Liar's Oath

Chapter Six

“I want to see the Marshal-General,” Aris said. Seri pressed close behind him.

“Run off, lad, and tell your Marshal your troubles,” said the big guard. The skinny one said nothing, but his eyes laughed. Aris felt his anger glowing, and fought it back. He knew what the Marshal-General thought of boys who lost their tempers. They had not come this far to make fools of themselves.

“The Marshal-General,” he said again. “It’s t-too imp-portant for just our Marshal.”

Brows went up on both guards. “Oh?” said the skinny one. “Would your Marshal agree?”

Aris just stared at them, one after the other. Finally the skinny one flushed, shrugged, and said, “Gran’ther Gird won’t mind young’uns. He never does.” The big guard glowered, but finally shrugged as well.

“All right, but you stop first at Luap’s and ask if the Marshal-General’s got other business right now. Upstairs, second door on the right.” He stepped aside, waving a vast meaty hand. Aris and Seri scampered past. The guard yelled after them, “No running! This isn’t some alley, brats!” Seri giggled. Aris was at the landing before he figured it out: alley brats, just what everyone called them, but the guard hadn’t meant it that way. Exactly.

“We made it,” she whispered. “I didn’t think—”

Aris shushed her. Another flight to a passage . . . paneled walls, a floor of patterned wood, dark and yellow. Once it would have been polished; now it was clean, but scuffed. The first door on the right was closed. The next, open, gave on a sun-barred room lined with shelves. A tall man in Girdish blue sat at a table, facing away from them, looking at someone on a low pallet under the windows. Aris peeked around the door . . . the youth on the bed lay pale as milk, bones tight under the skin of his face, eyes deep-shadowed. Seri, bolder now that they were upstairs, rapped on the doorpost. The tall man swung around, finger to lips, then stared at them, clearly surprised. With a glance at the sleeping youth, he rose and came to the door.

Aris had heard the tales. Gird’s luap, the Marshal-General’s scribe and friend, was supposed to be mageborn on his father’s side. Royal, whispered some. King’s bastard. Uncanny, born with great powers but promised not to use them. Can’t trust that kind, most muttered, making one or another warding sign. Their Marshal said the same, glowering when another leaf of Gird’s Code came down, scribed in the luap’s elegant hand. To Aris, he looked like just another tall, dark-haired adult. An uncle or father, not a grandfather, and no more magical than a post. Seri pinched him. His mouth came unglued, and he said, quietly enough, “Sir, they said downstairs to tell you we’ve come to see the Marshal-General.”

The tall man had graceful brows, but they still rose. “Children, now, they’re letting in to pester the Marshal-General? Or do you bear a message from your Marshal or some judicar who could not come himself?”

“It’s our message, sir!” Seri pushed past Aris; she knew his temper and its limits. Her single braid hung crooked over her shoulder, already fuzzy with escaping hairs, for all that she had rebraided it neatly just before they came into the Upper City. “The Code says, sir, that all come equal before the Code—”

His wide mouth quirked. “True, young judicar, but it also sets up the courts in which to try cases; not all come before the Marshal-General.”

“This does.” Seri gave him a flat stare for his amusement, and his face sobered. “It is a matter the Marshal-General must decide, and we must see him. If he cannot see us now—”

“If you’ll allow, I’ll let him know you’re here; so far as I know he has no one with him.” The man slid past them, and strode down the hall. Aris looked at Seri, not knowing whether to follow or not. She leaned against the doorpost, peeking in.

“I wonder if he’s dying.”

Aris looked too. Unbidden, his magery stirred; he squashed it down. “I think he must be,” he said.

“You should,” Seri said, flicking him a glance. “Even if we haven’t seen the Marshal-General yet.”

“It’s against the Code; it’s not right.”

“You should.” He wondered if the Marshal-General himself were that certain; Seri had the rooted integrity of a tree, that cannot be but what it is. Were all the old peasant breed like that, so sure of themselves, so all-of—a-piece? What would it feel like? He himself, his magery flickering inside him, often felt he was made of shadows and flame, shapeless except in opposition to each other. He could just remember, in his early childhood, someone explaining that light existed by itself, but shadows only when something stood before the light. Now Seri nudged him into the room. “Go on, Aris. I’ll tell the Marshal-General—”

The boy—man?—on the bed was older than either of them; Aris could tell that, but not how old he was. He would be tall, if he stood, and would grow taller yet, if he lived. Can I? he asked himself. He had never actually healed someone so close to death, not a human person, not someone so large. Did that make a difference? He wasn’t sure. Seri nudged him again. She would not give up, but she had no parrion of healing, the way her people thought of it. Our people, he reminded himself. He and Seri were one people, whatever anyone else said. She had stood by him in the grange, and he would stand by her . . . meanwhile, he felt his mage powers lean toward the sick youth, as if they could reach out of himself.

