Valdemar 11 - [Owl Mage 02] - Owlsight

by Mercedes Lackey

  A moment more, and it wasn’t just a few drops, it was a downpour—a downpour without much thunder, just more growling now and again. There wasn’t much wind, which didn’t augur well for the storm blowing past in a hurry. She shut all the windows as some rain splashed inside, then lit her lanterns to ward off growing darkness; when she cracked the door open and peeked out, what she saw confirmed that this was not going to be a simple cloudburst, over quickly.

  Not with the amount coming down, the slate-gray of the clouds overhead, and the relative lack of lightning and thunder.

  I’m glad the seedlings are up and they’re in drained beds, she thought with a sigh. And I’m glad I put those gauze cones over them to protect them. This is likely to last for the next three days. If she hadn’t put the cones over them, her precious new plants would be flattened before sunset.

  With that in mind, she considered going out now and collecting some foodstuffs; she might be spending a lot of time in the workshop or tending flus and colds. I’d better; I can’t just live on vegetable soup.

  Getting out her waterproof rain cape, she put the hood up, slipped on a pair of wooden clogs, bowed her head to the storm and plodded out into it. Beneath the hood of the cape, she watched her footing; already the rain had pooled into some deepish puddles—deep enough that her clogs wouldn’t keep her feet dry if she blundered into one. As she came to the hedge around her house, she looked up, wondering if her brothers had the sense to bring the clothing in. The line at her house was empty, so her brothers had saved their laundry from a drenching, but the righthand neighbor hadn’t been so lucky. Tansy Gel-cress struggled with wet clothing, flapping rain cape, and a basket she didn’t want to put down—Keisha couldn’t simply go into the house with that going on next door. She stopped long enough to help Tansy gather in her things, then went on up the path to her own house.

  Everybody will be coming home—they can’t work in the wet. I’ll get the fire going, so they have a warm house to come back to. She built up the fire in the kitchen, then surveyed the kitchen stocks, deciding what her mother wouldn’t mind her taking. Ham, cheese, eggs, butter, a jug of cider—that’ll do. I have beans, flour, basic staples at the shop. I have a quarter of a loaf of bread, and I’ll be out enough that I can get more bread from the baker. We’ve plenty more of what I’m taking at the farm; she can send Da after more if she needs to. People will start bringing barter stuff like eggs and milk around here as soon as I start handing out cough potions. That was part of the arrangement with the village, after all; since Keisha wasn’t a single male who needed to be cooked for and looked after, the family got foodstuffs on an irregular basis. Things usually started appearing when Keisha had done a lot of work in a short period of time.

  Gathering her spoils up into a basket and covering it with a fold of her cape, she went out into the storm again, only to see the neighbor waving frantically at her from the door of her house.

  She splashed across the yard, fearing that someone had already gotten sick.

  But Tansy handed her a bundle wrapped in a clean dishcloth. “I made seedcakes, and I thought since you’ll probably be busy in this nasty weather that you might like to take some to your workshop to nibble on in between emergencies,” she said as she patted Keisha’s hand. “There, just a little thanks for being a good neighbor.”

  “Thank you,” Keisha replied, touched and pleased, and a little dumbfounded. “Thank you very much. They’ll be appreciated—”

  “Now don’t let me keep you standing here, go!” the woman told her, making a shooing motion. “I don’t want to be the one responsible for drowning you!”

  Keisha left, making her way through the growing runnels of water, protecting both sets of provisions under her rain cape. People are noticing! They’re really noticing what I do! It wasn’t just a reward for helping with the laundry; the neighbor had specifically said “I thought you’d probably be busy in this nasty weather.”

  Somehow, she felt immensely better than she had a few moments ago and quite ready to meet whatever the weather brought with a steady spirit.

  The wind picked up, sending the edges of her cape flapping, and there was a definite edge to it that there hadn’t been before. It was getting colder, and that wasn’t good.

