Part 14 (1/2)

The villagers shook their heads. Gift was a brave woman, but there was such a thing as being too brave. Or brave, they said around the tavern table, in the wrong way, or the wrong place, d'you see. n.o.body should ought to meddle with sorcery that ain't born to it. Nor with sorcerers. You forget that. They seem the same as other folk. But they ain't like other folk. Seems there's no harm in a curer. Heal the foot rot, clear a caked udder. That's all fine. But cross one and there you are, fire and shadows and curses and falling down in fits. Uncanny. Always was uncanny, that one. Where'd he come from, anyhow? Answer me that.

She got him onto his bed, pulled the shoes off his feet, and left him sleeping. Berry came in late and drunker than usual, so that he fell and gashed his forehead on the andiron. Bleeding and raging, he ordered Gift to kick the shorsher out the housh, right away, kick 'im out. Then he vomited into the ashes and fell asleep on the hearth. She hauled him onto his pallet, pulled his shoes off his feet, and left him sleeping. She went to look at the other one. He looked feverish, and she put her hand on his forehead. He opened his eyes, looking straight into hers without expression. ”Emer,” he said, and closed his eyes again.

She backed away from him, terrified.

In her bed, in the dark, she lay and thought: He knew the wizard who named me. Or I said my name. Maybe I said it out loud in my sleep. Or somebody told him. But n.o.body knows it. n.o.body ever knew my name but the wizard, and my mother. And they're dead, they're dead... I said it in my sleep...

But she knew better.

She stood with the little oil lamp in her hand, and the light of it shone red between her fingers and golden on her face. He said her name. She gave him sleep.

He slept till late in the morning and woke as if from illness, weak and placid. She was unable to be afraid of him. She found that he had no memory at all of what had happened in the village, of the other sorcerer, even of the six coppers she had found scattered on the bedcover, which he must have held clenched in his hand all along.

”No doubt that's what Alder gave you,” she said. ”The flint!”

”I said I'd see to his beasts at... at the pasture between the rivers, was it?” he said, getting anxious, the hunted look coming back into him, and he got up from the settle.

”Sit down,” she said. He sat down, but he sat fretting.

”How can you cure when you're sick?” she said.

”How else?” he said.

But he quieted down again presently, stroking the grey cat.

Her brother came in. ”Come on out,” he said to her as soon as he saw the curer dozing on the settle. She stepped outside with him.

”Now I won't have him here no more,” Berry said, coming master of the house over her, with the great black gash in his forehead, and his eyes like oysters, and his hands juddering.

”Where'll you go?” she said.

”It's him has to go.”

”It's my house. Bren's house. He stays. Go or stay, it's up to you.”

”It's up to me too if he stays or goes, and he goes. You haven't got all the sayso. All the people say he ought to go. He's not canny.”

”Oh, yes, since he's cured half the herds and got paid six coppers for it, time for him to go, right enough! I'll have him here as long as I choose, and that's the end of it.”

”They won't buy our milk and cheese,” Berry whined.

”Who says that?”

”Sans wife. All the women.”

”Then I'll carry the cheeses to Oraby,” she said, ”and sell em there. In the name of honor, brother, go wash out that cut, and change your s.h.i.+rt. You stink of the pothouse.” And she went back into the house. ”Oh, dear,” she said, and burst into tears.

”What's the matter, Emer?” said the curer, turning his thin face and strange eyes to her.

”Oh, it's no good, I know it's no good. Nothing's any good with a drunkard,” she said. She wiped her eyes with her ap.r.o.n. ”Was that what broke you,” she said, ”the drink?”

”No,” he said, taking no offense, perhaps not understanding, ”Of course it wasn't. I beg your pardon,” she said.

”Maybe he drinks to try to be another man,” he said. ”To alter, to change...”

”He drinks because he drinks,” she said. ”With some, that's all it is. I'll be in the dairy, now. I'll lock the house door. There's... there's been strangers about. You rest yourself. It's bitter out.” She wanted to be sure that he stayed indoors out of harm's way, and that n.o.body came hara.s.sing him. Later on she would go into the village, have a word with some of the sensible people, and put a stop to this rubbishy talk, if she could.

When she did so, Alder's wife Tawny and several other people agreed with her that a squabble between sorcerers over work was nothing new and nothing to take on about. But San and his wife and the tavern crew wouldn't let it rest, it being the only thing of interest to talk about for the rest of the winter, except the cattle dying. ”Besides,” Tawny said, ”my man's never averse to paying copper where he thought he might have to pay ivory.” ”Are the cattle he touched keeping afoot, then?” ”So far as we can see, they are. And no new sickenings.” ”He's a true sorcerer, Tawny,” Gift said, very earnest. ”I know it.” ”That's the trouble, love,” said Tawny. ”And you know it! This is no place for a man like that. Whoever he is, is none of our business, but why did he come here, is what you have to ask.” ”To cure the beasts,” Gift said.

