Liar's Oath

Chapter Nineteen

Two horses, where no horses had been. Aris shivered. Surely they should have heard horses walking up on them. One of the horses reached across the tiny trickle of water and nosed his hair. The other reached toward Seri. He and Seri looked at each other, he suspected her thoughts were the same as his. But neither spoke. As in a dream, he put out his hand, and the horse—his horse, the dark bay—nuzzled it. He turned away from the spring, and the horse followed. He put his saddle on it, as if he had the right, and the horse stood quietly, switching its long, untangled tail at flies. Seri, when he looked, was saddling the bright bay as if she’d done it for years. And the bridles—he had thought the bridles burned with the dead horses, but discovered the bridle—or a bridle—in his pack. It fit the dark bay as if made for it. Still without a word, he and Seri lashed their packs to the saddles, then mounted.

Aris turned the horse’s head toward Fin Panir. It did not move. He thought about it. Was it a demon horse, sent by the iynisin? He could not believe that. But it had been sent by someone, he was sure. Perhaps he ought to be thinking what that someone wanted. He didn’t really want to go back to Fin Panir now, he realized. He had something else to do, though he could not think what.

“I don’t want to go back,” Seri said. Her eyes sparkled; her cheeks had color again. “Let’s go on, and see where these horses take us.” She reined hers around, and it pricked its ears to the north, winterwards.

“Good idea.” Aris rode up beside her. His horse strode off with a springy stride that made riding a pleasure. He knew he should be stiff and sore, but he wasn’t. He felt he could ride forever. Seri’s braid swayed to the movement of her horse. For a time they rode in silence. Aris puzzled over all the things that had happened, most of which made no sense to him, but he did not feel ready to talk about them out loud. He felt as if he’d fallen into someone’s story, as if powers he could not imagine were working on their own plans, using him as a stone on the playing board.

Seri spoke first. “If we were together like this all the time, it would help if you could fight better, and I could also heal.”

Aris laughed. “It would be better if both of us could do everything anyone can do.”

“I’m serious.” Seri made a face at him. “If you were a better fighter, you wouldn’t almost get killed right away—if you had, who’d have healed me? And if I could heal, then I could heal you—or someone else that needed it.”

“I don’t think good healers make good fighters,” Aris said slowly. “I think it’s—it’s how, when I’m practicing, I can almost see the wound that I could cause. And I know what it costs me to heal it.”

“Ah. Then that’s why fighters—at least Marshals—should be healers as well. If we’re to lead yeomen into battle, we should know what will follow. Not just what it looks like, but what it takes to heal it.”

Aris shook his head. “But that makes it too easy, like the old stories of the Undoer’s Curse: if you can make something right too easily, there’s no reason to worry about doing wrong beforehand. Marshal Geddrin told me that, when I’d have healed every cut he got trying to shave himself: if I depend on you, he said. I’ll never learn to keep a sharp edge and a steady hand.”

Seri leaned forward and stroked her horse’s mane where the wind had ruffled it. “But it’s not easy for you; I’ve seen what it takes out of you. That’s not the same as the Undoer’s Curse. I still think there should be a balance. Those who must fight should also be healers, and those who heal should also be fighters. Otherwise I’m too proud of my fighting, and you’re too proud of your healing. Or not you, maybe—”

“But the old healers are, some of the ones I worked with. You’re right. Alyanya’s the Lady of Peace, they say, and those who heal must never take service of iron . . . remember Gird, that time, when he told us about his boyhood? How his parents were angry that he wanted to be a soldier?”

“Yes, but it’s Gird who healed the peoples at his death,” Seri said, “and he couldn’t have done that if he hadn’t been a fighter first. Not because he wanted to kill people, but because—” She looked far over the rolling grass, then shook her head. “I’m not sure how to say it. I just know it’s true. He had to be a farmer and a fighter to do what he did.”

“The service of blood,” Aris said softly. “Both ways—I hadn’t thought of it before, but they’re related. To give blood to the fields, to bring the harvest—that’s like giving blood to the people—”

“But it doesn’t always work.”