  Cold-teas, sore-throat syrups, cough syrups, fever-teas, herb-and-garlic packets for chicken soup—she started cataloging all the things she was going to need as soon as she got through the door. Her workshop seemed doubly cozy after the bitter weather outside; she shook out her cape and hung it up, then slipped her clogs off and padded around in her stockings, knowing that she’d have to put the clogs back on as soon as someone called on her. Quickly stowing her provisions in her food cupboard, she put beans to soak for soup tomorrow; if the rain lasted, tomorrow would be the day when the first colds made their appearance, and she’d be busy all day.

  She took long enough to eat her vegetable soup with sliced bread and butter; if things got bad, it might be bedtime before she had another chance to eat. Then she set about inventorying her cold medicines, and putting together batches of whatever she thought she’d need more of.

  Her hands flew as her mind worked; was it likely that anyone would get caught by flooding? With the way this rain was coming down, it was a possibility, though people tended to be pretty sensible about rising water this time of year. It was only in the summer that people got lazy, were too busy, or were having too good a time to pay attention to the possibility of flash floods.

  Last year had brought a fine honey harvest and she had plenty stocked away for making soothing syrups. With a surplus of extra jugs, she’d gone ahead and made more decoctions of comfrey, lobelia, hyssop, and horehound than she usually did. Now her preparations paid off; it didn’t take long for her to mix those four ingredients, chamomile, and lemon-balm tinctures, plus the honey, for cough syrup. Work didn’t stop just because people got colds; it was up to her to make certain they could do their work even with one.

  Late afternoon brought the first of the emergencies; people might be sensible about flooding, but unfortunately, cows were as stubborn and stupid as rocks. Some of the water-meadows started getting knee-deep and several folk had to wade in to lead their cattle out—the floods were too deep for the herd dogs to work in, so each fool cow had to be caught and led to safety by hand. So a handful of people came home chilled to the bone and blue around the lips—and Keisha was there with hot medicinal teas and packets of preventative herbs to go into the evening soup or stew. No harm if the rest of the family got the medicines either; all that would happen was that everyone would get sleepy earlier, and go off to bed. A warm bed was the best place anyone could be on a night like this one.

  The cattle had to be treated, too, for the results of their boneheadedness, so out she went to three different farms, making sure each silly cow got her drench.

  Keisha had her villagers well-trained; at the first sign of a sniffle, mothers came to the door for syrups and teas for their littles. There was a steady parade of them just after suppertime, as children who’d gone out healthy came home sneezing, because they would play in the puddles and not come in until they were as soaked and blue as the men who’d rescued the cattle.

  These weren’t the things she charged for; she’d early come to the conclusion that if she took her “pay” for run-of-the-mill Healing in the things the villagers were already supplying her, it was more likely that they’d come to her early rather than waiting until the illness was truly serious. Doses with enough sleepy-making potential to make people stay abed a candlemark or two longer when they were mildly sick would keep them from getting sicker—keeping a cold at the level of sniffles and coughs in a child kept it from turning into something that could kill. She’d charge the farmers for the cattle-drenches, but only after the rains were over, and only because they had asked her to give the doses herself.

  Then again, she thought wearily, after she’d trudged back to the shop from what she hoped would be the last call of the
night, I can get the stuff down their throats without them fighting me; when they do it, more of it goes on the cow than in it, poor things.

  Absolutely, positively, no point in going home to sleep; everyone knew that in weather like this, she’d be at the shop where everything she might need was at hand. I’m just glad I got the laundry done, she told herself, as she closed the door behind her, and surveyed the wreck of her workshop. I hope they give me some time to get this cleaned up in the morning before they haul me out again.

  She followed her own prescription and added a packet of her herbs to the last of the soup before she ate it—as she’d anticipated, she hadn’t had a chance for a meal after that first bowl. The she put the beans, seasoning, and some ham into another pot and put that over the fire to cook all night. She managed to wash up the dishes and the first soup pot, but ran out of energy, and took two seedcakes and a mug of cider up to the loft where she snuggled into her bed, leaving them on the little table beside the bed for a quick bite if someone pulled her out in the middle of the night.

