by Andre Norton
As time passed, though, Herta was hard put to explain some things. Why her charge grew so quickly and showed wits and strengths village children of near age did not. Yet, though she watched carefully, especially on the full moon nights, she saw no sign of any Outling change.
Briary early advanced from a creeping stage to walking, and she was always a shadow to Herta. She seldom spoke and then only in answer to a direct question, but when Herta sat by the fire of an evening, a warm posset in her mug, stretching her feet to the fire’s warm, she would feel a small hand stroking her arm and then her cheek and she would gather up the child to hold. Perhaps it was because she had lived alone for so long herself that she felt the need for speech, and so she first told Briary of her own childhood, and then tales of older times. But she never spoke of Outlings nor such legends. Instead she repeated the names of herbs and plants and most of the lore of her trade, even those the child she held on her lap could not understand. Yet Briary seemed to find all Herta’s speech a comfort, for when the healer would take her to bed she would ask in her soft voice for more.
When spring came Briary grew restless, pacing to the door of the house and fingering the latch bar, looking to Herta. At first the healer was reluctant to let her out. There were two reasons—the Outling blood in her, which Herta tried hard to forget, and the fact that she was so forward for her age that surely the village women would gossip about it.
But at length she yielded and allowed Briary to go into the garden, which must be carefully tended, and even, walking, with one hand grasping Herta’s skirt, to the mill for a packet of meal, standing quietly, sometimes with a forefinger in her mouth, listening while Herta exchanged greetings and small talk with her neighbors.
If Briary did not hunt out the children of the village, they were quick to spy her. To the older ones she was but a baby, but there were others who shyly offered flowers or a May apple. At length she became accepted; all differences denied that she was a stranger. She could outrun even Evison, who had always been fleetest of foot. And as the years passed Herta also forgot her wariness and looked no more for what she suspected might come.
Somehow the villagers came to accept, though they sometimes commented on her rapid growth of both mind and body. She became a second pair of hands for Herta, learning to grind, to measure, to spread for drying, to measure drop by drop liquids from the clay bottles on the shelves. It was she who stopped the lifeblood flow when Karl misswung an axe until Herta could come. And Lesa swore that Briary only touched the ugly wart rising on her chin and it grew the less and vanished. Herta was given credit for training so good an apprentice.
When summers reached the height of sticky weather and one sweated and slapped at the flies, hunting shade at noontide, Briary was made free of another of the children’s secrets. For she had early learned that there were some things one did not blab about.
This was one mainly known to the boys until Briary had followed them. And, seeing her watching, they somehow could not send her away.
Among the ancient stories Herta had shared with her was one of the village itself. There had been a mighty lady, such as had never been hereabouts before, who had come with workmen and had built a stone house which stood now fields apart from the village. Before it was dug a pool as the lady ordered, and a spring had burst to fill it, nor had the water ever failed. Then she had built across the upper end of the pool, nearest to the building, a screen of stone.
Once that had been done she dismissed the workpeople, offering land to those wanting to stay. Later came others, odd-looking in queer garments. They, too, worked, for one could hear the ring of their hammers throughout the day and sometimes on nights when the moons were full.
Whatever they wrought was also finished at last, and they left very quickly between dawn and dusk of a single day. The native villagers took an aversion to the building. Of the lady they never saw anything again, and it was thought she must have gone with the last workpeople.
However, in time the boys used to dare each other to try the pool and, nothing ill happening, it became a place of recreation for the village in the high heat of summer. But no one ventured beyond the screen or tried to explore what stood there.
Briary seemed able to swim as easily as one already tutored, though the other girls squealed and splashed and floundered into some manner of propulsion.
It seemed that life flowed as smoothly as always, one day melting into another one, until the coming of the peddler. He arrived on a day for rejoicing for the crops, for the last of the harvest had been brought in and there was a table set up in the middle of the street whereon each housewife set a dish or platter of her best and most closely guarded recipe. They were just about to explore these delights when Evison came running to say there was a stranger on the road from the south.
Perhaps twice or three times a year such a thing might happen. It meant news to be talked over for months and sometimes things to be learned. To have this happen on the day of Harvest Home was a double event which near aroused the younger members of the village to a frenzy.
He came slowly, the peddler, with one hand on the pack frame of his mule, as if he in some manner needed support, and his face was near as red as a field poppy.
Johan, the smith, hurried to meet him, a brimming tankard of Harvest Mix in his hand. The man gave him a nod of the head and drank as if he had been in a desert for days. When he came up for air he pulled his dusty hand across his wet chin.
“Now that’s a fair greeting.” His voice had a cracked note as if some of the dust had plagued him to that point. “I be Igorof, trader. May all your days be sunny and your crops grow tall, good people.”
“Let us help your beast, trader.” Johan already had a hand on his shoulder and was pulling him toward the table. “Good feasting, Igorof.” He placed him on the nearest bench while the women crowded forward with this dish or that full of the best for him to make choice.
