The leather tip and its felt covering were replaced when they wore out.
As clever as the physical design of the peg leg was, its hidden properties were cleverer still.
Engis had drawn on his magical skills for strengthening the flint knives and spearheads of the warriors to reinforce the device that permitted him to walk unaided with relative ease.
Keiran knew that if she looked at the peg leg with her inner sight, she would see a glowing green node within each of the gears beside Pater’s knee, each emanating scrolling arcs of silver that curved through the entire extent of bone and leather.
But her attention was not on the miraculous device this time.
Pater wrapped thin layers of lambswool around his own leg beneath each of the gripping straps of the peg leg. The upper layer of wrapping had developed a crease in its smoothness, creating an angry red line on Pater’s skin. Keiran hissed. No wonder he’d limped.
“Let me, Pater,” she said.
He lay semi-reclining upon the sheepskin on his divan, leaning against the curving wall of their one-room hut. The fire in the central hearth was banked – the earthy smell of the peat tickled Keiran’s nose – and shadows filled the space under the conical roof. Soft light, filtered by the overcast, drifted in through the open doorway. Neither Isolt – Keiran’s younger sister – nor Muirne, their old nurse maid, were home.
Keiran’s long braid fell forward over her shoulder as she reached for the small stone jar of goose grease.
“Keiran.” Pater’s voice held a cautionary note. She knew he wanted her to reserve her energea for the lesson he would give her later at the seaside.
“The skin will break, if all I do is rub ointment on it,” Keiran insisted.
He sighed and nodded, reluctantly.
If the skin broke, he would have to wait for it to heal before he could wear his peg, or else accelerate the wound’s healing with his own energea.
Keiran scooped a dollop of the milky grease from the jar and smoothed it over the red mark, letting her inner vision open. Ah! The silvery arc curling down from Pater’s root node shivered in response to his pain. With practiced ease, she directed energea from her own nodes along the arcs of her arms, out through her fingers, and into the disturbed arc of Pater’s thigh. It quieted in the stream of silvery sparks.
Good.
Her own arcs smoothed into more relaxed curves, and she felt her spine take its most natural and comfortable shape, hips slightly dropped, crown lifted. Healing with energea felt as good to the healer as it did to the healed.
“That’ll do,” came Pater’s voice.
Keiran checked the results of her inner work on the outer reality. The angry red welt had faded. So long as she wrapped fresh lambswool over it, the remaining mark would be gone by evening.
Pater dragged his peg leg off the floor of crushed shells, where Keiran had let it lie.
And Keir dragged her thoughts out of the memories of her last afternoon with her father.
Belzetarn, not Fiors, was her home now. And she’d arrived at the regenen’s door – very near the battlements at the top of the Regenen Stair.
Healing with energea felt good, but not so good that she would flout the prohibition against practicing magic in Carbraes’ citadel. Or work in his hospital healing the enemies of Fiors.
* * *
Chapter 4
Climbing the Regenen Stair one more time, Gael’s thigh muscles burned, and his ankle protested. The flames of the half-burned torches flickered in the lower stairwell, creating moving patterns of light and shadow on the stone walls and treads.
In the higher reaches of the stairwell, the sunlight slanting in through the arrowslits would have acquired the golden tinge of early evening. Dark was yet a long way off – dusk came very late in the summer – but the day was winding to a close. So Gael pushed himself.
Preparation for the checking in of swords, armor, and ingots demanded his presence in the tally room, and then the vaults above. Soon. But he wanted to nail down one last detail, before performing his usual duties.
Emerging into the blade smithy, he saw the scullions wrapping the unmolded blades in soft suede.
Which meant it was later than he thought. Hells.
He slipped into the unlit storeroom to the right – that would be faster than dodging smiths and scullions in the smithy – and barked his shin on something. Had someone left a broken shovel loose, instead of placing it properly on a shelf or in a bin? He would tell one of the scullions to see to it.
