The Healer of the Woods
an excerpt

ONE

I don’t know why I went that way up the slope from the valley to the falls. I never usually take that path; although wide and easy to walk, it’s slippery and smelly from the rotting leaves washed down from the upper levels of the forested slopes and it would be fatally easy to turn a foot and be injured.
But today I took that path and in consequence I saw the horse. I stopped short when I saw it. It was magnificent. It’s hide glowed a deep brown like a nut fresh cracked from the shell, contrasting with a pale gold mane and tail. It had a white blaze on its forehead, exactly diamond shaped, and I knew it instantly from deep learning as being one of the fabled horses of the Icewine River herds. It was saddled and bridled, the bridle looped with braid and precious stones. All the appurtenances necessary for a knight. I approached it with care, but it stood watching me come, and then tossed its head and stamped a hoof.
That was when I saw the injured man. The spell the horse had cast was broken at once, and I picked up my skirt and hurried forward across the small clearing. I knelt down by his side, and examined him.
I was counted as a good healer, although very young, and I had had an excellent teacher in Mistress Mione before she had gone through the weaver’s loom to the other side, leaving me her hut and her learning.
I checked this stranger over as carefully as if he were not one of the most handsome men I had ever seen, his face sculpted like the statues in the little church in the valley, his hair, although greened with slime, the same shade of nut brown as his horse. He was dressed in woollen clothing with touches of satin, sadly draggled now, but he had a baldrick and an empty scabbard, and no weapons on him.
I glanced up at the slope. A trail of broken branches and torn moss-beds showed where he had come down from the upper levels. The horse had not come that way, it must have picked its way down to find him.
“Let’s take a look, mystery man,” I murmured, and felt over his head and face. I could feel the pulses beating, and I could feel something else, a thread of unhealed something that made me examine him more carefully.
I found the splinters of wood embedded in his side and whistled gently under my breath. He had rolled through a patch of splint-fire and the pieces embedded in him would be causing his blood to fever.
I pulled my bag over and searched for the herbs I needed, looking around for water. The horse carried a water bottle, and I stood slowly and carefully, making encouraging noises. Horses were few and far between in the village, only the strong steady farm horses that were of use being tolerated to graze the precious grass. But I knew how to call this horse, how to steady him as I took the water bottle and unscrewed the silver cup. I stroked it appreciatively; silver would help the healing.
The trick of stroking medicine down an unconscious throat was easy, but extracting the splinters was not. I needed to be careful not to cut myself, and used a silk kerchief the man wore around his throat, a very strong and well muscled throat, I saw, before I looked away and concentrated on the splinters. They came out easily, but I parted the flesh with my cutting hook to check for broken-off ends. The wounds were empty, a little blood seeping. I reached for the bandages I always carried. The wool the rock-goats left in generous clumps on the rocks and snagged to branches could be washed, spun and then woven into almost magical bandages that healed without any help of herbs or casting of fortunes. I watched the bandages settle into the man’s side, and knelt back to consider what I should do next.
I was far from my hut, far above the valley, and this man was nearly as tall as a door, and would be as heavy. As I was thinking it, the horse came over and snuffed into the man’s hair.
He groaned and turned his head away.
“Not now, Celon, it’s too early to play.”
I wondered who Celon was, if it was the name of the horse, but the snuffing seemed to have roused him. He opened his eyes, and of course they were the heavenly blue of the midsummer night sky, with the impossibly long lashes only the most handsome of men could have without appearing womanish. His brows drew into a frown as he looked up into my face, which is not unhandsome, so I’ve been told by the lads at the dances.
“Who - are you?”
“Gria. And you?”
“Rhodri-Yesylt.”
I nodded. I had thought as much, that he must be one of the Yesylt Knights from the castle over the bridge on the next mountain ridge.
“You fell,” I said helpfully. “From up there.” I pointed and he looked, and made a face.
“I was attacked by a dire-wolf,” he said. “I must have left my sword buried in the foul creature. I tripped and my foot went out from under me.”
I glanced down at his left leg, and the boot seemed strained.
“You’ve probably sprained or broken your ankle, as well as falling through splint-fire.”
“Splint-fire? Where are the pieces? They need to be charmed out!”
“I’ve removed them, and bandaged you.”
“You?” He stared at me, and his expression hardened to scorn.
“Yes, me. Who else d’you see here, unless your horse bandaged you?”
His fingers found the bandage and fretted at it, and I slapped his hand away.
“Don’t be undoing all the good work! The bandage will come off when you’re healed.”
“You’re only a village witch! What d’you know about charming wounds?”
I sat back on my heels, staring at him, wondering why he had made that warding gesture with his right hand, a gesture I knew from deep learning was to ward away witches and warlocks of the worst kind, those who summon the dead spirits and feast from the emotions of the totally insane. I shook my head.
“I am not a witch. I’m a healer of the woods. That’s an honourable calling, I’ll have you know, and you need not bad-mouth it! I didn’t charm your wounds, I washed them out and bandaged them. The splinters are over there, buried away from harm.”
“Is there any of my blood on them?” he asked sharply, and I was about to make a sarcastic answer when I saw fear and anxiety in his face.
“No,” I said slowly. “No, there’s no blood, because I washed them out. I used your kerchief, and there’s some blood on that. I put it back in your pocket. You can get it washed - ”
“Yes, I’ll have to do that.” He relaxed slightly, then struggled to a sitting position, and a shudder ran through him, he grimaced and groaned.
