Most never know their potential. Some know it and do not care. A few are blessed — or cursed — with the struggle to achieve it.

— The Academy Archives, Anonymous, Circa 2400 EP

Thousands of possible futures swirled in Calmyrra's head and in none of those futures had her daughter survived if she stayed home.

A lifetime ago — or perhaps a few minutes, it was hard to tell — Calmyrra had looked at Talia, playing alone as she often did, admiring the warrior her daughter was becoming. She was small, but far from frail. She had just passed her twelfth birthday only a month past and was growing into a beautiful young lady.

Talia's golden blonde hair brushed a thick, muscular back that showed through a tight leather tunic. It was far too sheer for the chill autumn morning, but she didn't seem to notice. She spent much of her time climbing the cliffs and thick trees that prevailed in the foothills of the Aludan Mountains where the nearby city of Akril was nestled, competing easily with most of the boys for prizes in hunting, tracking, and trapping. She was a sinewy child, strong and lithe, with a keenness of sight and smell that gave her a seemingly unfair advantage. More than once, Calmyrra had witnessed Talia's friends nearly go to blows over who would hunt and train with her and who would not. Yet despite all the attention her friends tended to give her, she was more often contented to play alone.

Her days of play were coming to an end. Soon enough she would need the skills she was developing for war. Whether ending or pending or ongoing, it seemed there was always war. The current peace would not last long. Calmyrra was content that her child could just play and be a child.

A slight breeze from the north brought the musty smell of the plains and tousled Talia's hair as she drew pictures with a stick in a patch of dirt. Calmyrra watched quietly as the circling winds distorted and erased the images almost as quickly as Talia could make them. She hesitated to interrupt, but there was company waiting.

"Talia, Yangor and Sairus are here," she said. Talia was on her feet in a swift moment, so quickly it made Calmyrra blink. The child certainly had her father's agility. In fact, she had many of her father's traits and features. Perhaps that was why she was such a beautiful child.

"Did they get one?" she asked, eyes dancing as she skipped to her mother.

"A huge one. I'm surprised you didn't hear it squealing," Calmyrra said, giving her daughter a quick hug. She took Talia by the shoulders and bent slightly to look into the crystal blue eyes over high cheekbones that she inherited from her father. "They want you to go with them to present it."

Talia's jaw hinged open, and her features melted into a full-faced smile. "Really!?"

"Yes, really."

Talia squeaked with delight and jumped in circles, her hands clasped tightly beneath her chin.

Suddenly, Talia stopped hopping, but kept her hands under her chin as she looked inquisitively at her mother, her brow knit studiously. "But... wait, they are going to see the Council of Nine."

"Yes. And they want you to go with them."

"Why would they want me to go with them?"

Calmyrra smiled serenely and waited. "Children will ask questions without thinking," her father once told her. "Just give them time to think. They will usually offer an answer to their own questions and whether they are right or wrong, you will often learn more than they."

Once again, Talia's jaw dropped and her eyes grew wide. "They want me to be in the Mahala'it Shan...?"

Yes, Calmyrra thought. She's answered her own question.

 Suddenly Talia's countenance shattered. "But... I'm a girl!"

"I'm so pleased you recognize that fact, Talia. I have often wondered whether you knew it."

"Mother!"

"Well," Calmyrra said, waving a hand at the thin leather blouse and long pants Talia wore.

"What? Do you want me to wear a dress to play in the dirt?"

"No, but when was the last time you wore a dress?"

"When was the last time I wasn't playing in the dirt?" Talia answered with her hands on her hips.

"Precisely my point," Calmyrra countered with a smile and a sideward nod.

"But how can I be in the Huntsman Circle if I'm a girl?" Talia whimpered.

Calmyrra shot a reproving glare at her. She knew better than to whine. "It's simple. You go with the boys and get approval from the Nine then the blessing from the Bael'it Shem," Calmyrra said. "And then you..."

"But the Bael'it Shem won't bless me! The Nine won't even pass me to him!" Talia interrupted.

"And why not?"

"Mother! Because I'm a girl!"

"What has that to do with anything? Where is it written that girls cannot be in the Huntsman Circle?"

