by Anna Elliott
Some of the torches were still burning, casting enough light that Isolde could see his face: Eurig, eyes wide with shock, one hand clapped to his beefy chest.
He let out a breath. “Great Arawn’s manhood, you gave me a jump.”
Cabal had woken at the sound of the opening door, and now bounded forward, teeth bared in a snarl. Isolde kept one hand on his collar but let the big dog move between her and Eurig. She took a breath and tried to steady her racing heart.
“Why are you here?” she asked. “What do you want?”
Eurig looked from Cabal to Isolde, and he rubbed a hand over his bald head, glancing all about them and whispering as though afraid of being overheard. “No harm—believe me. I meant—mean you—no harm.”
“Believe you?” Isolde repeated. “You know, I’ve found when anyone says that, it generally means you’d be seven times a fool to take their word.”
“I. …” Eurig’s gaze dropped to the ground, and he looked so wretched—like a dog expecting to be kicked—that Isolde relented. Because despite Fidach’s words, she found she did instinctively trust Eurig—partway, at least.
“Tell me why you are here, then,” she said.
Eurig’s eyes flashed gratefully to her face, and he swallowed. “It’s Piye.”
“Piye?”
Eurig nodded. “That’s right.” The words came in a whispered rush. “He’s one of the men that carried Hereric today. Piye and Daka. Twins, they are. But now Piye’s sick. And Trystan said as how you were a rare skilled healer. And me and Daka thought—” He swallowed again. “We thought as how maybe you’d help him. On the quiet, like. Because if Fidach finds out, it’ll be all over for him. For Piye, I mean.”
Isolde studied Eurig’s round, homely face and gentle brown eyes. His gaze was still shifting nervously about the crannog, and she could see a glitter of perspiration on his brow. Slowly, she asked, “You mean that Piye would be cast out if Fidach found out he was ill?”
Eurig’s head moved in jerky confirmation again. “No place for a man here who can’t hold his own in a fight. He’d be cast out—and even then he’d not be long lived. Fidach doesn’t let any man stay alive that can find this place, if he can help it.”
Isolde kept silent a moment, still holding Cabal between her and Eurig. If she hadn’t yet entirely decided to trust Eurig, she found she could believe what he told her of Fidach—believe it readily. Her mind flashed for a brief moment to Trystan, and she wondered how he had managed to get free—plainly carrying the knowledge of how to find Fidach and his men again.
She pushed the thought aside, though, trying to make up her mind about the man before her. On the one side of the balance was her instinctive liking of Eurig. And on the other side was the certainty that if she’d wanted to lay a trap for herself, this was exactly the kind she would have devised: a plea for help, with a sick or wounded man to bait the snare.
Eurig cleared his throat. “We could pay, maybe. If you’d see what you can do.”
Isolde’s eyes rested on those of the man before her. The moment stretched out. But wherever Trystan was now—whenever he returned—any allies she could find among the group would be valuable. Isolde came to a decision. “You don’t have to pay me,” she said. “I’ll come.” She put a hand on Cabal’s head. “Cabal, stay and guard Hereric here.”
Cabal whined softly at seeing her follow Eurig down one of the causeways, but he was a war dog, well trained to obey. Glancing back over her shoulder, Isolde saw him settle himself, paws outstretched, ears alert and at the ready, by the door of the hut. Then she turned back, keeping her eyes on Eurig’s broad back as he led the way towards another of the round thatched huts.
“FALLING SICKNESS.”
All was silent outside, the sound of men’s talking and laughter died away as Isolde stood looking down at the prostrate man, lying on a straw pallet much like the one she’d just left behind. Piye’s eyes were wide and terrified in his dark face, and though he hadn’t moved since Isolde entered, she could see the rapid rise and fall of his chest and the rigid stiffness of the way he held himself, as though poised for flight. Daka, too, looked tense and strained, and kept shooting quick, wary glances at Isolde from the corners of his eyes.
Piye’s fit had passed by the time Isolde and Eurig had reached the hut the brothers shared, but his brother had told her—grudgingly, it seemed to Isolde—what had happened. She had asked Piye, first, how he felt, but Daka had shaken his head. “He not know your tongue. I speak for him instead.” Daka had a deep, musical voice that made Isolde think of the thrumming beat of a great drum. “A bad spirit come to him. Take him. Throw him on the ground. He fight with it.” Daka’s arms sketched the frantic movements Piye had made. Then he shrugged. “Finally, spirit go.”
