“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 field-fee 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.
“Of course we did. D’you think we’re all fools up here?” The farmer glowered. “M’wife’s parrion is needlework, not herblore, but she knows a bit. She used allheal and feverbane, and you can see how well they worked. We took ’em off today, as it seemed to ease him. Please—” And now his voice was no longer angry. “Please, lad, try to heal him.”
Aris was afraid it was too late, but his power burned in his hands. The women he had worked with had insisted on cleaning wounds first, before trying to heal them, but would he have time? He thought not: even as he watched, the man’s flushed, dry skin turned pale and clammy, though he still breathed strongly. He looked at Seri, who stood poised as if for battle. “Seri—you wanted to know more of healing. Come here.” Her eyes widened, but she came. “Think on this man as Gird would . . . a farmer, a father, beset by the evil that came upon us. Put your hands here—and I’ll be here—and we’ll see how your prayer works with my magery.”
This time, the flow of power through his hands seemed like fire along a line of oiclass="underline" both he and Seri came alight, as they had on the hillside when menaced by the iynisin. He heard the farmer stumble against the door and mutter, but he could not attend to it. Seri’s hands glowed from within; he felt the flow of power from her, indescribably different from his—but he could direct both. He sent the power down the man’s body, driving away the heavy darkness of the woundfever, then returning to mend the ripped flesh, the cracked bone, the torn skin. Seri’s power, wherever it came from, seemed lighter somehow than his own, almost joyous. It seemed most apt against the sickness while his soothed the wounded tissues together. At last he could find nothing more to do, and leaned back, releasing his hands. Seri kept hers on the man’s shoulders a moment longer, then lifted them. Instantly their lights failed, leaving the room in candlelight that now seemed darkness. But instead of the stench of rotting wounds, the room smelled of fragrant herbs and clean wind.
“What did you—” The farmer lurched forward, hand raised. Then the man on the bed drew a long breath, and opened his eyes. “Geris—” he said. “I—did I dream all that?”
“Dream what?” the farmer asked hoarsely.
“I thought—they came again. The blackcloaks. And you came, and I was hurt . . . I thought I was dying. . . .”
“You were,” the farmer said. His voice was shaky; tears glistened on his cheeks.
“But I have no pain.” The man looked down at himself. “I have no wound—and who are these people? Why have I no clothes?” He dragged the blanket across himself.
“Girdish travellers,” the farmer said. “I—I’ll get you clothes, Jeris.” He turned and plunged from the room. The man they had healed struggled up, wrapping the blanket around him.
“You—will you tell me what happened?”
“Your brother asked us to heal you,” Seri said. “We asked the gods, and it was granted us.” Aris glanced at her. Was that what she’d done? He had done what he always did, using his own power. Like any talent, it came from the gods originally, but not specifically for each use.
“But—” The man shook his head. “Then it really happened, those blackcloaks? It seems now like a dream, an evil sending. They—they toyed with me; they would not quite kill me. And they laughed until I felt cold to my bones.”
“iynisin.” Aris said. “That’s the name we know for them. Evil indeed: we too have faced their blades—”
“And lived? But of course . . . you have healed me, so I, too, have lived despite the blackcloaks.” The man still seemed a little dazed, which Aris could well understand. They heard the farmer stumbling back along the passage; he came in with shirt and trousers for his brother, and Aris and Seri edged past him out the door and went back downstairs. The woman and children all stared at them.
“He’s alive,” Aris said. “I’ve no doubt he’ll be down soon.” Two of the children burst into noisy tears and ran to hug the farmer’s wife; the others looked scared. Then they all heard feet on the stairs, and the injured man came down first. His lean face still looked surprised, but he moved like a healthy man, without pain or weakness. Aris let out the breath he had not known he was holding. The farmer, heavier of build, stumped down the stairs after him.
“Thanks and praise to the Lady,” the farmer said; his brother echoed him, then his wife and all the children. “Alyanya must have sent you,” he said to Aris and Seri. “Did this Gird of yours follow Alyanya?”
“Alyanya and the High Lord,” Seri said. Aris wondered at her certainty. He had always thought of Gird as following good itself, whatever god that might mean from day to day.
“And you are mageborn too, are you? I saw that light, which only the mageborn have. . . .”
“No,” Seri said, shaking her head. “My parents were peasants, servants in a magelord’s home. That light—I do not understand it myself, but it came upon me first when Aris and I were beset by those blackcloaks, as you call them.”
“The gods’ gift,” the brother said. Aris wondered if he himself had looked like that when the elves came. “Are all Marshals, then, like you?” He looked at his brother. “Because if they are, Geris, perhaps we should turn Girdish; perhaps this is a sign.”
“It may be a sign to us,” Seri said, “or to you, but Marshals are not like us. They’re older; nearly all are still Gird’s veterans, those who led his troops in the war. I’m not yet a full Marshal. I’m in training. But Marshals are supposed to help and protect those in their granges; they study healing—at least the young ones do—but not all have more than herblore.” Yet. Aris thought. Perhaps they would someday. Perhaps this has been a test given by the gods, instead of the Council of Marshals. He imagined future Marshals able to call light at need, able to heal. Perhaps the Marshals, and not the mageborn, would carry on his gift. It didn’t matter, so long as someone did. He yawned, suddenly feeling the loss of strength that usually followed a healing. It had taken less from him this time. Because Seri helped? Because the gods were involved? He did not know, but he knew he would fall asleep here at the table in another breath or two.
Seri woke him at daybreak. He had been moved to a warm corner near the hearth, and covered with a blanket; he knew she must have told them to do that. Overhead, he heard muffled scrapes and thuds: the farmer moving around. Seri seemed indecently cheerful for such an hour. Aris scrubbed his itching eyes with cold hands.
“The horses are calling us,” Seri said.
“They would be.” Aris yawned again, and scrambled up, brushing at his clothes. They would be rumpled and smudged after a night on the floor. Seri opened a shutter, letting in the cold gray light of dawn. The farmer’s boots thudded on the stairs. He paused when he saw them up, then shook his head.
“Now I can believe you’re farmers’ brats,” he said. “Ready for chores, eh?”
Aris and Seri followed him outside. Heavy dew lay on the grass and bushes near the house, and furred the moss on the stone walls of the outbuildings. Seri drew buckets of water and Aris carried them to the different pens. When he came to the enclosure where their horses had sheltered, he stopped and stared. The horses snorted, nosing for the bucket. Aris poured it into a stone trough, still staring. The horses gleamed as if they had just been rubbed with oil. Of course he and Seri had rubbed them the previous day, but the girthmarks had showed slightly. Now nothing marred their glistening coats. Something tickled his mind, something he should understand, but it slipped away when he tried to follow it. A stronger flicker in his mind continued, strengthening, all through breakfast. Seri, he saw, felt it too.