Evison had taken the donkey to the nearby field, where two of the other boys helped him lift off the heavily laden pack frame while another brought a pail of water for the thirsty animal.
“Feast, let us feast!” Johan hammered the hilt of his knife on the table.
Briary had squeezed in beside Herta, but she noted, as she always was able, that the healer was eyeing the newcomer with a frown beginning to form between her eyes.
Feast well they did, with many toasts in the more potent drink offered the elders. Igorof’s tankard was kept brimming, and he emptied it nearly as quickly, though he did not seem as drawn to do more than taste what lay on his plate.
Herta leaned forward suddenly and asked, her voice loud enough to cut through the general noise, “How do those in Langlot, friend? You have come from there—what news do you bring?”
His eyes were watching her over the edge of the tankard.
“Well as one would wish, goodwife. There be three new babes and—” Suddenly he set down the tankard so its contents splashed and his mouth was drawn crooked in grimace.
What moved Briary arose inside her as one might suddenly come from a dark into light. She skidded under the table and caught the edge of Johan’s smock, pulling him backward with all her might, away from the stranger. He cried out in surprise and tripped.
The girl continued to face the stranger, flung out her arms and pushed against all those near him she could reach. “Away—away—” Her voice was shrill.
“What do you, brat!” Ill-tempered Trike aimed a slap at her.
Herta arose. “She saves your life!” she told Trike. “Stranger, what is the truth of what you have brought to us?”
He grimaced again, his eyes turning swiftly from side to side.
“No! Not the fire!” He had scrambled up from his seat. His shirt only loosely held together fell open to show red splotches on his chest. Herta’s eyes widened, fear masked her face.
“Plague!”
One word, but enough to silence them all. Those nearest the trader strove to get away, and thos
e beyond tried to elude them in turn. There had been no plague in many years, but when it struck, whole villages went to their deaths and only the wild creatures were ever seen in their streets.
Such was the role of deaths, it was said that those bearing the contagion were often hurled into fires, the living with the dead.
A wild scramble rolled along the street, each family seeking their own home, though one could not shelter with any bolt against this menace.
The man threw back his head and howled like a beast at the slaughter pen and then crumpled to the ground. Briary could see the heavy shudders that shook his body.
“Get away from him, fool!” Johan’s wife showed her hatchet face at their cottage window.
Herta moved around the table to the stricken stranger. She did not look to Greta in the window, but her voice surely reached the woman, for the shutter was slammed shut again.
“I am healer sworn,” Herta said, then she spoke to Briary.
“Bring me the packets from the drawer with the black spot on it.” Briary ran as swiftly as in a race. But fear was cold within her. She knew the nature of those packets—they brought an end to great suffering—but also to life, and she who used them would take a great weight upon her inner self for every grain of the powder she dispensed. Yet it was said that the last moments of the plague brought pure torment, and if that were lessened it was a boon well meant.
There were two sides always to the healer’s craft. In her hands from time to time she held both life and death. Briary found the packets, thrust them deep into her apron pocket and returned to the wreckage of the feast.
Herta was on her knees by the still shuddering body of the trader. As Briary came up she grabbed a tankard from the edge of the table before her and there was an answering slosh of drink unconsumed. Then she spoke to Igorof.
“Brother, you are plague gripped. There is no cure—but your passing can be eased if you will it so.”
His head turned so his sweating face could be seen, and it seemed that the shudders ran also across his features. His bitten lips, flecked with blood, twisted.
“Give—peace—” Somehow he grated out the words.
Calmly Herta held packet and tankard up to eye level and shook some grayish ashes into the tankard. Then she pushed the packet back to Briary.
As if the man had been stricken by an ordinary fever and lay in her own cottage, she slipped an arm about his shoulders and lifted him, setting the tankard to his lips.
“Thanks of all good be on you, healer,” he grated out. “But you have doomed yourself thereby.”
“That is as it may be,” she said steadily as he drank what she offered.
To Briary’s eyes his passing was quick, but the body he had left behind was as much a danger to the village as the living man had been.
Herta arose and faced down the street. And her voice came high and clear.
“Show your courage now. Those who were near to this poor soul and his belongings—already, as well you know, the taint may lie upon you. Away from those you cherish until you know you are clean. Come forth and give aid for what must be done.”
There was silence, no other answer. Then a door was flung open and a youthful figure half fell, half flung himself into the street. There were screams and calls from behind him as he lurched to his feet, stood for a moment as if to get his full breath, and then came forward with visible reluctance. It was Evison, who had dealt with Igorof’s pack and mule. He gulped twice and turned his head not to view the dead as he approached, and his face was gray beneath the summer’s tan.
His coming might have been a key turned in a stubborn lock, for now other doors opened and the wailing from within the cottages mingled in a great cry of sorrow and loss. But they came—Johan, and the others who had drunk with the stranger, three women who had taken it upon themselves to fill his plate and so had been shoulder close to him.