“Broken or sprained,” I said with some satisfaction. “I’m not going to cut that boot off, it’s holding the swelling in.”
He glared at his swollen leg. “That’s my best pair of boots! You think a Yesylt Knight has money to throw around?”
“I wouldn’t know. I don’t know anything about the Yesylt Knights. Except that they’re mighty careless, to slip off a ledge like that!”
“I was attacked.”
“So you said.”
We glared at each other and there was a small apologetic cough behind me. Rhodri-Yesylt stiffened and glared, and I looked around. A girl, my ward and helper, slim and slight with a cloud of fair hair, Bee stood behind me, wearing a grey pinafore over her striped dress. As usual, and against orders, she had bare feet, her shoes tied by their laces and hung around her neck.
“Bee. I didn’t know you were in the woods.”
She opened her hands to show a double handful of wool sherds, tucked them carefully into the big pocket on the front of her pinafore, and came closer. She hummed interrogatively, and I gestured to the man.
“This is Rhodri-Yesylt, one of the knights from the castle yonder. He slipped and fell from up there.”
She looked up, and nodded, miming a man wielding a sword.
“Yes, he fought a dire-wolf.”
Bee nodded and hummed enthusiastically.
“You saw it?” Rhodri demanded, and flushed. “And saw me fall, I suppose?”
Bee shook her head and gestured to the higher rocks and imitated the leaping of the rock-goats.
“We need to get him down to the castle,” I said. Bee shook her head, and held it, moaning, rolling her eyes. I stared at her, and back at the knight.
“He’s still hurt in the head?”
I reached to feel for the pulses, and he slapped my hand away, overbalancing me so that I sat down with a hard shock, my skirts flying out. I glared at him, doubling my fists, and he glared back, obviously furiously angry, and Bee made a tutting noise and gestured to his head.
“You might have struck your head,” I said grittily. “You need me to look.”
“I don’t need! If you can help me to my feet, I can mount my horse - ”
“That you will not! Don’t be any more stupid than your training makes you! Mount the horse when you’ve damaged your ankle, rolled down a slope and probably knocked yourself into the middle of tomorrow. You’ll let me look.”
“I will not.”
But he had flopped back onto the grass and suddenly groaned aloud and rolled over, and vomited up his stomach contents. Bee watched with interest and I wondered distractedly why red-root always came up in vomit. I stood up and came around to the other side of him and helped him to wipe his mouth, gave him the water bottle to swill out the last of the vomit.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“You’ll be able to stand if I help you,” I said with matter of fact calm. “That’s right - don’t put any pressure on your foot - here’s Bee to help you.”
We managed to get him standing, swaying, blinking around the clearing. The horse came over and he gripped the saddle, putting his face into the horse’s side.
“My - sword - the pelt - ”
“That can wait. I’ll come and get it later, once we have you safely down off the mountain.”
“Did you know it smokes?”
“Smokes? What smokes?”
“The mountain. Over that ridge, there’s a scree slope and puffs and jets of smoke and a filthy stink come from them.”
I laughed aloud in relief. “Oh yes, the fumaroles!”
“The - what? What did you call them?”
I frowned suddenly. “I - I don’t know. Fumaroles. It was a word that just came to me about them. Look, just forget it, and let’s get on with healing you.”
“I don’t need your kind of healing. It’s not - proper for a Knight.”
“You can’t take the bandage off until you’ve healed. It’s impossible.”
“I can’t go back to the castle with a healer’s bandage.”
“Then you’ll have to stay in my hut until you’ve healed. If I can get you down there.”
I exchanged an anxious look with Bee and she made a pantomime of lifting. I frowned at her, but it had to be done.
I fetched out the bones, and rolled them, and murmured the spell, and between us we lifted the now light as a feather knight into his saddle, unknowing of the magic I had used. Bee mounted before him and took the reins. I tidied up my basket, scattered soil and moss over the vomit and led the horse down the path, hoping it would obey my murmurs and encouraging clicks of the tongue, and that it was as sure footed as the rock-goats that inhabited this lonely spur of forest-clothed rock.
TWO

My hut isn’t in the village proper. Mistress Mione had built it on a higher shelf of land, and I had inherited her place. I led the horse there, avoiding the villagers, avoiding the inevitable curious questions and speculations the knight would arouse.
Bee held the horse as I helped the knight down. He would not remember the journey, and I could devise a suitable lie for the feat of bringing him here. I brought him into the hut and made a hasty bed for him, laid him down and covered him. His eyes were still wide open, but there was nothing there, and would not be until I rolled the bones again and released the lifting spell. I put my bag away and went out to the horse again. Bee was struggling with the tack and I helped her strip it off and lay it over the fence rail of our small paddock. The wounded rock-goat eyed the horse with deep suspicion, and limped away to the further corner.
“I hope they don’t fight,” I murmured. “Small reason why they should, I suppose. He doesn’t seem to be limping so much today, we might be able to release him soon.”
The rock-goat had lowered his head and was cropping and the horse, released from bridle and saddle, did the same, tasting over the grass.
“We need some sort of shelter,” I said to Bee. “This is a horse used to being in a stable at night, locked away safely.”