Daka and Piye’s hut was much like the one where Isolde had left Hereric and Cabal, save for the array of knives, hunting bows, and arrows hung on the walls. A single small oil lamp burned on the floor beside Piye, showing her the three men: Eurig, pale-skinned and anxious, Daka and Piye, their coal-black faces so alike as to be mirrors of one another down to the suspicious fear in their eyes.
Now Isolde moved to kneel beside Piye, and instantly he jerked back, pressing himself against the wall of the hut, his eyes flying upwards to where a hunting knife hung just above his pallet. Daka, too, made a quick, convulsive movement, as though about to catch hold of Isolde’s arm and hold her back—though he checked himself before actually touching her.
He turned to Eurig and said something, rapidly and low, in what Isolde thought must be his own native tongue. Probably, How do you know we can trust her? Or something of that kind. Before Eurig could answer, though, Isolde looked from Daka to Piye and then back again. Her scalp was prickling, but she had come here, had decided to trust Eurig, had chosen her course. So she set aside all thought of fear, keeping her gaze firmly fixed away from the weapons hung on the walls.
She spoke to Daka, since Piye’s look was uncomprehendingly blank, his eyes dazed even amidst his fear.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m not going to hurt him. I only want to examine him, to see if there’s anything I can do to help.”
Though if what she suspected was true, and it was the falling sickness that had struck Piye, there would be very little that she could actually do. Daka hesitated a long moment, then gave a wordless nod of agreement, gesturing her to go ahead.
Piye sat as though carved of stone while she listened to him breathe, looked into his eyes, and felt the pulse of life in his throat. She could feel, though, how tightly strung he was, sense the control he was exercising not to leap up and run from the hut or burst into speech. Isolde thought briefly of starting one of the old tales, as she often did with patients afraid or in pain—or as she’d done with Hereric so many times over the last days. But if Piye didn’t speak the Briton tongue, and Daka only barely, hearing her murmur a flood of unfamiliar words might be only another cause for fear.
Thinking of Hereric, though, made her wonder whether she might be able to reach Piye as she had Hereric. So as she worked over him, she focused on speaking to Piye in her mind, forming with her thoughts what she would say to him if he could understand her words. She imagined Piye’s fear as almost a separate, breathing presence in the room with her and the other two men, imagined herself stretching out a hand to that fear, soothing it softly into sleep.
The effort was harder than it had been with Hereric—maybe because she knew Piye so much less well. Isolde’s head started to ache, and her eyes felt gritty with fatigue. But slowly, slowly Piye’s taut muscles started to relax. By the time she at last sat back on her heels, Piye’s eyelids had started to droop and his head had fallen forward on his chest as the exhaustion that usually followed fits like his started to overtake him.
Isolde watched him another moment, then turned to look up at Daka. “Has this happened before?”
The young man seemed to hesitate, his long-lashed dark eyes still wary, as though seeking to
take Isolde’s measure. Then he inclined his head. “Happen six—maybe seven times before.”
Isolde nodded.
“Can you do anything for him, lady?” Eurig asked.
Isolde’s eyes had gone back to Piye, but she said automatically, “Isolde.”
Eurig ducked his head, his face flushing. “Sorry. Just don’t seem right to call you that, somehow. Plain to see you’re a cut above the likes of us here.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
She was thinking that at least these men had risked their chief’s formidable anger in aid of their friend. And she had absolutely no power to help Piye, who despite the confusion of fear she still felt from him was now half asleep, slumped back on his pallet of straw.
Isolde drew out from her medicine bag a vial of lady’s slipper and valerian decoction, and worked to shake off an inevitable wave of anger at her own helplessness. She’d learned long ago that there would always be those like Marcia or Bedwyr or Piye here that she was powerless to aid. But still she felt the same every time.
She started to hold the glass vial out to Piye, but he jerked back again, eyes flaring wide, and beside her she felt Daka go rigid, too.