He came closer. From the shallow, uneven movement of the chest, he deduced lung trouble: he knew that much from animals. Was the thinness from that, or from not being able to eat for coughing, for lack of breath? With a sudden lift, he felt the power take him over, an exhilaration like none other unless birds of the air felt this way, swooping and gliding. He let himself flow with it, barely aware that he murmured words he’d overheard in childhood. His hands glowed; he laid them carefully on either side of the youth’s sleeping head, ran them down to his shoulders, then over his chest. Something prickled in his palms, harsh as nettles or dry burs. He wanted to pull back, but knew he must not. Behind him, he heard Seri’s indrawn breath, but he paid no attention to it. She had seen him do this before; she always gasped, but he had learned it meant nothing. She would watch and wait, and be there when he had done.

Darkness retreated slowly, grudgingly, from his light; he could feel, in his hands, the slow withdrawal of something dire from the youth’s body. He had no name for it, and it didn’t matter. The light either worked, or it didn’t; when it worked, it healed old wounds as well as new ones, fevers as well as wounds. If he could hold his focus until all the damage had been repaired, the youth would wake whole and free from pain, healthy as if he had never been sick.

But that was the limit: his own strength, his own concentration. He could feel the sweat trickling down his face; he knew his sight narrowed to a single core of light, and he dared no attention to interpret what his eyes could see. Only with the vision of power, which perceived each strand of disease or injury, which knew when the light had worn or driven it away, dared he perceive. Hearing had gone, and most of eyes’ sight, and even the sense of where he was, when the last dark shadow fled. At once, his power snapped back into him, and with it, all his strength. He fell, knowing he was falling, trusting Seri to be there, to catch him, as she had been from the first time he’d used this power.

Hearing returned while he was still crumpled untidily on the floor. Seri’s voice, sharp, and a deeper rumble somewhere overhead.

“—because I told him to, sir! He would not break your law, but—”

“Will you just stand back, child, and let me see the lad. I’m not going to hurt him. He’s fallen.”

“He always does,” said Seri, somewhat more calmly.

Another voice—the man they had first met. “You mean he’s done this before? Healing?”

“Yes, of course. He’s always done it, until the new Code came out, and the Marshal said he couldn’t. That’s why we came.”

Aris managed to open his eyes. His vision had not cleared: would not, for some little time. But he could see Seri, standing stiffly, ready to fight if she had to, and the man whose office this was, and a great lump of a man who must be the Marshal-General. Aris swallowed, with difficulty, and smiled. “Please don’t worry,” he said to the Marshal-General. “I’m all right.”

The man grunted, and came nearer; Seri moved out of his way, scowling. “You’re the color of cheese-whey, lad, and your eyes no more focus on me than a newborn’s. If this is ‘all right,’ I would hate to see you sick or wounded.”

“Is he all right?” Aris asked. The Marshal-General, so close, looked even bigger, heavier, almost as if a great oak had chosen to move and lean over him. He glanced down, half-expecting roots instead of worn boots.

The other man answered, in a lighter, clipped voice that carried some emotion Aris could not read. “He’s got the color you had before; he’s sleeping peacefully and breathing normally, and I could swear he’s gained a half-stone. . . . I suppose we’ll know when he wakes.”

The Marshal-General’s hand, hard and warm, cupped Aris’s chin. He felt no fear; here was nothing uncanny, but strength and gentleness allied. Less frightening than his father’s steward had been, less frightening than his father, for that matter.

“Lad—from what your friend says, you knew you broke the Code, to use such magic.”

“Yes, sir.” He didn’t try to explain.

“Your friend says you did it because she told you to—was it then her fault you broke the Code?”

He could feel himself turning red, hot to the ears. “No, sir, of course not!” He quoted carefully: “ ‘Let each yeoman take heed for his own deed, for if one counsels wrongly, yet the ears which listen and the hands which act belong to the doer.’ ”

“Mmm. You have learned to recite, but yet you do not obey. What then should the judicar say, in such a case?”

