“We should wash those before we mend them,” Seri said, “but I don’t know if it’s right—”
“She’s brought the water back, and its—she might see it as another gift, our blood.”
“It’s smelly dirt, is what it is,” Seri said. Aris looked at her, surprised. He had said something like that, long ago, when she’d tried to explain her peoples’ rituals in building or reaping. Now she wrinkled her nose at him. “All right. I know better. But washing dirty clothes is not the same as ritually blooding a foundation.”
“It might be, if we thought of it that way,” Aris said.
“It’s not the same. Else anyone could treat a spring as a common washpot, and claim to have a ritual in mind.” She shook her head, and the first tendrils of her braid came loose. “But—we need to do it, and we’d best get on with it.”
In the cold water of the larger pool, the dried blood melted into faint pink streaks and left rusty stains on the cloth. A smell of blood rose more strongly as the water soaked into the stains. Aris scrubbed at the gray shirt, the gray trousers, the blue tunic… he had bled more than he’d realized, and felt almost faint thinking of it. He did not look too closely at Seri’s washing; he didn’t want to know how much she had bled. Finally they had all the blood out that would come out, and wrung the clothes as dry as they could. Aris watched the clean springwater cut through the hazy pink, watched it clear gradually, in ripples and swirls, the last taint of blood from the pool. Alyanya must not be angry with them, if she kept the spring open.
They spread their clothes on the grass, up above the hollow, in the evening sunlight, and considered whether to start walking back to Fin Panir or spend the night near the spring. Aris yawned so, that Seri finally suggested napping awhile.
“You had no sleep last night,” Aris said. “I had some—I’ll watch first.”
“You’re half asleep already,” Seri said. “You wouldn’t be able to stay awake—” And in the end Aris curled up where he sat and fell asleep.
Sunlight woke them both. Aris stretched, blinked, and sat up. Why hadn’t Seri wakened him? She was awake now, looking around with a puzzled expression. “I slept,” she said. “I wasn’t supposed to, but—”
“It’s all right. We’re here, we’re alive.” He felt completely rested, alert, better than he had felt in a long time, as if sleeping on the living earth had restored him. He stood, and looked down into the hollow. A thin haze of green covered the black scars of the fire; along the line of the brook, it thickened to a brilliant streak of emerald and jade. It had come back so quickly—how could that be? Was the damage done by the iynisin so superficial? He could not believe that; he had touched that earth, the agonized limbs of tortured trees—those had not been minor wounds. The elves had not thought them minor. So this recovery meant some power had intervened, restoring what it could not heal.
He felt an urge to go back to the spring one last time before they set out for Fin Panir. After they had eaten, he and Seri went down the slope, sniffing the fresh green smell of growing things that replaced the stench of death and burning from the day before.
Even the horses’ skeletons had crumbled, erasing the memory of their contorted, unnatural transformation and death. The spring rose, pulse after pulse of pure water trembling the surface, shaking the reflections of their faces as they leaned over it. Aris felt at one with it, with the power of Alyanya to bring life and growth, with the water and the growth of plants, with sunlight and the wind that blew through it, with Seri—as always with Seri.
When he looked up, two horses stood across from him, a bright and a dark bay.
Chapter Nineteen
Two horses, where no horses had been. Aris shivered. Surely they should have heard horses walking up on them. One of the horses reached across the tiny trickle of water and nosed his hair. The other reached toward Seri. He and Seri looked at each other, he suspected her thoughts were the same as his. But neither spoke. As in a dream, he put out his hand, and the horse—his horse, the dark bay—nuzzled it. He turned away from the spring, and the horse followed. He put his saddle on it, as if he had the right, and the horse stood quietly, switching its long, untangled tail at flies. Seri, when he looked, was saddling the bright bay as if she’d done it for years. And the bridles—he had thought the bridles burned with the dead horses, but discovered the bridle—or a bridle—in his pack. It fit the dark bay as if made for it. Still without a word, he and Seri lashed their packs to the saddles, then mounted.