“Don’t be afraid.” She spoke directly to Piye this time, hoping that he would understand the intent, if not the actual words. “It won’t hurt you. Here—look.” She unstoppered the vial and took a sip of the draft herself. The mixture of herbs was cool and slightly spicy on her tongue. “You see—it’s safe to drink. It will help you go to sleep, that’s all.”
Piye looked from her up to his brother, and it seemed to Isolde that his eyes held a question. The silence stretched out in the small, lamp-lit space. Then Daka said something in their own tongue, and Piye let out his breath. He reached to take the vial from Isolde, raised it to his lips, and swallowed before sinking back against the straw pallet once more.
“That draft—cure him? Drive out evil spirit?” Daka asked her, after Piye had drunk.
Isolde felt another twist of anger at herself—and guilt, this time as well, because she could see the hope warring with disbelief in both Piye’s and Daka’s eyes. The god’s touch, her grandmother had called the falling sickness, because fits like Piye’s sometimes brought Otherworld visions, flashes of Sight. But whether it was a sign of attacking demons or was a gift of the gods, Isolde knew that there was nothing—nothing at all—that she could do to heal it or stop its striking Piye down again.
“I’m sorry,” Isolde began. And then she stopped, a sudden memory flashing across her mind’s eye: herself in her workroom at Dinas Emrys, packing what she would take on the journey with Trystan. She’d been putting jars of salve and vials of herbal simples into her medicine bag. And then her eye had lighted on the crude little iron ring Garwen had given her. And because she’d not wanted Garwen to find it after she and Trystan were gone—and be hurt, because Isolde hadn’t kept it by her as she promised—she’d dropped the ring into the bag.
Now, in the dimly lighted hut, with its weapons of war hanging all about them on the walls and the eyes of the three men fixed on her face, Isolde opened her medicine bag again, sorting quickly through the array of bottles and jars. And the ring was there, sifted to the very bottom.
It was partly impulse that made Isolde pick it up, impulse born of the way the hope in the brother’s eyes had caught in her chest. She took up the iron ring, holding it on her palm. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I can’t cure Piye’s sickness. No healer that I know of can. But this—” She stopped, then spoke steadily, reaching this time towards both Piye and Daka in her mind, imagining her words reaching through to the deepest root of their fear. “This ring is a charm against all evil. Make sure he wears this, and he’ll be certain to triumph if the shade attacks him again.”
It was almost frightening how readily the three men trusted her. Maybe it was the power she’d tried to pour into the words. Or maybe they were all simply so desperate that they clutched at any hope at all, like a drowning man clutching a floating spar. Whatever the reason, Daka’s fingers closed round the ring, and he said, his deep voice turning slightly husky, “Thank you.”
Piye was asleep almost before Daka had pushed the ring onto the smallest finger of his brother’s right hand. Then Daka straightened and turned back to Isolde. The lamplight gleamed golden on the chiseled plains of his dark face, throwing glimmers of golden yellow into his eyes. “And—” He stopped, glanced from Eurig to Isolde, and then back again, the hint of wariness creeping back into his deep voice. “You not tell Fidach?”
That, at least, Isolde could answer truly, and she shook her head. “No. You have my word.”
Daka bowed his head in grave acknowledgment. “Thank you,” he said again. For a moment, his dark gaze rested on his brother’s face, the face that was so much a mirror of his own. When he looked back at Isolde, she thought she caught a glimmer of moisture in his eyes. “Piye is my brother,” Daka said. “Hurt to him hurts me as well.” He made Isolde a slight bow, oddly formal in the round, cramped little room. “I thank you, lady,” he said. “For us both.”
Isolde nodded, because she would undo any good to Piye if she denied that she’d done anything at all. “You’re very welcome,” she said quietly. “Both of you.”
Daka watched the slow rise and fall of his brother’s breathing a moment more, then let out his breath and turned to Eurig. “Better be getting her back, now. Safer she be in her own place.”
Eurig nodded and rose to his feet. “You’re right there.” The eyes of the two men met, and it seemed to Isolde that a wordless communication passed between them.
“Safer for you—or for me?” she asked.