“Nor does farming. Things go wrong, in peace and in war both. But what Gird did, he showed that it’s the giving that matters. You can’t hold yourself back.” Aris smacked his thigh with his fist as the thoughts boiling in his head finally came clear. “That’s it, Seri! That’s the link between healing and fighting: the good healer withholds nothing that could help. If I don’t go because I’m tired or sick, or if I am unwilling to risk the loss to myself because I don’t like the person who needs me, then I’m a bad healer. If the fighter tries to protect himself—herself—then that makes a bad fighter. Even the training, working on the skills—both are long-term crafts, practiced because they may be needed, not today, but someday.”

“Yes,” Seri said. “And the other link is that the fighter who heals will never forget the cost of it—and the healer who fights will never condemn others for fighting at need.”

They looked at each other as if seeing anew. “I still don’t know what this is all about,” Aris said finally, “but somehow I don’t think Arranha will be able to help us with it. It’s too much of Gird for that.”

They rode the rest of that day without meeting anyone. Aris had no idea, now, where they were in relation to Fin Panir, and he did not feel it mattered. He was going this way because he was supposed to go this way, and his horse agreed.

The next day, they saw sheep spread across a slope far ahead of them, and angled that way without talking about it. By afternoon, they were close enough to see the hollow below, with a tight cluster of stone buildings; they could hear dogs barking as the sheep moved down slowly toward the hollow.

“They must think we’re brigands,” Seri said, frowning. “They wouldn’t be penning them that early, else.”

“We’d better change their minds,” Aris said, “or we’ll be spending another night on the hard ground.” He turned his horse downslope. Seri followed. From their height, they could see the scurrying figures, the dogs working the sheep far too fast . . . and one broke away at a gate, bounding up the hill toward the riders, followed by a dark streak of sheepdog. A shrill whistle from below brought the dog to a halt, growling, then it raced back down the hill. The sheep, moving with the single-minded intensity of the truly stupid, made for the gap between Aris’s horse and Seri’s. Seri flung herself off her horse and made a grab for it.

“Idiot!” Aris said. Grabbing a determined sheep is harder than it looks, and jumping on one from above is chancy at best. Seri had a double-handful of wool and a faceful of stony hillside as the sheep, bleating loudly, did its best to jerk free. Aris swung off his horse and grabbed for a hind leg, then the other. With the sheep in a wheelbarrow hold, Seri could get a foreleg and then they could flatten the sheep out and decide how to get her back down to the fold.

A bellow from below caught his attention—and there, making surprising speed up the steep slope, was a tall man and a boy, with two sheepdogs. “Let loose o’ my sheep!” the man yelled, when he saw Aris watching.

“She was gettin’ away!” Seri yelled back. “We just caught ’er for you.”

“An’ sheep are born wi’ golden fleece,” the man yelled. “I know your kind. You catch sheep all right, and then ye make sure they don’t escape—yer own stomachs.” He waved the dogs on, and they came, bellies low, swinging in from either side. Aris started to rise, but then saw what the horses were doing. Each horse had put itself between a dog and the pair with the sheep—and the sheepdogs found themselves herded back as neatly as ever they’d worked a flock. The man and his boy stopped a short distance below. “That can’t be,” the man said, half in anger and half in wonder. “Horses don’t do that.”

“Ours do,” said Seri, almost smugly. The sheep picked that moment to thrash again and kick her with the loose foreleg. “D’you want us to bring your sheep down, or will your dogs pen her for you?”

The boy came nearer, out of reach of his father’s arm. “Aren’t you robbers, then?”

“Not us,” Seri said cheerfully. “Here—you take her.” She beckoned, and the boy came up and got a foreleg hold on the sheep himself. At his soft voice, the sheep quit struggling; Seri stepped back and looked at the man. “I’m sorry we frightened you,” she said. “We’re not robbers, even if Ari does have your sheep by the hind legs. We thought we’d help you.”

“You could help me,” the man said slowly, “by letting go of my sheep.” Aris shrugged, let go, and stood. The sheep scrambled up awkwardly; the boy still had a grip on one foreleg. “Let’s go, Varya—let’s see what these folk do.” The boy let go, and the sheep stood, ears waggling. He said something to her, and she followed a few steps. Then the man whistled, and waved an arm, and the two dogs closed in on the sheep. She edged her way downhill.

