by Shannah Jay
She just couldn’t. They were too soft in their dealings and she couldn’t bear the thought of spending her whole life staying in one place, even a place as friendly as this.
When Sarann was twenty, a group of people searching for somewhere to settle turned up, bringing word that Discord was at last dying down. It was the news Sarann had been waiting for. That very night she spoke to Maurin and Chella. ‘I’m grateful for all you’ve done for me, very grateful, but I’m of trading stock and I have a restlessness in me that won’t let me settle happily in one place.’
‘It’s still dangerous out there,’ Maurin protested. ‘Discord may be dying down, but it’s not over yet.’
‘Why will you not marry our neighbour’s son?’ Chella mourned. ‘He’s such a nice young man.’
‘He is and he’ll make some other girl a fine husband, but I can only marry a trader.’ If there were any trader families left. If they hadn’t all been killed like her parents.
In the end she agreed to wait a little longer, but the restlessness didn’t die down. ‘I’m leaving tomorrow,’ she said firmly once the harvest was in. She made a wide gesture with her arms. ‘I just - have to travel.’
Her foster-parents gave up trying to keep her, found an old pack and filled it with clothes and provisions. Chella wept as they stood waving their girl goodbye. Sarann didn’t weep, and felt guilty about that. But the sun was shining brightly, the track was tugging at her feet to follow it, and the world seemed full of adventure.
‘I’ll come back to visit you one day,’ she called as she walked away.
It took her ten days to get to a wider track, the sort used by traders and other travellers. There was no one in sight, but she walked along it singing cheerfully, hoping to meet up with some traders, who would surely take her in until she could find some way to get a wagon and trade for herself.
But the first people she met were men with that mad look in their eyes. She ran away through the woods, so fleet of foot that she started to outdistance them. Then she fell and twisted her ankle.
They hauled her back to the track and stood in a circle around her, gloating.
‘Shall us kill her now?’ one asked, licking his lips.
‘A-course not. Save her till later. Play with her a little.’
She tried to stay calm, to be brave, but was filled with shuddering horror at the way they looked at her.
‘We ent goin’ to ravish you, girlie,’ the man beside her said softly. ‘We got women of our own back in the camp.
We’re just goin’ to play with you, enjoy ourselves a bit.’
Her terror must have shown in her face. ‘Why?’ she demanded.
They chuckled in a quiet rasping sort of way, nudging one another. ‘See if we can make you scream loudly. The last one did.’
She didn’t try to talk to them again, just limped along as they ordered. Surely, surely, she would find a way to escape before they killed her? Surely her life wasn’t about to end?
At the camp, they were met by a group of women. They looked as wild-eyed as the men and grew angry at the sight of Sarann.
‘I telled you not to capture any more of ’em,’ one woman said, pushing the man next to Sarann away from her. ‘It’ll bring folk hunting us. Didn’t I tell you?’ She shoved him again, so hard this time he fell over. ‘And give me that travel pack of hers.’
To Sarann’s amazement the men didn’t resist the women, just pleaded with them to be allowed a little fun.
‘No.’ The oldest of the women came up and stared at Sarann. ‘When you’ve played with them, you get too rough with us. We talked about it and we decided we ent havin’ it no more. You can take her off into the woods and kill her straight out. Thass the decent way to do things.’
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There was a chorus of protests from the men.
‘If you don’t, me an’ the other women’s leavin’ .’
One of the men grabbed Sarann’s arm. ‘I’ll do it, then.’ He dragged her away through the woods.
She didn’t try to protest, but couldn’t help whimpering with pain when she was banged into a tree or stumbled over a root. The ankle was hurting her so badly now she couldn’t think clearly.
‘An’ take her a long way away!’ yelled the woman who’d followed a little way behind them. ‘We don’t want no bad smells from the body.’
For what seemed a long time, the man dragged Sarann through the woods, muttering to himself, clearly very upset.