Behind the Marshal-General, Seri opened her mouth; Aris shook his head at her. “It is my deed, and my fault, sir. I know that. But . . . but the boy was so sick, and if I waited he might not live. That’s why we came, to ask you to amend the Code to allow healing. The judicar should say I was wrong, and punish me—but you, sir, can amend the Code.”

“To save you punishment?” The Marshal-General’s face gave nothing away to his still blurred vision. Aris shook his head. “No, sir. Even if you amend the Code, I broke your rule before you changed it. But others who heal won’t have to be punished later.”

“Alyanya’s flowers!” Strong arms gathered him into a rough embrace. “D’you really think I’d punish a boy who healed another, who gave his power until he looked near death? If you need punishment, the way your power wounds you is punishment enough. I had thought the healing magery all destroyed, and all rumors of it lies, with the sick charmed perhaps into thinking themselves well. But I saw this myself, saw you heal—”

“It’s not really me, sir; it’s the power,” said Aris. He was too old to let himself be comforted like this, but he wished he weren’t. He had never had that much of it. “It’s the light—”

“I don’t doubt it’s some god’s power,” said the Marshal-General. “But you’re the one they gave it to, and you’re the one must decide how to use it. Now: the two of you will come with me, and have more to eat than you’ve had lately, by the look of you.”

Aris found himself standing, but with the Marshal-General’s arm half-supporting him. His vision reddened, then cleared; he looked at the youth on the bed, who had slept through all this undisturbed. He’s tired, Aris thought. Seri gave him one of her looks; he was not sure what it meant, but he would find out. She always told him. The other man, the Marshal-General’s luap, had another look, or series of them, that flickered across his face like cloudshadow over a meadow. In the aftermath of using his power, when he felt unusually sensitive, he felt the man’s own magery as something cold and hard, and wondered that he could have missed it before.

“Food,” said the Marshal-General, and urged him forward. Then, to his luap, “I’ll take care of these two for now, but find them a place to sleep. Wherever they’ve come from, they aren’t going back today.”

Out in the passage, with its scuffed patterned wood, and along it to the right. The Marshal-General said, as they passed a door, “That’s my room, if you need me later, but I think you should eat and rest now. The kitchen’s down this stair.” Aris stumbled in the change from lighter passage to darker stair, and the Marshal-General’s arm steadied him. Seri padded behind, silent for once.

The kitchen, warm, smelling of rising bread dough, some kind of stew, lit by both fire and windows open to an enclosed courtyard, promised safety and comfort. Aris sank down on a bench beneath a window and let himself relax. Seri sat beside him; the Marshal-General murmured to someone working at a long table, and fetched a cut loaf of bread. The other person vanished into a dark door, then reappeared with a jug and brought over jug and several mugs. A tall woman, that was, wearing an apron over trousers and tunic. “Milk,” said the Marshal-General, pouring it into the mugs. He handed one to each of them, and then lifted his own. Aris sipped, cautiously. Sometimes his belly objected to milk or meat after a healing; this time it lay quiescent. The milk slid down, cool and sweet. The Marshal-General sliced the loaf, and offered it. Seri fished a dirty lump of salt from her pocket and offered that on an open palm. The Marshal-General pinched off a bit without speaking, sprinkled it on the bread, and waited until she took a slice to bite into his own. Aris swallowed the last of his milk, and filled his mouth with bread and salt.

They had eaten bread and stew, and drunk more milk than Aris had had in several years, before Gird let them talk more about it. Aris felt sleepy with all the food; Seri looked ready to leap at some task, her braid already more than half loosened, the tendrils curling around her face, her eyes sparkling. In the kitchenyard, in the shade of an old apple tree, the Marshal-General looked like an old farmer, not a judicar—and certainly not like what he was. But food had not dulled his wits, Aris found.

“—and your father was a mageborn noble?” he asked. “Did he have the power of healing?”

“No, sir.” Aris numbered his father’s magery, what he knew of it, on his fingers: light, fire, sending arrows where he would. “He died when I was very young—” In the Marshal-General’s war against the magelords, though it would be rude to say so. “—but no one ever said he could heal. Nor my mother either.” Seri made a small noise; Aris hoped that would be enough for her. She had never liked his mother.