Aris turned the horse’s head toward Fin Panir. It did not move. He thought about it. Was it a demon horse, sent by the iynisin? He could not believe that. But it had been sent by someone, he was sure. Perhaps he ought to be thinking what that someone wanted. He didn’t really want to go back to Fin Panir now, he realized. He had something else to do, though he could not think what.
“I don’t want to go back,” Seri said. Her eyes sparkled; her cheeks had color again. “Let’s go on, and see where these horses take us.” She reined hers around, and it pricked its ears to the north, winterwards.
“Good idea.” Aris rode up beside her. His horse strode off with a springy stride that made riding a pleasure. He knew he should be stiff and sore, but he wasn’t. He felt he could ride forever. Seri’s braid swayed to the movement of her horse. For a time they rode in silence. Aris puzzled over all the things that had happened, most of which made no sense to him, but he did not feel ready to talk about them out loud. He felt as if he’d fallen into someone’s story, as if powers he could not imagine were working on their own plans, using him as a stone on the playing board.
Sen spoke first. “If we were together like this all the time, it would help if you could fight better, and I could also heal.”
Aris laughed. “It would be better if both of us could do everything anyone can do.”
“I’m serious.” Seri made a face at him. “If you were a better fighter, you wouldn’t almost get killed right away—if you had, who’d have healed me? And if I could heal, then I could heal you—or someone else that needed it.”
“I don’t think good healers make good fighters,” Aris said slowly. “I think it’s—it’s how, when I’m practicing, I can almost see the wound that I could cause. And I know what it costs me to heal it.”
“Ah. Then that’s why fighters—at least Marshals—should be healers as well. If we’re to lead yeomen into battle, we should know what will follow. Not just what it looks like, but what it takes to heal it.”
Aris shook his head. “But that makes it too easy, like the old stories of the Undoer’s Curse: if you can make something right too easily, there’s no reason to worry about doing wrong beforehand. Marshal Geddrin told me that, when I’d have healed every cut he got trying to shave himself: if I depend on you, he said. I’ll never learn to keep a sharp edge and a steady hand.”
Sen leaned forward and stroked her horse’s mane where the wind had ruffled it. “But it’s not easy for you; I’ve seen what it takes out of you. That’s not the same as the Undoer’s Curse. I still think there should be a balance. Those who must fight should also be healers, and those who heal should also be fighters. Otherwise I’m too proud of my fighting, and you’re too proud of your healing. Or not you, maybe—”
“But the old healers are, some of the ones I worked with. You’re right. Alyanya’s the Lady of Peace, they say, and those who heal must never take service of iron… remember Gird, that time, when he told us about his boyhood? How his parents were angry that he wanted to be a soldier?”
“Yes, but it’s Gird who healed the peoples at his death,” Seri said, “and he couldn’t have done that if he hadn’t been a fighter first. Not because he wanted to kill people, but because—” She looked far over the rolling grass, then shook her head. “I’m not sure how to say it. I just know it’s true. He had to be a farmer and a fighter to do what he did.”
“The service of blood,” Aris said softly. “Both ways—I hadn’t thought of it before, but they’re rel
ated. To give blood to the fields, to bring the harvest—that’s like giving blood to the people—”
“But it doesn’t always work.”
“Nor does farming. Things go wrong, in peace and in war both. But what Gird did, he showed that it’s the giving that matters. You can’t hold yourself back.” Aris smacked his thigh with his fist as the thoughts boiling in his head finally came clear. “That’s it, Seri! That’s the link between healing and fighting: the good healer withholds nothing that could help. If I don’t go because I’m tired or sick, or if I am unwilling to risk the loss to myself because I don’t like the person who needs me, then I’m a bad healer. If the fighter tries to protect himself—herself—then that makes a bad fighter. Even the training, working on the skills—both are long-term crafts, practiced because they may be needed, not today, but someday.”
“Yes,” Seri said. “And the other link is that the fighter who heals will never forget the cost of it—and the healer who fights will never condemn others for fighting at need.”
They looked at each other as if seeing anew. “I still don’t know what this is all about,” Aris said finally, “but somehow I don’t think Arranha will be able to help us with it. It’s too much of Gird for that.”