The charcoal cellar beyond the storeroom presented no obstacles, and then he was in the armor smithy, its dim bays littered with anvils, forms, and work counters, limned but partially by the fraction of daylight filtering from the deep embrasures on the north tower wall. The smiths had lit tallow dips. Within their separate pools of light, they collected the myriad scales they’d poured and hammered that day – small rectangles of bronze measuring a finger in width, a palm in length – checking the edges for smoothness and the placement of the punched holes.
The scullions gathered at the forges, raking the coals apart for the night.
Gael spotted Arnoll laying out his work – platelet after bronze platelet – on a counter before his notary, who sat poised with parchment and quill. Gael hastened toward them. He could really only spare a moment here.
Arnoll looked up at his footfall. His eyes warmed when he saw who approached.
Gael suppressed a frown. That Arnoll should welcome his friend was unremarkable. But was that relief behind the welcome?
Arnoll spoke first as Gael halted beside him, his voice gravelly, but easy. Perhaps Gael had been mistaken about that hint of relief in the smith’s expression. “Gael! Excellent. I’ve something to consult you about, my friend. Though not this instant.”
Well, that was strange. Gael was here because he wanted to consult Arnoll. About the gong. Arnoll had been rolling around the north for many more years than Gael. He might know . . . something. Might have encountered some Ghriana magics – or ancient magics – that would shed light on the artifact.
“Meet me here in the smithy?” suggested the smith. “Immediately following the evening feast?”
Gael did frown at that. Why not in Arnoll’s quarters?
No matter. He could ask Arnoll to his own chambers from the smithy just as well as from Arnoll’s quarters. He nodded.
On his nod, shouting broke out in the privy smithy behind him.
“Ow! Ow! Ow!” someone howled. “It hurts! It hurts! Ow!”
Gael whipped around, and Arnoll surged forward.
As one, they strode to the knot of scullions gathered around a troll boy huddled on the smithy floor.
* * *
The injured troll was a sweep – not one of the smithy scullions. Gael dredged his memory for a name. He knew this one, didn’t he? Hilan? Hyan?
Hew. The boy Gael spared a kind word for whenever he encountered him, because Hew was simple, in addition to suffering troll-disease.
Hew lay curled around his own right arm, groaning and weeping. Gael knelt beside him.
“What has happened?” Gael asked, his voice gentle.
Hew looked up piteously and held out his hand. “Hurts,” he sobbed.
Gael hissed.
Hew’s palm sported a red, blistered blotch with an open wound seeping clear fluid at its center and crusted black at its edges.
“Hurts, hurts, hurts,” pleaded Hew.
Gael took the back of Hew’s hand gently in his own. He was no healer, but he could ease the boy’s pain a touch before they got him to the hospital in the artisans’ yard. First, he needed to be sure Hew wouldn’t startle at the touch of energea.
“I can help you, Hew,” he said. “It may feel a little strange.”
“Hurt more?” asked Hew fearfully.
“It will not hurt,” Gael explained, “but it will feel different from what you are used to.”
Hew thrust his injured hand nearer.
Gael steadied the boy’s elbow. “Keep still,” he said. Upon Hew’s timid nod, Gael closed his eyes and took a long, slow in-breath. On the out-breath, equally long and slow, he opened his inner sight.
The silvery arcs connecting to the lesser node in Hew’s palm shuddered, jangled by the injury. The node itself pulsed more quickly than it should.
Gael drew on his own nodes, sending energea cascading along his arcs and out his palms. It sparkled blue – safe – as it flowed into Hew’s energea. The shivering of Hew’s arcs calmed, and their curvature relaxed and lengthened. Hew’s node pulsed less wildly. Gael heard Hew sigh.
He opened his eyes.
The boy had stopped sobbing, although the tears still stood on his cheeks.
“Better?” asked Gael.
Hew nodded.
“Good.” He saw Hew preparing to shift. “Don’t move!”
The boy subsided.
Gael glanced up to see the scullions still gathered around them, standing silently.
“I need something to make a sling.”