When he stopped, she braced herself, hoping he would at least kill her quickly. Waves of pain were washing through her and she knew that with an injured ankle she had no way of escaping from him.
He stared at her. ‘It ent fair,’ he grumbled. ‘We found you an’ we should hev our fun.’
As his face brightened, Sarann felt another jolt of terror. What was he going to do to her?
What he did was push her down, pick up a big branch and heft it in his hands. ‘What I reckon to do, girlie, is break that leg of yours. Then I’m goin’ to leave you here to die.’ His eyes were filled with madness again.
She tried to crawl backwards away from him, but before she had gone more than a couple of paces, the piece of wood crashed down on her leg. Pain lanced through her and she screamed in agony. Dimly she was aware of him laughing happily as he crashed the wood down again.
Then he leaned over her, pushing his face right next to hers. ‘I’ll be back,’ he promised. ‘It’ll take you a while to die, an’ you won’t get far if you try to crawl away. I’ll be back to see how you’re getting on. I might break an arm next time.’
Then he walked away, whistling.
When she could think straight again, Sarann crawled across to the piece of wood he had hit her with and used it to pull herself fully upright, nearly fainting from the agony of moving.
As she stood there swaying, wondering if she could manage to get away, or if this was exactly what he wanted her to do, she heard a noise. She flattened herself against the tree and held the piece of wood in front of her ready to hit out at anyone who came near.
But as the noise grew closer, a suspicion became a certainty and hope flared in her once again. That was surely the sound of deleff’s feet trampling through the undergrowth? You couldn’t mistake it, not if you were a trader’s child.
When one of the creatures she loved crashed into the clearing, stopped to look round, then moved towards her, tears of joy began to run down Sarann’s face. It was quite a young deleff, much paler in colour than the older ones, and it continued to look round nervously as it knelt by her, clearly expecting her to drag herself on to its back.
It took her a few tries to get up and once she jarred her leg so badly she nearly fainted from the pain. Once up, she hung on as the deleff trampled away through the wildwoods. After a while it came to a halt and stood there panting.
Deleff were not made to hurry.
Sarann leaned forward and placed her hands on the deleff’s head from behind, and although she should have been facing it, the action seemed to work just as well. Perhaps it was simply the physical contact that made the communication between them possible. ‘Risslin!’ she said, delighted. ‘Hey, you’re called Risslin.’
The deleff made a whining sound through its nostrils, the sound deleff always made when you were talking to them and they wanted to respond.
She tried not to lean too heavily on Risslin’s neck, but something told her that her companion hadn’t finished communicating. You couldn’t explain this process to other people and some traders, even, couldn’t do it, which was why they denied it existed. But once you’d felt it, you couldn’t doubt that the deleff could speak to you in their own way.
By the time they set off again, moving more slowly this time, Sarann knew that this was Risslin’s first journey with humans and that the great creature was her deleff, ready to draw a wagon and travel with her for years to come.
Joy beat through the young woman when she realised that and for a few m
oments, she forgot the pain in her leg.
She was back where she was meant to be - with a deleff, on the road. And if she could attract a deleff for herself, then surely, somehow, she could get a wagon, too.
***
Karialla was walking along the road outside town when another deleff appeared from the undergrowth with a young woman on its back. The rider was hale and sunburnt, but when she slid from the deleff’s back, Karialla saw that she had a crooked leg and walked awkwardly, using a stick and moving with an ugly, rolling gait. The leg had obviously been broken at some point and badly set.
The deleff snorted through its nostrils, but didn’t attempt to leave.
‘Greetings to you!’ called the newcomer cheerfully. She had a sunny, open face, with fair hair, freckled skin and light blue eyes. ‘I’m Sarann.’
‘Greetings to you, too. I’m Karialla. Have you travelled far?’
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‘Yes. My family were traders, but after they were killed, I lived in a settlement in the north for a few years. I wanted to start travelling again, but I’ve been longer than I expected on the road. Discord might be dying down, but there are raiders around, as I know to my cost. One of them broke my leg on purpose and left me to die.’ She looked at Karialla with a fierce expression on her face. ‘Only I didn’t die!’
