Herded by his angry wife and four angry daughters, Sarendel’s blacksmith entered her hovel, carrying so much pain that he could hardly move. He had fallen against his forge and burned away most of the flesh on one side of his chest; his wife and daughters were angry because they feared that he would die. Fern gave him a salve for healing, herbs to soften the hurt, and other herbs to resist infection.
When her husband began to mend, the blacksmith’s wife at last allowed herself to weep. She cried ceaselessly as she brought Fern several small flakes of silver.
A farmer was given a cure for gout; he expressed his thanks with a lump of ambergris which he had treasured for years without knowing why. Over her father-in-law’s vociferous objections, Jessup’s eldest son’s wife asked for and received an herb to ease the severity of her monthly cramps; her gratitude took the form of two pints of refined lard. One of the blacksmith’s daughters believed that she was unwed because her beauty was marred by a large wen beside her nose; when Fern supplied her with a poultice which caused the wen to shrink and fall away, she—and her father—gave Fern an iron grill to hold Meglan’s cookpot.
In the course of a fortnight, Fern seemed to become the center of all Sarendel-on-Gentle, the hub on which the village turned. Children cared for her needs, and adults visited her at any hour. Resplendent in her new robe—of all the gifts she had been given, this one alone warmed her heart—she sat in state to receive all who came to her. With Titus at her side, as well fed and well tended as herself, she made new concoctions and spoke new words as though those separate actions were one and the same, bound to each other in ways she could not see. She no longer cowered against her walls in fright or chagrin. Instead she gave her help with the same unstinting openheartedness which she had formerly shown only to pigs. Helping people made her love them. She disliked only the gifts she was given in thanks, never the efforts she made to earn that thanks.
Her life had indeed changed. This time, however, she recognized the change for what it was. She neither chose it nor resisted it, but she saw it. And when she watched the change, comparing it to what her life had once been, she made new connections.
She understood why she could speak, why she could understand the people around her and reply, why she could prepare complex salves and balms, why she could look her fellow villagers in their faces. It was because of the broth and paste which Titus caused her to eat three times daily. Those herbs had wrought a change within her as profound as the change in her life.
One thing will lead to another because it must.
And she understood that she did not deserve Sarendel’s gratitude for her cures and comforts. That was why gifts gave her no pleasure, but only sorrow. She healed nothing, earned nothing. Like her new ability to speak, all the benefits she worked for others came from Titus: the credit for them was his, not hers.
She did not resent this. The pig had come to her in his extremity, and she loved him. Nor could she wish the lessons he had taught her unlearned. Nevertheless she grieved over her unworth.
In addition, she understood without knowing she understood that Titus himself caused a certain number of the hurts she treated. Too frequently to be unconnected, his forays away from her hovel coincided with the onset of injuries and illnesses in the village. The same powers with which he had raised her from her familiar destitution, he used to create the conditions under which Sarendel needed her.
He was trying to speed the process by which she accumulated gifts.
This troubled her. It offended her honesty more than begging; it seemed a kind of theft. But she did not protest against it. Other, similar connections crouched at the edges of her understanding, waiting for clarity. When she grasped one, she would grasp them all.
Ready, she thought to herself, using words instead of images. We must be ready. We are becoming ready.
We are, Titus assented. She could hear pride and hope in his voice, as well as anger and more than a little fear.
Before the end of another fortnight, Sarendel had learned to accept Fern in her changed state; the village had begun to live as though she had always been a healer rather than a half-wit. And Titus had finished accumulating the gifts he required.
Now she noted the passing of time. Around her the seasons had moved along the Gentle’s Rift, turning high summer to crisp fall. Hints of gold and crimson appeared among the verdure; at their fringes the leaves of the bracken took on rust. Slowly the labor of tending fields and beasts eased. Soon would come a time she dreaded, a time she now knew she had always dreaded—the time when porkers were slaughtered for food and hide and tallow. She did not fear for Titus in that way: because he was hers, no villager would harm him. And yet she feared for him now, just as she had always feared for the porkers.
