Woundhealer's story ls-1

by Fred Saberhagen

  Zoltan hesitated briefly, then turned aside from the cow path and entered the field where the lonely worker labored. Treading carefully between the rows of vegetables-noticing in passing how healthy they all looked-he approached the man cautiously and saw nothing in him to be alarmed about. He was a bent figure, somewhat gnarled, with calloused hands and a sun burnt neck. Whether he was landowner, serf, or hired hand was not obvious at first sight; the man was dressed in rough clothing, but Zoltan had plenty of experience with powerful people who were disinclined to wear finery.

  The man, intent on his labor, did not notice Zoltan's approach. His back to Zoltan, he kept at his hoeing, the implement in his rugged hands attacking weeds, churning the rich black soil with a regular chuffing sound.

  Remembering his manners, Zoltan kicked a clod of earth when he was still a few meters from the man, making a slight noise. Then he cleared his throat and waited.

  The man looked round at him with only minor surprise. "Well! What be you doing here, then?" he asked mildly enough. His words came in what was certainly a country dialect, though Zoltan could not place its locality.

  "Trying to get home, sir." The sir was something of an afterthought; but the man's tone had certainly not sounded like that of a serf or slave.

  "Home," said the man, leaning on his hoe. "Ah, home!" he cried, as if now he suddenly understood everything. Then with an air of profundity, he said "Ah!" again and turned away and shot up a long arm. Pulling down a waterskin, obviously his own supply, from where it hung on the stub of a tree limb in the shade, he offered it to Zoltan with a quick gesture. "You've come a far way, then. What's your name?"

  "My name is Zoltan. Thank you," he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand after the most delicious and invigorating drink he'd ever had in his life. For a moment he'd wondered if it was something more than water.

  "Zoltan-good old Tasavaltan name." The man nodded judiciously. "I am called Still, young sir. Just plain Still is quite good enough for me, though it's Father Still that some folk call me. Appears that old age is starting to creep up. But I keep busy and I hardly notice, most days." The old man laughed heartily-Zoltan decided that he must really be an old man after all, despite the vigor of his gardening. "But you'll be wanting food, too-and I've already finished off the last of my lunch. Go on to the house, go on to the house, and she'll take care of you." He accompanied this advice with violent gestures, as if he thought that Zoltan might after all not be able to understand his words.

  Zoltan obediently turned and started for the house, then paused uncertainly to look back. He was reassured when the fanner, already hoeing away industriously, waved him on with a motion of his hand and went on working. There was apparently no time to waste.

  Back on the cow path, Zoltan realized that the house was farther off than it had appeared at first-indeed, the whole place now looked even larger than it had at first glance.

  As he moved on toward the house Zoltan kept looking for other laborers. He looked to right and left, in one field after another of beautiful crops, but he could see no one. Probably, he thought, most of the hands were still taking their noontime rest under one of these rows of trees. Certainly there had to be a large force of people at work to keep the place in the magnificent condition that it was.

  Tall, multicolored flowers of a kind that Zoltan had never seen before surrounded the perfectly kept patch of short lawn right at the front door of the house. Bees were busy here; and the perfume of the flowers was as different as could be from that of the pale blooms along the river. The front of the house was flanked by two shade trees, their foliage starting to turn orange and yellow with the onset of fall. The door was wood, solidly built and painted white, and it stood ajar just slightly, in a hospitable way. Somewhere out of sight, toward the rear of the house, dogs were starting to bark to signal Zoltan's arrival-it sounded more a mindless welcome than a challenge.

  There was no bell or knocker on the farmhouse door. Zoltan rapped firmly on the white frame, and immediately the white door, perhaps jarred slightly by his knocking, swung open farther as if in welcome. A sunlit parlor was revealed, furnished with enough chairs and tables for a large family, though at the moment it was unoccupied. Then footsteps, soft but brisk, were coming down a hall.

