Blazing Earth by Terri Brisbin Page B

vibrating with the power of the earth and shining with its color. He grew serious now.
    â€œI do not think ’tis safe to discuss these things here. Not with a guard shadowing me.” He closed his eyes and let out a breath before speaking again. “But he is gone for now.”
    â€œHow do you know that he has not returned?” Thea glanced toward the front of her cottage and could hear and see nothing.
    â€œI have only just discovered that I can feel the footsteps of others who approach. I can feel their weight on the soil as they move.”
    Stunned by such a thing, she waited on him.
    â€œI planned to go back to my farm in a few days. To sort things out there. Come with me, Thea. We will have privacy there to discuss these matters and others.”
    â€œDurrington, Tolan? You return to Durrington?” His farm was several miles away and was rumored to be large and prosperous, though she’d never seen it and he spoke of it only in passing during their times together.
    â€œAye.” He nodded. “I passed it while on that journey with Lord Geoffrey and wish to go back.”
    â€œI will go with you.”
    â€œUntil we go, speak not of this to anyone else and use your gift only if necessary. We must gain a better understanding of why the lord has sent a guard to watch me.”
    â€œDo you think there are others, Tolan? Others like us?” she asked. If there were two, mayhap there were others?
    His only reply was to nod, grimly and once. She accepted his hand and they walked back to the door of her cottage. He bade her farewell and promised to speak to her about the arrangements in a few days, but he did not follow her in or stay the night. ’Twas clear to her that he was concerned about the lord’s reasons for following him, and rightly so.
    When she finally sought her bed, sleep did not come for several hours. The excitement of discovering the truth about him, about them, and witnessing his use of his gift as he called it, kept her awake. As she tossed and turned, the one question that plagued her relentlessly through the dark of the night was the same one she’d asked Tolan.
    Were there others like them?
    But the question she had not had the opportunityto ask him was mayhap the more disturbing one to her—if she had the power of the healing sun within her and he had the power of the earth within him, what powers did others have and to what purpose did they use them?

C HAPTER 9
    His plans to visit Durrington did not happen as he’d hoped when he invited Thea along with him. Since Tolan also intended to speak on more personal matters, the delays and changes in his plan frustrated him even more. And the guard’s continuing presence, though now more discreet, angered him.
    Two days after the revelations in Thea’s cottage, Tolan tried to speak to Lord Geoffrey about it but was sent away without seeing the nobleman. Tolan did not, however, miss the strange stare from the man he served as Tolan walked out of the keep and toward the gates.
    Lord Geoffrey, with that strange, rambling journey, his eerie questions, and his piercing stare, knew more than Tolan hoped any man ever would. For now, he must have a care not to be seen doing anything that seemed to be more than any other experienced farmer would do.
    An experienced farmer whose tasks seem to grow more numerous with each passing day as the growing season approached. This year, it seemed that Bordan and the lord assigned more and more things to his list of responsibilities. In a way, it felt as though it was an attempt, like Thea’s marriage to Jasper, to keep him near and busy.
    The one thing Tolan did not wish to do was to ignore Thea. So when he saw her going about her visits, he followed her until he could pull her unseen into the shadows behind the miller’s house. They’d not spoken since the revelations two nights ago. Worried over what her reaction would be, he was reassured by the