“You don’t act like robbers,” the man said then. “But I never heard of honest travellers . . . where are you from?”

“Fin Panir,” Aris said. His horse walked up and laid its head along his arm. He rubbed the base of its ear absently, and then the line between jowl and neck.

“Girdish folk? Is that why you’re wearing blue?”

“Yes,” said Seri. “We’re in training to be Marshals.”

“Whatever that is,” the man said. He stood silent some moments, and Aris had almost decided to mount when he said, “You might as well come down wi’ us for the night; I don’t want your deaths on my conscience.”

“Deaths?” Seri asked.

“Aye. There’s things in the dark—surely you know that. We don’t take chances any more, between human robbers and those other things, the blackrobes, and sometimes wolves and that, things running in packs. We’d have brought the sheep down early even without seeing you. Come on, now. No time to waste. There’s chores.”

The farmer showed no surprise when Aris and Seri both proved handy at the evening chores. Perhaps, Aris thought, he didn’t know there were people in the world who couldn’t milk, who couldn’t tell hay from straw, for whom wheat and oats and barley were all just “grain.” The farm buildings were larger than those Aris had seen before, well built and weathertight. They met the farmer’s wife, his other children, all younger than the boy on the hill. And they ate with the family, sharing some berries they had gathered that day.

“So what brings you this way, Girdsmen?” the farmer asked. “Is it part of Marshals’ training to wander around frightening honest farmers?”

“No . . . the wandering, perhaps, but not the rest.” Seri rested her chin on her fists. Aris watched the faces watching her, the children all intent and eager just because she was a stranger. The farmer’s wife sat knitting busily, looking up only now and then as she counted stitches. “To tell you the truth, there’s new ideas about how Marshals should be trained. Do you have a grange here?”

“Nay.” The farmer sounded glad of it. “We had better things to do than get involved in your war and go around killing folk. We stayed here wi’ our sheep, as farmers should. So all that about grange and barton and Marshals, all that means naught to us.” He gave Seri a challenging glance, as much as to say And take that as you please.

Seri just grinned at him. “You were lucky, then. Aris and I had the war come upon us as children; we had to grow up hedgewise. Then Father Gird took us in—”

“Was that a real man, Gird, or just a name for whoever was leading?”

“A real man,” Seri said. Aris could hardly believe that anyone doubted it; did these farmers never leave their little hollow? “He took us in, Ari and me, when we’d been living with farmers, because Ari has the healing magery.”

“Mageborn!” The farmer glared at Aris; no one else in the room moved or spoke. “I let a mageborn in my house?”

Seri shrugged. “Father Gird let him in his house. And told everyone to let him use his magery. Healing’s good, he said.”

“Is it true, lad? You can heal?” The farmer’s voice rumbled with suppressed anger.

“Yes,” Aris said. “But not all things, though I’ll try.”

“Come on, then.” The farmer heaved himself up from the bench, clearly expecting Aris to follow. He caught Seri’s eye, and she rose as well. “What’s that?” the farmer asked. “I thought you said he had the healing—why are you coming?”

“Gird said Aris must have someone to watch him.” Seri said. “I travel with him for that reason.”

“Huh. Don’t trust him, eh?” By his tone, he approved: no one should trust mageborn.

“I do,” Seri said, “and so do those who’ve worked with him before. But Gird set the rule, and the Council holds by it.”

With a last grunt, the farmer led them upstairs. Aris had not seen stairs in a farmer’s house before. He wondered if the farmer had taken over a small manor house. But he had no time to ask, the farmer flung wide a door on the left of the passage. There on a low bed lay a man near death from woundfever. “It’s my brother,” the farmer said. “He and his family lived here with us, and this is all that’s left. They killed his wife and oldest child one night when we were out late, in lambing time. She’d gone out to bring us food. The younger children, two of them, died of a fever—they’d been grieving so, I think they had no strength. The others are with mine, of course. But a hand of days ago, maybe, he thought he heard voices outside, near the pens. He didn’t wake me afore going out to see, and by the time I woke, and got outside, this is what I found. Heal him, if you can.” His gaze challenged Aris.

“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 oil: 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.

