The power, thought Dag. The power to so readily move matter through its ground was immense, yet Arkady’s ground projection danced as delicately as if he were laying out flower petals that he was trying not to crush. He persuaded the two sides of the ripped hole back together, then set a neatly shaped ground reinforcement to hold them that way. Tapp’s strained face and grip eased, and he lay back bonelessly on the table. It had all been done in less than ten minutes, without ever breaking the skin.
“I’ll send one of the ham-handed novices down to your tent tonight to give you another reinforcement,” Arkady told Tapp, and glanced up. “Has anyone told his wife yet that he’s home early?”
“I sent the boy,” said Challa.
Indeed, Tapp’s wife arrived in a few minutes more, irate with worry, and the Tapp, what did you do to yourself? and It wasn’t my fault! conversation was repeated, with variations. Arkady prudently gave most of his instructions to her—bed rest and no food till tomorrow, camp rest till Challa decreed otherwise. Dag helped carry Tapp back out to the horse litter and saw him trundled off, escorted by his partner and his wife. Staring after them, Dag turned his hook this way and that, trying to imagine the groundwork that would persuade half of someone’s stomach back to its proper position through such a little hole without bursting it under the heart.
Arkady, stretching his back beside Dag, said, “He’ll recover well if he doesn’t overdo. It didn’t help that he was two days fooling around with the rupture and telling his patrol leader he’d be fine before he even started home, his partner says. Patrollers have no sense, sometimes.”
“Goes with the territory,” Dag said. “Sensible people don’t go looking for malices.”
“I suppose you would know.”
“Forty years at it, sir.”
“Huh. I guess it would be about that.” He frowned at Dag’s hook. “Before and after the hand, then? Because it looks like that’s been off for about twenty years, there.”
“Aye,” said Dag. “Just about that.” But if Arkady was angling for an old patroller story, he was doomed to disappointment. A more important question occurred to Dag then. “Sir—why didn’t you get cold and shaky after doing that groundwork?”
Arkady’s head turned. “What, do you?”
“After all my healings, pretty much, and that glass-bowl episode knocked me on my tail. My flesh felt like clay, and my stomach heaved.”
“Well, then, you were doing something wrong.”
“What?”
“We’ll have to figure that out.” Arkady rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand and stared curiously at Dag, but did not pursue the matter at once. Instead, he turned Dag over to Challa while he went off to, he said, check on a few folks.
Challa showed Dag her tent’s record-keeping methods, more pleased than was quite flattering to learn that the shabby northerner could read and write. They were interrupted once by a woman whose toddler’s oozing sore throat had not responded to home ground reinforcements, and a second time by a boy, frog-marched in by his father, in need of having his bloodied head stitched after a fight with his brother. A rock seemed to have been involved, presented as evidence, or possibly a souvenir, by the irate and dizzy loser.
As she worked, Challa kept up a gentle and seemingly habitual flow of instruction and commentary that Dag drank in—with the growing sense that he was just the latest in a long line of apprentices to pass through her tent. Dag was painfully aware that he was of no help in stitching up the flap of scalp, but at least his hook provided a useful diversion while the sewing was going on. The boy ingenuously demanded the tale—severely abridged by Dag—of how the missing hand had been bitten off by a mud-wolf, then set his quaking lip and endured his own little ordeal under Challa’s curved needle with fresh determination. Challa suppressed a smile and complimented his courage.
Barr popped in then with the news that the lunch basket and Arkady had both arrived back at the house. Dag paced silently beside him up the road, his head awhirl with his morning’s tutorials. The range of things he didn’t know seemed to be expanding at an alarming rate.
This lunch basket yielded ham sandwiches and plunkin, swiftly consumed. While Fawn, Remo, and Barr cleared away the plates and crumbs from the round table, Arkady arose and went to one of his shelves. He returned with a piece of paper and sat again across from Dag. Instead of presenting it to read, he turned it over and tore it in half.
“Now,” he said, “let’s just see what it is you’re doing that’s giving you trouble. Watch. Ah—with your groundsense, please.”