“And both are dead now?”

“No, sir.” He said no more, even when Gird’s eyebrows rose in a clear demand for more information. Seri took over.

“She went off with another ’un, sir, after the old lord was killed. He didn’t want Aris, her new man didn’t.”

Gird looked at Aris; Aris said nothing. Whatever Seri thought, his mother was his mother, and he would not speak ill of her. Gird turned to Seri. “So, then—how long ago was this, and how long have you known him?”

Seri grinned, glad to take over “I’ve known him always; we grew up in the household together. Aris was youngest, and they were always busy—”

“And I was small for my age,” Aris added. “Easy to misplace in a crowd.”

“And you had none of your father’s magery,” said Seri. “He didn’t know what you did have.” She turned back to Gird. “My mother’s sister was Aris’s nurse; ’twas not her fault he grew no larger. But she was blamed for it, and then his mother wouldn’t have him by because he fretted so about sickness. They thought he was afraid of it.”

“I am,” Aris said. “I didn’t know what to do, then.”

“And now you do?” asked Gird.

“Not . . . completely. There’s too much—Seri’s people have ways of healing with herbs I don’t know, and she’s told me of hearth-witches who can draw pain and lay it on stone or iron. But I know some of what I can do with magery.” He yawned, fighting the sleep that tried to overwhelm him. He felt he’d been running for hours, or heaving stones. Why was healing, that required only concentration, such hard work?

“He needs to sleep,” he heard Seri say. A chuckle shook the shoulder he leaned against.

“I can see that for myself, child. Let the lad rest, then, and you tell me your tale. You’re not mageborn-bred, are you?”

A snort from, Seri. “No, sir. Not a drop of magic in me, just peasant common sense.” You have magery, Seri, but it’s not my kind, Aris thought, then drifted into sleep.

He woke on a pallet on the floor, a clean soft pallet. The room was almost dark; the window above him glowed deep blue: late evening. He heard no one near, and stretched at leisure, his spine crackling. He loved to think of the little spine-bones clicking against each other in some language he didn’t know. Cats stretched, but he never heard their spines crack. He blinked at the window; one star had pricked dusk’s curtain. As he watched, another, and two more. He felt safe, and happy, and thought of going back to sleep. He would wake early, if he did, but no matter. Then he heard voices in the distance, coming nearer. Seri and the Marshal-General, still talking. He grinned in the dark. Seri could talk all night and half the day; now that she’d decided she liked the Marshal-General, he’d have a time getting rid of her. She had missed her grandfather after he died.

“He should be awake,” Seri was saying. “And if he goes back to sleep now, he’ll wake with a headache before dawn. He always does.”

The Marshal-General’s voice carried a hint of humor. “So what should we do, lass, to keep the lad healthy?”

“Feed him. He won’t think he’s hungry, but he needs it.”

The light they carried warmed the passage outside, began to gleam on the edges of the furniture. Aris grabbed his wandering mind by its scruff. This was not the time to fall into a trance and let the light play in his mind. So far the Marshal-General had been understanding, but he mustn’t push his luck too far. He sat up, rubbing his eyes, as they came in. With the candlelight, the window looked darker, more true night.

“Aris—” An edge to Seri’s voice, a warning. Did she think he’d let himself be caught by light-trance in front of the Marshal-General?

“I’m awake,” he said, yawning hugely. “Just woke.” He looked for the Marshal-General; in candlelight, his broad lined face looked entirely different. “I’m sorry, sir, I fell asleep and keep yawning.”

“Seri explained.” A long pause during which Aris wondered if Seri had explained too much, then, “Come, lad—there’s soup and bread left for you.”

He stood without assistance, and didn’t argue about the meal; Seri was right, as usual. By the time he’d eaten two bowls of soup, and three slices of bread, he felt solid to himself, firm on his feet. The Marshal-General, he saw, recognized the difference.

“So, lad—are you able to tell me your side of it, or would a night’s rest improve your tale?”

“I’m fine now, sir.” He felt Seri stir, beside him, but she said nothing.

“Good. You’ll need the jacks, I expect, and then come up to my office; Seri can guide you.” The Marshal-General pushed himself up and left the kitchen. Seri gathered the bowls and the end of bread.

“I’ll help,” said Aris, but she shook her head.