“No,” she said to the fourth or fifth invitation to stay. “No, we must go, today.” And today meant as soon after breakfast as possible. Aris, moved by the same inexplicable urgency, took their gear out to the horses and found them already saddled. Seri, he thought, must really be in a hurry; he wondered when she had found time to slip out and saddle them.

They were well away before the sun entered the hollow, this time riding sunrising, into the light, as their need suggested. They followed a beaten track that ran along the high ground most of the time.

About halfway through the morning Aris said, “Do you think it’s the gods, or Gird, or something else?”

Seri’s frown meant concentration, not annoyance. “I’ve been trying to think. Up until the iynisin attacked us, everything seemed normal, didn’t it?”

“I thought so. I was surprised that you’d gotten permission for us to leave, but nothing more.”

“There was nothing strange about that; the Autumn Rose and Raheli and Cob all thought you should have the chance to travel and try your healing elsewhere, ’stead of becoming one of Luap’s scribes. And they thought we’d do well together. Rahi said I’d been watching you heal even before Gird knew about it, so they might as well trust me.”

“So it started with the iynisin attack,” Aris said. “Or was it before?”

“Before?”

“When you were talking to me about Luap, about mageborn and peasant, and which I’d chosen.”

“No.” Seri shook her head. “It couldn’t have been that.”

“It didn’t sound quite like you—the Seri I knew.”

“How not?”

“Mmm. Angrier. And I couldn’t believe you would stop trusting me, just because I tried to be fair about Luap.”

“I’m sorry. I remember feeling suddenly furious, hot all over. You’re right, that wasn’t like me, most of the time.” They rode in silence a few moments, then Seri turned to him with a strange expression. “You don’t suppose . . .”

“What?”

“Torre’s Ride,” she said softly. “It’s a test, like Torre’s Ride—could it be?”

Aris snorted. “That’s ridiculous. It—” He grabbed wildly at the saddle as his horse bolted, bucking and weaving. Seri’s exploded too, pitching wildly and then bolting in a flat run to the north. Aris managed to stay on until his horse, too, gave up bucking to run after Seri’s. His breath came short; he felt sore under the ribs, and the horse ran on and on. By the time it slowed, they were far from the track they had been following; a wind rose, whipping the grass flat in long waves, obliterating the pattern of trampled grass that might have led them back to it.

“And now we’re lost,” he said to Seri, who was hunched over, fighting for breath.

“I’m right,” she said a moment later. “And don’t argue again. It’s a test.”

“Fine.” Aris waited until he could breathe more easily, and said, “And perhaps we should start figuring out what kind of test involves iynisin, elves, thunderstorms, and horses that come out of nowhere and run forever without sweating.” For the two horses were not breathing hard, and no sweat marred their sleek hides.

“And a dying man who needs our healing.” Seri straightened up and stretched her back. “And getting lost.” Then she reached over and grabbed Aris’s arm. “Look at them.”

He looked. Their two horses had their muzzles together, and each had one eye rolled back to watch its rider. “They know,” he said. “You mischief,” he said to his horse. He felt its back hump under him, a clear warning. “No, I’m sorry. Don’t do that again; I’ll fall off. But you do know, don’t you?”

“Gird’s horse,” Seri said. Her eyes danced. “These are the same kind.” Her horse stamped, hard, and shook its head. “Or—similar?” Both horses put their ears forward and touched muzzles again, then blew long rolling snorts.

“Gods above,” Aris said. “We are right in the middle of something—I wonder if Torre ever felt confused.” He felt suddenly better, as if he’d solved the puzzle. But he knew he hadn’t.

Seri grinned. “Remember when we were very young, and used to hide in the garden and tell stories?”

“Yes, and you always said you wished we could have a real adventure.” Aris chuckled. “And I thought you’d grown out of that.”

“Never,” Seri said. “Nor have you; I remember who got stuck up in the pear tree.” Her face sobered. “Father Gird wants us to do something,” she said. “And even if we hadn’t stumbled into the iynisin; he’d have found some way to test us. He wasn’t one to send untrained farmers into battle.”

