Amzil hurried ahead of me; I walked more slowly. I stopped. I turned to look back at the two cottages that had, for a few moments, been in my imagination an inn. Yet, why not here? I asked myself. Why should I not build the inn, just as I had imagined it, but for myself and eventually for Yaril? And if my efforts here produced benefits for Amzil and her children as well, that would simply be an additional good. “I could stay here and build a life for myself,” I said softly.

At my words, lightning flashed through me. I remembered my dream, all in that instant. In the next moment, I stood trembling in full daylight, possessed of a knowledge I did not want. I could not stay here. I couldn’t build an inn or make a place for Yaril. I was supposed to go on, to the land of the Specks. If I did not, evil would befall me. No. Not just me. Evil would befall any who held me back from that quest.

The corollary to that axiom fell into place for me. Misfortune had befallen my home and family in Widevale because they had sought to keep me there. The plague had come to Widevale, and scoured me of my family because I had defied the magic. The magic had cut me free of my old life. I shook my head. It could not be true. It was a stupid uncivilized superstition, something an ignorant man or a savage might believe.

My gut cramped with guilt and pain.

I bent over, clasping my great wobbly belly in my hands, sickened with the knowledge that filled me as much as by the emptiness of the hunger that suddenly assailed me. It was not a hunger for simple sustenance. I needed to eat to feed the magic that dwelt in me. It demanded food, and it demanded that I continue on my way to Gettys, to the territory of the Specks.

“You. You! Help me! In the name of the king. Help me.” The voice was faint, both from distance and weakness in the man who called. I looked around me, and then lifted my eyes to look up the hillside, past the stump field to where the uncut trees began. A man stood there, leaning heavily on a tough little horse beside him. He was bearded and without a hat, dressed in rough, ragged clothing. His head wobbled on his shoulders.

When he saw me looking at him, he took two steps toward me, and then collapsed. He rolled a short way and then lay still.

I ran toward him. For a very short way. Then I stopped, caught my breath, and hurried on as best I could, through the crooked lanes between the ramshackle houses and across the stump field and then up the steep rise of the hill. In all that time, the man did not move. When I reached him and knelt beside him, I saw he was a larger man than I’d thought. He’d finished his tumble flat on his back. His eyes were closed. His clothing was not ragged from long use, but hung in tatters where something had attacked him and torn his garments with its claws. His cavalla trousers were stained with blood and dirt. He’d bound rags from his shirt across his chest and his upper right arm. Lesser gashes scored his belly, and showed on his legs through his torn trousers. The cuts were crusted dark with scabs and soiled with leaves and dirt. It was hard to guess his age through his whiskers and shaggy hair, but I thought him a man of middle years. “Sir! Wake up!”