“That’s not what you said when Herald Aldren offered to escort you to the Collegium last year—” Deira began.
“Then, I was still a child,” Selaine said loftily. “Now I’m old enough to do something useful! You can’t keep me wrapped in wool rovings for the rest of my life!”
I can try . . . thought Deira. “Brewing herbs will be useful,” she said aloud. “I am trying to protect both of us, can’t you understand?”
“I want to be a Healer . . .” Selaine said grimly. “Risking sickness is part of the job.”
Someday . . . thought Deira, striding ahead. But not yet! Not now!
* * *
• • •
“White willow, waybraed, chamomile, weal-wort, elder . . .” Selaine’s murmur blended soothingly with the burble of simmering liquid and the crackling fire as she sorted the herbs the villagers had brought in. “But why is sweetseal on the list? To make it taste better, maybe?”
You certainly couldn’t tell from the smell of the potion, thought Deira. As wind shifted the steam, she felt a warning tickle in her throat and turned away from the cauldron, pulling up the neck of her shift to catch her cough.
The labor was mind-numbing, but the constantly shifting patterns in the cauldron exercised a strange fascination. When the steam lifted, the spiraling currents pulsed with a dark sheen. I must be becoming accustomed to the heat, she thought, for despite the fire and the weather, her forehead was quite dry.
“Around, around, the spell is bound . . .” Deira sang as she did sometimes at the loom. The tasks were more alike than she would have imagined. In both brewing and weaving, unlike elements were mingled to create a harmonious whole. But she was growing bored with the patterns that were all the folk in the village wanted. If she looked long enough into the seething liquid what would she see?
She leaned over the cauldron, her gaze following the swirl of chaff from the dried herbs. It spiraled inward . . . downward . . . “Around . . .” she whispered, and found herself coughing again.
“Mother!” Selaine gripped her arm and piloted her to the wicker chair. “’Tis the third time you’ve coughed this past hour. Drink this!” The tea in the mug the girl handed her was hot. As she drank, it soothed tissues scraped raw.
“Thanks,” Deira said hoarsely. “The reek of those herbs catches in the throat. If the smell is any indicator, it should be a powerful brew.”
“Stay right there!” snapped Selaine as Deira started to rise. “I’ll take a turn at the cauldron. You need to rest for a while.”
I’ll sit for a few minutes . . . here where the air is clear. She settled back against the cushion, breathing very carefully to keep that annoying tickle at bay. A faint throbbing at her temples threatened a headache, but her lips twitched with amusement as she remembered how authoritative her child had looked, marching her to the chair.
Like a real Healer, she thought as her eyes closed.
* * *
• • •
When Deira woke, she was on her bed, and she was cold. Darkness had fallen. She plucked at the blanket, and suddenly Selaine was there, tucking the folds back around her. In the lamplight she could see beads of perspiration on her daughter’s brow. Deira wanted to ask if the weather had changed, but the light hurt her eyes, so she shut them.
After that, periods of confusion alternated with glimpses of her daughter’s set face, then a period of jolting movement until she slid into darkness once more.
The next time she was aware, her wandering gaze fixed on the shifting pattern of light and shadow on the striped cloth suspended above her. I wove that . . . She turned her head a little and realized she was lying on a straw mattress beneath a roughly stitched canopy made from miscellaneous pieces of cloth attached to ropes stretched from posts at the sides of the square to the great oak tree.
This is the market square at Evenleigh. Slowly the thoughts came, with a vague memory of arguing about the journey. Selaine is getting to work with Master Abolon after all.
* * *
• • •
Deira floundered in a sea of delirium, struggling to cling to the occasional islands of clarity. She remembered Master Abolon praying over her with fanatic fervor, Selaine kneeling with rapt attention by his side. She was still trying to recall if she had seen Healers do that before when the world faded out once more. The next time, she noted that though his voice vibrated through the ground, she felt no flow of energy, and her daughter looked less adoring.
And then came a day when the babble of many voices roused her. From her bed she could see the platform in the center of the square. Master Abolon stood before it, displaying a green velvet bag.
“This is the last of the All-heal!” He up-ended the bag and a fine powder sifted into the cauldron. “I had hoped to get more from the Healers at the Temple in Freetown, but they have none to spare—”
“But so many are still sick!” The villagers who had been doing the nursing cried out as Abolon gave the bag a last shake and tossed it aside. “What will we do?”
“Give me a good horse, and I will ride to Haven. The potion in the cauldron should last until I return. But the herb is rare and expensive—I will need as much coin as you have . . .”
Metal clinked as the village folk lined up to drop coins into a basket, Selaine among them. Deira glimpsed a glint of gold, and tears stung her eyes as she realized her daughter was giving up her greatest treasure, the coin struck to celebrate the coronation of King Sendar that had been a gift from Herald Garaval. She tried to remember when the Herald’s Circuit would bring him back to Evenleigh, but the effort plunged consciousness into chaos once more.
* * *
• • •
“Lady Trine please be with me, Kerenal who helps Healers hear me . . .” the voice was thin with strain.
