He woke just at dawn, to find the elves standing in a circle around the two of them. Their elflight had drawn in around them, leaving Aris and Seri to the dawnlight. Seri looked as sleepy as he felt; in the cold predawn light, the dried blood on her clothes looked like smears of black mud. Aris scrambled up, uncertain of many things. The elven leader neither smiled nor frowned.
"We have no memory of any such as you," he said. "The blending of your lights last night . . . this is new. In all our memory, none of this lady's race has ever called such light, and we know no other living person with the magery among the mageborn." He looked at the cluster of trees, motionless now in their posture of anguish, blackened as if burnt, leafless, the ground beneath them ash-gray. "And there is the work of the iynisin, the un-singers, those who hate the living trees for the One Tree's choice. We found their blood on your blades . . . and I say we do not understand. We knew Gird, but we do not know you." The elves came together; their light brightened so that Aris could hardly see their faces. "We do not condemn you, for the iynisin blood you shed. But we do not commend you, for those trees which the iynisin blasted, and the creatures dead with them, and the spring now tainted. Heal that, if you can—if not, you have a long journey afoot, and the gods will deal with you."
The elves vanished, withdrawing their light with them; where they went, Aris could not see in the glare of the risen sun. He blinked; Seri came to him and put an arm around his shoulders. She was shivering; they both were. Around them, the new grass sprang, somewhat trampled but green and healthy; it stretched to the edge of the hollow. But the trees, and under the trees—all that was dead, not only dead but a death that held no promise of rebirth. Aris felt his mouth dry with fear as much as thirst. How could he heal that?
Gingerly, they moved into the twisted shadows of those twisted trees. The earth beneath felt dead, as if they walked on salt or iron filings. When they came to the horses—what had been the horses—Seri gave a choked cry and ran forward. Whatever magery the iynisin used had killed them as well, drawing them into strange unhorselike shapes as it worked, leaving the dead bodies hardly recognizable, the very hairs of mane and tail stiff as thorns. Aris moved past the horses to the spring, which the evening before they could have heard bubbling from here.
In its hollow, a plug of dirty wet earth like mucus, and a thin black stain along the line of the beck. It stank of death and decay, as disgusting a smell as the shambles in the lower market. Aris prodded the sodden earth with a stick that shattered in his hand. He was going to have to dig it out with his fingers. He shuddered; he did not want to touch the oozing slime. Behind him, he could hear Seri's boots scuffing the dead earth, the shriveled leaves. She was probably trying to do something about the horses, but he knew he had to clear the spring first. That was the earth's lifeblood.
He laid his hand just above the lowest part of the spring's hollow, trying not to smell it, and tried to feel his way into it. Nothing. Grimacing, Aris plunged his fingers into the cold, slimy mess and tugged. It felt worse than anything he'd ever touched. Gobs of cold stinking goo came off; he wiped the stuff from his hands on the ground beside the spring and reached in again. It's cursed, he thought to himself. There's nothing healthy in there at all; it's all gone wrong. Something warmer than the rest wriggled against his fingers and he almost cried out; when he yanked his hand free this time, he saw a dank tendril pull itself back into the muck.
Seri's hand on his shoulder felt as hot as a firebrand. "I hope Father Gird knows what he's doing," she said.
"He didn't do this," Aris said, wiping his hand on the dry earth again, and wishing he didn't have to put it back in there with whatever that was. "The iynisin did this." And us, he thought, because we came out here not knowing what we were doing.
"Can you heal it?" Seri asked, as calmly as if she were asking if someone could weave a fircone pattern.
"I'm trying," Aris said, putting his hand back on the damp hole. Was it any less slimy? Could he feel even a trickle of something that might be clean water?
"It doesn't look like it." Seri's face, when he glanced at her, gave no hint to any other meaning than the words themselves. "It looks as if you're digging muck out of a smelly hole—not healing a spring."
Aris felt a blinding rage, a white hot boiling fire that nearly escaped through his teeth. He clenched them, and looked at her through the flickering blaze. Her calm face . . . her eyes that were not looking at him, or the spring, or anything else. He saw the tears rise, glittering, in the early sun, and overflow; she did not even try to blink them away. His rage fled as suddenly as it had come. When he could get his breath back, he said "I can't reach my magery. You're right—I'm just digging and hoping."