While the scullions turned to one another, muttering and gesturing and coming up empty, Arnoll pulled a canvas sack from beneath one of the counters and started ripping its side seams. A moment later he handed the large rectangle to Gael. Gael placed the center of the canvas under Hew’s arm, passed both ends up the boy’s chest and behind Hew’s neck, where he tied them.
Arnoll joined Gael to help Hew to his feet.
“Can you walk?” Arnoll asked him.
Hew was staring at his own hand, apparently amazed. No doubt the swift diminishment of the pain had bewildered him.
Gael turned to the nearest privy scullion to ask sharply, “Where’s Martell?”
The scullion flushed and looked at the floor. “Latrine,” he mumbled, and then started to explain how Hew had been injured.
Gael cut him off. “Never mind.”
He turned back to Arnoll. “I’ll take this boy to the physicians. Will you send one of your scullions to Keir, explaining that I’ve been detained.” He’d intended Keir to perform the morning’s check-out routine alone. It would hurt nothing for him to start with this evening’s check-in routine instead.
“I’ll take care of it,” said Arnoll. “Go!”
Gael nodded, gripped Hew’s good arm, and aimed the boy toward the cramped spiral stair at the back of the charcoal cellar. A half turn down and out through the kitchen annex would be the most direct route to the hospital.
* * *
The tunnel through the kitchen annex – a long, straight shot toward the outdoors – flared with fresh torches in the brackets. The banging of pots, cooks’ yells, and savory aromas boiled from the two open doorways – one on each side – as Gael steered Hew forward.
Then they were outside.
The golden evening light glowed through the grass strands of the upper yard like green flame. The still air felt soft and clear, and the sunshine fell warm on Gael’s shoulders. He turned his face up to the sky, blue and cloudless – a benison forgotten indoors.
Gael’s sense of oppression – the worrisome implications of a thief in the forges, his wariness about the cursed gong – lifted.
Hew stumbled.
Gael twitched his gaze back to their footing.
No, Hew hadn’t stepped off the edge of the gentle ramp that led from the annex door down to the yard. He’d been looking up, like Gael, and simply tripped on his own ankle.
Gael steadied the boy onto the cobblestone walkway that skirted the grass, passing along the flint-and-mortar fronts of the artisan workshops – woodcarvers, leather workers, the feltery, the armorers’ lodge. The smellier offices were relegated to the bailey, so the yard air smelled sweet, of grass pollen and warm earth.
Gael looked out over a retaining wall to the lower yard. A messenger dashed from the doorway of the scalding house toward the stone steps to the upper yard. Both upper and lower yards would soon throng with trolls at their leisure before the evening feast, but not quite yet. Most of the artisans were still finishing their day’s work inside.
An inner curtain wall bounded the lower yard. Beyond it, the bailey spread out across the hill, sloping down toward the west and the forest beyond the outer curtain wall. Faint baaing drifted from the flock of goats grazing near the gate. Nearer sounded the shouted orders of opteons drilling several decani of warriors.
Hew’s steps slowed, and Gael slowed with him. The illusion of peace was beguiling.
Gael pondered how easily, how naturally he’d just performed magery. Without a second thought. Had he not made a personal vow never to do so again? Had he not sworn to Lord Carbraes that he would eschew magery, as did every other troll of Belzetarn, save the healers? Did he not fear the performance of magery in the matter of the evil gong?
And yet, the instant a boy’s pain confronted him, he forgot all that. He’d drawn energea through his nodes as smoothly as when he’d been magus to Heiroc. And the energea had been safe – blue – not dangerous. It had felt soothing.
Was Carbraes correct in believing that manipulation of energea advanced troll-disease? Or did the troll-disease of Belzetarn’s magus, Nathiar, worsen more rapidly because he dabbled in the dangerous energea – scorching orange? Did he so dabble? Gael didn’t know, even though he might suspect.
Not that it mattered.
Despite his lapse, despite how satisfying it had felt, he had no intention of returning to magery. Unless rendering the gong harmless required it. And – if it did – he would perform only enough to get the job done.
