I thought about Hauser, too. I could stay in Yuulith and be a bigshot if I wanted, in Tekalos or at the Cloister, and probably in Oz or other places. Or be Wollerda's ambassador at Duinarog. But instead I was going back to Farside, to the farm. While Hauser could probably be a professor on Farside, but in Oz he was a slave. Couldn't go back, even if they'd let him.
Then I got thinking about the dangers Arbel had mentioned in big powerful magicks, and told myself I better be careful with fireballs. Sarkia was supposed to have practiced magic for two hundred years and stayed young and healthy. And was only now declining; something I wouldn't mention to Arbel. But from what I'd heard about Ferny Cove, from some Kormehri and from Sarkia herself, she hadn't used magicks for weapons, only for protection-confusion spells, invisibility spells, spells to raise fogs and mists. And tracking magic. Things like that. Maybe magicks like those didn't kick back on a person.
What with all the thoughts running through my head, I must have laid there an hour before I got to sleep.
The next day my lessons started. Like before, Arbel said I should do other stuff too, to keep grounded, and offered to get a slave girl sent in for me once a week, like he did for himself. I was tempted, but instead, for a few mornings, I saddled up Hog and rode around the countryside a couple hours. Then I took a notion to train with Isherhohm's militia veterans on Six-Day afternoons, for the exercise and to keep my hand in. They'd nearly all of them been in the war, and I'd been the commander, but Isherhohm treated me like just another veteran.
The morning after the first workout, I was sore all over, really sore! I'd gone soft! Never thought that could happen to me. So I started taking an ax and trotting out to the woods in the morning, where I'd cut logs and firewood for a couple hours.
I'd figured Blue Wing had come along mainly to see someone go through a gate, but he told me it was because Melody and I had gotten to be his best friends, and now she was gone, and pretty soon I'd be. Whatever. In Oz he didn't hang around close all that much, any more than he had on the farm. He even flew west once to visit Maikel. Anyway I set it up with the local butcher to keep him supplied with cutting scraps that otherwise would have gone to the hogs or the dogs. Most of our talking got done in the woods, where he'd drop in on me pretty often. But he'd be gone days at a time.
Cutting wood, I'd take a few minutes every day to practice throwing the ax at a tree. And the knife Arbel gave me when I went off to the Heroes. Stuck them better than ever, which made me wonder if magic played any part in it.
Whatever. Trotting and chopping every day made me feel good; toughened me and gave me more energy. And the lessons went really well, a lot better and faster than when Arbel had tried teaching me before. My very first day back, he'd said I was already better than lots of shamans-a late starter but fast learner. Kerin, his real apprentice, was bright and sharp, and already getting tall, but kid-skinny. And dark, with big, bright, dark eyes, a sharp curved nose like an Aye-rab, and a little narrow mouth. Lots of times he'd just give her something to do and leave her to do it, while he worked with me. I felt a little awkward about that, but he said he had years to work with her, while I wanted to be on my way. No later than Four-Month, I'd told him. Part of what he had Kerin doing was preparing dried herbs for him; and practicing to read and write, which lots of Ozians could barely do; and practicing ceremonial magic that could be used to bring rain or cancel curses-things like that. I didn't figure to learn either one; I didn't much believe in curses or rain spells. Arbel didn't seem to make much of them either, but if Ozians did, I suppose he had to go through the motions.
He took a different approach with me than before. I'd told him how Varia had taught me meditation, which she'd set me up for early on by spelling me. So he tried teaching me stuff when I was in a meditation trance, and liked how it worked. Better than just spelling me, he said, because under a spell you're less doing than being done to, while in a meditation trance you did it yourself. A matter of self-responsibility, he said.
Right from the start I did a fair job of healing injuries. Arbel was famous for his healing, and folks came or got brought to him from miles around. One guy he worked with me on had split his foot with an ax, and another'd got slashed in a knife fight, and a little girl had fallen in her ma's cookfire. Mostly what he did was refine, and strengthen quite a bit, what I could already do for wounds like those. Taught me to focus better.
Except for the little girl that fell in the fire: I didn't know anything about healing burns; all I could have done was use a sort of general spell that would give relief from the pain, and speed the healing some. He showed me things just for burns.
Where I was weakest was in healing the sick. He had different spells for different sicknesses. Some sickness, he told me, comes from the mind. Asthma was sort of like that. Some folks could get asthma from their mind alone. Others were allergic to something-hay more often than not-but get them away from the hay, they'd keep the asthma for hours or days, or even longer, because of something in their mind that held it there. It could even kill them. When someone got asthma from hay, they could come to him and he'd treat the mind, and the asthma would quit right away, instead of hanging on. After that they could still get asthma from hay, but usually, take them away from the hay, and the asthma was gone in minutes. Commonly rashes disappeared in minutes too, at least the itching eased, and the rash would almost always be gone within the day. Rheumatism might go just as quick, or take a few days, or it could hang on.
He even showed me how to make tumors shrink up and disappear. That didn't always work either, but sometimes it did, and sometimes the tumor didn't come back. And when someone got brought in that had what I'd call pneumonia, he couldn't make it go away right off, but usually they'd feel better right away, and well, after a night's sleep. They'd be back working in two or three days, instead of a couple weeks.
Like anything else, what he did had its limits. Sometimes someone wasn't helped at all-everyone dies sooner or later-and he said the shaman who couldn't live with that had better quit and go to farming, for peace of mind. For me, not being perfect wouldn't be any problem; I'd been doing it all my life.
It was a mild sunny morning in Three-Month when I met Vulkan. Or when Vulkan found me. I'd felled a tree and was chopping logs out of it when I heard Blue Wing yelling from way up high, I couldn't tell what. Then I felt someone looking at me-someone of power-and turned around. And almost shit myself! There was a BIG boar hog standing between two trees watching me. Not that he looked like any hog I'd ever seen, not even a razorback. I could tell he was a hog, but for size he reminded me more of a shorthorn bull, a good four feet high at his humped shoulders. He had a thick coat of bristly hair, dark gray on the sides and nearly black along the back. His tusks looked like ivory sickle blades, and I'd judge his weight at better than half a ton. There was no doubt at all that were he to meet a bear in the woods, that bear would go up a tree quick as a wink, crying for its mama.
I should have been scared to death, but after the first shock I wasn't; somehow I knew he wasn't there to rip me up. So I stepped onto the log I'd just cut, squatted there and looked at him. hSo you are the one.h
His "voice" was deep and hollow, like someone talking with an empty milk pail over his head, but somehow I knew there wasn't really any sound to it-that the words had come into my head without him ever speaking. "Could be," I said. "It depends on who the one's supposed to be." That amused him; I could feel it. "Sounds as if you're looking for someone in particular," I went on. "What brings you?" hAn urge. The purpose will no doubt unfold itself for us in good time.h His hooves, the only dainty thing about him, brought him a few steps closer. hYour aura marks you as someone of power,h he said. hA ruler and magician.h