They rode the rest of that day without meeting anyone. Aris had no idea, now, where they were in relation to Fin Panir, and he did not feel it mattered. He was going this way because he was supposed to go this way, and his horse agreed.
The next day, they saw sheep spread across a slope far ahead of them, and angled that way without talking about it. By afternoon, they were close enough to see the hollow below, with a tight cluster of stone buildings; they could hear dogs barking as the sheep moved down slowly toward the hollow.
“They must think we’re brigands,” Seri said, frowning. “They wouldn’t be penning them that early, else.”
“We’d better change their minds,” Aris said, “or we’ll be spending another night on the hard ground.” He turned his horse down-slope. Seri followed. From their height, they could see the scurrying figures, the dogs working the sheep far too fast… and one broke away at a gate, bounding up the hill toward the riders, followed by a dark streak of sheepdog. A shrill whistle from below brought the dog to a halt, growling, then it raced back down the hill. The sheep, moving with the single-minded intensity of the truly stupid, made for the gap between Aris’s horse and Seri’s. Seri flung herself off her horse and made a grab for it.
“Idiot!” Aris said. Grabbing a determined sheep is harder than it looks, and jumping on one from above is chancy at best. Seri had a double-handful of wool and a faceful of stony hillside as the sheep, bleating loudly, did its best to jerk free. Aris swung off his horse and grabbed for a hind leg, then the other. With the sheep in a wheelbarrow hold, Seri could get a foreleg and then they could flatten the sheep out and decide how to get her back down to the fold.
A bellow from below caught his attention—and there, making surprising speed up the steep slope, was a tall man and a boy, with two sheepdogs. “Let loose o‘ my sheep!” the man yelled, when he saw Aris watching.
“She was gettin’ away!” Seri yelled back. “We just caught ’er for you.”
“An’ sheep are born wi’ golden fleece,” the man yelled. “I know your kind. You catch sheep all right, and then ye make sure they don’t escape—yer own stomachs.” He waved the dogs on, and they came, bellies low, swinging in from either side. Aris started to rise, but then saw what the horses were doing. Each horse had put itself between a dog and the pair with the sheep—and the sheepdogs found themselves herded back as neatly as ever they’d worked a flock. The man and his boy stopped a short distance below. “That can’t be,” the man said, half in anger and half in wonder. “Horses don’t do that.”
“Ours do,” said Seri, almost smugly. The sheep picked that moment to thrash again and kick her with the loose foreleg. “D’you want us to bring your sheep down, or will your dogs pen her for you?”
The boy came nearer, out of reach of his father’s arm. “Aren’t you robbers, then?”
“Not us,” Seri said cheerfully. “Here—you take her.” She beckoned, and the boy came up and got a foreleg hold on the sheep himself. At his soft voice, the sheep quit struggling; Seri stepped back and looked at the man. “I’m sorry we frightened you,” she said. “We’re not robbers, even if Ari does have your sheep by the hind legs. We thought we’d help you.”
“You could help me,” the man said slowly, “by letting go of my sheep.” Aris shrugged, let go, and stood. The sheep scrambled up awkwardly; the boy still had a grip on one foreleg. “Let’s go, Varya—let’s see what these folk do.” The boy let go, and the sheep stood, ears waggling. He said something to her, and she followed a few steps. Then the man whistled, and waved an arm, and the two dogs closed in on the sheep. She edged her way downhill.
“You don’t act like robbers,” the man said then. “But I never heard of honest travellers… where are you from?”
“Fin Panir,” Aris said. His horse walked up and laid its head along his arm. He rubbed the base of its ear absently, and then the line between jowl and neck.
“Girdish folk? Is that why you’re wearing blue?”
“Yes,” said Seri, “We’re in training to be Marshals.”
“Whatever that is,” the man said. He stood silent some moments, and Aris had almost decided to mount when he said, “You might as well come down wi’ us for the night; I don’t want your deaths on my conscience.”
“Deaths?” Seri asked.