“You go clear your mind, Ari. The jacks are across the court, through the gate: there’s torches. And the washstand’s by the well. I’ll do this.” When he came back in, all traces of his late supper had vanished; the kitchen looked vast and bare in the candlelight, warmth radiating from the banked fire on the hearth. The cooks had put beans to soak; the faint earthy smell made him think of cellars and small-gardens. Seri took his hand, one quick clasp, then led him back upstairs. He thought he could find Gird’s office on his own, but he was glad of her company.

She left him in the passage outside the lighted room, with a single hug. Inside the room, the Marshal-General sat with another man, the luap, and when Aris tapped at the doorpost, they both looked up to stare at him. “Come on in, lad,” said the Marshal-General. “Come and tell me your story, and Luap here will write it down.”

Aris felt a mild reluctance to talk in front of the luap—Luap, he must be called—but with the Marshal-General’s eye on him, he could not argue. He took the stool the Marshal-General pointed out, and wondered where to start. What had Seri already said? He didn’t want to bore them. Luap, he noticed, had what looked like an old, rewritten scroll on the board in his lap. Luap smiled at him.

“Start by telling me your name, if you will, and what you know of your history.”

Perhaps Luap had not taken down what Seri said. Aris began with his name, his father’s name, the place of his birth. That was enough of family, he thought, and said, “When I found I could heal—”

“Wait.” Luap held up his hand. “Were you the only child?”

“No, sir. But the youngest, by several years; my next older brother had already begun arms training when I was born. That’s why I was so often alone with Seri and her family and the other servants; my parents were away at court, or visiting other domains, or—by the times I remember at all—at the war.”

“Do you read, then?”

Aris nodded. “Until near the war’s end, I had a tutor my father provided. He taught me to read and write and keep accounts, and I taught Seri—”

“A servant’s child?” Disbelief edged the Marshal-General’s voice at that.

“She’s my friend,” Aris said. “It was more fun, to have someone to read with, to write to, and as for accounts, she is faster than I. It was a game to us.”

“So,” Luap said, with a glance at the Marshal-General, “Seri was your companion in childhood, and much of that was during the war. Did your tutor instruct you in magery?”

“No, sir. He had none himself; he said my father would have me taught later, if I showed any ability. But then my father was killed, and my mother—” He stopped, feeling the heat on his face. His mother could not have known what he overheard; surely no child was supposed to hear things like that. He had tried to forget them.

“Seri said your mother married another lord after your father died in battle,” the Marshal-General said. “Seri said the other lord didn’t want to bother with you. Is that what you think?”

The last time his father had been home, his mother had said those things he wished he’d never heard. I didn’t want the last brat, she’d screamed. It’s not my fault he’s too young to help. There was more, that he carefully did not remember. Then his father had come for that last moment, scooping him into a tight hug, telling him to remember. Not what he’d just heard, he was sure: his father could not have known, any more than his mother, that he’d been awake with a headache. If only you had the magery, his father had whispered. But it’s too late, now. He had been frightened; he had started to cry, partly with pain of his headache and partly with fear, and his father had put him down gently and gone out the door.

Aris realized too much time had passed, and his hands had knotted in his lap as they did when he thought about his mother. “She—she grieved at my father’s death,” he said finally, in a low voice. “The lord Katlinha swore to protect her.”

His throat closed on another memory he had not quite buried. The lord Katlinha’s long black moustaches, which had fascinated him with their stiff curl. The lord’s hand stroking Seri’s cheek and neck, and the drawling voice in which he’d said, “Of course you can bring your sweetling, lad, though you’re really too young to appreciate her. . . .” Something wrong: he had realized suddenly that Seri was frightened, Seri who was never frightened—her eyes dilated, her breathing shallow. “But you’ll both have to mind me,” the lord had said, laughing at something Aris couldn’t understand, because Seri afraid was nothing to laugh about.

Then his favorite pup, the lame one, had chosen that moment to nip the lord’s other hand, and the lord’s hard bootheel had stamped. The pup squealed, Seri jerked free, Aris had flung himself at the injured pup, ignoring the lord’s command to let the beast die. In the end the lord had shrugged. “I’ll have you, lady, if it’s your will, but I won’t bother with that worthless scrap. There’s no mageblood in him; you said you weren’t willing, and no doubt you withheld yourself.”

They had gone, and left him. He and Seri had run off to join the blueshirts, with the surviving servants, and spent the last of the war fetching water and digging trenches for the peasant army. That he could say; he could not say the other.

