Chapter 9
Cale and the Archer
As he finished healing the young man who’d said this was his first time being a thief, Hamal realized he was being watched.
Rosy had turned around to stare as Hamal worked on the wounded man. Her fire-filled eyes followed Hamal’s movements. This was the first time he had seen her with fire in her eyes all day, and he wondered why. He smiled reassuringly at her, hoping she wasn’t alarmed by the sight of blood. She didn’t seem to be.
When the wounded man was resting comfortably, Hamal crawled over to join Rosy at the fire. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. It was a real nod, and it required no guessing on Hamal’s part.
A water bucket sat beside the fire, and Hamal used the dipper to splash water across his dirty hands. If it were a warm night and this were a warm place, he would dry his hands on his trousers. But not here. Damp trousers would be awful on a night like this one. He rubbed his hands briskly and held them near the fire.
“You don’t need to worry about that man, Rosy. He’ll be fine. Not even a bruise remains. Just because a man has an arrow in him—”
“Two arrows,” Gild interrupted.
Hamal nodded. “Just because a man has two arrows in him, it doesn’t mean bad things will happen to him. An arrow just slows a man down. You get him to a healer, and he’s fine.”
“You’re a unique individual, Hamal,” Gild said and chuckled.
A flash of light burst in the trees. Thunder rumbled from a clear, star-filled sky.
“That’s Hainn,” Will Chiodo said. He was sitting on the ground near the fire, his bare hands pressed against the soil as he read the earth and, from a safe distance, observed what was happening upon the earth’s surface out in the woods. “Hainn has an odd kind of humor. He likes to scare the wits out of someone and then leave him to tell the story any way he pleases.”
Gild muttered something unfit for children’s ears and ended with, “Annoying.”
Will grinned and shifted position, quickly returning his hands to the ground. “Hainn’s victims tend to be men invested in protecting their reputation—you know the kind, Hamal. Bad men. Men who want to own what other men have worked for. That is likely what we’ll see happen here too. By tomorrow morning, all of Redsprin will have heard a hero’s tale, not that of a thief. ‘The evil seers attacked us!’ The man is…yes. He’s racing back to town on a horse that is nearly as frightened as he is.”
Gild laughed.
Hamal did not. “He will lie about Cale and Masly? Cale is the king’s own seer! And Masly used to be. They are the king’s men, not liars.”
Masly grunted.
Will looked over at Hamal, and his dark-eyed gaze softened. “Everyone lies about seers, Hamal, when they think they can get away with it. The justice gift is hard to find out here in the North Territory. Without that gift, there’s no way to tell when the truth is being spoken—other than relying on one’s own discernment, which does not seem to be a priority in a place like Redsprin.”
“But I thought seers were respected,” Hamal said.
“Oh, they are. Sometimes that is why they are lied about. However, this time…” Will’s voice faded. His brows snapped together as he stared down at the earth, like the ground was telling him something he didn’t like. When he spoke again, his voice had changed. “Hamal, prepare to receive Cale.”
Hamal stiffened. “What happened? Is he—?”
“He went against the archer.”
“The archer?”
“He succeeded in stopping him, but he took a substantial blow to his shoulder. Hainn is assisting him back to camp.” Will looked at Masly. “Sir, their progress would be swifter with your aid.”
Masly held Will’s gaze. To Hamal, it looked like the seer heard words that had not been spoken. Then he nodded quickly and was off—jogging back into the woods.
“Is Masly headed the right direction?” Hamal asked Will.
The charter nodded. “Yes. He will reach them shortly.”
A few minutes passed in tense quiet. Hamal fidgeted and remembered how Cale had been concerned about thieves. Rosy was looking at him, the fire flickering off and on in her eyes, and he patted her shoulder, even though he was the one who needed reassuring this time.
At last Will said, “Here they are.”
Three men staggered out of the trees. Hainn supported Cale on one side, Masly on the other. In the firelight, Cale’ face looked as white as chalk, and the right sleeve of his coat was drenched with blood.
“This was not one of your grander ideas,” Hamal told Cale, who groaned as the other two men helped him to the ground.
Hamal set his hand on Cale’s bloody arm and used his gift. Cale’s skin leapt to follow Hamal’s urging, sealing together where it had been slashed apart. It was a deep cut; Cale had lost an unhealthy amount of blood.
As the color slowly returned to Cale’s face, he focused on Hamal’s expression and said, “I was curious.”
“Curious? What does that mean?”
“After you healed my hand, I began working with it. Running drills. Trying to strengthen it. I thought…” Cale paused. “I thought it was as good a time as any to test it. But the archer was good with a sword. Better than I expected him to be.”
“Why did you go up against the archer? Archers never miss. Kolling could have taken care of this.”
Cale had the nerve to smile like a boy who loved mischief. “You are my friend, Hamal. What reason have I to fear what other men fear? I feel better now. Thank you.”
“What sort of logic is that?” Hamal frowned. “Cale, I don’t understand your thinking.”
Cale started laughing, which just made it worse.
Clenching his blood-covered hands, Hamal squatted down in front of his friend and waited until the seer looked at him. In a quiet voice, Hamal said, “This isn’t the first time I have seen you act this way. The night I met you, you let those bad men kill you—because you knew you were going to find me. You are very brave, the bravest man I know, but you are not acting with wisdom. This is not wisdom.”
Cale stopped laughing. His head tilted, like he genuinely did not understand. “You are my friend, and I know I can rely on you. How is that not wisdom?”