Sunbright had not been gone three days when a new stranger appeared in town: a man riding up the south road on a good horse and asking at the tavern for lodging. They sent him to Sans house, but San's wife screeched when she heard there was a stranger at the door, crying that if San let another witch-man in the door her baby would be born dead twice over. Her screaming could be heard for several houses up and down the street, and a crowd, that is, ten or eleven people, gathered between Sans house and the tavern.

”Well, that won't do,” said the stranger pleasantly. ”I can't be bringing on a birth untimely. Is there maybe a room above the tavern?”

”Send him on out to the dairy,” said one of Alder's cowboys. ”Gift's taking whatever comes.” There was some sn.i.g.g.e.ring and shus.h.i.+ng.

”Back that way,” said the taverner.

”Thanks,” said the traveler, and led his horse along the way they pointed.

”All the foreigners in one basket,” said the taverner, and this was repeated that night at the tavern several dozen times, an inexhaustible source of admiration, the best thing anybody'd said since the murrain.

Gift was in the dairy, having finished the evening milking. She was straining the milk and setting out the pans. ”Mistress,” said a voice at the door, and she thought it was the curer and said, ”Just a minute while I finish this,” and then turning saw a stranger and nearly dropped the pan. ”Oh, you startled me!” she said. ”What can I do for you, then?”

”I'm looking for a bed for the night.”

”No, I'm sorry, there's my lodger, and my brother, and me. Maybe San, in the village-”

”They sent me here. They said, ”All the foreigners in one basket.”” The stranger was in his thirties, with a blunt face and a pleasant look, dressed plain, though the cob that stood behind him was a good horse. ”Put me up in the cow barn, mistress, it'll do fine. It's my horse needs a good bed; he's tired. I'll sleep in the barn and be off in the morning. Cows are a pleasure to sleep with on a cold night. I'll be glad to pay you, mistress, if two coppers would suit, and my name's Hawk.”

”I'm Gift,” she said, a bit fl.u.s.tered, but liking the fellow. ”All right, then, Master Hawk. Put your horse up and see to him. There's the pump, there's plenty of hay. Come on in the house after. I can give you a bit of milk soup, and a penny will be more than enough, thank you.” She didn't feel like calling him sir, as she always did the curer. This one had nothing of that lordly way about him. She hadn't seen a king when she first saw him, as with the other one.

When she finished in the dairy and went to the house, the new fellow, Hawk, was squatting on the hearth, skillfully making up the fire. The curer was in his room asleep. She looked in, and closed the door.

”He's not too well,” she said, speaking low. ”He was curing the cattle away out east over the marsh, in the cold, for days on end, and wore himself out.”

As she went about her work in the kitchen, Hawk lent her a hand now and then in the most natural way, so that she began to wonder if men from foreign parts were all so much handier about the house than the men of the Marsh. He was easy to talk with, and she told him about the curer, since there was nothing much to say about herself.

”They'll use a sorcerer and then ill-mouth him for his usefulness,” she said. ”It's not just.”

”But he scared em, somehow, did he?”

”I guess he did. Another curer came up this way, a fellow that's been by here before. Doesn't amount to much that I can see. He did no good to my cow with the caked bag, two years ago. And his balm's just pig fat, I'd swear. Well, so, he says to Otak, you're taking my business. And maybe Otak says the same back. And they lose their tempers, and they did some black spells, maybe. I guess Otak did. But he did no harm to the man at all, but fell down in a swoon himself. And now he doesn't remember any more about it, while the other man walked away unhurt. And they say every beast he touched is standing yet, and hale. Ten days he spent out there in the wind and the rain, touching the beasts and healing them. And you know what the cattleman gave him? Six pennies! Can you wonder he was a little rageous? But I don't say...” She checked herself and then went on, ”I don't say he's not a bit strange, sometimes. The way witches and sorcerers are, I guess. Maybe they have to be, dealing with such powers and evils as they do. But he is a true man, and kind.”

”Mistress,” said Hawk, ”may I tell you a story?”

”Oh, are you a teller? Oh, why didn't you say so to begin with! Is that what you are then? I wondered, it being winter and all, and you being on the roads. But with that horse, I thought you must be a merchant. Can you tell me a story? It would be the joy of my life, and the longer the better! But drink your soup first, and let me sit down to hear...”

”I'm not truly a teller, mistress,” he said with his pleasant smile, ”but I do have a story for you.” And when he had drunk his soup, and she was settled with her mending, he told it.

”In the Inmost Sea, on the Isle of the Wise, on Roke Island, where all magery is taught, there are nine Masters,” he began.