“Tell me, O Seeress! Tell me…um…” The maiden stumbled over her words, hardly able to contain her emotions, a mix of eagerness and nervousness in equal measure. The two other girls, sitting beside her waiting their turn to ask the fortune teller a question, giggled. “Well…will I find my love this year?” She finally spit it out. 

Sitting across the table from the trio of girls, Serana did her best to mask her amusement, adopting the grave expression one expected in a proper fortune teller. It was always the same with youth. When their parents paid a visit to Serana, their questions were always of the strictly practical: whether the next week would be a good time for planting or if the rains would delay; if the omens were favorable for their next trip to market… But youths were full of optimism and dread for their futures. They had yet to be ground down by life in a small village where, outside the steady progress of one season to the next, things never changed. 

The ritual was one Serana had down pat. She waved her hands through the incense smoke filled air, rattling the many brass bangles and charms on her colorful costume, while calling upon those spirits who possessed knowledge of the future and were willing to share some part of that knowledge with mortals. If all went well, Serana would enter a deep trance, where she would commune with the spirit and receive its wisdom. 

Only that didn’t happen. After a minute, Serana was forced to conclude that the spirits either did not know the answer or were not willing to share. Nor were they willing to answer her calls for the other two girls. One wanted to know if she would one day be free to travel to distant lands outside the small world of the village. The other wanted to know if her future house would be filled with treasures. Each time, Serana called, but got no reply. She did her best to answer them with rote platitudes and aphorisms she’d learned as an assistant to an older Seeress, but those were obviously not what the girls had been hoping for and they left disheartened.

Serana, on the other hand, was left troubled and confused. To be sure, the spirits might refuse to answer questions of great and terrible import, but the childish questions of three peasant girls hardly counted there. Another possibility was if the question, or its answer, was too confused or garbled to answer. That was possible, but what could make questions she’d answered for dozens of other village girls over the years suddenly so hard to answer? 

The Seeress frowned, recalling how a lot of her trances had gone unanswered in the last few days. She sensed something momentous was coming, that would shake up the tiny, quiet village, rendering much about the expected future for it and its inhabitants, upended. She also knew she would have no rest until she knew what that was. 

Locking up her hut, lest another villager with some urgent question should barge in and disrupt the delicate proceedings, Serana prepared, throwing fresh herbs and incense in the fire, rubbing her charms and whispering fresh invocations, beseeching the spirits. Her voice contained a tone of wariness. This was a harder divination than any she’d attempted before. Asking simple questions, which concerned only the immediate future of a single peasant was one thing. She was trying to trace the open ended future of a whole village. It was true, there were seers and seeresses who could chart the course of whole empires, but there was a reason they were living in palaces, advising the rulers of said empires on matters of war and politics, while she was living in a tiny hut in a backwater village, advising farmers the best times to plant beets. 

Serana fought down her doubts, committing irrevocably to the divination. She forced herself to relax, mind and body, opening up to the spirits. This time they answered. Her eyes rolled back and she swooned in her chair, slipping into a deep trance. 

Suddenly, the Seeress saw the village below her, laid out like some dilettante’s model. Serana’s training took hold and she went into action, knowing all too well she would see this vision only once and would need to hold onto details once she came out of her trance, like clinging to a dream as it faded upon waking. The sky overhead was dark and cloudy, but she spotted the moon, noting a thin sliver, nearly fully New, just above the horizon. That would give her some idea of timing. The trees were still full of leaves, so it could not be so far into the future that Autumn or Winter had come. 

Then the vision changed and Serana found herself flying over the village towards the coast, which lay some seven or eight miles southward. She saw shapes coming out of the sea mists to land on an isolated cove. A chill came over the seeress as she saw they were warships, sleek and fearsome. As soon as their keels ground on sand, armed men jumped over the sides, splashing through the surf towards shore. The raiders paused a moment, forming from a mob into a halfway organized warband. Then, in disciplined silence, the raiders made their way inland, making straight for the village which lay quiet and sleeping, blissfully unaware its doom was drawing close.  

Serana wanted to look away from the vision as the raiders came to the village outskirts, but knew she couldn’t. It was dangerous to end a trance as deep as this one too early and too suddenly. She had asked the spirits to tell her the future and now she would have to see what they showed her, all the way to the end, regardless of how terrible it might be. 