“We’re supposed to be trained already,” Aris said. “All those years in the granges, as yeoman-marshals, as Marshal-candidates—”

“So we’ve survived the tests. We’ve learned to share our talents. We’re more ready now than we were.” Seri looked cheerful; Aris hoped she was right.

“When we find out what it is he wants,” Aris said. “If we’ve finished the tests.” Seri grimaced and put out her tongue.

The two horses stiffened, then threw up their heads and neighed. Out of a fold of the ground rode a troop of nomads on shaggy ponies. All carried lances; the nomads called out in their high-pitched voices.

They came back to Fin Panir leaner, browner, and far more cautious than they’d left. The gate guards didn’t recognize them or the horses, but when they gave their names said they were wanted at the palace. “Why?” asked Seri. Aris thought he knew; his hands prickled. He led the way, his bay picking his way neatly through the crowded lower market.

“Aris!” Luap, crossing from the palace to the Hall, stopped in midstride. “Is it really you? We need you.”

“Who is it?” He was already off the horse; Seri slid off hers. A stableboy came running out; the horses let themselves be led away.

“Arranha. A few days after you left—” Luap told the story as he led them quickly into the palace. “We’ve tried everything—herblore, young Garin—and it’s not enough. He hasn’t died—I suspect that’s Garin’s doing—but his arm’s swollen to the shoulder and he weakens daily.”

Aris said nothing. He loved the old priest; he wondered why the gods had let him leave Fin Panir if Arranha was going to be in danger. When he came into Arranha’s room, he stopped short, shocked. Arranha had always been “the old priest” to him; he had known Arranha was older than Gird. But he had been so vigorous an old man, so full of life . . . and now he lay spent and silent, his body fragile and his spirit nearly flown. Awe flooded him. Was this Arranha’s time, and had the god he had served finally called him? He could not interfere with that.

He put his hands on Arranha’s shoulders; at once the magery revealed the dangerous fever in the wounded arm. It had seeped even past his shoulder, into his heart. Aris let his power flow out. He felt the resistance of a deepseated sickness, and worse than that Arranha’s lack of response. He had given up; although, he breathed, he would not struggle against death any longer.

Seri put her hands on his; Aris looked up, surprised into losing his concentration. “We work together,” she said. He nodded. He could feel her power pulsing through his hands and into Arranha. “Gird loved and trusted him,” Seri went on. “Gird wants him to live; he must help Luap with the mageborn in the west.” Slowly, Aris felt the sickness yielding, first from Arranha’s heart, and then fingerwidth by fingerwidth down his arm. The swollen tissue shrank; the angry reds and purples faded. He could feel that Arranha breathed more easily; his pulse slowed and steadied. Finally, even the purple bite marks which had oozed a foul pus faded, and Arranha’s hand lay cool and slender on the blanket once more.

Arranha opened his eyes. “You called me back. Why?” Then he seemed to see them clearly and his expression changed. “Both of you! Seri, when did you learn healing?”

She grinned at him. “It’s not like Aris’s; I have to ask Gird what he wants.”

“Gird. But he’s not—”

“He’s not a god; I know that. But he lets us know what he wants done.”

Arranha pushed himself up in the bed. “I might have known. He saved my life outside the walls of Grahlin, and now he’s done it again; I wonder what he expects of me this time.” His gaze fell on Luap. “Don’t look at me like that, Selamis: I’m well now. I’ll be with you in the west; isn’t that what you wanted?”

Raheli watched the Council carefully the morning Aris and Seri were to come in to make their report. Already rumors had spread, as fast as light from a flame: Arranha healed, a mageborn and peasant working healing magery together. She and the Rosemage had already conferred; they sat on opposite sides of the room where they could hear most of the murmuring and see each other. Luap sat in his usual seat, with fresh scrolls around him and his pen full of ink. The scribe he had nominated to take over his position sat behind him at a small desk, he would practice taking the notes.