"Aris!" She threw her arms around him so suddenly and so tightly that he lost his balance and they both nearly fell into the spring's hollow. "I'm
frightened
. I don't know what this means, what the iynisin were doing, what the elves meant—and the horses are dead and all the trees and there's no water and—"
She had never been frightened but once that he knew of; he had always relied on her. She had been awake last night when the iynisin came; she had fought with far more skill than he . . . and now she lay against him, shuddering all over like a frightened child. As they both were, he realized.
"I am too," he said. He could not even stroke her hair, not with his hands soiled by whatever curse the iynisin had laid on the spring. "I am, and I don't know what to do about it." For a long moment they huddled together. Oddly, saying aloud that he was frightened made the fright more manageable. It wasn't some nameless horror, some impossible alien presence: it was fright, the same ordinary fright that he had felt before in his life, worse perhaps because they were in real and not imagined danger.
As he thought this, warmth seemed to flow over him. He glanced up. The sun had risen well above the lip of the hollow by now, and its power seemed no less than it should be. He was frightened, hungry, tired . . . but alive, and warmer every moment. He shifted, and Seri too sat up.
"How silly," she said. "So that's what that kind of fright feels like. Ugh!" She shivered, but more as someone who steps unaware on spilled water than fear. "And it seemed to go on forever, but it couldn't have. . . ."
"No." Aris's hands had nearly dried. He looked at the moist hole, the gobs of wet muck he had torn out. "I wonder why I thought that would work. You were right; it needs real healing. And I can't."
"What if they come again?" Seri said. "It's daylight now; supposedly they can't come in daylight, but—"
Aris spread his dirty hands. "I don't know. We'll fight, I suppose, and if that's not enough, we'll die." Until he heard the words come out of his mouth, he did not know how serious he was. They might die; they might have died last night and if the iynisin came back they probably would. He didn't think the elves would come back to help them.
Suddenly it seemed ludicrous. Yesterday they had been eager to leave Fin Panir, eager to ride out into the unknown and find adventure, and all in one night they'd had more adventure than he had ever imagined. And he was tired, hungry, filthy, and quite ready to spend the rest of his days playing scribe to Luap, if only he could get back there.
Or was he? He met Seri's eyes, to find the same speculative look coming back at him. She, too, had gotten more than she bargained for, but now she was coming to grips with it. He didn't want to go back and be Luap's scribe, the tame healer of the safe city, doling out dollops of power to close cuts and ease bruises and mend the odd broken bone. It wasn't contempt for those sick or hurt . . . it was simply that others could do that. Herblore and time would heal most of it, and the healers he'd been training could do the rest. No—he wanted to find out if there was something only he could do. He had wanted a challenge, and here it was, and he wanted to meet it. He felt a smile stretch his grimy face. Seri grinned back.
"We were idiots," she said. "We came out here expecting nothing worse than a stray thief, when we knew—we
should
have known—that these empty lands are empty for a reason. We were playing at being careful, and it nearly killed us. It's not maneuvers: it's real."
"Right." Aris stood up. The spring still stank; the trees still arched in anguish over them. "So how much water was left in the kettle when the elves left?" Very little, it turned out. Aris sloshed it thoughtfully back and forth, and did not pour it into the mug Seri held. "Wait," he said. "I'm thinking of something. Let's go up and see if there's dew on the grass."
Out of the hollow, the wide plain lay lush and green; the dew they could lick from the grass refreshed without satisfying. Aris looked back. In full daylight, the hollow looked even worse. They could not leave it like that, even though it meant spending another night far from any settlement. He hoped the dead trees would burn.
The column of smoke rose, oily and rank, from the dead horses and twisted trees. They had lighted it from their campfire, after carrying their remaining gear, including the kettle with its swallow or two of water, up out of the hollow. Seri, who had served with her grange's fire patrol, had told Aris which way it would burn, sunsetting, away from the city.
"And this season, with the new green, it should not go far, and be no worse than a storm-lighted fire."