Deira opened her eyes. The play of light and leaf-shadow above her had been replaced by a warm flicker of lantern light. Selaine knelt at her side, the bag that had held Abolon’s magic herb clutched like a talisman. There were dark circles under her eyes, and on her cheeks the shining trail of tears. Carefully she laid the bag on her mother’s breast.
She thinks I am dying . . . The thought came slowly. It might even be true. Deira tried to summon the will to fight, but her chest was an agony, and she was too tired to even be afraid.
“There’s no use in waving an empty bag, dearie.” Mistress Hanna patted the girl’s shoulder. “We must wait. She’s in the Lady’s hands now.”
Selaine picked up the bag. “I thought . . . maybe some of the virtue of Master Abolon’s herb might remain.” She shook her head in frustration. “Are you sure that All-heal doesna grow in the Pelagirs? You said that in different lands the herbs can have other names—”
“It was already powdered, dearie. I cannot give any name to an herb I cannot see . . .”
“What about the taste?” Selaine thrust the bag into the older woman’s hands. “You know all the plants—some bit of powder must be there—taste it and tell me!”
Hanna sighed, but she wet a finger and scraped it along the lining, then touched it to her tongue. After a moment, her brows bent.
“Why are you frowning?”
“I don’t understand,” Hanna said slowly, “It tastes like chamomile!”
Selaine grabbed the bag, sniffed, and stared up at her mentor, eyes wide. “Maybe . . . maybe it is. But that would mean—” She surged to her feet.
“Hush, child! Don’t disturb—”
“They have to know Master Abolon betrayed us!” The intensity of the adoration she had offered him rang in the anguish of her cry.
“And lose what little hope they have? If there was no magic in his medicine, it’s their belief that is keeping our patients alive.”
“And our money!” Selaine muttered as if she had not heard. “My golden king-coin! I want it back! I want him back, the che
at, to answer for his deceptions!”
She stretched, reaching, features furrowed in concentration, face flushing red. There was a small “pop.” When her clenched fist opened, a golden coin spun out and rolled across the ground.
“I Fetched it . . .” The wonder in Selaine’s voice changed to a desperate hope. “What else can I Fetch if I try?” She turned, staring as if she could see through Deira’s flesh to the torment within.
“I see you, evil ones . . .” her whisper rose to a shout. “I summon you, evil wights who torment my mother now. I draw you forth and cast you out! Be gone, be gone, be gone!”
She leaned on the bed frame, gasping. “Listen to me, Mother,” she said, still in that tone of command. “I see your lungs clear, your throat clean, your body cool . . .”
Selaine’s prayers became a murmur on which Deira’s consciousness focused as their intensity rose and fell. She twitched as an energy that was not quite physical frothed along each nerve. Clean and cool . . . she thought. She is trying so hard . . . I have to try too . . .
She took a deep breath and then another, surprised to find it did not hurt as much as it had before. She heard Selaine’s voice falter, then other voices. She tried to rouse, but this time it was cool peace that carried consciousness away.
* * *
• • •
Morning light, filtered through the linen shade, cast a gentle illumination across her daughter’s sleeping face. Deira found it strange to see it so, after having been accustomed to look up at the canopy for so long, but whatever magic Selaine’s prayers had wrought had revived her enough to demand a chair. Since dawn she had kept vigil, alert for any sign of fever, but the tea Mistress Hanna had brewed for Selaine’s headache had put the girl to sleep, and her skin was cool. Deira told herself it was the effort of Fetching, not the plague, that had felled the child. Perhaps the worst was over. There had been no new cases for two days, and most of those who had been brought to the square for nursing had either died or were recovering.
Was that a shift in the light, or had Selaine moved? The girl sighed. Then her eyes opened, blazing with joy as she saw her mother sitting there.
“You’re well!”
“Not quite, but I am better,” Deira replied, “better than you look right now. How do you feel?”
“Like a dishclout that’s been wrung out and hung to dry—”
“I am not surprised. It seems you Fetched the disease demons away.”
Selaine’s eyes widened. “I don’t remember . . .” Her gaze moved from her mother’s face to the green bag and the gold coin that lay beside it and her face changed. “Master Abolon!”
Wonder was replaced by a reflection of her former fury, and as if the words had been a summons, they were echoed from outside. There seemed to be rather a lot of noise in the square for so early in the day. They heard a babble of excited voices, and hoofbeats, and the chime of silver bells.
“Master Abolon! How did you get back so soon?” came the cry.
“We found him in the forest,” someone replied in a pleasant baritone, “Riding in circles and making no sense at all. We thought it best to bring him back here.”
Selaine met her mother’s eyes and began to smile. “It’s Herald Garaval!”
“Master, did you get the herb?” asked Headman Bartom as people crowded under the canopy, Herald Garaval in the lead with Abolon, followed by a younger man in green.
“He did not and he cannot, for there is no such herb as ‘All-heal,’” Mistress Hanna declared as she pushed toward them through the crowd. Her white coif hung in limp folds around her face, but her sturdy frame radiated indignation. She took up the green bag and waved it over her head. “The only herb in this pouch was chamomile!”