Three shallow steps led up to the hospital portico. Gael guided Hew up them and through the heavy, brass-bound door to the interior.
Two notaries sat at a large table in the entrance foyer, one flipping through a stack of parchments, the other copying notes onto a blank sheet. Always there were records in Belzetarn – in the forges, in the kitchens, everywhere. Gael approved, although he knew many complained.
Unlike the chambers within the tower, those of the hospital possessed large, glass-paned windows and were flooded with light. The smooth wood floors gleamed with polish. Gael might have been jealous of their spacious quality did he not crave the security of his tally chamber. But he did crave it. And he had no desire to exchange tallying for healing.
The notary sorting the stack of parchments looked up as Gael and Hew came through the front door. He wasted no time, getting up immediately and walking around the table to approach them, studying Hew’s sling.
“Broken? Sprained?” he asked.
“Burned,” Gael answered. “Badly. I risked an energea lavage, else he’d be screaming yet, and unable to walk.”
The notary’s eyebrows rose. “Indeed! This way, please.” He ushered them along a short hallway and into an examining room. “I’ll get a medicus right away.”
Hew made a beeline for the tray of alarming tools resting on a sideboard, his eyes staring and his jaw dropping. “Uh! Uh! Uh!”
“They won’t use those on you,” Gael reassured him, then towed him away to a chair set before a window onto the courtyard garden at the heart of the hospital. He had the boy sit facing the outdoors, looking at four neat squares of herbs and flowers centered on a sundial and bounded by a colonnade. A scullion gathered leaves from a low-growing plant, while bees hummed in the taller blooms behind him.
At the sound of footsteps in the hallway, Gael turned.
* * *
The physician addressed Hew. “I am Medicus Piar. Let me see your hand.”
Piar wore a crisp blue tunic of linen and presented an impression of controlled efficiency. The symptoms of his troll-disease were mild, save for his ears, which were large, with drooping lobes. Gael wondered that the medicus cropped his straight, dark hair so short. Many trolls preferred to hide their ears.
Hew, confronted with the request that he remove his arm from its sling, looked again at the bronze scissors and knives and calipers on the tray of tools, and shrank.
Piar, seemingly unfazed by
his patient’s recalcitrance, turned to Gael.
“Secretarius, you’ve given him preliminary treatment?”
“I did nothing for the burn, I’m afraid,” answered Gael. “Merely for his pain.” Would Piar be jealous of his physician’s prerogative?
Apparently not, for he returned his attention to Hew, unperturbed.
“Did the ministrations of the secretarius hurt you?” the medicus asked.
Hew shook his head.
“Mine will not hurt either.” Piar’s smile was brief and tight, but it reassured Hew. He proffered his hand, sling and all.
Piar pushed the canvas back, took a swift glance at Hew’s oozing palm, and passed into manipulation of the energea without even an in-breath, merely closing his eyes. Were healing disciplines so different from other uses of magery? Or was Piar simply that practiced, that he needed no preliminaries?
Gael allowed his inner sight to open, curious about Piar’s methods.
Interestingly, Piar’s energea flowed from the tips of his fingers, not the palm, and it was violet, not blue. Was that why his troll-disease seemed so little advanced for his age, which Gael judged to be about thirty years? Gael noticed that Piar pulsed his energea, as well as giving it a buzzing vibration.
“Mm, mm,” mumbled Hew.
Gael closed his inner sight to check Hew’s wound with his outer sight. The red of the palm had faded to pink, and the broken skin no longer wept.
Someone rapped on the wooden frame of the open door.
Piar opened his eyes. “Come in,” he said, studying his patient’s hand.
A troll about Keir’s age entered the room.
“What is it?” asked Piar, touching each of Hew’s fingertips in turn and noting their response.
“Medicus, sir.” The young assistant shuffled his feet. “Rainar told me to deliver the sleeping draught now, but the herbalist says he’s not compounded it.” The boy’s voice rose with his distress.
Piar turned Hew’s hand, checking the motion of the wrist. Gael liked how thorough he was, not shorting his patient, despite the interruption.
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