It looked worse; the trees writhed in the fire as if they were still alive, popping and cracking and showering sparks. The smoke twisted, billowed, clear evidence to anyone as far as the horizon that something dire had happened. A back gust whirled it up Aris's nose; he coughed and shook his head. They waited; the fire burned away from them at last, the trees shattering into fallen coals. Without their shape, the hollow looked naked, vulnerable. Aris whispered an apology without realizing he'd done it until Seri looked at him.
"I was thinking of the Lady, of Alyanya," he said. "You remember what you told me, long ago—that the springs are sacred because that's where she gives her blood to the world?"
"Yes." Seri's ash-streaked face looked years older than the day before. He thought his probably did too. "And defiling a spring is like raping the earth itself. And all we can do is burn—" Her voice broke.
Aris looked away, blinking back his own tears. His gaze followed the smoke column into the sky; he grieved at its stain on what had been clean blue from one rim of the world to the other. It rose more gracefully now that it had consumed most of its tainted fuel, its black ugliness paling to gray as it burned slowly along the grass. "Come with me," he said finally, taking the kettle and starting back down the slope toward what had been trees.
"Wait, Ari—it's too hot." Seri caught at his arm. Then as if she had touched his mind instead, she moved with him. They said nothing more, even when the heat of fire beat on their faces, even when the coals they could not avoid scorched their boots. Aris found the spring's deep hollow surrounded by smoldering logs; he kicked one aside and knelt on the hot soil. The spring's outlet, first plugged by the iynisin's foulness, had burnt to a solid cake of muck in the fire. Aris tipped the kettle, as carefully as if pouring into a tiny cup. He knew no words to say, but he heard Seri chanting.
The first drop of water seemed to hang long in midair, sparkling in the light of the sun like a great jewel. Aris watched it hit the center of the original spring. It sat on the surface a moment, then made a tiny round spot of darkness. The next fell, and the next. Aris strained to hold the kettle steady, to have each drop fall exactly on the one before. He knew that was important, though not why. The sound of each drop falling echoed in his ears, as if they were hoofbeats, drumbeats, the tramp of armies . . . he had to keep the pattern, make the intervals regular. Drop by drop, he emptied the kettle and the dry, baked earth clogging the spring absorbed it.
When the last drop had fallen, and nothing happened, he started to shrug and stand. Then he felt his power return, as unaccountably as it had vanished. His hands itched and stung, he held them out over the single drop of moisture. Seri's hands gripped his shoulders; he felt her as a great reservoir of power, and drew upon it, trying to force a way past the obstruction. But it was like trying to heal a block of stone; he could tell he was doing something wrong. He sat back on his heels, enduring the torment of his unused power.
Then he realized . . . he had been trying
his
peoples' way, using force where violation had been the original wound. How could he use his power without repeating that violation? He tried to imagine it trickling out, as the water had, drop by drop, to be absorbed or not, as the spring—as the Lady chose. He cupped his hand gently over the damp spot, protecting it from the sun, the hot acrid air. A gust of cooler air brushed along his face. He looked up.
The smoke had shifted shape with the change in wind. Now it arched over him—over the spring—in almost the shape of a great gray horse.
Gird?
he thought. It could not be Gird's old horse . . . it was just smoke on the wind.
Thunder muttered; Seri's grip on his shoulders tightened. Another gust of cold wind made his skin roughen; he felt a sudden weakness as his power surged out of him as uncontrollably as a lightning bolt. He squeezed his eyes shut; when he opened them, rain stung his face. The sky had darkened, one of the spring storms, he thought, coming up unseen in the shadow of the smoke. Lightning flashed, so near that light and sound came together: he felt his teeth jar together. Rain fell harder, hissing on the hot coals that had been trees. Steam rose in swirls, blown by the wind. Perhaps the rain would waken the spring, when he had not. He huddled with Seri under the storm's lash, until it cleared as suddenly as it had begun. The last of the raindrops sank into that sterile soil; the surface seemed to dry almost instantly.
He felt a great tearing sadness. They had cleansed with fire, and the rain with water; he knew nothing else to do. He blinked the rain out of his lashes and looked up.