“I am a Healer from the Collegium,” shouted Abolon as the blacksmith reached for him. “Keep your filthy hands off me!”
“He is not!” Mistress Hanna responded. “He is a swindler and a charlatan!”
As they reached the platform, Abolon lurched toward Selaine and was hauled back again. Scratched and dirty, with green robe torn and dyed hair askew, he did not look like a Master Healer now.
“You!” he exclaimed, focusing on the girl. “Witch, what have you done to me?”
“Silence!” Garaval’s voice cut through the clamor. The babble faded as all turned to look at the girl.
Selaine’s eyes widened. “I only wanted my coin!”
Deira laid a restraining hand on her arm. “I believe he was fleeing with the funds the village raised for medicine. My daughter has the Fetching Gift, but she is untrained. The coin came first—” she held it up. “Is it possible that her Gift has drawn this man and the rest of the money back as well?”
A shocked murmur swept through the crowd, and then a little nervous laughter.
“If that is so, I think I can release you.” Herald Garaval stepped to Selaine’s side. For a moment he looked at her, then set his palms to either side of her head. As she gave a sigh and fell back against her pillow, Abolon ceased his struggling.
“Selaine, I offered to take you to Haven once before,” said Garaval. “I repeat that offer now. The Healers and the Heralds both will want to find out how you did this and teach you how to keep it under control.”
Selaine cast an imploring glance at her mother.
“I agree. In fact, I insist,” Deira replied. Best not to tell them how the girl had used her Gift to heal, if indeed that was what she had done. Seeing how exhausted her daughter still appeared, she suspected that Selaine could drain herself of life if she overused that power.
“But what of the man?” the Headman called, “and the herb he took our money to buy?”
“Is that what he was babbling about?” The Herald’s companion, a slender fellow in a serviceable green robe, stepped forward. Deira looked from him to Abolon, wondering how she could ever have mistaken the man’s tawdry splendor for an authentic Healer’s gown.
“I am Healer Kernow from the Temple at Freetown. I know of no herb called ‘All-heal,’ nor any that might deserve that name,” he went on. “But I have brought febrifuges and restoratives, and I will stay with you so long as there is need. I am sorry I could not come sooner—the man you sent was ill when he arrived, and it was only two days ago that we at the Temple learned of your situation. I am grateful to Herald Garaval for escorting me here.”
“I’m glad I did,” the Herald replied, “for it took the two of us to bring this fellow in, though I thought only that he was some madman displaced by the wars. What shall we do with him?”
Looking at her daughter’s face, Deira realized that was the question. Selaine had retrieved her precious coin, but nothing could bring back her trust, or the faith of all those who had believed in the man.
“Make him tell us the truth!” said Headman Bartom.
Deira sighed. If trust was broken, she supposed that truth was the next best thing.
“He said he studied in Haven,” said Selaine.
Garaval looked at his prisoner. “Is that true?” he asked. He began to whisper something they could not quite hear. There was a gasp from the people as the space around Abolon’s head took on a blue glow.
“Did you train at the Collegium?”
“I did! I was one of the best students in my year.” Abolon spoke defiantly, and though the glow flickered, it was still there. A murmur of doubt rippled through the crowd.
“And did you complete your training?” Deira asked then.
“I studied there for five years! I was first in my class!” Abolon cried, and still the blue glow remained.
“But you were not confirmed as Healer, were you?” the Herald said softly, a rather frightening focus in his gaze. “You were not given the right to wear that green robe . . . Answer me!” The glow intensified.
“I passed . . . the examinations . . .” Abolon fought for every w
ord. “But they . . . wouldn’t . . . they did . . . not . . .” He stopped, gasping, though his glare needed no words.
Garaval nodded. “I think your answer is clear. It takes more than knowledge to win the green robe. Character counts as well, and I judge that you have none. To Haven you will go, and your fate will be decided by the Healers there.”
* * *
• • •
Deira sat by the window, open to receive the breeze that had begun as the sun went down. The weather still held fair, but the valley no longer felt like a kettle with the lid clamped on. Selaine was sorting clothes on the long table, muttering to herself.
“You know that at the Collegium you will be wearing a uniform most of the time. You won’t need half those things,” Deira observed.
“If they let me in . . .”
“After what you just showed you can do? Garaval would be failing in his duty if he did not insist you be trained! They will be delighted to see you!” she said bracingly.
“I hope so—” Selaine managed a smile.
Deira hesitated, “In a little while, I might come to the capital too. Not to keep an eye on you—” she added quickly. “You will live at the Collegium, and I am sure you will be kept busy there, but without you the cottage will be very lonely. I need a challenge, and the nobles will pay for work that is unique and unusual.
“I won’t go with you now—” She gestured around the room, “I need to recover my strength, and it will take time to organize a move.” She paused, searching for words. “And I think you will find it easier to settle in if I am not there.”
She watched the play of expression across her daughter’s face, understanding all the things Selaine would not, or could not say.
“You’re asking me?”
“It is time for you to move on . . . and I think it is time for me as well,” Deira replied, and she was rewarded by something she had not seen in months—her daughter’s smile.
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