“Aye. There’s things in the dark—surely you know that. We don’t take chances any more, between human robbers and those other things, the blackrobes, and sometimes wolves and that, things running in packs. We’d have brought the sheep down early even without seeing you. Come on, now. No time to waste. There’s chores.”
The farmer showed no surprise when Aris and Seri both proved handy at the evening chores. Perhaps, Aris thought, he didn’t know there were people in the world who couldn’t milk, who couldn’t tell hay from straw, for whom wheat and oats and barley were all just “grain.” The farm buildings were larger than those Aris had seen before, well built and weathertight. They met the farmer’s wife, his other children, all younger than the boy on the hill. And they ate with the family, sharing some berries they had gathered that day.
“So what brings you this way, Girdsmen?” the farmer asked. “Is it part of Marshals’ training to wander around frightening honest farmers?”
“No… the wandering, perhaps, but not the rest.” Seri rested her chin on her fists. Aris watched the faces watching her, the children all intent and eager just because she was a stranger. The farmer’s wife sat knitting busily, looking up only now and then as she counted stitches. “To tell you the truth, there’s new ideas about how Marshals should be trained. Do you have a grange here?”
“Nay.” The farmer sounded glad of it. “We had better things to do than get involved in your war and go around killing folk. We stayed here wi’ our sheep, as farmers should. So all that about grange and barton and Marshals, all that means naught to us.” He gave Seri a challenging glance, as much as to say And take that as you please.
Seri just grinned at him. “You were lucky, then. Aris and I had the war come upon us as children; we had to grow up hedgewise. Then Father Gird took us in—”
“Was that a real man, Gird, or just a name for whoever was leading?”
“A real man,” Seri said. Aris could hardly believe that anyone doubted it; did these farmers never leave their little hollow? “He took us in, Ari and me, when we’d been living with farmers, because Ari has the healing magery.”
“Mageborn!” The farmer glared at Aris; no one else in the room moved or spoke. “I let a mageborn in my house?”
Seri shrugged. “Father Gird let him in his house. And told everyone to let him use his magery. Healing’s good, he said.”
“Is it true, lad? You can heal?” The farmer’s voice rumbled
with suppressed anger.
“Yes,” Aris said. “But not all things, though I’ll try.”
“Come on, then.” The farmer heaved himself up from the bench, clearly expecting Aris to follow. He caught Seri’s eye, and she rose as well. “What’s that?” the farmer asked. “I thought you said he had the healing—why are you coming?”
“Gird said Aris must have someone to watch him.” Seri said. “I travel with him for that reason.”
“Huh. Don’t trust him, eh?” By his tone, he approved: no one should trust mageborn.
“I do,” Seri said, “and so do those who’ve worked with him before. But Gird set the rule, and the Council holds by it.”
With a last grunt, the farmer led them upstairs. Aris had not seen stairs in a farmer’s house before. He wondered if the farmer had taken over a small manor house. But he had no time to ask, the farmer flung wide a door on the left of the passage. There on a low bed lay a man near death from woundfever. “It’s my brother,” the farmer said. “He and his family lived here with us, and this is all that’s left. They killed his wife and oldest child one night when we were out late, in lambing time. She’d gone out to bring us food. The younger children, two of them, died of a fever—they’d been grieving so, I think they had no strength. The others are with mine, of course. But a hand of days ago, maybe, he thought he heard voices outside, near the pens. He didn’t wake me afore going out to see, and by the time I woke, and got outside, this is what I found. Heal him, if you can.” His gaze challenged Aris.
“Do you know who did it?” Seri asked. The farmer nodded.
“Aye. They blackcloaks, that the magelord used to keep away with his mageries. Cost us plenty in field-fee, it did, and we were glad to see him go, but we didn’t know what our fieldfee paid for until he was gone. It must have been his mageries that protected us, for now we see them, season after season, and if they keep coming, we’ll soon be gone.”
Aris knelt by the wounded man. He had been stabbed and slashed many times, but without a killing wound, almost as if the swordsman had wished him to live for awhile. The wounds drained a foul liquid that filled the room with its stench. “Did you try poultices?” he asked.