“Yes, yes,” Hamal replied. “All of that is true. I am your friend, and I will be a faithful friend. But I think there is a difference between being wise in battle times and taking risks you don’t actually need to take. I…”
Hamal glanced at the others and lowered his voice even more. He spoke words he had never said, but he had thought them several times in the last few months. “I know what your bones say, Cale. I know your secrets—that you feel guilty. You blame yourself for the prince’s death, and I know you think you should have died too. It does not seem fair to you that you lived and he did not.”
His face now blank, Cale stared at him.
“I think you take risks that others would not take. Sometimes I even think you wouldn’t mind if you died again, and I wasn’t there to save you.”
They looked at each other.
Hamal shook his head slowly. “I cannot heal what your bones say. But…” Here he smiled slightly. “I can give you a reason to be interested in their healing.”
The silver gaze narrowed. Eventually Cale whispered, “What reason?”
“Your blood has conceived.”
“I don’t understand.”
Hamal grinned. “I mean you are a father now, so it would be good if nothing happened to you. And if something happened to you, Satha would be angry, and you know she scares me when she is angry.”
Cale didn’t move. “A…father?”
“Your wife is pregnant. The blood doesn’t measure time as man does. You aren’t going to be a father. You are a father. The moment the blood conceives, it knows, and it counts the child among the living—from that moment, as if he were already born. You are a father, so you need to act with wisdom. No more challenging archers with swords. Use Kolling. She could have stopped that bad man from a distance.”
A long moment passed, during which Cale blinked several times. “Satha?”
“Of course Satha. She’s your wife.”
“How far along is she?”
“Just a few days.” Hamal paused, thinking about it. “I don’t believe she knows yet. But I know—because your blood knows. Blood you just risked and spilled everywhere for no good reason.”
Hamal became aware that Masly was standing beside them, his arms folded. Masly knew about Cale and Satha, his secret wife, and not because Cale had told him. Masly was a talented seer who didn’t often need to be told things.
The other seer chuckled. “The king will be thrilled, I’m sure, to hear of the extension of his family. He’ll host a ball in your honor. Make you a prince.”
Cale looked up at Masly, opened his mouth, and then froze. His calm demeanor rattled to pieces, and his eyes widened. “I’m going to have to tell the king.”
Masly’s chuckle became a full-chested laugh. “Serves you right for marrying above you.”
“It wasn’t my decision,” Cale replied.
Masly laughed again. It pleased Hamal to hear him, and it pleased him further that Cale was the one who made the laughter start. Masly needed to laugh more. He had been very serious since his arrest.
“Wait a moment,” Lord Rhyan said, coming up behind them. “Married above you? What does that mean?” Then his jaw dropped. “Satha? The king’s cousin? You married Satha?”
Cale winced.
Never tell a secret to a flamemaker.
Within a few minutes, every person in their party knew what Cale and Satha had managed to keep hidden for three years, and by the next morning, Rhyan had started calling Cale Your Highness just to annoy him. Hamal thought it was funny. Cale did not.
However, he responded calmly. “You, more than anyone, know the regulations of noble blood,” he told Rhyan, who was the firstborn son of the House of Kanyan. “It is likely I have cost my wife her heritage and the benefits of a noble house. I do not make light of this.”
Rhyan didn’t argue with him, but he didn’t fully agree either. “The king would cut off his hand to keep you happy, Cale. You’re the seer, not I—you should already know his reliance upon you. In this matter, he may choose to look the other way. He could even choose to elevate you, and I predict he will do one or the other.”
“And the predictions of a flamemaker can always be trusted,” Masly said.
Rhyan rolled his eyes.
Around ten o’clock that morning, Hamal began to smell wood smoke. The trees parted, and they saw in the distance a small, walled-up town built into the base of a large bluff. Cale and Masly drew their horses together and whispered back and forth, and then Cale turned back to speak to Hamal.
“This would not be an appropriate place to leave the oracle,” he said, glancing at the child sitting in Hamal’s arms. “We will keep looking.”
They passed three farms and one more small village, and Cale said similar words each time.
That afternoon, a peddler wandered down the road with his brightly colored cart piled high with interesting things. Cale bought a fur-lined hat that had bear’s ears. He dropped it on top of Rosy’s head and said, “You sound like a bear when you sleep. Now you will look the part.”
He was the first one to claim a shy smile from her. It was mostly in her eyes, which were brown today.
Hours later as they approached Gallank Tree, Hamal overheard Masly telling Cale, “We are rapidly losing our opportunity to leave Rosy in a safe environment.”
Cale replied, “Then perhaps it is wisdom to take her with us.”
“That is not what Hamal said. He said we should leave her in a safe location and return for her later.”
Cale nodded calmly. “Perhaps it is not our decision.”
Both seers turned and looked at Rosy, who was tugging at the ears of her bear hat and staring off into the trees.
Masly said quietly, “You suggest it is not coincidence that we have found no suitable place for her. You think the god she shadows—or a god, somewhere—might be doing this on purpose. This god might intend her to stay with us, all the way to our destination.”
“Have you ever worked with gods before?”
Masy did not hesitate. “No.”
Cale shrugged. “Neither have I. But I suspect Shel Galen has. Let us wait and hear his wisdom on the matter.”
They arrived at the gate of Gallank Tree.
– H –
Author’s note: I wrote the first draft of this book about six years ago. At least six, maybe seven. I decided I didn't like it and tried to redo certain parts, and at one point in the editing process, I decided to take out this chapter and the previous chapter. I DECIDED TO TAKE THEM OUT. Sigh. Maybe it was good that this book had to wait six years—so I would have greater writing wisdom. 😉
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Comment below or find us on Facebook. Copyright notice: © 2026 by Lauren Stinton. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or sapient plants is purely coincidental.