But the Council concerned her most. In the years since Seri had maneuvered Cob into presenting her own plan for the training of new Marshals, the Council had changed character. Fewer of the rural Marshals bothered to come in to Fin Panir; some sent their concerns, and some ignored the Council until a crisis arose. Most of the Marshals who attended regularly had granges in Fin Panir or Grahlin, or vills within a day’s ride of Fin Panir; they had plenty of yeoman-marshals to do their work while they attended Council. By the accidents of war, most of them had also been latecomers to Gird’s army, gaining command because the earlier Marshals died in battle. Since they had not known Gird as well, they relied on the written Code, the growing volume of Commentaries, and Luap’s version of Gird’s life when considering some new policy. Raheli could still influence them, as Gird’s daughter, as could a few others, but it grew harder every year. She had begun to regret her decision to refuse the Marshal-Generalship.

Aris and Seri appeared in the doorway. Both wore the gray shirts and pants of the training order, and the blue tunic of a Marshal-candidate. Raheli felt herself relaxing. No one could help liking those two; they had the cheerful steadiness that attracted goodwill. Aris looked tougher, his face tanned where it had been pale, his shoulders broader. Seri looked less concerned about him; she seemed full of confidence.

When they were called to account for their journey, they spoke in turns, but without formality; it did not seem rehearsed. Rahi had already heard part of the story the night before, but Aris’s description of the iynisin curse on the grove and spring, and its healing the next day still awed her. When Seri told of the horses appearing, one of the older Marshals said, “Like Gird’s old gray horse!” at once.

“We thought of that,” Aris said. “But we are not Gird—we could never claim that importance.”

“Nor did he,” Luap said. Everyone stared; Luap rarely spoke in Council meetings, maintaining the distinction between the Marshals and himself.

“But go on,” another Marshal said. “We can discuss this later. I want to know what happened next.” So did they all, and questioned Aris and Seri about each last detail of their journey, including much that the two had not had time to tell Raheli. They had healed someone at a farm, they had found a tribe of horse nomads, and spent a few hands of days with them, learning their language and healing their sick. . . .

“Horse nomads? How could you learn so fast? And why heal them? We didn’t train you and send you out to benefit them. Aris was supposed to heal yeomen who needed it.”

Seri answered this time. “We cannot say how we learned so fast—it surprised us, and them, as much as it surprises you. But since the gods directed us there, they must have had some purpose. As for healing, that is the purpose of such power—to withhold its use is as evil as to misuse any magery.”

“I don’t like it,” the Marshal-General said, scowling. “An honest peasant lass fiddling about with magery; that can’t be right. I know you’ll say Gird approved young Aris using his healing magery, under supervision. But that’s not the same as Seri doing such things, calling light and all that.”

Raheli spoke up. “Marshal-General, in the old days there are legends of our people having some great powers—consider the Stone Circles they raised. And Gird would have trusted peasants—especially someone like Seri who has served well in barton and grange—to use magery for the benefit of all.”

“It’s magicks, and magicks are evil,” the Marshal-General said.

Raheli would have said more, but Seri leaned forward, smiling at the Marshal-General. “Sir, that magic by which Gird freed us all from fear and grief at his death; was that evil?”

“No, but—but that was not magicks; that came from the gods. Luap said so.”

“And the gods granted this to me, sir—I did not ask for it; I didn’t even imagine it was possible. It is not my talent. It is their gift. I would be ungracious to refuse it. Now if the Council requires that I not use it here, I will leave—but I will not renounce what the gods have given me.”

That set off a stormy argument. Some said Seri was rebellious, haughty, ruined by spending too much time with a mageborn; others argued that she was right: if she had new powers, they must be the gods’ gift, and she should use them. Through this, Aris and Seri sat patient and quiet, though Rahi felt angry enough to bash some heads. She wished Cob had been there.

Finally, when the argument died of its own weight, the cheerful steadiness of the two young people had its effect, and the vote the Marshal-General demanded, to force Seri to give up healing, failed, in the days that followed, both returned to their former training duties so quietly that it seemed the storm had never occurred. Aris spent more time in the drillfields and barton, and Seri spent more time with him, learning herblore, but otherwise they seemed unchanged.

As the year rolled on, Luap and Arranha together planned for the great move. By word of mouth, the plans travelled the land, and mageborn survivors began to trickle into Fin Panir. The strong and young, those known to have magery, would go first and prepare the land for planting. One by one, Luap showed them what became known as the mageroad. He still worried that they did not know where in real space the stronghold lay, but he felt he could not wait.