True, she could hear his own fear in the way he spoke. But she also saw it in the tension of his movements, in the staring of his flawed eyes; she smelled it in his sweat. It confirmed her apprehension for him when she might have been able to persuade herself that she had no reason for alarm.
One sharp fall morning, he poked his snout past her hovel’s velvet curtain, scented the air—and recoiled as though he had been stung.
Hell’s blood! he panted. Damn and blast them!
An unnamed panic came over her. She surged up from her pallet to throw her arms about his neck as though she believed that she could ward him somehow. He shivered feverishly, hot with dread.
“Titus?” She needed words for her fear, but only his name came to her. “Titus?”
He appeared to take comfort from her embrace. After a moment, his tremors eased. The confused moil of images and hues which he cast into her sharpened toward concentration.
Now we must hurry in earnest, he breathed. There is a stink of princes and warlocks in the air. That damnable Roadman has betrayed me, and I have little time. As I am, I can neither flee nor fight.
Oh, Fern, my Fern, if you love me, help me. Give me your willingness. Without it, I am lost.
“Who?” she asked with her face pressed to his neck. “Who comes to threaten you?”
Princes, warlocks, does it matter? he snapped back. They are frightened, even more than I—therefore they will be enough. They would not come if they were not enough. I tell you, we must hurry!
She could not refuse him. She gave him a last hug, as though she were saying farewell. After that, she dropped her arms and seated herself by the fire.
“Then tell me what to do.”
She seemed to take his fear from him; he seemed to leach all calm and quiet out of her. The words and images which he supplied to instruct her were precise and unmistakable, as clear as sunlight on green leaves; yet her hands shook, and her whole heart trembled, while she obeyed. She was Fern of Sarendel-on-Gentle, a half-wit who loved pigs. What did she know of language or time, of magic or warlocks? Nevertheless Titus needed her, as he had needed her once before, and she did not mean to fail him.
Throughout the day she labored under his guidance, trying to do several things at once. As she heated her new cookpot until the iron shone red, she also ground rueweed and fennel and sloewort and garlic and vert and silver flakes to fine powder; at the same time, she gripped the lump of ambergris between her thighs to soften it. While she warmed lard to liquid in one of her mixing bowls, she also kneaded the ambergris until it became as workable as beeswax. And when her hands were too tired for kneading, she busied herself dividing her powders into ever more meticulous quantities and combining them with pinches of dried dyes.
Children came to scratch at her curtain, but she sent them away without caring whether she was brusque. She would have sent all Sarendel away. Horrik the tanner came as well; he seemed to want nothing more than an opportunity to sit and look at her. But she told him “No,” calling the word past Karay’s heavy curtain without raising her head from her work. “If you meant to speak to me, you should have done so long ago.” She ha
rdly heard herself add, “I am too far beyond you now.”
Morning lapsed to afternoon; afternoon became evening. Still she worked. Now her hands were raw and her arms quivered, and sweat splashed from her cheeks to the dirt. Fire and red iron filled the hovel with heat until even the slats of the walls appeared to sweat. The smells of powders and dyes in strange combinations made her head wobble on her neck. But Titus did not relent. His instructions were unending, and she labored with all her willingness to obey them.
At last he let her pause. While she rested, panting, he surveyed her handiwork, squinting blind and silver at what she had done.
Now, he announced distinctly. Now or never.
With the hem of her robe, she mopped sweat from her face. Fatigue blurred her sight, so that she could no longer see the pig clearly.
“Have they come yet?” she asked in a whisper. “Are they here?”
I cannot tell, he responded. Even a pig’s senses cannot distinguish between those scents and what we do.
But it does not matter. Whether they are poised around us or miles away, we must do what we can.
Fern, are you ready?
Because all his fear was hers, she countered, “Are you?”
