When the last drop had fallen, and nothing happened, he started to shrug and stand. Then he felt his power return, as unaccountably as it had vanished. His hands itched and stung, he held them out over the single drop of moisture. Seri’s hands gripped his shoulders; he felt her as a great reservoir of power, and drew upon it, trying to force a way past the obstruction. But it was like trying to heal a block of stone; he could tell he was doing something wrong. He sat back on his heels, enduring the torment of his unused power.
Then he realized . . . he had been trying his peoples’ way, using force where violation had been the original wound. How could he use his power without repeating that violation? He tried to imagine it trickling out, as the water had, drop by drop, to be absorbed or not, as the spring—as the Lady chose. He cupped his hand gently over the damp spot, protecting it from the sun, the hot acrid air. A gust of cooler air brushed along his face. He looked up.
The smoke had shifted shape with the change in wind. Now it arched over him—over the spring—in almost the shape of a great gray horse. Gird? he thought. It could not be Gird’s old horse . . . it was just smoke on the wind.
Thunder muttered; Seri’s grip on his shoulders tightened. Another gust of cold wind made his skin roughen; he felt a sudden weakness as his power surged out of him as uncontrollably as a lightning bolt. He squeezed his eyes shut; when he opened them, rain stung his face. The sky had darkened, one of the spring storms, he thought, coming up unseen in the shadow of the smoke. Lightning flashed, so near that light and sound came together: he felt his teeth jar together. Rain fell harder, hissing on the hot coals that had been trees. Steam rose in swirls, blown by the wind. Perhaps the rain would waken the spring, when he had not. He huddled with Seri under the storm’s lash, until it cleared as suddenly as it had begun. The last of the raindrops sank into that sterile soil; the surface seemed to dry almost instantly.
He felt a great tearing sadness. They had cleansed with fire, and the rain with water; he knew nothing else to do. He blinked the rain out of his lashes and looked up.
The horse standing across the hole that had once been a spring did not look like Gird’s horse. It seemed made of air and cloud, storm and smoke, all the colors of the sky, and all the power of thunder. Its dark muzzle snuffed at the dry hole; its eyes accused. Aris found himself talking to it as if it were mortal.
“The iynisin cursed it; we tried to cleanse and heal . . . but I don’t know how.”
A sound between snort and grunt: a challenge. The delicate nostrils widened, sniffed at him, and over his shoulder to Seri. Then, with deliberation, one forefoot went into the hole. Aris could not see how deep; he could not look away from those eyes. He saw the quick withdrawal of the hoof, a flurry of mane and tail, then nothing as a final clap of thunder shook him to his face.
No rain followed: the sky arched unclouded overhead, with the sun halfway down the afternoon sky. In the arch of the hoofprint, as they watched, the damp earth darkened, sifted downward, and a line of silver appeared: the sky reflected in living water. Slowly, steadily, it widened to a circle, and the circle lifted to fill the hole. Aris felt something in himself that echoed that movement, something filling a hole he had not known was empty.
“Aris, look!” Seri tugged at his shoulder. He turned. Where there had been blasted, sterile soil, covered with ashes and the burnt remnants of trees, a few green leaves showed. It could not be; it was too soon. But there they were, looking exactly like young sprouts anywhere. Aris touched one lightly; he felt only the surging growth of a healthy young seedling just emerging from its sleep.
Seri reached back to touch the water in the spring; he wanted to stop her but was too late. She put her wet finger to her forehead, then the nearest seedling. “Alyanya’s grace,” she said. Aris echoed her. Whatever else had happened, Alyanya had chosen to restore her spring. The spring gurgled suddenly, almost a chuckle of amusement and content; its water overflowed the central hole and swept down the little channel, sweeping away ash and sticks. Aris wondered if they dared drink from it, or if that would be sacrilege; Seri had no such doubts, and with another brief prayer sank the kettle in the deepest part of the spring. “She doesn’t want us dying of thirst and making another mess,” Seri said. “Drink your fill.”
The water tasted of water, clean and pure as any springwater. Aris drank, and let it wash away the night’s fear, the day’s frustrations. When they had had enough, they went back to the gear they had left above the hollow. Not all had been destroyed in the fight, or in the fire; they had food enough for a day or so, and a change of clothes. Aris went to fetch another kettle of water, and found that the spring had swept the old channel clear as far as the deeper pool where they’d watered their horses the day before. He called Seri; they took turns bathing, with the other keeping watch above the hollow, and changed into clean clothes. Seri had washed her hair; it lay slicked to her head, braided tightly. Aris looked at the blood-stained rents in the clothes he’d been wearing. It was hard to believe that blood was his, that he had been wounded there, and there, and there, and yet was walking around in the sun with no wounds upon him.
“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.