You found help, then.’
‘In a manner of speaking. This deleff - her name’s Risslin, by the way - came out of the wildwoods to help me. I managed to get on her back and she took me to a clearing with a spring. She brought me fruit and nuts, and - well, she was just there to give me heart. My leg’s healed now, though it’s crooked.’
You’re still alive, that’s the main thing.’ Karialla eyed the leg assessingly, wondering if she and Deverith could do anything to improve it.
Sarann looked down at her leg with a sad expression, then shook her head as if dismissing the useless regrets. She patted the deleff’s snout affectionately. ‘Risslin’s quite young. That’s why she’s so small and light-coloured. This is her first journey and she’s waiting for her travelling mate to join her. What town is that?’
‘Tenebrak.’
‘Hey, I was born here, though I don’t remember it, and I’ve always wanted to see it.’
A cool breeze reminded Karialla that dusk was approaching. ‘We’d better get moving. It’ll be dark soon. Do you want to mount your deleff again or can you walk?’
‘Oh, I can walk pretty well, though my leg aches sometimes.’ Sarann started limping down the hill and Risslin followed a few paces behind without any prompting. ‘You wouldn’t know anywhere I could stay, would you? I don’t mind working for my keep. In fact, I’d prefer it. I don’t have any money or even spare clothes. Those cursed raiders took everything.’
Karialla had taken a great liking to Sarann already. ‘You can have a room in our house, if you like, and I’ll lend you some clothes. We have plenty of space,’
As they walked into town she knew Sarann’s arrival wasn’t a coincidence. A picture of the big stone building the deleff had shown her on the Ridge came into her mind again, and she even seemed to hear a faint echo of bells and chanting from that direction. She shook her head in an effort to clear it, but that evening the sound seemed to follow her all the way into town.
She was getting far too fanciful lately. Especially about that building. She’d tried to talk about it to Deverith, but he’d only given one of his inscrutable smiles and told her that all was unfolding as it should.
***
Deverith examined Sarann’s leg carefully two days after her arrival in Tenebrak, then pursed his lips and looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I learned some new skills on my travels. I think I could straighten out that leg for you, if you wanted.’
She gasped. ‘Straighten it! Are you sure?’
‘Yes. Will you let me work on it without running away in fear?’
‘Hey, I’d like it straightened again, I surely would, but what will you have to do to me that’s frightening? Break it again?’ A memory of the pain made her shudder. She wouldn’t willingly face agony like that again. ‘Because if so, I’m not sure I can - ’
‘Nothing that’ll give you pain, I promise. What I do may frighten you, though, because it’ll be like nothing you’ve ever experienced before.’
She stared at him, mouth open in surprise, then squared her shoulders. ‘Well, I don’t frighten easily and if it’ll straighten my leg, you can go ahead and scare me silly. It’d be worth a year of terror to get this leg even half-straight again.’
‘Very well. I’ve a few preparations to make before we can start. Sit quietly and wait.’
He sent the two apprentices out to search for supplies of various common herbs in the town woods. ‘They’re too inexperienced to participate in this sort of healing,’ he told Karialla as he watched the youngsters walk down the street, baskets on their arms, conversing earnestly about something, ‘but I shall need to borrow some of your strength, lass.’
She looked at him in puzzlement. She, too, was wondering what he was going to do, how he could possibly straighten a leg which had set crookedly without breaking it again and re-setting it, something that would be incredibly painful. ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’
‘It’s hard to explain. I’ve learned to focus something - I don’t know what you’d call it, perhaps life energy is the best description - and I can then use it to promote rapid healing.’ He grimaced. ‘I can do it to everyone but myself, that is.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’ve been trying to understand it for years, and I’m still not sure exactly what I do. I only know it works.’