“The lord didn’t want another son,” he said, half-gasping with the pain of remembering it.

“And your mother?” The Marshal-General’s voice held no anger, but also no space for refusal.

“Didn’t . . . didn’t want me,” said Aris, eyes down. It was his greatest shame, that he had been the kind of boy a mother would not want.

“Did she know you had magery?” asked Luap.

“No, sir. She was sure I had none; my brothers, she said, had shown it younger than I did.”

A silence followed. Aris looked up to see that the Marshal-General’s face had contracted in a black scowl. Luap stared at nothing, across the room. Finally the Marshal-General shook out his shoulders and looked at Aris. “Well—she was wrong, quite clearly. When did you find out what powers you had?”

“It was the puppy.” He hadn’t told them about the puppy; he tried to make it brief, and avoid that difficult moment with Seri. A favored pet, accidentally injured, and the pressure of his grief. “The cowman had already told me I was good with animals,” he said. “I liked the stables and byres; the beasts were quiet with me, and the men showed me how to work with them. But all I’d done was what they told me, until the puppy.” The huntsman had said it was hopeless; the cowman had said the same. Broken spine, soon death, and the sooner the better; the huntsman wanted to put the pup out of its misery. He had burst into tears again, and again an adult had been disgusted with him, though this time not cruel. Yer not cryin’ ’bout the pup, the huntsman had said. Yer cryn’ ’bout yer ma and da and that sun-lost count, may he die in the dark.

He had held the whimpering, shivering pup, that had made such a mess in his arms, and felt Seri behind him, also shivering. Then the familiar prickle he had felt so often before without doing anything—without guessing what it was. His hands itched, stung, moved almost without his knowing. He ran a finger down the pup’s back to the soft pulpiness where the count’s bootheel landed. He tried to imagine what should be there, what it should feel like. The pup rolled in his hands suddenly, squirming, and slapped his face with its wet pink tongue . . . and he’d fallen asleep where he sat, with Seri holding his head.

By the time he’d wakened, the pup had run off somewhere; Seri, the cautious, had said it was best. Before he could argue with her, the remaining servants had rushed in with word of an advancing peasant army. He never saw the pup again, to be sure he’d healed it. But in the next few seasons and years, he had plenty of opportunities to try out his powers. Seri argued for caution, for secrecy, but later helped him use—and hide—what he could do.

“I thought at first it was for animals only,” he explained, now once more calm, with the story far enough from his mother. “After what the cowman said—well—I asked to work with the beasts, wherever I was, and found I could help them. Seri said to start with little things, so if I couldn’t do it, it wouldn’t matter so much. Scratch on a cow’s udder, a sore teat, lameness from stepping on something sharp, that kind of thing. I couldn’t always heal it, but I could usually make it better. Then one place at lambing time, the shepherd wanted my help because my hands were so small—”

And lamb after lamb he delivered, in the cold rain of that week, had lived . . . they had all lived. The shepherd, who had taught him the old hard truth that sheep are born looking for a place to die, had taken his hands and spread them, looking for the gods’ mark, he’d said. He’d found nothing, but Aris had slept for a week when the lambing was over, so deep asleep that Seri had had to clean him where he lay, like a baby. It was natural, then, when the shepherd’s wife’s next baby came out blue and still, for the shepherd to thrust the limp bundle into his hands and growl, “It’s a lamb, lad—save it!”

“The baby lived?” asked the Marshal-General.

“Oh, yes. She’s a healthy child; it was just something about the birthing.” He paused, trying to think what to tell next. Not how frightened he had been; Gird wouldn’t want to hear that. The shepherd had assumed his talent came from Alyanya; he himself wasn’t sure. The only magery he’d seen was a dance of light by his father and brothers when he was very small, one Midwinter Feast. He’d been told Esea gave them magery, and that made sense, for the light dance. But healing? No one had even mentioned the possibility. In that remote village, once the war passed, all anyone cared about was sowing and tending and harvest, the daily routine, into which he fit happily. No one really cared how he healed, or where the power came from, so long as it worked.

“But you had no family—who’d you live with?” asked Luap, leaning forward. Aris grinned and spread his hands.

“After the war, sir, there’s many not in the right place . . . we worked in well enough, here and there, until things settled a bit. Then that shepherd, he took us into his family.”

