Page 306 of Seer Prophet

“Maybe,” Revik muttered next to me, frowning. “I don’t feel anything physical, though.”

Still holding my hand, he looked behind us, at where we’d just passed through, and then back at the boathouse. I could tell he was wondering what I was wondering?namely, had we just walked into the real? Or the illusion?

Everything around us, everything we could feel and see, might be another trick.

Whatever this was?a Barrier construct within a Barrier construct within a Barrier construct?or a Barrier construct protecting us from the wider Barrier construct managed by Menlim?or some combination?something about crossing that line made me believe, really believe, for the first time, that Terian was telling the truth.

He really did have people out here.

And he really had been hiding them from Shadow.

Which meant, whatever other game Terian might be playing in all this, we might really have found them.

We might have finally found the missing seers and humans from the Lists.

Chapter56

The Trap

“Idon’t like this,” Wreg muttered, holstering his sidearm with more force than necessary, even as he scowled at the Middle Eastern seer. He gave a bare glance to Jon before he looked back at Loki. “He told you to come back here? On this side of the line? Why?”

Loki remained characteristically expressionless.

He shook his head once, slowly, as if thinking, his dark eyes focused on the sand dunes that rose past them, stretching off into the distance as far as Jon’s eyes could see. The dunes glowed softly, even in the darkness of a moon-less sky, their shadows purple and dark blue.

Loki seemed lost there, in that expanse of softly rolling sand.

After another pause, he looked back at the two of them.

“I cannot say for certain?” he began, his words measured.

“You cannot say for certain?” Wreg cut in, his voice holding disbelief. “What the fuck’s that supposed to?”

Jon held up a hand, silencing Wreg as he stared at Loki’s face.

“You can’t say for certain,” Jon repeated. “But what do you think, Loki? What is it you felt on him, when he gave the order?”

Loki exhaled more forcefully, as close to an expression of frustration as Jon had ever heard on him. The seer frowned as his eyes went back to scanning the dunes.

“I do not know, brothers,” Loki said then. “Truly. It is an impression only. On the surface he appeared to be complying with the Rook’s demands. Perhaps that is all it was, in which case, we are here because Terian demanded it.”

“What impression?” Wreg said, glancing at Jon. “What did you feel?”

He’d picked up on whatever Jon noticed, and was now following his lead.

“Can you show us, brother?” Wreg said. “The thing that struck you in this way?”

Exhaling again, Loki nodded.

They stood outside the city’s outer walls. Jon, along with Wreg and the rest of their military unit, had been instructed to enter through the back gates in less than an hour, if they didn’t get any kind of signal telling them otherwise.

Then Loki appeared, and told them to postpone that entry. But Loki being back here at all ran counter to every scenario they’d run with Allie and Revik back on the carrier.

Loki said Revik now wanted them to wait until he contacted them personally before they entered the city, regardless of what they heard from Balidor. He’d given no reason for the change. Moreover, he’d given no real reason for Loki and the others to leave the city limits, versus waiting inside the city gates where they could provide real back-up.

Loki went on to explain that Revik had lost Allie somehow?somewhere after they’d arrived on the docks. He’d still been without her when he reached the rendezvous point with Loki’s team near the center of Old Town, but he’d had a lead on where she was. Now, apparently, he had Allie back with him again, but the detour had taken them on a strange path, one that now involved Terian, the List seers?and possibly Feigran.

“This is only an impression,” Loki cautioned. “It is subjective, brothers.”

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