He paused to stare thoughtfully into the distance, almost as if he had forgotten her. ‘It was sheer desperation the first time it happened to me. A young friend and I were hunting in the woods when he fell and ripped his leg open. He was like a son to me. There was no time to fetch help and I couldn’t have carried him anyway, because he was too big. I
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didn’t have a conscious understanding of what I was doing, but somehow I healed him enough for him to limp home. I can do it at will now - as long as I have enough energy. It’s exhausting, though.’
He hesitated, then added, ‘Karialla, I believe - I’ve always believed - that healers are born, not trained - the real ones, that is, not the mere technicians. One can sense that capacity in an apprentice and help bring it to maturity.’
‘Is that how you chose Heth and Ferilla?’
‘Yes. Some of the others applicants had the same capacity, too, but none as strongly as those two. And it’s far stronger in you. You have a great capacity for healing, my dear, even though you’re not yet in full possession of your powers.’
As he spoke, there was a strangeness and distance to him that made a shiver run down Karialla’s spine, but she trusted him absolutely. This man had no evil in him, not even the slightest spark of malice. It was as if he’d been through some cleansing fire that had left only what was good. She’d never met anyone quite like him. ‘Whatever I can do to help, I will. And I think I understand a little of what you mean about true healers being born, not made. I could feel Sarann’s leg aching last night, almost as if it were my own, and I’ve found from experience that sometimes my touch will help reduce pain.’
He nodded. ‘I thought you might be starting to understand, lass.’
Silence lapped gently around them for a few minutes, then she asked again, ‘What must I do to help?’
‘If you’ll sit by Sarann’s bed and start meditating, as you do each morning, that’ll allow us both to tap in, for a few moments, to the gods’ own powers.’
Karialla stiffened. This was the last thing she’d expected to hear him say. ‘You know I don’t believe in gods or anything like that. Not any more! If there really were gods, they wouldn’t have allowed Discord to happen!’
‘You’ll come to believe in them again,’ he replied tranquilly.
‘No, I won’t!’ She still had the occasional nightmare in which she saw Pavlin sprawled across the doorway, dead. No gods worthy of their name would have allowed that to happen to such a gentle, kind man.
He shrugged. ‘We’ll see. Just call what I use life energy, then, for today. ‘Gods’ is only a word for something we don’t understand, anyway. Goodness would be just as accurate. Now, please sit there and start to meditate.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Yes, but don’t fight me if you feel my presence in your mind.’
Karialla looked across at the other woman, who said pleadingly, ‘Hey, I’d be real grateful if something could be done to improve my leg, so if you don’t mind helping out, that is?’
Karialla nodded and sat down near the head of the bed. Deverith told Sarann to lie down, close her eyes and not get upset, whatever happened.
What did happen struck fear into both women, though neither was credulous or ignorant. Deverith began to stroke the twisted leg gently. ‘Leg be whole!’ he murmured from time to time, ‘Leg be whole!’
After a while, Sarann could feel a tingling start in her leg, then tremors began running up and down it. She clenched her teeth against the fear that rose within her, refusing to give in to it. She’d told no one how much she loathed her ugly gait. The leg and her hip could become very painful, too, after a day of walking around. Sometimes she had trouble getting to sleep because of the ache. What was the use in complaining, though, when you could change nothing? But now . . . maybe . . .
The tingling sensation began to build up in the leg and it seemed to Sarann that the air around her had grown blurred, that something was humming, something just out of her hearing. I’m going mad, she thought as she started to drift away towards the distant sound, but if he can cure it . . . if he really can cure my leg . . . After a while, she forgot her surroundings completely and lay quiescent amid the vibrations that hummed within her body.
Karialla watched Sarann gradually relax. She could sense the energy in which they were all enmeshed, but to her it was a visible thing, a glow that trickled from her and from Deverith - and from somewhere else. It coalesced around Sarann’s leg like a living blanket of woven light. There was no sense of evil in it, but like Sarann, Karialla felt unease crawling through her.