So she watched, hovering high above the scene, a helpless spectator as the pirates swarmed through the unsuspecting and helpless village. Doors of houses were broken down, raiders rushed in. Minutes later, the house’s stunned occupants stumbled out, bound with ropes, expressions of terror and stunned disbelief clear on their faces. Those who resisted or tried to escape were beaten into submission with leather cudgels and whips. The few village men who tried to fight back were cut down without mercy. 

Soon, the whole village was a scene of horror. Some of the pirates were going through the houses, now vacated by their owners, throwing any valuables they thought worth taking out into the streets, putting everything else to the torch. In the village green, the captured villagers were being herded, under the guard of the rest of the raiders. 

To their distress, the village women and maidens were split off from the rest of the villagers, some ripped from the arms of their husbands and parents, and formed into several lines. A number of raiders went down these lines, examining the trembling captives. Night clothes were slashed open with knives or even ripped off entirely, baring the naked bodies beneath to the inspection. The youngest and prettiest women and girls were picked out of line and roped together. They sobbed, bitterly, knowing for what reason they’d been chosen. 

Taking their loot and captives, the raider departed. The maidens were dragged after them in long slave coffles that stumbled towards the shore, weeping and bemoaning their cruel fate. Watching the line of stooped, half-naked figures tramp by, Serana saw many of her friends among the captive women. A dagger of terror stabbed into her guy as she saw herself, naked but for ropes, one of her own scarves tied across her mouth for a gag, stumbling under the lash of one of the pirates. 

Down by the shore, the abductees were led up the gangplanks of their captor’s vessels and down into the dank, dark holds below. Dawn was breaking overhead as the ships pushed off and made for the open sea, but locked in the hold it was still night for the captives, and would remain so until, many days later, they reached their destination: a distant port city and its notorious slave market. 

The captive maidens were unloaded from the pirate’s hold and immediately brought to the dungeon of the slave dealer who had bought them, wholesale,  from the pirates. They waited there for the next market day. When that day came, the captive maidens were led out, naked and chained, before a large crowd of eager buyers and put up for auction as slaves. 

Watching as the auctions proceeded, Serana got hints of the fates that awaited some of the villagers. At last, the seeress got her answers to the questions of the three girls, earlier that evening. She knew now why the spirits hadn’t been able to give her a straight answer. The first girl Serana saw handed over to an older man. Smiling with delight, he seized the maid in his arms and clasped her to him. She had indeed found her lover, but a twisted, cruel sort of love it was. The second girl was sold to a merchant. Serana saw her chained up in her Master’s cabin, to keep him company on his voyages. She would indeed travel to distant lands, but she would not do so freely. The third girl was sold to a wealthy man. She became another rich treasure to beautify his house. 

After seeing more of the village women sold off to find their various fates, few of them kind, it was Serana’s turn at last. As helpless as the image of her, chained and naked on the auction block, Serana watched herself be bid for and, at last, sold. As she was led from the stage, Serana watched, in a mix of fear and curiosity, waiting to see what her own fate was to be. But, fickle as ever, the spirits decided she was not to know that…at least not yet. She caught only an indistinct shape, a hand reaching out to take the chain and lead her away, when the vision ended. 

Serana gasped, panting heavily as the trance ended. She looked around, seeing the familiar outlines of her hut all around, breathing in the familiar scent of home. As always, it took her a moment to separate herself from the mirage of her trance and convince herself she was back in reality, safe at home. 

“No, not safe…” Serana said, dredging up the details of the vision unwillingly focusing on the start of it, the night of the raid. She stood and went to the window, unlatching it and throwing back the shutters. Looking up into the sky, Serana felt the dread return as she saw what she had feared. A tiny sliver of moon peaked between the clouds. It was positioned right where she had seen it in her vision. Even now, she knew, the raiding ships were sailing into the cove. 

Silently, the seeress weighed her options, knowing she had little time to prepare for the raiders’ arrival. Turning back inside the hut, Serana reached up with trembling hands and undid the clasp of her dress. She let it fall to the floor about her feet. Beneath it, she was completely naked. Taking the scarf from her head, she knotted it in the center and slid it between her teeth, knotting the gag off behind her head. From a small chest in the corner, the seeress took out a coil of rope. It wasn’t easy, tying herself up with it, but she managed in the end. By that time, she could hear the clatter from the rest of the village, signaling the imminent arrival of the raiders. 

With a last, sighful glance around her soon to be former home, Serana knelt by the door and awaited her captor’s arrival…