Chapter 18

Fortunately, the woman turned away and proceeded back into the encampment, though not without one last smiling look at me as I scrambled to get dressed.

A while later, decently clothed and with a bowl of some sort of porridge in my lap, I sat in a lavishly decorated tent with Raneld beside me.

“I am Arielda,” said the woman who now sat cross-legged on a cushion opposite us. She had her own bowl, which she spooned from in between speaking. “And you are welcome here for as long as you wish to stay, but I suspect your path doesn’t lie among us.”

Raneld shook his head. “It could, perhaps. But I don’t think so. But about Valde’s curse…”

“Geas,” I muttered.

“What’s the difference?” asked Raneld, giving me a curious look.

“A curse is evil, and meant simply to harm. A geas just makes you do something, whether you want to or not.”