"What if they don't let me? I've only been one of the Seven in a regular Drodging. Once! I didn't catch the cyphus. I'm a girl, I'm only twelve, and..."

"Talia," Calmyrra broke in before her daughter worked herself into a panic. "Sai and Yang are not here to tell you that you cannot be in the Huntsman Circle. They are inviting you to be in it. Not that Sai will be passed after that stunt he pulled last month."

"What stunt?"

"Never mind that," Calmyrra said. "You just say your thanks to Aliel, now, and go. Get dressed and go with them before they change their minds."

A gentle nudge toward the house got her moving.

She watched Talia run inside and looked back to where the child had been drawing in the dirt and caught a glint of... No, there was nothing there. She felt sure she'd seen something. Her brow drew itself together involuntarily as she stepped nearer and saw the glint again, but again there was nothing.

Calmyrra looked around. The cool morning sun was still low in the sky and the yard was in shadows from the trees. There was definitely nothing to... But there it was a third time. More curious now, Calmyrra strode to the spot where Talia had been and looked at the image on the ground.

It was perfect. Impossibly so. It was wonderful and terrifying. The lines were untouched by the morning breeze and yet they were so very delicate and... perfect. It was an absolutely flawless drawing of a man, old with three large hoops in one ear and a long lobe on the other, as if a heavy weight hung unseen from it. Calmyrra had certainly never seen this man, and she wondered where Talia had seen him. There had been none but her daughter to draw it. How? It was so perfect a drawing! In dirt!

She stared unblinking at the image in the dirt, wondering — fearing — what it might mean when it began to move. Images like fine sand in the wind slowly formed in her mind...

Now Calmyrra watched as the wind stirred and blasted the drawing until it was nothing more than a memory.

Oh Aliel, she is only a little girl! It was only images and vague thoughts, but they were so real! They seemed real anyway, real enough to believe.

Who was this strange old man? The hoops in his ears marked him from Ylon or Ankron, one of the shore folk along the Sea of Gyth. How had he even spoken to her? Had he spoken? Was it even real?

The morning sun began to burn the dew off the sparse flora of her meager yard. It was a small dwelling, inauspicious and unassuming, like most of the homes in the northern districts of Akril. Calmyrra provided for her daughter as best she could. She had given her daughter an understanding of how to care for others as well as herself, and to be a lady, although very little of anything lady-like had ever manifested. Talia was not particularly given to elegance or charm, although both came somewhat naturally to her anyway, if a bit unrefined. She was a hunter and a warrior like her father had been before Searchers took him from them nearly two years ago. Now it seemed they wanted her daughter, too.

Talia was all she had left. It would be hard to let her go. No, it would be nearly impossible! But in none of all those images of possible futures had Calmyrra survived. None of them. And Talia only lived if she let her go. If those images were real... Was it worth risking that they were not?

Calmyrra took a deep breath and forced herself to stand tall. Her gait was elegant and regal as she walked into the house.

Talia was already gone with the boys to speak with the Council. She could tell her what she needed to know after Mahala'it Shan. There was no need to rush anything or worry the child unnecessarily. She would simply gather the things Talia would need and have them ready — just in case. She had at least a week. There was plenty of time. Plenty of time, she thought as she slowly folded herself onto her knees in the dirt and shook as she wept into her palms.

Cedrin steadied himself as his eyes focused once again on the floor of his cabin. Blinking a few times to clear the vision from his head, he leaned back in his chair and tugged absentmindedly at his long, dangly right lobe.

On other days, the well-worn thatched chair was a comfort. It was a product of the plainsfolk of Gael, south of the desert of the same name. It was an exceptionally comfortable and masterfully crafted chair, high-backed with armrests fashioned of smooth silkwood imported from Tolk on the northern fringe of the desert. More years of use than he cared to count had rounded and polished them so that they felt almost like hardened milk in his palm. Dense hand-woven crosshatching lacewood bark from Loshek caressed what was left of his wispy, gray hair.

The Send was successful, but it was still a difficult message to deliver. The girl was very strong-minded, not as simple to control as he had thought a child would be. That was good. She would need to be strong.

