Editing TORDOM:Lossel (section)

==Background==
The tang of metal stung against her palm, the reverberation of steel against the rings of the man's hauberk shimmying up her arm and grinding straight into her teeth. Desperate to be free of her accoster, Lossel pressed all her weight forward and drove the short sword through flesh. She felt something pop. An organ, maybe. When she braved a look up, the light of fear fired in the man's eyes. He opened his mouth to growl something, but stopped when a blood bubble burst at his lips. Lossel let go the sword and backed away, panic loose in her veins. She turned to run, but Hoeli caught her, pressed a meaty fist around her throat. His breath was putrid in her ear. "You'll not get away with this, witch." The world went black. 

It rained the day of her trial. She was Dunadan, so the Hillfolk chieftain did not dare deny her her right: trial before the elders. The trees leered through a grim sky as she walked a gauntlet of spit and jeers from the cell to the folk-moot. She was offered trial by arms, but no champion stepped forward in her stead. She'd no friends here, not after weeks of debilitating dreams and fits their healer deemed untreatable. With no champion to plead her case, she was left with words, and words only. Lossel stared at her accusers, dirt smudged across her cheeks. The wind was cold in the fire ring. She pressed the threadbare cloth they'd thrown at her three days ago against her thin frame. Her chin lilted in defiance. She was good with words. Her eyes flitted from man to man, meeting Einarr's. He smiled wickedly, and Lossel's hope sank. He guessed her game, and, knowing her ploy, whispered in the chieftain's ear. Their king nodded, motioned wordlessly to Hoeli. This was how she lost her speech; they cut the tendon anchoring her tongue, leaving the appendage to flap uselessly in her mouth. Someone else, Einarr she thought later in a haze of tears and blood, spoke for her. 

They'd wanted her gone, and so she was gone. Banished from negotiating further. Later, as she walked the long road north and east and shivered less, Lossel began to understand. The dreams were prophecy. She stopped fearing the nightmares, welcomed them, tried to remember bits and pieces from each dream, mostly unsuccessfully. Without companions or speech, she wove a story in her head. Ghosts were everywhere, she realized, and they came out during the day, too. She saw things others didn't, felt the frustration of no tongue build until she wept in anger. She'd find someone, find a way to make them understand the things she saw. And so she walked, searching.