“It must have been—” Luap coughed, spat, and went on. “It must have been very different from what you knew before.” Aris did not miss the keen glance the Marshal-General shot at his luap.

“It was, sir, but—but for missing the people I knew, it was better.”

“Better!” That from both of them, clearly surprise and disbelief.

Aris felt his face reddening. “Before, sir . . . my tutor and some others, they didn’t think I should spend so much time with Seri, or in the stables with the animals. We’ve been lucky; I know that. Except for that one bad winter, we’ve always had enough, and we’ve always been together. Once I found out what I could do, what the feeling was for, I felt happier than I’d ever been.”

“Hmmph.” That was the Marshal-General, giving his luap another look Aris couldn’t read. “Well, then: if things have gone so well, why come to me?”

This part he could tell without a hitch. From the shepherd’s child, to another in the vill born apparently dead, from those to a child with fever, a man injured by falling rock, a woman poisoned by bad grain . . . he had begun testing his powers on people as well as livestock. When the village saw how each attempt at healing wore on him, they were careful in their requests, and Seri protected him as best she could. Then came the first request from a neighboring vill in the same hearthing, a child kicked by a plowhorse. Another, from another vill, then another and another. He had come to be known all through that hearthing, as the boy who could heal what herblore could not. Most of the time, he worked with animals, learning all he could of each kind, but when the calls came, he would go and heal the sick and injured. Seri stood between him and the world, the warm hand at his back, the one who remembered that he needed food after, the one who would sometimes scold those who hadn’t tried herblore first.

“Then the Code came,” Aris said, meeting the Marshal-General’s gaze directly. “Of course we’d all heard of you, sir, and I’d seen a Marshal in the market towns. Our vill has a yeoman-marshal; Seri and I drilled with the other younglings as we grew tall enough. No one thought anything wrong about my healing and being in the barton as a junior. I don’t know how many knew I was mageborn, but no one questioned me. Until last harvest-time.”

Last harvest-time, the new Marshal of Whitehill grange had come to inspect each barton on his rolls, and with him, he’d brought the new version of Gird’s Code. All the village stood in the barton to hear him read it, nodding their heads at familiar phrases—it wasn’t that different—until the clause about magery.

Aris felt the now-familiar tremor in his hands, and locked them together. “It said, sir, that no form of magery could be tolerated, that what seemed good was really evil in intent and act, and forbade the mageborn to use, or anyone to profit by, magery. Of course everyone looked at me, and the Marshal stopped reading. ‘Do you have a mageborn survivor in this vill?’ he asked. Some nodded, and some didn’t—I think they wanted to hide me, protect me. I raised my hand, and he called me forth. ‘Do you practice evil magicks, boy?’ he asked. Sir, I could hardly answer. I had healed, yes: that hand of days, I’d healed a serpent bite. But evil? I said so, that I had healed, and he drew back as if I’d thrown fire at him. Our yeoman-marshal stood up for me, then, and said I’d caused no trouble, nor had a bad heart, but the Marshal was firm that my magery was evil. If I had no bad heart, he said, I’d be willing to forswear it, never use it again. The people sighed at that, but he overrode them. I could not be in the barton, he said, if I used magery, nor could they harbor me. It was in the Code, he said.”

“What did you do?”

“I said I was sorry, and would do so no more, though I couldn’t see how healing was evil. He bade the yeoman-marshal watch me closely, and warned me that he would tolerate no magery in his grange.” Aris looked at the Marshal-General again. “He said you knew best, sir, and if you said it was evil, then it was. I did my best, after that. The village folk were troubled in their minds; a few said I must have charmed them, to make my power seem good, but most wished naught had happened. They still came to me, many of them, when someone was sick, or a beast hurt. The yeoman-marshal tried to make them quit, but he couldn’t. He asked couldn’t I do something, short of using magery, but I don’t have what Seri’s folk call a parrion of herblore: I don’t know any way but the power. And it came to hurt, sir . . . it rises up in me like water in a spring, when I see someone in need . . . I fell sick myself, late in winter, and Seri said that caused it. She said we had to come to you, because the Code is yours, and perhaps you didn’t know that magery could be healing power.”

“I had heard it could be; I never knew it so.” The Marshal-General leaned forward; Aris could see doubt in his expression. “You say you had seen little use of magicks by your own folk before—did you never see someone charmed?”

