By the time he’d wakened, the pup had run off somewhere; Seri, the cautious, had said it was best. Before he could argue with her, the remaining servants had rushed in with word of an advancing peasant army. He never saw the pup again, to be sure he’d healed it. But in the next few seasons and years, he had plenty of opportunities to try out his powers. Seri argued for caution, for secrecy, but later helped him use—and hide—what he could do.
“I thought at first it was for animals only,” he explained, now once more calm, with the story far enough from his mother. “After what the cowman said—well—I asked to work with the beasts, wherever I was, and found I could help them. Seri said to start with little things, so if I couldn’t do it, it wouldn’t matter so much. Scratch on a cow’s udder, a sore teat, lameness from stepping on something sharp, that kind of thing. I couldn’t always heal it, but I could usually make it better. Then one place at lambing time, the shepherd wanted my help because my hands were so small—”
And lamb after lamb he delivered, in the cold rain of that week, had lived . . . they had all lived. The shepherd, who had taught him the old hard truth that sheep are born looking for a place to die, had taken his hands and spread them, looking for the gods’ mark, he’d said. He’d found nothing, but Aris had slept for a week when the lambing was over, so deep asleep that Seri had had to clean him where he lay, like a baby. It was natural, then, when the shepherd’s wife’s next baby came out blue and still, for the shepherd to thrust the limp bundle into his hands and growl, “It’s a lamb, lad—save it!”
“The baby lived?” asked the Marshal-General.
“Oh, yes. She’s a healthy child; it was just something about the birthing.” He paused, trying to think what to tell next. Not how frightened he had been; Gird wouldn’t want to hear that. The shepherd had assumed his talent came from Alyanya; he himself wasn’t sure. The only magery he’d seen was a dance of light by his father and brothers when he was very small, one Midwinter Feast. He’d been told Esea gave them magery, and that made sense, for the light dance. But healing? No one had even mentioned the possibility. In that remote village, once the war passed, all anyone cared about was sowing and tending and harvest, the daily routine, into which he fit happily. No one really cared how he healed, or where the power came from, so long as it worked.
“But you had no family—who’d you live with?” asked Luap, leaning forward. Aris grinned and spread his hands.
“After the war, sir, there’s many not in the right place . . . we worked in well enough, here and there, until things settled a bit. Then that shepherd, he took us into his family.”
“It must have been—” Luap coughed, spat, and went on. “It must have been very different from what you knew before.” Aris did not miss the keen glance the Marshal-General shot at his luap.
“It was, sir, but—but for missing the people I knew, it was better.”
“Better!” That from both of them, clearly surprise and disbelief.
Aris felt his face reddening. “Before, sir . . . my tutor and some others, they didn’t think I should spend so much time with Seri, or in the stables with the animals. We’ve been lucky; I know that. Except for that one bad winter, we’ve always had enough, and we’ve always been together. Once I found out what I could do, what the feeling was for, I felt happier than I’d ever been.”
“Hmmph.” That was the Marshal-General, giving his luap another look Aris couldn’t read. “Well, then: if things have gone so well, why come to me?”
This part he could tell without a hitch. From the shepherd’s child, to another in the vill born apparently dead, from those to a child with fever, a man injured by falling rock, a woman poisoned by bad grain . . . he had begun testing his powers on people as well as livestock. When the village saw how each attempt at healing wore on him, they were careful in their requests, and Seri protected him as best she could. Then came the first request from a neighboring vill in the same hearthing, a child kicked by a plowhorse. Another, from another vill, then another and another. He had come to be known all through that hearthing, as the boy who could heal what herblore could not. Most of the time, he worked with animals, learning all he could of each kind, but when the calls came, he would go and heal the sick and injured. Seri stood between him and the world, the warm hand at his back, the one who remembered that he needed food after, the one who would sometimes scold those who hadn’t tried herblore first.
“Then the Code came,” Aris said, meeting the Marshal-General’s gaze directly. “Of course we’d all heard of you, sir, and I’d seen a Marshal in the market towns. Our vill has a yeoman-marshal; Seri and I drilled with the other younglings as we grew tall enough. No one thought anything wrong about my healing and being in the barton as a junior. I don’t know how many knew I was mageborn, but no one questioned me. Until last harvest-time.”
Last harvest-time, the new Marshal of Whitehill grange had come to inspect each barton on his rolls, and with him, he’d brought the new version of Gird’s Code. All the village stood in the barton to hear him read it, nodding their heads at familiar phrases—it wasn’t that different—until the clause about magery.
Aris felt the now-familiar tremor in his hands, and locked them together. “It said, sir, that no form of magery could be tolerated, that what seemed good was really evil in intent and act, and forbade the mageborn to use, or anyone to profit by, magery. Of course everyone looked at me, and the Marshal stopped reading. ‘Do you have a mageborn survivor in this vill?’ he asked. Some nodded, and some didn’t—I think they wanted to hide me, protect me. I raised my hand, and he called me forth. ‘Do you practice evil magicks, boy?’ he asked. Sir, I could hardly answer. I had healed, yes: that hand of days, I’d healed a serpent bite. But evil? I said so, that I had healed, and he drew back as if I’d thrown fire at him. Our yeoman-marshal stood up for me, then, and said I’d caused no trouble, nor had a bad heart, but the Marshal was firm that my magery was evil. If I had no bad heart, he said, I’d be willing to forswear it, never use it again. The people sighed at that, but he overrode them. I could not be in the barton, he said, if I used magery, nor could they harbor me. It was in the Code, he said.”
“What did you do?”
“I said I was sorry, and would do so no more, though I couldn’t see how healing was evil. He bade the yeoman-marshal watch me closely, and warned me that he would tolerate no magery in his grange.” Aris looked at the Marshal-General again. “He said you knew best, sir, and if you said it was evil, then it was. I did my best, after that. The village folk were troubled in their minds; a few said I must have charmed them, to make my power seem good, but most wished naught had happened. They still came to me, many of them, when someone was sick, or a beast hurt. The yeoman-marshal tried to make them quit, but he couldn’t. He asked couldn’t I do something, short of using magery, but I don’t have what Seri’s folk call a parrion of herblore: I don’t know any way but the power. And it came to hurt, sir . . . it rises up in me like water in a spring, when I see someone in need . . . I fell sick myself, late in winter, and Seri said that caused it. She said we had to come to you, because the Code is yours, and perhaps you didn’t know that magery could be healing power.”