The mother was no weak-minded lady herself. It took all the will and creativity Cedrin had, even with his skills in disciplines of the Mind, to get her to take the short walk to look at the picture he had drawn with the hands of the child and the help of the Stream.

Those difficulties, however, paled in comparison to the difficulty of the message itself. It was not one he wanted to send, and certainly not to the child! But time was of the essence and preparations had to be made, and she needed to be able to recognize him when he came too. His errand was not one of peace and prosperity. The mother was so young. She would need to be strong as well, at least for what time remained. Maybe the futures held other options for her, but Cedrin could not see any.

A child? He gripped the arms of his chair, his brow furrowed so intently that the furry white bushes arched down over his dark eyes like an angry brier. He looked through them unblinking, with intense, crystal-blue eyes that saw nothing but memories of the Send that he himself had received. It had come from Aliel, The One, the only god to survive the Shattering besides Gromash, who had gone rogue and killed the others. Separately banished for three thousand years, they had each sought for one such as this child.

She can't be. She has to be!

He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the crisp morning air. Shards! What am I going to do with a child?

Most of the leaves of the forest had already fallen, but there were enough evergreens to provide a modicum of protection from the elements. He always felt the chill in his bones, especially in the morning before he'd stoked the fire in the stove nestled in the northeast corner of the small cabin he had built with his own hands — and the skills he had managed to master.

The dried leaves on the forest floor introduced a slight musty odor to the stiff wind. It drove the late-autumn air above the canopy, whistling a thousand cacophonous tunes past bare limbs that stretched upward as if begging the sky for warmth. Cedrin took another deep breath, focusing once again on the task at hand. Maybe he could see a way out of this situation, but he dared not hope too much, given the source of the Send he had received. Surely The One knew what was inevitable and what was not.

The futures were always muddled and varied the more distant they were. No one could See very far, but Cedrin could delve perhaps up to a couple of weeks into the futures and see a complex variety of possibilities.

Peering into times, especially the futures, was difficult and draining. The Stream was supremely powerful, but to direct the Stream took a great deal of energy. When he was young and inexperienced with the Stream, Cedrin had once awakened lying on his stomach in the mud, his mouth gaped open, half full of murky water. It was the bugs swimming around his teeth and tickling his tongue that woke him. For several moments, he could do little but chuckle to himself as he lay there in excruciating pain, with no more ability to do anything about it than did the bugs to move him out of their puddle. It was his first experience being dammed. It was what happened when a Tapper diverted too much of the Stream at once, especially in a minor discipline.

A shard of glass in his mind reflected on what might have been each time he saw a child. The pain of it was one he both hated and embraced. That old, lingering pain was the only thing he had left of the woman he loved that the Searchers had not taken. And that insane witch, Ashtar.

After all this time, there was little left now of anything he ever held dear. And now he was old. Very, very old. If men who lived fifty years became "set in their ways," what of him? A fifty-year-old was an infant. Pah! A fetus! What was he supposed to do with a girl-child at his age?

After some time, Cedrin took another deep breath, watched the misty air swirl and disappear slowly as he exhaled. This path he was set upon was simply too complex. He could see only a few days into the futures before they became a complex weave of nearly infinite possibilities. Any efforts to peer further into time, even with his skill as a Savant, would almost certainly lead to another face-down experience in the mud, one from which he might never awaken, even when the water bugs began to do more than tickle his tongue.

He recovered from his momentary reverie and found he still gripped the arms of his chair. This child's futures were so complex that even trying to see them was taxing! He relaxed his grip on the silkwood arms and began to stroke them gently. So much more would likely be lost before what he saw came to pass. I will miss this chair, he thought as he stroked the smooth wood one more time before he began to gather together what few things he would be able to take with him on his journeys. If this child was who he believed she was, it would be quite a challenge just to keep her alive long enough to do what she needed to do. He wished he fully understood what that was.

A few hours later, Cedrin ambled slowly and thoughtfully through the Forest of Forlaster. It had been his home for many years now. He carried a small pack, and a bag slung over his old shoulders, everything else left behind. If he didn't return soon, the forest would quickly consume his modest hut, and all it contained. Most of all, he would miss his chair.