  But that night, at least, her sleep was unbroken, and the cakes and cider made a perfectly good breakfast. It was an unexpected luxury to eat breakfast in bed, with the rain drumming down on the roof outside and the savory aroma of bean soup filling the workshop.

  She didn’t linger long, though; she was up and washed and clothed quickly, dressing for the weather. No telling when she’d be called out again.

  I could do myself a big favor by getting baskets ready to snatch up, she decided, and lined up four on the workbench. Into one went standard remedies for minor human ailments, and into the second the same sorts of things for animals. Into the other two went medicines for more serious complications. She didn’t think she’d have to use the one for people—but the Fellowship beasts were so sensitive—

  She’d no sooner finished the fourth basket when someone knocked on the door, then came in without waiting for a reply.

  It was Alys, from the Fellowship.

  Keisha grabbed the fourth basket without waiting to hear what brought her. “It’s the sheep, right?”

  Alys nodded. “Cough,” she said anxiously. “It’s odd, a dry, hacking sort of cough.”

  “Hah!” Alys didn’t recognize it, that was clear, but Keisha did. Her own family flock had gotten the illness in a rainy spring like this one. She turned to get a different jar of heavy concentrate down off the top shelf and put it in her basket as well. “No worries, I’ve got what we’ll need; they’ll be fine as long as we get them warm and dry and get my stuff into them. Come on.”

  She swung on her rain cape and slipped her feet into her clogs, heading straight out the door. Alys followed, her brow creased anxiously.

  “How are we going to get them dry and warm?” she asked. “They’re soaked to the skin!”

  Keisha stopped in the doorway and made a mental inventory of the Fellowship buildings, and realized Alys was right, there was no way to get the sheep under cover on Fellowship property. But there was the village threshing barn, empty and unused at this time of year, and with the favors the Fellowship had done the village, they were certainly owed a favor from the village in return.

  “Get your dogs and herders and bring all the sheep up to the threshing barn,” she ordered. “We’ll use that until the rain is over. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure it’s right. I’ll meet you there.”

  Alys took her word as good, and trotted off through the puddles toward the Fellowship holding. Keisha stopped just long enough at the Mayor’s house to confirm the right of the Fellowship to use the octagonal barn until the rains were done—so long as they supplied fodder for the sheep and cleaned up after them.

  Keisha hurried to the barn and let down the oiled canvas interior sides that shut out the wind and rain when need be. The canvas hadn’t come cheap, but in the rush of prosperity following the sale of the barbarians’ looted goods, it had been a sound investment. Now the barn could be used for many purposes in all weathers, even in the dead of winter—it became a tight, weatherproof and windproof tent with a fine shingled roof and seven external supporting walls of wood. It was a tight squeeze, but you could even hold a Faire in there.

  The eighth wall, the one opposite the door, was of stone and did not have a canvas cover, but that was the very last thing it needed.

  By the time she’d done lacing all the canvas panels together, the poor, sodden sheep showed up, bleating and coughing pathetically. No doubt about that cough; Keisha had heard it before, and the illness “felt” the same as soon as she touched her hands to one of the sheep.

  “Bring them in, then start squeezing the water out of their fleeces,” she ordered, as Alys and four more Fellowship shepherds hustled their charges into the barn. “When you’ve got them all as dry as you can, bring clean straw in here for them to bed down in. I know it’ll seem like a waste, but trust me, I want it belly-deep for the sheep in here. They have to get warm and stay warm, or you might start losing lambs.”

  Nods all around, neither questions, nor arguments. Keisha went outside to start a fire in the big oven built into the eighth—stone—side of the barn.

  The door of the oven faced the outside; inconvenient to say the least, but entirely necessary when you realized that the floor of the barn would be covered in flammable things like straw whenever the barn was in use. There was always a huge pile of wood under a cover next to the oven; it would be a while before the stone wall heated up enough for the warmth to build up in the barn, but that was all right. This would solve the problem of getting the delicate sheep warmed clear through.