  The woman who emerged from the interior of the house was silver-haired and generously built, garbed in a flower patterned dress of many bright colors, which was half-hidden by an apron. She looked at Zoltan with an expectant smile, as if she might have been anticipating some messenger who bore good news. Zoltan could not guess whether she was the mistress of this house or only a servant, and for the moment at least it hardly seemed to matter.

  He said to her: "The man out there in the field-Still, he said his name was-sent me here. I need-"

  He never did get the chance to spell out what he needed. Perhaps his needs were all too obvious. The woman, talking much faster than Zoltan in his present state could follow, swept him in with great gestures of the straw broom in her hand. He followed her to the kitchen, where in a moment the broom had vanished, to be replaced by a plate of small cakes, and then another of sliced melon. Next thing he knew, he was seated in a sturdy wooden chair at a broad wooden table, with plates in front of him. The kitchen was a huge room- the house, he realized, must be a little larger than it had looked from outside. A small fire crackled in the huge cooking hearth, and the air was full of magical vapors, of a kind that the visitor had sometimes experienced in the kitchen at High Manor. Here-he had never been so hungry-the aromas were of doubly concentrated magic.

  Mother Still was a large woman, much bulkier than her good man out in the field. But like him she was hard to place in terms of age. Now she was bustling everywhere. For a moment Zoltan thought that she was in two places at once. "Call me Goodwife Still, or Mother Still-it's all one to me, my laddie. Have some cheese; it goes well with that melon." Zoltan, his mouth full, discovered that it did indeed. Experienced people had told him that if you were really starved it was a mistake to stuff your belly to its limit as soon as you had the chance. But, by all the gods, this was a special case. Maybe starvation that occurred under enchantment wasn't the same as the more dreary, ordinary kinds of the affliction, and required special treatment.

  Meanwhile he observed that his hostess was starting-what else?-to cook dinner. The carcass of some small four-legged animal, pale and plump, was being adroitly skewered on a spit.

  That Zoltan-he got the impression that it would be the same for anyone else in her presence, or in her house-might have the bad luck to be attacked by hunger appeared to strike the goodwife as a personal affront. The boy, with arrays of dishes growing on the table before him, was bombarded with offers of cold milk to drink-drawn up in a stone crock from some deep well-and a clean fork appeared on the table in front of him, and yet another plate, this one holding a slab of fruit pie that Zoltan, after the first bite, was prepared to swear was the most delicious thing that he had ever tasted.

  "A little something to keep you going until dinner's ready." For all the incomprehensible amount of work that she was somehow getting done, Mother Still never seemed to hurry. Now she had joined Zoltan sitting at the table, a mug of tea in her large, roughened hand; and now finally she allowed the talk to shift away from things that he might like to eat or drink. "Is someone chasing you, child? How do you come to be here in this condition?" She was still indignant that the world had treated him so poorly.

  Zoltan, who had not realized that his condition was quite so obviously bad, told her the story as best he could, beginning with the strange experience he had shared with the younger children in the cave. Mother Still made appropriate sounds of sympathy as she heard about that and about the magical events that had afflicted Zoltan later on, but he wasn't sure that she really believed him-given the nature of the story he had to tell, he was prepared to understand anyone's not doing so.

  But Mother Still asked questions as if she might believe him. When he mentioned the
name of Burslem, she frowned and shook her head. The two of them sat there in the kitchen talking for some time, and they were still sitting there when from outside there came the lowing of cattle, a sound that in Zoltan's experience usually accompanied the animals' being driven back to the barn.

  He got to his feet, loosened his belt a notch, did his best to suppress a belch, and offered to help bring the cattle in.

  Mother Still smiled at him approvingly. "The old man'll be glad of help. Just trot out, then."

  He went out the back door and pitched in to help. Still, unsurprised, welcomed the assistance and sent Zoltan out to another field where there were more milk cows that needed prodding. All the animals were fat and healthy; by now Zoltan would have been surprised to find otherwise.

  There was a well just outside the kitchen-& cool, stone-lined shaft complete with windlass and bucket-and when the cattle had been brought into the barn Zoltan hauled up two pails of water and carried them into the kitchen and set them beside the big stone sink. It was the kind of thing he hated doing when at home, but he'd plenty of experience of it for all that. There weren't always a lot of servants ready to wait on you at High Manor.