To her surprise, he filled her mind with laughter. No, he admitted, not ready at all. Then he repeated, But it does not matter. For us there is only now or never.
“Then,” she repeated in her turn, “tell me what to do.”
Now his instructions were simple. She obeyed them one at a time, as carefully as she could.
The lump of ambergris she divided in two parts, each of which she molded with her fingers until it was shaped like a bowl. Into these bowls she apportioned the powders she had prepared, the mixtures of herbs and dyes and metal. Using Horrik’s knife, she pricked at the veins in her forearm until enough blood flowed to moisten the powders. Then quickly, so that nothing spilled, she cupped one bowl over the other to form a ball. With water warmed in a pan at the edge of the fire, she stroked the seam of the ball until the ambergris edges were smeared together and sealed.
Good. Titus studied her hands while she worked as though he were rapt. His breathing had become a hoarse wheeze, and sweat glistened among the bristles on his hide. The ball. The lard. My water dish. And some means to remove that cookpot from the fire.
Fern flinched at the thought. The fatal glow of the iron seemed to thrust her back. She was not sure that she could go near enough to the pot to take hold of it.
A shaft of anger and fear broke through Titus’ calm; he grunted a curse. But then, grimly, he stilled himself. Reverting to images, he made her see herself taking two brands from her dwindling woodpile and bracing them under the handles of the cookpot to lift it out.
She picked up the brands, set them in front of her beside the half-full water dish, the lard, and the ambergris ball.
The pig stood facing her as though nothing else existed—as though all the world had shrunk down to one lone woman. He had told her more than once to hurry, but now he gave her no instructions, and did not move himself.
Fear crowded her throat. “Titus,” she breathed, “why do you delay?”
Like you, he told her, I am afraid.
After a moment, he added, Do you remember your first name for me? It was Mythanks. At the time, I was not amused. But now I consider it a better name than Titus.
So swiftly that she could not distinguish them, images rang through her head. In one motion, she rose to her feet and dropped the ball into the cookpot.
Ambergris hit the red iron with a scream of scalding wax. But before the ball melted entirely away, she snatched up the lard and poured it also into the pot.
Instantly the smoke and stench of burning fat filled the hovel. The walls seemed to vanish. Tears burst from Fern’s eyes. She could no longer see Titus.
She could see his images still, however. They guided her hands to the brands, guided the brands to the cookpot; they made her strong and sure as she lifted out the pot and tilted it to decant its searing contents into the dish.
Gouts of steam spat and blew through the reeking smoke. Nevertheless Titus did not hesitate now. The potion would lose its efficacy as it cooled.
Plunging his snout into the fiery dish, he drank until he could no longer endure the agony. Then he threw back his head and screamed.
Fern cried out at the same instant, wailed, “Titus!” She had never heard such a scream. The pain of cattle was eloquent enough. And pigs could squeal like slaughtered children. But this was worse, far worse. It was the pure anguish of a pig and the utter torment of a man in one, and it seemed to shake the hovel. The walls bowed outward; smoke and stink filled the air with hurt.
And the scream did not stop. Shrill with agony and protest, it splashed like oil into the fire, so that flames blazed to the ceiling. The smoke itself caught fire and began roaring like the core of the sun. Conflagration limned each slat of the walls and roof, etched every scrap and leaf of her pallet against the black dirt. The scream became fire itself. Flames ate at Fern’s robe, her face, her hair. In another instant it would devour her, and she would fall to ashes—
But it did not. Instead it seemed to coalesce in front of her. Flames left the walls to flow through the air; flames drained off her and were swept up into the center of the hovel. The fire she had made lost heat. Her pallet ceased burning. Every burst and blaze came together to engulf Titus.
At the same time, another fire burned in Fern’s head, as though she, too, were being consumed.
