Garinor walked around the darkened town, keeping to the shadows wherever he could. He had no clue what he was doing, but he didn’t want to seem suspicious, nor did he want to be caught. A boy with a sword on his belt wandering the town at night was likely to raise a few questions. It couldn’t be helped.
One thing Garinor noticed as he strolled around the town was that it was a jovial sort of place. Even as the night deepened, lanterns were lit in most of the houses. Revelers shouted from the abundant taverns. The whole place had the feel of one gigantic celebration. It was hard keeping himself serious with laughter echoing from every direction. He felt sorely out of place and he wanted nothing more than to give up his pacing and join in the frolicking fun.
As he mused along these lines, he missed someone hissing at him to get his attention. The sound came again until he turned to face an old woman beckoning him urgently with her finger. She was hunched over badly and dirty white hair fell in tangles from her head. She seemed scared but more for him than for herself.
Garinor hesitated, so she pointed off in the distance. He looked and saw two stern-looking men marching purposefully down the street. He didn’t have much choice; he followed her into her home.
She said nothing, but ushered him frantically toward her bed, where she motioned for him to hide underneath until the patrol had passed, in case they had caught a glimpse of him. She went into her kitchen and kept a careful eye trained on the road, but the guards walked past without event.
“Come out now, boy,” she croaked. “And take a chair for yourself.”
“Thank you for hiding me,” he said.
“Yes, well, it took you long enough to get the hint, didn’t it?”
He sighed. “I’ve had a hard time knowing who to trust.”
The old woman tinkered with a cup of water and brought it to him with a slice of banana bread. “Eat it, drink it, and I’ll tell you why you’re here.”
His brows furrowed at this, for he thought she meant to ask why he was there, not for her to tell him. First, he bit into the bread.
“Now, that’s a good child,” she crooned in her scratchy voice. “Now as for the reason you’re here—”
“I am on my way to see the king,” he offered.
“Shh,” she snapped. “I put food in your mouth to shut you up. Now let an old woman speak.”
Her dark brown eyes pierced into him and he wordlessly crammed another bite into his mouth.
“Long ago,” she began, “before you were born, before your father was born, and perhaps even before his father was born, there was a prophecy. Oh, I see the skeptical look in your eye, but I don’t care. It won’t change the fates.”
She paused a moment before coughing, then continuing. “In this prophecy are three key figures. There is a usurper to the throne who would hold its power for his life and through all the lives of his children. There is a true heir whose identity is unknown, even to him. And there is a third player, one chosen by the true heir, with the ability to reveal the truth and to choose between them.”
She eyed Garinor silently for a moment while he sipped the cold tea.
“I am related to the Seer who foresaw that future. But I don’t have the true sight myself. I see glimpses. Mere shadows pieced together from dreams. But mark my words, boy, what I tell you is true.”
He wasn’t sure how fragments of a dream would lead to such profound information, but he kept quiet, struggling to keep his doubts buried.
She seemed capable of reading his mind. “You don’t need to believe me. You cannot change the fates,” she repeated.
“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She cackled for a moment, her scratchy voice grating on him. “Well, there are three players. One of them would seemingly be the eldest prince of our king. He is ambitious and would squeeze his power tightly for however long he can.
“But more than that,” she said with an eerie distance echoing in her voice. “I witnessed a moment where the three key figures were gathered in a cave. They collectively sought an iron-wrought scepter, each for his own reason.”
She placed her gnarled, discolored hands on the table and her eyes dug into Garinor’s soul as she breathed out the words, “And you were one of the three.”
The cup fell from his hand and crashed on the table, chipping from the impact. He didn’t even notice. “What?”
The old woman took a steadying breath and nodded. “Yes. You were there. Now that I gaze upon you, I know for certain it was you I saw. Events guided you here to me so I could share this knowledge with you. I am certain of it.”
There was an awkward silence for a long time while this simmered in Garinor’s mind. “How is it possible?”
“That, I don’t know. I am telling you only the parts I’ve seen and know in my spirit are true.”
“But if the prince is out to keep power…” His voice drained to nothingness. It was the prince, then, who had sent out the hunters. Garinor was being hunted, but that other boy on horseback was also being chased. It could have been a coincidence, but he felt uncomfortable.
The old woman waited for him to finish his thought aloud. When he didn’t, she finished for him what she thought he had meant to say, “If the prince is seeking to keep his power, then it probably doesn’t make sense to continue your journey to see the king.”
Garinor hadn’t reached that conclusion yet, but hearing it now made his jaw drop. “You don’t think the king would have had me taken from home just so I could be killed?”
“I cannot speak for the will of the king,” she professed, “but it would certainly lose him support if he sent warriors into people’s homes to slay their sons. After much talk of that, towns would organize and riot.”
The world fell away from Garinor then. He had been under the assumption that the king was his protector and the hunters were trying to thwart that protection. He had been trying to work his way to meet the king in order to learn the answers for the perils he had been facing. How could the ruler of the entire country be a cold-hearted child-slayer?
Everything seemed hazy to him. The floor vanished and he was falling, falling down. His lids grew heavy and he couldn’t deny their pressure. He remembered wondering how it was possible for information like this to affect him in such a way.
As he fainted and crashed to the floor, he heard a throaty voice call out to him, “What—? Oh no!”