  Presently dinner was announced, and Zoltan, after a thorough wash-up, reached the table right on the heels of Still. He was hungry again-it was as if all the food that he'd eaten since his arrival had already packed itself away into his bones and blood and muscles, leaving his stomach ready for more.

  Dinner was roast meat, with delicious accompaniments- bread, vegetables, pickles, more pie-and conversation.

  "Just the two of us here now. Children all grown and gone."

  Zoltan had seen enough farms to recognize that this place was a gem, and he said so several times. It was obvious to him that there had to be more workers around somewhere, a bunch of them, but somehow he didn't want to come right out and ask where they all were. He just wanted to get through the rest of this day without any further complications.

  An oil-lamp was lighted, making the parlor almost as cheery as it had been during the day, and Mother Still- somehow, incredibly, she had managed to clean all those dirty dishes already-sat down with her knitting.

  Meanwhile Still had reached up to a high shelf above the mantel and brought down some kind of a board game with pegs; he challenged Zoltan to a game and started to explain the rules even as he set up the board for play. Zoltan, trying to make sense of it, could hardly manage to stifle his yawns.

  "Better sleep in late tomorrow, young one. Then, soon as you're able to get up and about, we'll set you some chores."

  "I'll do chores. I'll do them"-yawn-"for you tomorrow. But I don't see how I can stay here any longer than that."

  No one reacted to that statement. It was as if they might not have heard it. Mother Still suddenly uttered a wish that she were back on what she called the big farm; "but then we have to do as best we can."

  Struggling to stay awake, Zoltan indulged his curiosity. "Where's the big farm?"

  A hearty laugh from Still. "It's way out in the country, laddie. That's the best place for them. But, it's a little harder to get to than this one. And we thought there might be visitors."

  His wife shook her head, as if her husband had made an objectionable joke. Or, more like it, as if he had repeated an old one once too often. Then she smiled at Zoltan and changed the subject. "So, your uncle Mark is Prince of Tasavalta now."

  "Yes, ma'am. He has been for the last eight years," Zoltan acknowledged, wondering. "Do you know him?" Zoltan thought that would not be strange. His own father had died as a low-ranking soldier, and he could remember something very like poverty in his early childhood. Uncle Mark had not always moved in royal circles, and to his nephew those earlier years of his uncle's life had always seemed the most interesting.

  "Must be the same Mark that Andrew knew," the old man commented abstractedly while taking another of Zoltan's painted game pegs off the board.

  "Well, of course, Father!" Mother Still sounded patiently and mildly exasperated. "I do wish you would try to keep up, where there's family connections and all."

  Family connections? Zoltan thought. But he was too sleepy to think about it much.

  "I keep up, Mother," Still grumbled. "I keep up pretty well. Andrew's the one that Yoldi married. Rest her soul."

  Andrew, in Zoltan's experience, was a fairly common name. Yoldi was not, though. In fairly recent family history- things that had happened after Zoltan was born, but when he was still too young to remember them now-there had been Dame Yoldi, the almost legendary sorceress and companion of Kind Sir Andrew. Could these two simple old farm people be talking about that Yoldi and that Andrew? Zoltan didn't really believe they could, and anyway he was too tired and too confused to ask.

  But now, incredibly, Mother Still was talking about her late sister, who, it seemed, had unfortunately got mixed up in being an enchantress, and all that kind of thing. And it sounded as if her sister were Yoldi. Zoltan couldn't credit it. He was half asleep and knew he was getting into some kind of hopeless muddle.

  "And in the end it killed her." Mother Still shook her gray head, knitting furiously. She looked at Zoltan as if he was the one arguing with her. "No, laddie, that kind of a life is not for me. I'm too plain for that."

  Father Still, squinting into the yellow lamplight that fell across the gaming table, nodded patient agreement.