  And if any other animals start looking seedy, they can be brought here, too. She reminded herself to tell the Mayor that on her way back to her workshop. Once the fire was going well, Keisha stacked logs all around it, and went back into the barn.

  With the only light coming from a couple of storm lanterns the shepherds had thoughtfully brought with them, it was pretty dim, but Keisha knew the contents of her basket well. Before very long, she had the water skins she generally used to dose animals full, and had the concentrated cough potion mixing with the water inside. As each poor sheep was squeezed relatively dry, she took it from the hands of its helper over to the stone wall where one of the lanterns hung.

  There, she looked deeply into its confused, frightened, eyes, and told it without words that it was safe, that she would be helping it, and that if it drank what she gave it, the nasty cough would stop. Then she promised that there would be warmth, dry straw to lie in, and peace for as long as the rain fell. She filled her mind with those images of warmth and safety, until she felt the sheep relax under her hands and saw the eyes lose their fear.

  Then she eased the sheep’s mouth open, and slipped the neck of the water skin past the back of the tongue. How she could tell that she’d gotten enough of a dose into each sheep, she couldn’t have said in words; she only knew that something told her when she’d poured exactly the right amount down its throat.

  That was when she let the sheep go; it would wander off and join the rest of the dosed flock making beds in the straw that more of the Fellowship folk were spreading on the floor.

  This was tedious work—not hard, except for those drying off the sheep, but tedious. “Talking” to the sheep without words was tiring, too—Keisha wasn’t sure why, but it took something out of her. The good part was that about the time she was half through, the stone wall began radiating warmth, so the second half of her task was accomplished in relative comfort.

  When she turned the last of the sheep loose—and now none of them was coughing—she stood up with a little groan and put the now-flat water skins back in her basket. Alys waited patiently to hear what other orders she had.

  “You’ll have to keep the oven stoked, and if anyone wants to bake something in it, or put in a casserole or something, let them, that’s part of the bargain,” Keisha told her. “Mayor said you’ll have to supply your own fodder.” She already knew she didn’t have to tell them to clean
up after themselves; when the sheep left this barn, you’d be able to eat off the floor. “Now, what your little beauties have got isn’t exactly a sickness, not yet, anyway.”

  “It’s not?” Alys said, puzzled.

  Keisha shook her head. “It’s some Pelagir-fungus, like ergot, but it grows on sheep-sorrel instead of wheat, down near the roots. Heat and freezing kill it, that’s why you won’t see it in summer or winter, and it needs a warm spring with a lot of rain to start. Which we’ve had.”

  Alys nodded. “But we’ve had warm springs with lots of rain before.”

  “You’re still all right so long as the ground stays dry, not soaked like it’s been. Then what it needs to spread is a cold rain in the middle of the warm spring.” She shrugged. “Here’s where I don’t know why, it just does. Otherwise, it just sits down at the roots of the sheep-sorrel and your sheep will crop right over the top of it and never come to harm. Since this is a lung sickness, maybe they have to breathe something in. All I know for certain is that if you don’t have the fungus in your fields, your sheep will be all right, and if you don’t have a cold, steady rain, your sheep will be all right—and if you bring your sheep off the fields where the fungus is until after it’s been raining for a day or so, you’ll be all right. Our sheep got it a time or two, and it knocked them down hard; I’m afraid yours would be in trouble if I hadn’t got the stuff into them that kills the rot that they breathe in. Now, though, with heat and good food and the medicine, they’ll be strong enough to fight it off and come out fine.”

  Alys looked relieved, and nodded. “The chirras all went into their barn and wouldn’t come out as soon as the rain started, and the goats are in their shelter—and none of them are coughing. It was just the sheep that kept grazing in the rain.”

  “Then the chirras and goats won’t have any trouble from this, but mind what I told you from now on; either get rid of the sheep-sorrel or the fungus, or keep animals out of those fields as soon as it starts to rain in the spring.” Keisha stretched, easing cramped arm and back muscles.