Johan loosened one of the benches and they brought pitchforks and staffs, to roll the limp body on that surface, carrying it into the field where the trader’s pack had been left. It was Stuben who smoothed the mule’s neck and, looking into the animal’s eyes, said in a shaking voice.
“What must be done, will be done.” And with his butcher’s practice brought down the heavy axe in the single needed blow.
There was movement again in the village, though those who had come forth stood carefully away from the known cottage while doors or windows were opened. Wood cut for the hearth, a roll or two of cloth, several jugs of oil were thrust into the street.
So Igorof came to the fire after all, though it was only his tortured husk which lay there in the lap of flames. And with him burned all his belongings, the frame on which those had ridden, and the mule.
It took hours, and those who worked tottered with weariness as they pulled together more fuel for that fire. Also their eyes went slyly now and then from one to another, watching, Briary knew, for some sign of the sickness to show.
Herta oversaw the building of the pyre and then went to her cottage and began to sort out bottles and packets, Briary following her directions as to blending and stirring.
“What can be done, shall be. Gather all the cups and tankards left on the table, child, and have them ready.”
The stink of the fire hung like a doom cloud over the whole village, and Briary could see those others still adding to its fury with whatever they could lay hands upon. She readied the cups and Herta came, a pot braced against her hip. The workers must have sighted her and taken her arrival as a signal, for they gathered again, singed, smoke darkened, though no one stood close to another.
“A Healer is granted only such knowledge as the Great Ones allow. I can promise you nothing. But here I have the master strength of many remedies, some akin to a lighter form of the plague. Drink and hope, for this is all which has been left to us, if we would not wipe out all who are kin to us.”
Drink they did, with Herta watching that each might get his or her full share. When they had done, their weariness seemed to strike at them, and they settled on the bank of the stream. Two of the women wept, but the third wore a face of anger against fate and dug her belt knife again and again into the earth as if she would clean it well for some use; while the men, grim of face, looked now and then to the towering flag of flame.
Briary had first sought Herta, tagging at her heels as might a babe who had but shortly learned to walk and needed a skirt to cling to. Inside she felt strange and wanted comfort, but of what sort she could not tell, perhaps better than most, for she had learned of Herta’s knowledge. Yet there grew in her a strange feeling that this thing was no threat to her, and that those sorrowing and damning fate upon the river bank were its prey—not she.
She still trod in Herta’s footsteps as they returned to the healer’s cottage. But on the very doorstep she halted as if a wall had risen past which she could not go. Yet all she could see was a string of drying herbs somehow fallen from its ceiling hook. The odor from it grew more pungent and she made a small sound in her throat— more like a whine than a true protest.
Herta swept around and stood staring at her as if she were some fragment of the plague broken loose. The healer sank down on her chair. Her lips moved as if she were speaking.
Briary heard no sound, but there came a tingling in her skin as if the briars which had been her birthing bed once more pricked at her. There seemed to be stronger smells, and some of them she found worse than those which had come from the fire.
Her hands itched and she rubbed them together and then looked down in startled horror, for skin did not touch smooth skin—rather hair. She looked to see a down appearing—gray as fire ash and certainly not true skin. Frantically she pushed up her sleeves to discover that that fluff continued, and then she tore apart the fastening of her bodice and looked down upon just the same growth.
The plague! And yet the trader had showed no such stigmata. Briary cried out her terror and from her throat there arose no true words, but rather a how
l.
Despairing she held out one of those strangely gloved hands toward Herta and went to her knees, begging aid.
The healer had arisen from her seat, the twisted astonishment on her face fading. She wet her lips with her tongue tip and then enunciated slowly as if speaking to a small child who must be made to understand.
“You are—Outling!” Again she wet her lips with tongue tip. “Now you meet your true self. Why I do not know, unless what has happened this day has also a strange effect on those of your blood. But this I will tell you, daughterling: get you away. They,” she gave a short nod in the direction of the rest of the village, “will wish for one on whom to blame disaster—they will remember how unlike their kin you are—the more so now!”
“But,” Briary’s voice was hardly more than a harsh rumble. “I—I smelled the evil—I wished to aid—”
“Truth spoken. But you have never been one to measure beside the other younglings. There have always been some who wondered and whispered. And now that black doom has descended upon us, their whispers will become shouts.”
“You call me Outling.” Tears gathered in the girl’s eyes, matted in the fur on her cheeks. “Am I then of the night demon kind?”
Herta shook her head. “Your kind is old. Before the first of the human landseekers came down valley your people knew this land. But then you passed, as a fading race passes when pressed by a stronger, fresher planting. I do not know why your mother returned here, though her need must have been sore, for death companied her. I do not—”
Suddenly she paused, arose from her chair. “The shrine,” she said. “Surely only the shrine could have drawn her hither, that she must have aid for some dire hurt!”
“The shrine—?”
“Yes, that which lies beyond the pool. None ever saw clearly the Great One who ordered its building, nor did any who worked upon it understand why it was set here—at least they answered no questions. But if it is a thing of power for your kind perhaps you can save yourself there—”