She made small gestures and pictures of a stall and together we hauled some poles I had put by for the bean-bed later in the year. We thatched it with bracken, Bee’s small hands agile enough to thread the fronds in and out and make it wind and hopefully rain proof. I stood back and admired it, and Bee slipped a small dirty hand into mine and smiled at our handiwork, humming contentedly. I glanced down at her and absently picking a couple of caterpillars out of her hair put them safely on a bush.
We returned to the hut and I could examine Rhodri-Yesylt more carefully. I found the bruised and cut area on his head. I had to clip his hair, and then bathed the wound and put on an herbal fomentation to bring out the bruising and dead blood, and bandaged him. I managed to cut his boot off by snipping at the seams, and put the boot to one side to mend later. I could feel no breaks in the swollen ankle, and so I bandaged it firmly and made a tent to keep the blankets off it. When I was satisfied he would mend without mishap, I cast the bones and Rhodri-Yesylt slipped into a natural sleep.
“If he won’t go to the castle with a healer’s bandage around his side, he certainly won’t show up with one adorning his head,” I told Bee with relish and she gave me a wide mischievous smile and began to unload the pockets of her pinafore.
She had been busy; not only wool, but some mushrooms and flower heads. Those went to the cooking of a meal, as she busied herself washing the wool. I watched her, wondering yet again if I would ever hear her speak. I did not miss the chatter of people around me; if I needed company, I took some of my weaving down to the village to exchange for goods. I had grown expert in interpreting Bee’s humming and the pantomimes she made with her hands.

The knight woke from his sleep towards evening. He woke and lay staring around at the hut. I daresay it was a strange place to a man brought up in a cold draughty castle. He reached out a hand to stroke the walls of felted wool, the strong upright live-willow that made the framework and gave off a pleasant scent of the wild woods to cover the smoke of the fire in the stone hearth.
“How d’you feel?” I asked, going across to him with a lighted dip lamp.
“My head aches, and my leg. But you said - splint-fire - are you sure you got all the splinters out?”
I nodded. “Otherwise you’d be in agony by now, wouldn’t you? Have you seen it’s effects, then?”
“Yes. It needs the most powerful charms a mage can conjure to overcome the poison.”
I nodded again. The ways of mages are not those of a healer of the woods. That was one of the things I knew from Mistress Mione. Mages cast spells, spin fortune’s wheel and draw their strength from forces no healer will touch.
“Are you hungry?” I asked and he nodded. I helped him sit up, propping him with a bolster, smoothing the blanket over him.
“How did you get me here?”
“Oh, we managed to rig a sling and the horse brought you down.”
“My horse! I need to see to it - ”
I pressed him back. “He’s quite safe. We made a shelter of sorts, and the rock-goat will warn us of any dangers.”
“Rock-goat? What’s a rock-goat?”
I stared at him in astonishment. “You don’t know about the rock-goats? What do they teach you in that castle?”
He flushed. I had washed his hair and his face and he had become even more handsome.
“We learn the ways of the Yesylt-Knighthood,” he said stiffly.
“Hmm. And nothing about the natural animals in the land about you, except if they are good to hunt, no doubt!”
“I was on the track of a tusker-man. We’d been told there was one in the area. They’re dangerous. Killers.”
“If you corner anything it can be a killer. I’ve never heard of one coming this side of the mountain. They usually stay over the next ridge, in another valley.”
Rhodri stared suspiciously at me. “How do you know about them?”
I shrugged as I stood up to fetch him some food and drink.
“My teacher, Mistress Mione, told me. This was her hut before she died.”
He looked around. “It’s a fine place,” he said slowly. “But it’s more of a tent than a hut, isn’t it? A two-story tent,” he amended, looking at the ladder opposite.
“Well yes - in that the walls are made of material, and live-willow.”
“Live-willow?” he stared at the wall and shrank away, making his odd gesture against evil. “That can grow up in an instant and imprison you, suffocate you.”
“Don’t be daft,” I said crossly. “Nothing can grow that quickly! This hut took Mistress Mione years to grow, and the chicken coops outside are the same. They certainly teach you some strange things in that brotherhood!”
I began spooning food onto a plate and of course, with the sound, the three smoke-cats roused and came down from their sleeping place upstairs. I heard a strangled exclamation from Rhodri and looked around.
“Oh, there you are. Wanting food, I’ll be bound. This is Rhodri-Yesylt, from the castle below. He was hurt, and we’re looking after him.”
Grey-smoke walked across to inspect our guest. Rhodri-Yesylt watched him come, both of them wary, and then Grey-smoke rubbed briefly against his tentatively outstretched hand, and walked away again.
“You’re honoured,” I said dryly. “He doesn’t usually bother.”
“I have a cat,” Rhodri said. “Not as handsome as that one, just a stable cat. Celon sleeps in the manger in M’Lesna’s stall. M’Lesna is my horse.”
“He’s a blood stallion from the Icewine River herds? How did you acquire him?”
Rhodri shrugged as he took the plate with a word of thanks.
“He was wandering as a foal - we think his dam might have been killed by dire-wolves. He certainly bears them enough hatred to have remembered!”
Silk-stripe had ignored Rhodri up to now. She raised her face from the plate and considered him, then put her face down again into the food. I suppressed a chuckle and ate my share of the meal. Normally the left-overs would make a second meal, but Rhodri was obviously hungry. He wasn’t thin, but he hadn’t seemed up to his weight when I had cast the spell, because I hadn’t needed much effort.