Outside her, beyond her, he stood in the middle of the floor, motionless. Like wax, he melted in the flames. And like wax, he fed the flames, so that they mounted higher while he was consumed. From his pig’s body they grew to a pillar which nearly touched the roof. Then the pillar changed shape until it writhed and roiled like a tortured man.
Abruptly he stopped screaming.
The fire went out.
A deep dark closed over Fern. The smoke and stench blinded her with tears; echoes of flame dazzled her. She could see nothing until he took hold of her arms and lifted her to her feet.
Lit by the last embers of her fire, a man stood in the hovel with her. Clad only in a faint red glow and shadows, he released her arms and stepped back so that she could see him more clearly.
He was tall and strong. Not young—she saw many years in the lines of his face and the color of his beard. Prominent cheekbones hid his eyes in caves of shadow. Beneath a nose like the blade of a hatchet, his mouth was harsh.
Looking at him, she was hardly able to breathe. She knew him without question—he was Titus, the pig who had chosen her, the one she loved—and the sight of him struck her dumb, as though he had stepped out of her dreams to meet her. Was he handsome? To her, he was so handsome that she quailed in front of him.
“Fern,” he murmured softly, “oh, my Fern, we have done it.” His voice was the voice she had heard in her mind, the voice which had taught her words—the voice which had changed her life. “We have done it.”
Before she could fall to her knees in hope and love and astonishment, another voice answered him. As hard as the clang of iron, it called out, “But not in time!”
“Damnation!” A snarl leaped across Titus’ face; embers and silver flashed from his hidden eyes. His strong hands reached out and snatched Fern to him as though he meant to protect her.
In that instant, a bolt like lightning shattered the hovel. Argent power tore the air apart. A concussion too loud for hearing knocked the walls to shards and splinters, and swept them away. Embers and rags scattered as though they had been scoured from the dirt. Fern was only kept on her feet amid the blast by Titus’ grasp. She clung to him helplessly while her home ceased to exist.
Then they found themselves with their arms around each other under the open sky at the edge of the village. This was the spot where her hovel had stood, but no si
gn of it remained: even her iron cookpot had been stricken from the place. Dimmed by glaring coruscation, a few stars winked coldly out of the black heavens.
A circle of fire the color of ice surrounded her and Titus. It blazed and spat from the ground as though it marked the rim of a pit which would open under their feet. At first it was so bright that her abused eyes could not see past it. But gradually she made out figures beyond the white, crystal fire. On the other side of the ring, she and Titus were also surrounded by men and women on horseback, as well as by the people of Sarendel-on-Gentle.
She saw Jessup and Yoel there, Veil and Nell and Meglan, Horrik and Karay, all the folk she had known throughout her life. Only the children were absent, no doubt commanded to their homes with the best authority their parents could muster. The strange, chill light seemed to leech the familiar faces of color; they were as pallid as ghosts. Their eyes were haunted and abashed, full of shame or fear.
Among them towered the riders. These figures also were spectral in the icy glow. Nevertheless they masked their fear and betrayed no shame. Their eyes and mouths showed only anger and determination, an un-remitting outrage matched by resolve.
Fern had never seen such men and women before. Their armor and cloaks and caps, their weapons and apparatus, were outlandish, at once regal and incomprehensible. Yet she seemed to recognize them as soon as she caught sight of them. There was Prince Chorl—there, with the blunt forehead, the circlet in his curling hair, and the beard like a breastplate. He was accompanied by his lords and minions, as well as by his daughter Florice—her plain riding habit, wild hair, and undefended visage made her unmistakable. And among the others were Andovale’s masters of magic, come to carry out the judgment of the council against one of their own.
All of them had ridden here for no reason except that the people of Sarendel had squirmed when Destrier had asked them about change. And those people had squirmed because they had known of a change which they had not wished to name. Out of loyalty or pity, they had declined to mention that she, Fern, had been adopted by a pig none of them had ever seen before. And yet their very desire to protect Fern had betrayed the man who now held her in his arms. He was snared in this circle by his enemies because of her.
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