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.