“Did you find my sword?” he asked abruptly. “I left it in that foul beast - I can’t return without it.”
“I’ll go and look for it later.”
“It’s dark out there. You can’t go wandering around at night in the woods. Anything might be out there!”
I stared at him and put my plate and spoon down, Bee taking them to wash.
“Rhodri - I live in these woods. I often go out at night - there are herbs that need gathering under the moon’s strength.”
Bee had gone over to collect his dish, and now patted his shoulder, getting his attention, and miming me fighting. He grinned, and it was a nice grin, as he relaxed.
“Very well. These are your woods, Mistress Healer Gria, you understand them better than I.”
He lay back and made himself comfortable and Stalker sauntered over, inspected him, and then curled up by his side. I watched in astonishment. Mistress Mione’s cats were smoke-cats, creatures of the wild wood and the very edge of magic, and they very rarely associated with people. I had inherited Grey-smoke, Silk-stripe and Stalker. Of the three, Stalker was the one who ignored me most. The other two had accepted that Mistress Mione had gifted me her knowledge, but Stalker still slept on the other side of the bedroom.
“Nice cat,” Rhodri murmured, stroking lightly over Stalker’s back, and a faint purring noise emanated from his tucked in face. I exchanged a look with Bee and she shook her head and turned her hands outwards. I thought that an adequate explanation of our astonishment.

If I was going to get the sword, I needed to go soon, so I pulled on a heavy wrap, changed my shoes, and took my billhook from beside the door.
“Remember, Bee - if anyone comes - still as a mousey - but no one can get through the wards.”
“I can protect her,” Rhodri said sleepily.
“Thank you for the offer.”
He opened his eyes and looked across at me. “You think I can’t, if I’m wounded? That’s one of the things we learn, to fight when wounded.”
“A damn-fool way to behave,” I said heatedly. “Making whatever wounds you have much worse.”
He closed his eyes again. “I never thought of it that way,” he murmured.
Bee fetched the bag of dried wool and I knew she would spend some time sorting and carding it ready for the spinning.
I went out, and the half moon was up over the shoulder of the mountain. I stood for a moment allowing my night vision to adjust. Stars were visible, and I checked my position and the time of the night, and then set out for the upper falls. I could cut through the woods to reach the place the fight had taken place. I jumped around in startlement when something blew at me, and the horse was there at the fence, pawing at the ground.
“You want to come too? Well I suppose you’d know where to look.”
I opened the gate and he came through, the moonlight gleaming from his coat and lighting his mane and tail like ice. I paced alongside him. He moved easily, and I wondered what it would be like astride him. Mistress Mione had never ridden, in my deep learning, but I wound a hand in M’Lesna’s mane and swung myself to his back. He trotted, and I rose and fell as if I had been born knowing how to ride. It was another of those strange things that I “knew”.
We reached the upper shelf and I slipped from M’Lesna’s back and advanced cautiously. I could see the dire-wolf’s body, and the gleam of the sword. There was something else there, snuffling around. I walked across the track and the tusker-man reared up and stared at me, his lips drawing back in a snarl over the long yellowed teeth in his upper jaw.
THREE

We stared at each other in the moonlight. The horse was pawing and snorting at the edge of the widened part of the track. The tusker-man was upright, but stooped over, his rough thatch of hair every which way up, and draggled with dirt. I had expected him to have hooves, but he wore shoes. I saw with a shock that he wore clothing, a coat and breeches, dirty and stained, dark coloured like his pelt and skin, what I could see of it.
“Dead,” he said at last. I had to think about what he had said, because his speech was muffled and distorted, as if his mouth was not made for speaking. The legends of the tusker-men were many, but none included intelligible speech.
“It was a Yesylt Knight who killed him.”
The tusker-man shook his head and pointed to the horse.
“Stamped. Tore. Bit.”
I turned and looked at M’Lesna, then back at the tusker-man, noticing he had a long knife in his hand.
“The horse killed the dire-wolf? What about that sword?”
“Missed. Tracks tell me. Missed. Struck late.”
“He was hunting you.”
The tusker-man grinned, an awful sight, the rest of his yellowed shovel-shaped teeth exposed. He nodded and pointed back up towards the falls.
“A merry dance. I led, he followed. No food. No sense to hunt or camp. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
I bristled.
“You may be right, and I won’t deny they don’t teach them much down there in the castle! But he seems to think he killed that dire-wolf.”
“Stupid. You want the sword?”
“Yes.”
“Fight for it?”
I eyed him thoughtfully. If he had been a lad from the village I knew how I would answer, and something about his pose struck a chord.
“Very well. I choose the weapons. I choose needle and thread. Sew me a seam as straight as a die, and I will yield the sword.”
He gave a snuffle of laughter. “Healer of the woods! Tricksy with words as well. Take it. I want the pelt. Good thick fur.”
He pulled the bloody sword out of the body and tossed it at my feet and I looked at it with distaste. I pulled some bracken and wiped off what I could, and watched the tusker-man haul the carcass up into the nearest tree ready to skin it.
“What about the meat?”
He shook his head. “Poisoned. Just dead, all right. Lying out - poisoned. Need to be good and hungry before you eat a dire-wolf.”