What is he about? Dag opened himself and attended, summoning the concentration of the morning against a drift toward a postlunch nap.
Arkady eased the two pieces back in line, held them down on the table, and ran his thumb down the tear. Behind the barely perceptible ground projection, the paper hissed back together. He held it up and snapped it, then turned it and tore it in half again. Fawn and the boys abandoned the sink and slid hastily back into their chairs to watch.
It had been so swift, Dag was barely certain what he’d sensed, but he dutifully positioned the halves on the table in front of him, edged them together as best he could, extended his ghost hand, closed his eyes, and found that strange level of perception, down and in, that he had first discovered while healing Hod. Paper, it seemed, was much like felted cloth, a mass of tiny threads all matted together—torn away from one another, now. He was put in mind of how Fawn had spun the threads for their wedding cords, making the fibers twirl around and catch hold. So freshly separated, these fibers’ grounds still held the echo of their former friction. This will be easy. He smiled and drew his hook down the edges, his ghost thumb persuading them back together.
And opened his eyes in consternation as the paper burst into flame along the line of his repair. He beat it out in hasty embarrassment.
Barr ducked the flying char and said, “It’s not anybody’s birthday, Dag! Take it easy!”
Dag brushed futilely at the scorch marks on Arkady’s table. “Sorry. Sorry! I’m not sure what happened just there.”
“Mm-huh,” said Arkady, leaning back with narrowed eyes and not sounding the least surprised. “As I thought. You’re expending far more strength than the task warrants, and exhausting yourself prematurely. The waste you shed becomes, in this case, heat.”
“But Hod’s knee didn’t burst into flames!” Fawn objected. Adding after a reflective moment, “Luckily.”
“That was a much greater task, and living beings absorb ground on levels mere objects don’t possess. The cure for the unpleasant aftereffects you experienced, the chill and the nausea, isn’t some special trick. It’s the result of a general habit of efficiency in one’s work. Don’t do with groundsetting anything that can be done physically, or even by another medicine maker; pace yourself, because you never know how soon another patient will turn up; and never use more strength than is truly needed. It’s not merely less wasteful; it’s more elegant.” Arkady rolled the last word off his tongue quite lovingly.
Dag scratched his head in doubt.
Barr sniggered. “I don’t know as Dag does elegant.”
Fawn bristled, opening her mouth to begin some hot defense. Dag interrupted smoothly, “Ground-veiling drills. When was the last time you and Barr did your ground-veiling drills, Remo? Back before Whit and Berry’s wedding, wasn’t it?”
Remo shot an acid look at his partner. “Yes, sir.” He did not add, You were there, Dag!; some former patrol leader had evidently cured him of any leaning to risky backtalk.
“Now, half an hour. Down on the lakeshore will be a good place. No one will interrupt your concentration there.”
Remo loyally arose, glowered at Barr, and jerked his chin. Barr grumbled up and followed him out, casting a last look of frustrated curiosity over his shoulder. Peace of a sort descended.
Beyond an upward twitch of his silvery brows, Arkady made no comment. Instead, he drained his mug of tea, set it sideways to the t
able, and with a sharp crack broke off its handle.
“Oh!” said Fawn, startled, then closed her lips tight. She glanced at the door through which the boys had left and folded her hands primly in her lap in a superfluous effort to appear small.
Arkady pushed the two pieces across to Dag. “Try again. Don’t try to contain the whole cup, or even the whole handle, although hold awareness of their essential ground in mind. Think surfaces. Again, let your muscles do as much as possible. Hold the parts together tightly—” He broke off; a tinge of color heated his cheeks. “Er…”
“Fawn, lend me your hands over here,” said Dag.
She nodded understanding, rose, licked her finger to pick up a couple of tiny fragments still left across the table, deposited them again in front of Dag, and gripped the cup and handle, fitting them back together. “Just like the bowl, huh?” Her dimple flashed at him, as if to say, You can do it.