There was a silence in which the hut was filled with the sounds of Piye’s breathing and the chirp of crickets from the marsh outside. Eurig and Daka both seemed to hesitate, and then at last Eurig said, “Aye, well. Safer for all of us, maybe. But you don’t—” He stopped, looking awkward. “I mean, you don’t have to worry none. I meant what I told you before. None of the rest would lay a hand on you. Even Esar—he’s the one Fidach clouted for objecting to your being here—wouldn’t dare.”
Unexpectedly, Daka grinned at that, teeth flashing in his dark face. “Not after what Trystan say he do to the man that try it, anyway.” He glanced towards Eurig. “You ever be trying to fight Trystan?”
“Oh, aye.” Eurig rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb. “Like fighting smoke. I know.”
He made as though to turn to the door, but before he could, Isolde stopped him, looking from one to the other of the two men. “Will you tell me, now, where Trystan is?”
Another silence followed, another wordless communication between Eurig and Daka. Then, finally, Eurig let out his breath. “We would tell you, if we could. But we’re under oath—all of us—not to speak of it. Not to you. Not even amongst ourselves, like. But—” Eurig passed a hand over his bald head. “Don’t seem right not to tell you anything. You being Trystan’s sister and all.”
It gave Isolde a shock to hear him say it, to realize that of course the rest of the men would believe the story Trystan had given Fidach. Eurig, though, apparently saw nothing out of the way on her face, for after a moment, he went on. “I’ll tell you. Can’t see it would do any harm for you to hear this much: Trystan’s off on a job for Fidach. A mission, like.”
“A mission?” Isolde repeated. Then, with a tightening feeling about her heart, she asked, “Is this the price Fidach demanded for his help—for allowing a woman amongst the band?”
Slowly, and as though unwillingly, Eurig nodded, and Isolde asked, “And this job—this mission—is it a dangerous one?”
She felt half sorry for asking the question, Eurig’s discomfort was so transparently clear. But right now she wanted too desperately to know every scrap of intelligence he could give her to do anything but wait in expectant silence for him to go on. Eurig looked helplessly from her to Daka, as though seeking aid, and at last Daka said, “Could be danger. Will be, I�
��d say.”
Eurig’s gaze was fixed on the floor, but at that, he looked up at Isolde. “Trystan’s good, though. None better at this kind of thing. He’ll come back, right enough. And besides, we. …” He stopped, then added, awkwardly, “We’d look after you, you know. If anything—well, if anything happened to Trystan. He made us swear it before he left. But we’d all—” He sketched a gesture that included himself and the two other men. “The three of us, I mean, we’d all have done it anyway. Even if he hadn’t.”
The strain of the long day must have been wearing on her even more than she’d realized; Isolde felt the breath freeze in her lungs at Eurig’s words. And she actually bit her tongue to keep from losing her temper, from telling Eurig furiously not to speak—not to even think—of such a thing. Eurig meant well, after all. He was trying to be kind.
So she forced her tight hands to relax, and instead said simply, “Thank you.”
LYING AGAIN ON THE ROUGH STRAW pallet in the hut she’d been allotted, Isolde drew her cloak about her and stared unseeingly out into the dark. Something rustled and squeaked in the thatched roof above her head, and she was grateful again for Cabal’s presence, the knowledge that the big dog lay now across the threshold of the single door. She kept trying to tell herself that in cases like Piye’s, where she could do no good towards healing the ailment, it was better than nothing if she could at least allay terror. That the Sight was a blessing if it let her reach towards the sick or afraid.
She couldn’t entirely believe it, though. Closing her eyes, she tried to conjure up a vision of Morgan’s face in the dark. Was there anything more I could have done?
The imagined Morgan shook her head. Of course not. You know as well as I do that the gods’ sickness has no cure.
Isolde shifted, turning onto her back. The feeling that she’d unfairly bewitched the men still clung to her—or that she’d played on the fighting man’s readiness to clutch at all omens and protective charms. Such things were a way, she supposed, for men at war to live with the knowledge that they might die at any moment of any day. And in a way, she envied them their ready, clutching belief. It was only that after being swept up by the Sight’s ebb and flow for so many years, she couldn’t believe that charms or protection were ever as simple as a dried rabbit’s foot or a ring set with a sheep’s bone. Or at least that anyone—man or woman—could so easily bend to will the forces beyond whatever veil sealed off the Otherworld from this.