  Then he put out a gnarled hand and deftly cleaned the last of Zoltan's pieces off the board.

  There was a steep stair and a small upstairs room at the top of it; Zoltan was sure before he saw the room and bed that they would be clean and warm and comfortable. In the moment before sleep came, he had just time to ponder whether he would be better off starting for home right after chores in the morning, or resting here another day. And eating one or two more meals of Goodwife Still's cooking ...

  In the morning, Zoltan slept comparatively late. On awaking, in the broad daylight of a fully-risen sun, he jumped up, feeling somewhat guilty for having stayed so long in bed, and hurried downstairs. Mother Still was in the kitchen, and he asked to be given chores.

  "That's fine, laddie. There're still eggs to be picked up in the henhouse." Mother Still added that her good man was already out in the fields.

  After bringing in the eggs and polishing off a gargantuan breakfast, Zoltan got directions from Mother Still as to where to find her husband and went out to join him at his labors. Zoltan felt he could hardly refuse at least one full day's work to these people who had saved his life.

  This morning, as it turned out, the job was harvesting gourds and pumpkins, which grew intermingled in the same field. A small, phlegmatic load beast pulled a cart along while Still and Zoltan cut the fruit from vines and lifted it into the cart. As before, there were no other human workers to be seen. Zoltan felt his scalp creep faintly. All right, some kind of magic was at work here. He should have realized it yesterday; he would have realized it if he hadn't been exhausted and half-starved when he arrived.

  The great wizard Karel had told him that it was easy to tell good magic from bad, provided you could get a good look at all of the results. The results here, as far as Zoltan could see, were anything but bad.

  It didn't seem right to simply ignore the situation. Straightening up to stretch his back, Zoltan remarked: "Seems to me awfully unlikely that two people could manage to run a farm this big without any help."

  The man grunted, lifting a big pumpkin into the cart. "Can always use some help."

  "But you don't really need any?"

  Still appeared to be faintly amused. "Laddie, I live in the real world, and I expect to work. Long as there's work here, I expect to get it done. My share of it, anyway." He rapped the load beast on the rump, getting it to move along.

  Zoltan didn't push the subject any further. Maybe there were kinds of beneficial magic that were spoiled if you talked about them.

  As he and Still were returning to the house for their noontime meal they were both surprised to
see a traveling wagon, with two riding-beasts in harness, parked on the grass immediately in front of the house. The animals were lean and worn, as if they had been hard-driven. Two people, a middle-aged couple in clothing that had once been expensive but was now worn and stained as if from a long journey, were standing beside the wagon, talking to Mother Still. The goodwife had evidently just come out of the house because a kitchen towel was still in her hand.

  She turned her head and called out cheerfully: "Father, Zoltan, we have more visitors!"

  The newly-arrived man and woman looked around. Zoltan saw that the man was holding an elaborate leather sword belt and scabbard out in front of him, supporting it awkwardly in both arms, as if he did not quite know what to do with it and was ready and eager to give it away. A large black hilt projected from the scabbard.

  Now the man, still holding out the black-hilted weapon and its harness, approached Zoltan and the farmer. When he came closer Zoltan could see that he looked as worn as the team that drew his wagon.

  "Your good wife here," the visitor said hoarsely, "doesn't understand. We have been commanded to bring this weapon here. So here it is. It's your problem now." And he thrust the weapon toward Still with a commanding gesture.

  Still, however, was in no hurry to accept the present, but stood with arms folded as if he did not yet understand what this was all about.

  Zoltan was now close enough to the black hilt to get a very good look at it, and he could feel his scalp creep. He had been allowed, once or twice, to enter the royal treasury in the Palace at Sarykam, and he had seen Swords before. The white symbol on the hilt of this one was a small, winged dragon.

  "You've got to take it." The man from the wagon sounded agonized. He shook the sword belt at the farmer so that the massive buckle jingled faintly. "We've put up with all we can. You people must be wizards, warriors, something. You'll know what to do with this. I've been assured that you won't hurt us. I'm only a trader, myself. My wife is only my wife."