“And the head?”
He considered the head. “Bury it?”
I nodded and he shrugged and struck, one blow, and the head fell and rolled. M’Lesna gave a high hard whinny and before I realised it, had leaped forward. His shoulder knocked me flying. I felt the edge of the path give under my foot and I began to slide. I thrust with the sword, it snagged in the ground, and I hung from it, scrabbling desperately to get a footing.
The tusker-man’s head appeared over the edge above me.
“Stupid horse. Stay still.”
“I don’t intend going anywhere,” I gasped. He grinned at me and then he was coming down the rock face, as sure footed as a rock-goat.
“Here - left foot down - let go - ”
I had to trust him. I couldn’t look down, my skirts obscured my feet, but his hand was guiding my left foot and I felt the shelf of rock, and let go of the sword. Released, it spanged outwards like a released bow and fell, end over end, sparkling in the moonlight, down towards the river.
“Oh damn!” I cursed, and the tusker-man laughed and helped me down to the lower path, through the same broken moss-beds to the place where I had found Rhodri. I peered out towards the river far below.
“Gone?” I asked gloomily, and the tusker-man nodded.
“Gone. He has plenty. They all have plenty.”
I frowned. “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “He said those were his best boots. He implied he didn’t have much.”
The tusker-man snorted aloud as we turned to climb again the upper level.
“They all got clothes. Food. Weapons. Horses. Better than most.”
“I suppose you’re right. Where’s M’Lesna?”
“Tied him up. Gone mad. Biting, kicking, stamping.”
The head of the dire-wolf was a bloody pulp of bone and brain. I looked away from it and the tusker-man stared at it.
“He remembered,” he murmured.
“Rhodri said his dam was killed by dire-wolves.”
“Yes. No blame, then.”
“I don’t blame him.”
Together we shovelled the mess to one side and covered it, and I looked around for M’Lesna. He was unconcernedly cropping at a patch of grass. His hooves and front legs were splashed with the dire-wolf’s remains and I made a face at him, went across to untie him.
“What will you tell him? About me?”
“Nothing. I’ll say the sword was lost.”
He stared across the clearing at me, and then turned back to the carcass, and I began walking.

I was furious, and also trembling with a reaction of fear now. I had confronted a tusker-man, and all Mistress Mione’s learning had screamed at me to turn and run, or to cast some sort of spell, of a kind I was sure she had never taught me. Instead I had talked to the creature as if he were rational and sensible.
“Which he was, M’Lesna, you terrible creature,” I whispered to the horse. “It was you who was terrible.”
We reached the paddock. The moon was still up and there was sufficient light for me to pull a bucket of water from the butt and clean the horse’s legs and muzzle. I let him drink, then I trod wearily back to the hut. I undid the wards and went in, and Bee rose silently from the fire and brought me a mug of hot drink, gesturing me to sit down. Until that moment, I hadn’t realised how chilled I was, nor how my clothes must look, muddy and torn. I sat down and took the mug as Bee surveyed me. Her enquiring hum made me shrug my shoulders.
“I lost the sword,” I said quietly. Rhodri appeared to be asleep, but now his eyes snapped open.
“You lost it? How did you lose it?” He sat up on one elbow and Stalker moved away from the crook of his knees.
“I slipped. It fell out of my hand. It went down the slope towards the river.”
There was just light enough to see his face. No anger, I thought in surprise. Fear, perhaps, and anxiety.
“Will I be able to get it back?”
I shrugged. “I certainly wasn’t climbing down there at night. Maybe in daylight we can go down, Bee and I, and have a look.”
He lay down again, plucking at the blanket.
“I don’t have another one.”
“I thought all you Yesylt Knights were rich? You must have a second sword, and some armour and all those things, back at the castle?”
He shook his head, staring up at the dimly lit ceiling.
“Not me. I wasn’t supposed to be a Yesylt Knight at all, I was just a squire, but I did a service for a king of a distant land, and he knighted me. So I was just an ordinary knight of the field then. That was fine. Then we came home, and they found out about my deeds, and said I had to be a Yesylt Knight. But to be one of those, as you implied, needs money and position. I had neither. So I have a good pair of boots, now ruined, a sword, now lost.”
“You’re alive,” I said sharply and loudly. “Don’t lose sight of that fact. Or the fact that you might be dead, if I hadn’t come along that path. One I don’t often use, and one I just took on impulse.”
We stared at each other across the last of the firelight, and Rhodri sighed and shook his head.
“I’m not sure Joalt, the mage, would say it was impulse. Thank you. Have I thanked you for saving my life?”
“Not until now,” I replied sulkily, because I was ashamed I had lost my temper with him. I stood up, realising how weary I was, how my shoulders ached from gripping the sword, how my legs ached from riding M’Lesna.
“I need some sleep,” I said at last. “It’ll look better in the morning.”
Rhodri laughed ruefully. “You sound like my sister. Yes, the morning will bring better counsel, I’m sure.”
He watched us go up the ladder, and I saw the gleam of yellow as Stalker raised his head and then laid it down again, tucked into himself in the crook of Rhodri’s knee. Grey-smoke and Silk-stripe were up here already, asleep on their ledge, and only twitched an ear each at the increase of light. I stripped off my dress and sighed over the state of it. Even with washing and mending, it had now become a very second best dress. I brushed my hair out, finding lumps and tangles, brushing it smooth again, coiling the dark mass around my hand and examining it, not looking at Bee who had climbed into her own bed and was fussily arranging the blankets.