Aris shook his head. “Not that I know of. Others have told me . . . it makes them think they want to do something, or like someone.”

“And people do like you.” The Marshal-General said that flatly. “Seri says everyone in your household liked you.”

“You think I charmed them?”

“Perhaps you didn’t mean to; a child may not know what it does. But I worry about it, lad. From what Seri says, even my own reaction to you. . . .”

Aris could not think of anything to say. He had been ready for anger, even punishment . . . but he had not expected this. The Marshal-General, looking steadily at him, apparently saw an expression that meant something, and relaxed, sighing.

“No, I don’t think you are using magicks, not even without your knowledge. You’re too relaxed; you weren’t like that while healing. I’ve seen Luap here make light; he gets a faraway look. But I’m still worried. You seem a nice enough lad, no harm to you; Seri’s talked my ears half off explaining about you and your family. Yet . . . there was a reason for the Code to forbid all magicks.”

Aris let out the breath he had held. Gird waited, as if for Aris to say something, then went on.

“The magelords misused it, misused it so badly that what everyone remembers is the misuse, not the right use,” He said “right use” as if it hurt his mouth. “None of us know what the right use would be like, not having seen it, so judging the difference—knowing when the use is right and when it’s wrong—would be difficult, if any of us could do it at all. Tell me, lad, have you ever misused your healing magick?”

Aris had followed the argument Gird was making; it made more sense than what his own Marshal had said, that magery was inherently evil. He spoke his thoughts aloud. “I had thought, Marshal-General, that healing was good in itself—and because it was good, then that use of magery was good. I never used it for anything but healing; but . . .” He stopped, trying to remember all the details of each healing, even in that abstraction he noticed that Gird’s luap watched him closely. “I suppose, sir . . . if the gods meant someone to die, for some reason, then healing that person would be bad, and not good. Or not being able to heal completely . . .” He remembered the child kicked in the head by a horse, whose life he had saved, but the child remained mute and subject to fits, dying a few years later of a fever . . . the parents had not sought his help then. He told Gird about it. “Perhaps that was a misuse of magery, although at the time, I thought only of the child’s life.”

Gird nodded. “It may have been, though I agree you did not mean harm. But I’ve seen a man who meant no harm bury the tip of his scythe in a child’s belly during harvest: the harm is done, with or without malice. I am glad to see that you recognize that, that you are willing to consider what harm you may have done.” He glanced at his luap before going on. “Have you ever used your healing magicks to gain something unfairly? To force others to do what you wished? To cause a pain that you might gain approval for relieving it?”

“No!” Aris heard his voice rise, childishly, and took a long breath before continuing. “Sir, I would not know how to cause a pain; the pains people come with hurt enough. I have—I have told people what they must do to help me, sometimes, as in pulling a broken limb straight, or cleaning a wound. As for gain—some have given me food, afterwards, and if that is wrong, then I have been wrong, but I never asked, sir. Seri will tell you.”

“Seri,” Gird said gruffly, “is a young lass growing into a woman, and you are a young lad; in Seri’s eyes you are a hero who will never do wrong.”

Aris felt his face burning; it took all his will to meet Gird’s eyes. “Seri doesn’t lie, sir,” he said through locked teeth. “She wouldn’t, even if she were—”

“A lass in love?” finished Gird when he hesitated. “You may be right—but even if you are, I had to hear it from you. You are about to cause me a lot of trouble, lad, and I want to be sure it’s worth it.”

“Cause you trouble?” The last thing he wanted to do was cause trouble, and he could not imagine what trouble he would cause.

Gird’s deep laugh surprised him. “Yes—how do you think your Marshal will like it when I change the Code to allow healing? Or the others who think as he does that all magicks are evil, that there are no good uses of a bad tool? And Luap here will have a lot of work to do, writing out new versions of the Code to be sent all over. I will have arguments from the Marshals and others who are afraid of any magicks; I will have complaints about changes—you don’t think that’s trouble?”

He could hardly believe what he was hearing. “Then—”

“Aris, I believe your healing is good, and your intentions good. I will insist on some restrictions, both for your own good and to calm peoples’ fears: you are still young, you would have guidance if you were a farm lad learning to scythe, let alone someone who can save lives. But of course you must heal, and more than that I give you leave to train other mageborn in the use of that gift, if you can. If anything will reconcile our peoples, it will be the right use of magicks, using them to help and not harm.”