At length, Dag woke too, then it was her turn to help him prop up his shoulders against his saddlebags. Happily, she fed him. He could both chew and swallow, and not choke; halfway through, he revived enough to start capturing the bits of plunkin or roast deer from her with his right hand and feed himself. His hand still trembled too much to manage his water cup without spilling, though. His left arm, more disturbingly, didn’t move at all, and she suspected the bandage wrapping his left leg disguised even deeper ills than the knife wound. His eyes were bloodshot and squinty, more glazed than bright, but she reveled in their gold glints nonetheless, and the way they smiled at her as though they’d never quit.
In all, Fawn was glad when Hoharie came by, even if she was trailed by Othan. She was accompanied and supported by Mari, whose general air of relief clouded when her eye fell on Dag. The medicine maker looked fatigued, but not nearly as ravaged as Dag, perhaps because her time in the lock had been the shortest. She had all her formidable wits back about her, anyhow.
Othan unwrapped the leg, and Hoharie pronounced his neat stitches that closed the vertical slit to be good tight work, and the redness only to be expected and not a sign of infection yet, and they would do some groundwork later to prevent adhesions. Othan seemed even more relieved at the chance to rewrap the wound with more usual sorts of patroller bandages.
While this was going on, Mari reported: “Before you ask three times, Dag—everyone made it out of the groundlock alive.”
Dag’s eyes squeezed shut in thankfulness. “I was pretty sure. Is Artin going to hold on? His heart took hurt, there, I thought.”
“Yes, but his son has him well in hand. All the Raintree folks could be carried off by their kin as early as tomorrow, at least as far as the next camp. They’ll recover better there than out here in the woods.”
Dag nodded.
“Once they’re away our folks will be getting anxious to see home again, too. Bryn and Ornig are up already, and I don’t think Mallora will be much behind. Young, y’know. I don’t know about you, but I’m right tired of this place. With that hole in your leg it’s plain you’re not walking anywhere. It’s up to Hoharie to say how soon you can ride.”
“Ask me tomorrow,” said Hoharie. “The leg’s not really the worst of it.” “So what about the arm, Hoharie?” Dag asked hesitantly. His voice still sounded like something down in a swamp, croaking. “It’s a bit worryin’, not moving like that. Kind of takes me back to some memories I don’t much care to revisit.”
Hoharie grimaced understanding. “I can see why.” As Othan tied off the new dressing and sat back, she added quietly, “Time to give me a look. You have to open yourself, Dag.”
“Yeah,” he sighed. He didn’t sound at all enthusiastic, Fawn thought. But he lay back against his saddle prop with a faraway look on his face; his lips moved in something deeper than a wince. Mari hissed, Hoharie’s lips pursed, and Othan, who had sewn up bleeding flesh without a visible qualm, looked suddenly ill.
“Well, that’s a bigger mess than Utau, and I thought he was impressive,” allowed Hoharie. “Let me see what I can do with this.”
“You can’t do a ground reinforcement after all you just went through!” Dag objected.
“I have enough oomph left for one,” she replied, her face going intent. “I was saving it for you. Figured…”
Fawn tugged at Mari and whispered urgently, “What’s going on? What do you all sense?” That I can’t.
“The ground down his left side’s all marked up with blight, like big deep bruises,” Mari whispered back. “But those nasty black malice spatters that I felt before seem to be gone now—that’s a real good sign, I reckon. The ground of his left arm, though, is hanging in tatters. Hoharie’s wrapping it all up with a shaped ground reinforcement—ooh, clever—I think she means to help it grow back together easier as it heals.”
Hoharie let out her breath in a long sigh; her back bent. Dag, his expression very inward, stared down at his left arm as it moved in a short jerk. “Better!” he murmured in pleased surprise.
“Time,” said Hoharie, and now she sounded down in that swamp, too. Dag gave her a dry look as if to say, Now who’s overdoing? She ignored it, and continued, “It’ll all come back in time as your ground slowly heals. Slowly, got that, Dag?”
Dag sighed in regret. “Yeah…” His voice fell further. “The ghost hand. It’s gone, isn’t it? For good. Like the other.”
Hoharie said somewhat impatiently, “Gone for a good, to be sure, but not necessarily forever. I know it perturbed you, Dag, but I wish you’d stop thinking of that hand as some morbid magic! It was a ground projection, a simple…well, it was a ground projection, anyway. As your ground heals up from all this blight, it should come back with the rest of it. Last, I imagine, so don’t go fuming and fretting.”
“Oh,” said Dag, looking brighter. Fawn could have hit him for winking at her like that just then, because it almost made her laugh out loud, and she’d never dare explain why to all these stern Lakewalkers.
“Now,” said Hoharie, sitting up and rubbing her forehead with the back of her wrist—Othan, watching her closely, handed her a clean rag, and she repeated the gesture with it and nodded thanks. “It’s my chance to ask a few questions. What I need to know is if a similar act would solve a similar problem. Because I need to write this out for the lore-tent if it does, and maybe pass it along to the other hinterlands, too.”
“I hope there never is a similar problem,” said Mari, “because that would mean another runaway malice like this one, and this one got way too close to being unstoppable. But write it out all the same, sure. You never know.”
“No one can know till it’s tried,” said Dag, “but my own impression was that any primed knife, placed in any of the groundlocked people, would have worked to clean out the malice’s involution. It only needed someone to think of it—and dare.”
“It seems a strange way to spend a sacrifice,” agreed Hoharie. “Still…ten for one.” All the Lakewalkers looked equally pensive, contemplating this mortal arithmetic. “When did you think of it?”
“Pretty nearly as soon as I was trapped in the groundlock. I could see it, then.”
Hoharie’s gaze flicked to Fawn’s left wrist. Fawn, by now inured to being talked past, almost flinched under the suddenly intent stare. “That was also about the time you felt a change in that peculiar ground reinforcement Dag gave you, wasn’t it, Fawn? Did it seem to come with, say, a compulsion?”
Othan sat up straight. “Oh, of course! That would explain how she knew what to do!”
Did it? Fawn’s brows drew down in doubt. “It didn’t seem anything like so clear. I wish it had been.”
“So how did you know?” asked Hoharie patiently. “To use your sharing knife like that?”
“I…” She hesitated, casting her mind back to last night’s desperation. “I figured it.”
“How?”
She struggled to express her complex thoughts simply. A lot of it hadn’t even been in words, just in pictures. “Well, you said. That there were cut-off bits of malice in that groundlock. Sharing knives kill malices. I thought it might just need an extra dose to finish the job.”
“But your knife had no affinity.”
“What?” Fawn stared in confusion.
Dag cleared his throat. His voice went gentle. “Dar was right—about that, anyway. The mortality in your knife was too pure to hold affinity with malices, but I was able to break into its involution and add some. A little extra last-minute making, would you say, Hoharie?”
Hoharie eyed him. “Making? I’m not sure that wasn’t magery, Dag.”
Fawn’s brow wrinkled in distress. “Is that what tore up your ghost hand? Oh, if I had known—!”
“Sh,” soothed Dag. “If you had known, what?”
She stared down at her hands, clutching each other in her lap. After a long pause, she said, “I’d have done it all the same.”