Part 14 (1/2)
Eyslk let the teapot down onto its hearth-hook too quickly, spilling water into the flames below. They spat and hissed like disgruntled cats.
”Ill? How ill?” She was already following him from the room, heading for their bedchamber beneath the loft stair.
”She's in a cold fever. Got a wretched cough. Can't seem to keep warm.”
She heard the cough as she entered her parents' room; it was a terrible, dry, hacking cough that wracked the bundled form on the bed.
”Mama?”
Deardru gazed up at her through glazed eyes, seeming not to recognize her own daughter. She shuddered, gasped breath into her lungs and began coughing again.
Eyslk put a hand to her forehead. It was, as her step-da had said, a cold fever, and Eyslk hadn't a clue as to what might cause it. She'd never seen the like. She wiped her palm on her woolen breeches, chewing her lip and trying to make sense of the picture-cold sweats, ruddy face, cough, chills. She sought one of her mother's hands to see if they might be swollen and found them both clenched fiercely beneath the covers, knuckles white.
”You've some healing, Eyslk,” said her step-da. ”What do you think it is?”
She shook her head. ”I don't know, da. I've never seen it.” She chewed another tiny strip from her lower lip. ”I'll get Roe Kettletoft. She'll know.”
But Roe Kettletoft was just as boggled by Deardru's sudden illness as her daughter was. While Garradh-an-Caerluel occupied himself and his two sons with caring for their small flock of sheep, Eyslk and the village healer practiced their skills on his ailing wife with no result. She continued to cough, to s.h.i.+ver, to bathe herself in sweat. It seemed, in fact, as if their ministrations threw her into even deeper agony.
Her face screwed into a horrible grimace, her eyes all but rolled back in her head, Deardru finally brought the young healer to a rueful admission of defeat.
”I can do nothing for her, Eyslk,” Roe said. ”This is no ordinary sickness. I sense magic in it. Can someone have cast inyx on your mama?”
The very thought was terrifying. ”Who'd do such a thing?”
”I'm sure I don't know. My aidan is for healing, Eyslk. It goes no further than that, so I can't tell you. I'm desperate to believe no Hillwild would do such a thing to one of their own. I can only think it must be one of the strangers among us.”
”But why? Why would any of them want to hurt my mama?”
Roe shook her head. ”I've not the skills to tell, Eyslk. Perhaps Mistress Taminy can.”
Eyslk chewed yet another strip from her lip. She hated to pester Taminy with her family's problems, but what if Roe Kettletoft said was true, if her mother's illness was caused by a purposeful inyx?
Her step-father came in then, to see how his wife was faring. He was beside himself when Roe told him she could be of no help. He ranted at her at first, blaming her, denigrating her skills. Then he drifted into a terrible, dark calm, and Eyslk was afraid he'd given Deardru up for lost.
When she had seen Roe Kettletoft from their house and returned to her mother's room, he looked up at her from the sickbed, clutching his wife's knotted hands and said, ”You must ask your Mistress to help us, Eyslk.”
She chilled. ”But, Da, she's so much more important things to do than-”
”Save the life of an innocent woman? I heard a bit of what Roe had to say about inyx. If someone's Weaving against your ma, it's sure that none of us is able to stop it. But Taminy could.”
”I'd be afraid to ask.”
”Afraid? Of what? If she's so dear and kind and loving as you keep telling us, how could she not help?”
Deardru groaned then-a horrid, thick, painful sound that rocked Eyslk to the soles of her boots.
Her step-da continued to gaze up at her, his dark eyes hot and demanding. ”Get up to Hrofceaster, girl. Beg if you have to. If that doesn't work, I'll beg.”
Still, she hesitated.
Garradh-an-Caerluel's face twisted with anguish. ”For G.o.d's sake, child, it's your mama's life!”
She ran-coatless, hoodless, ignoring the cold-all the way up the steep path to Hrofceaster. To beg.
”Please, mistress, do forgive me.” Airleas delivered his impa.s.sioned plea to Taminy's back. She would not turn her face to him, gazing instead from the window of her audience chamber into the courtyard below.
”What did you do, Airleas?”
He held his breath, quivering. ”Don't you know?”
”Yes. I wondered if you did.”
He breathed again. ”I Wove something bad. Without meaning too, though. I didn't realize I was Weaving at all. I . . . I was just angry.”
”At whom?”
”At . . . at Broran. For mocking me. He calls me 'midge' and insults me every chance he gets, and-”
”So he insulted you and you hurled inyx at him.”
”Well . . . no. Not exactly.” Airleas shuffled his feet beneath his chair. ”He walked away from me. He said he was going to tell Catahn I wasn't learning anything.”
”Were you-learning anything?”
”Yes, but . . .”
She turned to face him suddenly, her face caught half in shadow, half in light, making her expression difficult to read.
Tentatively, he tried to touch her with his aidan.
Blocked.
”But?” she prompted him.
He looked at his mud-stained knees. ”I was . . . I was being stubborn, I guess.”
”You guess.”
Humor tickled him. He kept his mouth straight. ”I know was being stubborn.”
”So you don't really think Broran was off the trail in walking off on you.”
”I suppose not.”
”Then why were you angry at him?”
”He just makes me feel bad.”