“Uh-huh.” Dag shot Arkady a challenging glance, but the maker made no comment. Surfaces, eh? Dag closed his eyes, reached out till his hook clinked, and dropped down and in, finding the ground of the bowl, of the handle. Of the two interfaces. This fired clay had a rougher voice than the high chime of the glass bowl, a mumbling little growl. The recent break still vibrated with the rupture, though the clay was far more inert than the ends of broken blood vessels that Dag had several times worked back together. But they still had a good catch. The two flakes rose through the air, seeking their slots. Catch. Catch. Finer and finer, catchcatchcatchcatch…And finer still…
“Good,” said Arkady. “Stop.”
Dag gulped and opened his eyes.
Gingerly, Fawn released the handle, which remained in place. Even more gingerly, she grasped the handle and released the cup. The mending held. “It’s warm,” she reported, “but not near so hot as that bowl was, Dag. You could barely touch that bowl, even after it stopped glowing.” She peered more closely. “I can just see a line in the glaze.” The two crumbs of stray clay were also back in place, faintly outlined.
“How do you feel?” Arkady asked Dag. His voice and gaze were both level.
“Not…bad,” said Dag, a little surprised. “Something’s taken out of me, sure, but I don’t feel dizzy or cold. And my lunch is staying put.” This mending lacked the soaring exaltation and violent collapse of his prior ones, of the glass bowl or Hod’s knee or Chicory’s head; it was more like…interest and ease. Less exciting, to be sure. But less wearing, I do admit.
Arkady rose and returned with another wrinkled note. He sat, tore it in half, and shoved the pieces across to Dag once more. “Try again. Less hard.”
Dag nodded understanding and aligned the scraps. Fawn slipped back into her chair, still clutching the cup, and watched wide-eyed. In anticipation of another conflagration her hand crept toward the damp dishcloth she’d been using to wipe the table, but then returned bravely to her lap.
This time, Dag deliberately slowed himself down, drawing his ghost hand back until it was barely projecting. He took his time, easing along the rip, peering warily through his lashes for any untoward flash of flame. Finishing, he opened his eyes, staring down at the repaired paper. Good as…old.
“Strange…” he said. “In a way, this is harder than Hod’s knee. The body seems to cooperate with its own healing in ways that dead objects don’t.”
“Huh,” said Arkady. “You already know that, do you…?” Dag glanced up to catch an unblinking frown. Arkady went on, “Do that one more time. More gently still, if you can.”
Dag ripped the page in half himself this round, smoothed it, pulled it back together once more. Handed it to Arkady.
“Good,” said the maker simply. “Something of the same technique works to hold together skin, as well. Best to save it for tissues you can’t reach with a needle, however.”
“That…would be all of them, in my case,” Dag noted gently.
“Ah.” Caught out for the second time, the maker grimaced. “My apologies. Habit, I’m afraid. I’ll try to be more heedful.”
“I’m used to it,” said Dag.
Did Arkady wince? Hard to tell. But he only said, “That does bring up…Have you ever attempted a ground projection from your right hand?”
Dag shook his head. “It came out from the left side all on its own, seemed like. I thought it was…well, I’m not just sure what I thought it was.”
Fawn said loyally, “To me, it didn’t seem any stranger than the rest of what you did.”
“Yes…it was you first guessed it was something I should have, that got delayed.” He smiled to remember just when she’d said it, too. “Seems you were square on.”
She shrugged. “Stood to reason, I thought.”
“Try now,” said Arkady. “Right hand.”
Dag did; nothing happened. His ground on the right side remained firmly intertwined with the flesh that generated it, just as always.
“Did Dag mention,” said Fawn, “that at the time his ghost hand first came out, his right arm was busted? All tied up with splints in a sling. Though I had to keep making him put it back in the sling.”
Arkady sat back. “Really?” It was more a noise of surprise than disbelief. “That’s…interesting.” After a moment, and another glance at the hook, his brows drew down in puzzlement. “My word. How in the world did you manage everything?”
“I had a little help,” said Dag.
“Who you callin’ little?” Fawn breathed at him, dimpling deeply. He couldn’t help smiling back.
Arkady rubbed his brow and sighed.