“I didn’t lose the sword,” I told Bee quietly as I climbed into my own bed and blew out the dip light. “It fell. Rhodri said he was hunting a tusker-man. I met that tusker-man out where the dire-wolf was killed.”
I told her the story, her face turned towards me, watching me, and then I lay down with a sigh.
“I can’t understand it. Mistress Mione is warring in my mind with her knowledge of the tusker-men and my perception of this one tonight. One does not prove a species, of course.”
I paused. Once again, I had used a word Mistress Mione had not known. From some other deep learning had come the knowledge that everything that looked the same and acted the same was a species. And that deep learning had supplied the correct name for the Smoking Mountain, the fumaroles that vented the gas from the volcano.
I stirred restlessly. I knew what I had to do. I had to trance myself so that I could access Mistress Mione’s memories and sieve out what I could find about tusker-men. I hated to do it. I hated letting go of myself and travelling in that weird trance-state beyond the weaver’s loom.
I composed myself, shut my eyes and began reciting under my breath, the ritual words that would bring me safely through the warp and weft, slipping through the pattern.
FOUR

I approached the loom with trepidation. With one small part of my mind, I knew I was in bed in the living space Mistress Mione had devised and grown. The other part of me knew I was going to detach myself and travel into a further dimension where I would try to learn more of my teacher.
I felt the first resistance of the warp and weft threads on the loom. The warp threads thrummed and vibrated, the weft threads moved and fretted against them. The loom was alive. The cloth woven on this loom was the cloth of life, not something to be stripped off, folded and stored as cloth for covering or healing.
I began to ease through the threads. There was real pain here, a sense of letting go, of anxiously capturing the one thread that held me, of ensuring that little tug was still there, like the tug of a thread stitching cloth, securing it, settling into the cloth, binding the hem line.
I stepped through into the other side. Stepping was the wrong word; I floated free of body and self. I emerged, and glancing back, saw the loom very briefly before it’s brightness forced me to look forward, to search the colours of the stacked lives.
I knew Mistress Mione’s colour and aura, and indeed she was approaching me, floating, twisting, making shapes and colour that never existed in the mundane world we had left.
- Gria
- Mistress Mione
- you are troubled
- I am troubled. I have encountered a tusker-man
Her aura swirled and convoluted, she shrank from me, and I followed. We traversed some kind of landscape that was yet not a landscape. I found myself alone, and then Mistress Mione was there, with some other presence, vast, immeasurable, and knowledgeable.
- this is my teacher Destev. She taught me all I know. All I know of the tusker-men, she taught me
- I need to ask about them, Mistress Destev to learn of them. You taught me they were completely bad, Mistress Mione, to be avoided. Yet one helped me
- you have met one?
Mistress Destev swirled and coalesced around us both as she asked the question.
- how have they developed? It is so long since anyone had contact with them. I tried to have them left alone, so I wove the stories of their badness.
Mistress Mione twisted and writhed.
- you taught me they were bad
- I taught you to avoid them, dear. I needed them left alone in that far valley.
I was enfolded by the brightness of her aura and self, enfolded and caressed and touched, and gave up my knowledge of the incident in the moonlight.
- yes, that is what I wanted, when I decreed they should be left alone. Yet all is not well, dearest Gria. I am troubled by these Yesylt Knights and their purposes in the land
- they do little harm, Mistress Destev, they hunt and they go to war, they seldom trouble the folk of the valleys
- they are foolish, then, wayward, as is the way of men?
- yes, I suppose so. They have the services of mages who do not practice the healing we are taught
- there are many ways of healing, all over this bright pleasant world of ours. Ours is not exclusive, and neither is theirs, no matter how they boast of it
She whirled away and commenced a dance and I watched her, the thread from the loom held tight in my hand. Mistress Mione questioned me about the smoke cats, about the way the hens were laying, and all the minute doings of the valley folk where she had lived and worked for so long.
Mistress Destev came back to us then and enfolded us both.
- there is no need to fear the tusker-men, dear Gria. You can go forward as the weft threads take you, and if you encounter them, they are neither wholly bad nor good, as are all those whose wefts are woven in the loom. You are a good weaver, Gria, you understand the threads, you understand the animals as well. It comes of that darkness, that well of darkness within you, that is not touched by me or Mione, that will be opened one day
- I have no darkness
- you know words never used in the valleys
- I could ride the horse yet I Mistress Mione never had a horse
- you have something more, then, and it is that more-ness that is making your bandages the best. Go now, dear child, and make your way
They were going, fading, they were drifting away like the threads of the autumn mists lying over the blaze of leaf-change, and I had not asked any other questions of them, not asked about Bee, not asked about the strange illness that seemed to afflict the villagers occasionally, a muscle-shaking and teeth-chattering illness that was rarely fatal.
I was being pulled back to the loom and I stretched out a hand, futilely, to ask my questions, and a single thread of colour lanced towards me, and as I passed back through the loom it followed and I was jolted awake by the squall of a smoke-cat downstairs.
FIVE

Bee and I hurried down the ladder. Grey-smoke was before us, and Silk-stripe butted at Bee as we came down to the lower floor and I fumbled with a flame for the dip lamps.
