course of a single year, but I have known whole years to pass without one." She leaned down again and collected her cup from the floor, then drained it at one gulp, after which she sat back and breathed deeply. I sat still, saying nothing, my thoughts racing. I had found someone who shared my gift, someone who knew the strangeness of the alien power exercised in me! The sound of her voice brought me back from my reverie.

"I saw your face in one of those . . . the kind I never understand, I mean."

I sat up straighter. "How so? What did you see?"

She gazed intently into my eyes for several moments and then turned to stare into the fire. The logs had burned away almost completely, and now she rose and crossed to where a fresh supply lay in a stout, wooden frame. I made no move that might interrupt her thoughts as she selected several sawn lengths and threw them on the fire, finally pushing and prodding them into position with a long, heavy iron poker.

"There was a bear," she said, her voice almost lost in the snapping and flaring of the fuel so that I had to lean forward to hear her. "It devoured a boar, and then it killed and ate a dragon that was black, with green scales, and breathed fire. Then, later—I think it was later, but it may have been directly afterwards—it rode on a bull's back to where it met another bear, and all three creatures fought each other in a ring of wolves, among waterfalls of blood, and when the fight was done, the bear, the first one, was sorely wounded and prepared to die among the wolves, but a darkness fell, and out of the darkness, on a broadening beam of light, came a great eagle to attack the wolves and scatter them . . ." Her voice died away completely and she remained there, head down by the fire, staring into its depths.