Dag straightened self-consciously, clearing his throat. “Besides me bein’ so lopsided,” he said, “you talked about doing something to, ah, cleanse my dirty ground. What did you have in mind?” Or was the cure for contamination, like that for the aftereffects of groundsetting, to be simple, tedious self-regulation? Pace yourself could be pretty useless advice, in the midst of some pressing emergency.
“Well…I admit, I don’t know yet. You’re an odd collection of puzzles to turn up at my gate.”
“At first it seemed to me that my ground cleansed, or healed, or remade itself all by itself, over time. The way anyone absorbs a ground reinforcement—or the ground of their food, for that matter. Figured the problem was that I’d just taken in too much, too fast.”
“Both of those, certainly. Though one might argue that any farmer ground is too much.”
Anyone, or Arkady? Dag frowned at the evasive wording. “Except the ground I most choked on was pure Lakewalker.” Or, considering Crane, impure Lakewalker. “I actually found the ground of food strengthening. At least after I learned to limit myself to the life-ground of things like seed grains, instead of ripping right down to the matter.”
Fawn said, “Yeah, that mess you made of my pie didn’t sit too well, did it? Because it was cooked and dead, do you reckon?”
“Maybe,” said Dag. “Which reminds me, I meant to try a live fish—minnow!” he corrected hastily at her dismayed look.
Arkady swallowed a noise of horror. “No! No! For the next several days—in fact, till I give you permission—don’t ground-rip anything! At least until I can get some sense of whether your disruptions are clearing on their own. Which reminds me…”
He rose and went to his shelves, returning with a quill, a bottle of ink, and what Dag now recognized as a medicine maker’s casebook. He laid them all out, opened the book to a fresh page, dipped his quill, and scribbled. He glanced up and added in an abstracted tone, “Open yourself, please.” A couple more minutes passed while he jotted what Dag, squinting sideways, read as notes upon the present condition of his ground, although between the handwriting and the abbreviations he could hardly guess what Arkady thought it was. Arkady’s own strange bright-shadowed ground was equally unrevealing.
“There,” said Arkady, finishing. “I should have done this yesterday. It goes without saying that—no, I suppose it doesn’t. You are to do no ground-gifting till I tell you, either, understood?”
&nb
sp; “Sir?” said Dag uncertainly. No medicine making at all? Observation could only go so far as a teaching method…It’s only the beginning, Dag chided himself. You’d think you were a sixteen-year-old on your first patrol again, stupid with daydreams of instant achievement. He couldn’t even argue, But now there’s the problem of Greenspring! since the problem of Greenspring had been sitting out there all his life, unnoticed. Yet all this attention to the particulars of his own ground, here in this quiet southern camp, seemed a long way from becoming help for the beleaguered north.
“We don’t want that ground contamination of yours spread all around the camp. At least till we know how much of your present problems stem from it.”
Dag nodded reluctant acknowledgment. About to ask, But could I heal farmers? They won’t care how dirty with farmer ground I am, he realized that the necessary unbeguilement would violate Arkady’s ban against taking in strange ground, too. He sighed, resigning himself to his—temporary, he trusted—quarantine.
6
Dag mulishly chose to share Fawn’s ostracism, keeping to Arkady’s house when he wasn’t on duty, but the medicine tent brought the camp to him. He divided his time between what traditional apprentice dog chores Maker Challa could think of that a one-handed man might do, and close observing. Perforce, he learned names, tent-names, personalities, and, more intimately, grounds of a growing string of New Moon folks; what they made of him he was less sure. But it was plain that a camp medicine maker must come to know his people over time the way a patroller memorized the trails of his territory.
Barr and Remo, meanwhile, wasted no time in going off to explore the camp at large, with the result that they’d shortly cooked up a scheme to go out on patrol as exchange volunteers. Dag approved; it would make good use of their time, take the burden of feeding them off Arkady’s neighbors for a couple of weeks, and pay the camp back something for their welcome here. It soon came out that their gingerliness in presenting the plan was not because they needed Dag’s permission, but because they wanted to borrow Dag’s sharing knife.
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