I stared around suspiciously. Rhodri was sitting up, and Stalker was standing by the loom, hissing at it. I started forward as if to stop him touching and damaging the threads and he turned a scornful look on me and patted at an object on the floor.
I hurried over and saw a stone lying on the floor near the loom. I stared at it, and then at Stalker who patted it again, and then danced around it, patting it.
“Something woke me, a thud, as if something had been thrown in here,” Rhodri said. “Then Stalker leaped off me - thanks for the claws, my friend - and you came down.”
“I had gone through the loom to ask questions of my teacher,” I said slowly. “There was a dreadfully important question, and I forgot it until the last minute, as I was being drawn back to this side.”
He stared at me, gripping his blankets.
“You - went through to the other side?”
“Through the loom, yes.”
“Even the mages don’t attempt to do that! They summon the spirits for answers, they don’t try and cross over.”
“More fool them, then,” I snapped as I picked up the stone. “How do they know they have the right spirits, or if they aren’t playing a prank on them?”
Rhodri frowned at me. “Are you doubting the experience of the mages?”
“I know nothing about them. I expect they do everything they say, but a healer of the woods passes through the loom for her answers. And this stone appears to be my answer, and I need to meditate on it.”
Bee had been peering at the stone and now hummed excitedly and pointed to it. I held it loosely in my cupped hands and she traced a line around it and it fell open in my hand, and I could see the small hollow inside, packed with crystals that reflected the light.
“A geode,” I breathed, then shook my head and blinked. “I mean - a sounder. If I strike the crystals right, they will sing me the answer.”
Grey-smoke was winding himself around my legs and I handed the stone to Bee and walked over to the door and opened it for him to go out. It was already daylight, I realised, and the sunlight was glinting off something outside. I stood staring in disbelief at Rhodri’s sword, point down in the turf, with the huge paw of a dire-wolf tied to it. There was also a haunch of meat, well wrapped, and a bunch of tubers, enough to feed us for quite a while.
I came out of the hut and stood looking around, but no one was in sight. Nevertheless, I made a gesture of thanks to the four points of the compass before taking the things indoors.
There was now no chance I would be able to avoid telling Rhodri what had happened, as I brought the sword over to him with the dire-wolf paw. Stalker growled and hissed when he scented it, and Silk-stripe came running over to sniff and growl.
Rhodri took the sword, and looked up at me.
“I thought you said - it was lost?”
“I’ll tell you after we’ve eaten,” I promised. “With the paw as proof - you’ll get the bounty for the dire-wolf killing, won’t you?”
He nodded, and I took the paw distastefully and found a bag to cover it and put it away, warning the cats away from it.
“It’ll pay for mending my boots,” Rhodri said. I whirled on him.
“I’m going to mend those for you! Don’t think I can’t, it’s something out of Mistress Mione’s learning, because she was the daughter of a cobbler before the loom called her!”
“And whose daughter were you? You’re much younger than the hags and witches the mages tell about.”
I stared at him furious that he could misname people so carelessly, that the men in the castle could be so hurtful.
“You mind your mouth,” I said crossly. “Don’t spout that nonsense they talk in the castle. Your mother never brought you up to be so disrespectful to women!”
He glared at me, and then looked away.
“Sorry,” he said quietly. “No, she didn’t allow any kind of disrespectful talk, against those either higher or lower than us.”
Bee had uncovered the fire and was setting out the bowls, and now hummed disapprovingly at us and I calmed down.
“Sorry, dearest. I’m sorry to flare up at you, Sir Knight, as well.”
Rhodri looked uncomfortable, and suddenly younger and somehow more vulnerable.
“No, it is I who should apologise. You are right, Mistress Gria, about the loose talk in the castle about those the mages disparage. We should not do so, it is very wrong, because by giving a label, we disregard the person.”
I had been ladling out cracked grain, adding dried fruits, and pouring milk on them, and brought a bowl across to him. Stalker jumped up on the bedding and put a paw on his arm, and he laughed and stroked him gently.
“You are an opportunist, sirrah! Yes, I daresay there might be a finger-tip of milk for you.”
“I can’t believe he’s taken so strongly to you,” I said, watching the smoke-cat behaving like an ordinary stable-cat. “He ignores me, except when he wants food. I suppose he never reconciled himself to Mistress Mione going through the loom.”
“Dying, you mean?”
I frowned as I seated myself and ate a couple of mouthfuls before answering. I was hungry, I discovered, and it was always the same when I had gone through the loom, even under Mistress Mione’s guidance in the early days of her teaching.
“I suppose it would be dying, to those not in the know,” I said now. “Her body is buried in the village churchyard - ”
“In the churchyard? The priest allowed that?”
“Of course he did! He used to come up here and talk with Mistress Mione, and he still occasionally comes up to consult with me. As he did this winter past when the fever struck.” I glanced at the stone. “I hope I can give him good news on that.”
“So she is buried in the flesh? But you maintain her spirit passed through the loom. Is it a loom much like that one?” He gestured to the big floor loom on which I wove my woollen cloths from the fleeces I bought, or fine linen when I could get the retted stalks. I looked at it, trying to assess it as if seeing it for the first time. The overhead beams hung with the warp threads, which made a shimmering curtain against the felted walls. The loom weights dropped into the gulley to pull the warps taut. The unfinished bands of ochre and sand coloured weft threads showed the potential of the piece of cloth. Rhodri had not commented on the smaller tablet looms on which Bee and I wove the bandages.
