They cheered and wept and babbled among themselves.
“Listen to me! One more matter of importance… is there one among you who is a healer?”
The cheers and chattering faded away. No one moved to speak.
“Surely someone eases your pains or cares for wounds or sickness…”
Some of the Singlars shifted uneasily.
“It is forbidden for us to take such service of another,” called out a youth. “That one would be flogged for changing the course laid out by the Source.”
“The Guardian said it was an evil thing,” said a bent old woman.
“No longer,” I said, already questioning my decision to keep the villain alive. “Healing sickness and hurts will reap no punishment. I promise. By the Source, I swear it. My companion - the tall traveler - has great need of healing. If anyone is skilled in such matters, I would be very grateful for help.”
A murmuring rose in the middle of the crowd, and a woman stepped, or was pushed, forward. She wore a veil wrapped about her head, covering all of her face except her eyes, which she cast down.
“Know you of healing, madam?” I said, trying not to let my urgency frighten her.
She dipped her head shyly, but voices rose from every side of the audience chamber.
“Her hands know much for easing those of us who are unstraight.”
“She gave me potent waters to clear my breathing when I could not.”
“When the graver’s fastness crushed his legs, she worked him whole again.”
“With caring she walks.”
“You are much praised,” I said to her, “and very brave to do such kindness when it was forbidden. Would you look at my friend? Help him, if you can?”
She bowed.
Dismissing the Singlars, I hurried the woman up the stairs and threw open the door to my bedchamber. No sooner had I stepped across the threshold than I felt an uncomfortable prick in my back. A duck, a spin, and a hammering blow with my stiff arm, and the knife clattered across the floor.
Roxanne sagged against the wall, cradling her right arm, but looking more relieved than hurt. “Blessed holy Annadis.” The princess’s voice was shaking.
I lifted the Singlar woman up from the floor where she crouched with her arms thrown over her head. “I’m sorry. This lady princess was just a little too - ”
I broke off. One of the Guardian’s claw-handed maintainers lay sprawled on the floor. I nudged the body with my boot and rolled him over onto his ugly face. No question he was dead. Most likely the bloody, well-placed hole in his back had done it.
“What is that?” The princess pointed a trembling finger at the ox-hided corpse.
“He was a man, a vicious, bloodthirsty servant of the former ruler of this place, but a man, nonetheless.”
“I thought… I thought it was just nightmares or my imagination when I saw them in the dungeon. I was sure it was the bad light or bad food. I didn’t know they were real.”
Before I could answer, she screamed. “Behind you!”
She shoved me to the side, dropped to the floor, and scrambled across the tiles toward the knife.
I whirled around, crouched and ready, but instead of hurling myself at the newcomer, I sprang toward the princess and caught her arm before she could launch the knife. Her target was Zanore.
“I told you that you’re a long way from Montevial,” I said, catching her wrist and removing the knife from her hand. “A lot of things will appear strange, and a lot of people won’t look like those you’re accustomed to. That’s the way it is here. It was good you killed that one, for he meant no good for you and Paulo. But don’t kill anyone else just because they look odd. This is my friend, Zanore.”
I tried not to show how relieved I was that Zanore had not come to the room any earlier. I needed to be more careful with my orders.
Roxanne wrenched her arm away, picked herself up off the floor, and flounced into a chair, her face a deep scarlet.
“Do you understand, Your Highness?”
She sniffed and averted her face. Straightened her back. Crossed her arms. Tucked her shaking hands out of sight quickly.
I had no time to play courtier. “What is it, Zanore?”
Zanore did not seem flustered by the commotion. “I’ve come to serve you as you require, my king. The good Vroon said you might have need of me.”
“Thank you. If you could just wait a bit… ” I left him at the door and hurried over to the bed, where the veiled woman had begun running her fingers over Paulo. One by one, she peeled away my crude bandages to examine his cuts and bruises, feeling every bone and muscle from his head downward. When she pressed her fingers on his bruised belly, he cried out sharply, though he didn’t wake. Quickly she brushed her palms across the discolored skin, and he quieted again. When she unwrapped his hands, she shook her head before rewrapping them carefully.
“Can you help him?”
“The cutting and pounding marks will ease of themselves,” she said. “The bones of his middle I can work to make whole and strong. The milk of the knotted tree with forked leaves will I bring to close the bleeding inside that makes him hurtful, emptying him so that he may eat and drink again and be well. But the hands have taken disease in their wounding, and I have nothing to appease it. If the disease does not go away, I cannot work the bones, and he will be forever unhanded.”
It was very hard to make out her words. She spoke softly, and seemed to lose half the sounds through her veil, but I understood enough.
“Disease in his hands… Festering, you mean, sepsis, mortification that makes them hot and putrid and filled with poisonous fluids?”
She nodded.
“Have you no medicines here, no herbs: woundwort, wild indigo, pond lily?” My mother’s Dar’Nethi friend Kellea had taught me something of plant medicines.
“I know nothing of these.”
Of course she wouldn’t know them. So few things grew in the sunless Bounded, except…
“Perhaps I can find something to help. Do what you can while I’m gone. Send Zanore here for anything you need.”
As I started for the door, the princess jumped from her chair and dodged in between me and the exit. “You’re not leaving again. Not with creatures like these about.”
“I’ll come back.” I motioned her to move aside.
“Your friend might wake up. He woke while you were gone before. He asked for you. ‘Young master.’ I suppose that’s you.”
“What else did he say?”
“I told him you’d gone to kill a man, and he said you’d likely come back a king.”
I gave her a second chance to get out of my way.
She stood her ground between me and the door. “Are you going to kill someone else?”
“I hope not.”
“Aren’t you awfully young to be killing people and such?”
“You seem to have done a most efficient job at killing this morning, and I am exactly one year, ten months, and five days younger than you.” I took her by the shoulders and moved her aside, leaving her with her mouth agape.
In half an hour I returned with a fistful of herbs, leaves, and roots. It had taken no trick at all to find my way back to the garden. Running my hands around the stone circle opened the passage as before. I had been pleased to find many plants I recognized. Some others I just seemed to know would be helpful, though they did not resemble any Kellea had taught me.
The veiled woman was amazed at the variety of things I brought her and my explanation of their uses. Once we had boiled, cooled, pressed, or squeezed enough of them to do some good, and dressed Paulo’s hands with the medicines, she rolled him to his side and began kneading his back and stomach muscles. “While you were away, I gave him tree milk,” she said. “Now I must work him so it may nourish and heal him. Soon he will bring up all the blood that’s pooled inside.”