“Yes, it’s like that loom. Bigger, of course, but you can’t tell how big it truly is, because it exists in all dimensions. It’s much duller, on this side, but on the other side - it glows with the spirits of all the healers of the woods, from generations back.”
Rhodri considered the loom. “And you can pass through it in the spirit?”
“Yes.”
I decided I was not going to tell him that before Mistress Mione passed through she had bequeathed me all her learning and knowledge, and that of the generations of healers before her, in a direct line to the Great Healer who had imparted the knowledge of good and evil to the women in his care.
Rhodri chased a fruit around his bowl, not looking at me.
“Where I come from, in my home, I mean, not the castle, we have healing men,” he said at last. “They study from each other, and write down the knowledge. There doesn’t appear to be any writing at all in the castle, not even the mage has the written word.”
“I never knew that. How does he pass on his knowledge?”
Rhodri shrugged. “He has apprentices, and you can hear them chanting at all hours of the day and night, from his tower. I suppose they must be learning it by rote.”
I shook my head as I gathered up the bowls, and Grey-smoke came sauntering in to investigate them as I piled them for washing.
“And if someone is a slow learner - they have to drop out?”
“I suppose so. In the lower castle it might be different.”
“What lower castle? There’s another castle?”
“You didn’t know about the lower castle? It’s much older than this one. Down the valley - far down the valley - there’s a lake, and the road in from the cities. There’s a castle on the bluff down there. It could be there’s writing down there. Then they established this castle further up, to train the Yesylt Knights.”
I looked curiously at him. “And that’s all you do, learn the way of the Knights? What about - progressing - learning more?”
“I don’t know. I only know what I’ve learned, and since I don’t have money or influence I doubt if I’ll move from the castle. I hope, eventually, I’ll become one of the teachers of the younger knights.”
“And you’ll write down what you know?”
He glanced at me, then away. “I don’t think it’s permitted, to write.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” I said testily. “But perhaps better to go along with their way of thinking. Keep it all in your head and maybe write it down where they won’t find out about it.”
He did not answer, fingering the sword.
“It’s been cleaned, and sharpened,” he said. “There was a nick in the blade - it’s been ground out - who did this, Mistress Gria?”
I faced around to him. Bee had opened the door, and swung the shutters wide. I could see Rhodri had not realised there were shutters. Light flooded in, and Bee hummed contentedly as she began to card and clean the pile of rock-goat wool before we could spin it. There were no bandages on the tablet looms at present, we needed a good few hanks of wool to begin weaving again.
“It was a tusker-man,” I said quietly. “You were pursuing one in the further valleys, and this was the same one. I found him skinning your dire-wolf, and took your sword. I slipped, as I said, but he helped me, but at the same time the sword was lost, spinning out into the river.”
“I didn’t kill the wolf,” Rhodri said. “I slipped. It was on me, and I thrust into it, but it wasn’t a mortal wound, far from it. It was M’Lesna who killed it.”
I nodded. “I will take your word of oath, Sir Rhodri-Yesylt, before I tell you any more.”
He looked startled and uneasy. “My - my word of oath? Why should you need that, Mistress Gria?”
“Because, obviously, I am going to tell you something secret,” I said impatiently. “Come, do I have your word of oath?”
He laid a hand on his sword hilt and swore, and I nodded, satisfied.
“The tusker-man told me the horse had killed the wolf. He had led you a chase through the mountains, he said, enjoying your discomfort. Then I suppose you turned for home, and he followed you, perhaps, and saw the confrontation.”
“He - spoke to you - a tusker-man spoke to you, Mistress Gria?”
I smiled thinly. “Now you know why I have your word of oath, Sir Knight. You will not tell anyone tusker-men are intelligent and can speak. Nor that this one bested you, if you do not care to reveal that. He has given you your sword and the paw, so he obviously intends you to have the bounty price.”
“The carcase - ”
“He skinned it for the pelt, and I think buried the rest of it.”
I told him briefly what had happened and he shook his head.
“Poor M’Lesna. I must speak to him and tell him what a fine creature he is to kill what made him afraid.”
“I don’t think he was afraid,” I said dryly. “Furious, yes. He might well be a weapon against dire-wolves in the right hands. I suggest next time you hunt them, Sir Knight, you take a lance.”
I smiled as I said it, and he relaxed and grinned ruefully.
“Yes, Mistress Gria, I think I will! Now - are you completely safe here, now the tusker-man knows where you live, and the child as well?”
“Of course I am safe! I am a healer of the woods.”
He frowned at me. “I know that.”
I shook my head. “No, you do not know that, Rhodri. I am not a healer who lives in the woods, I am a healer of the woods. If anything happens in these woods, I know about it, and I go and heal those wounds. Mistress Destev’s knowledge, passed to me through Mistress Mione, tells me of the grievous wounds when the castle was built, of the many trees cut down and uprooted.”
“Forgive me - you burn wood in your fire. You have a loom made of wood.”
“Found wood, Rhodri,” I said gently. “No healer will cut living wood. The live-willow grows freely, and to make a hut, a chicken coop or any other building, a healer will find young trees and transplant them, or even grow them from seed. The loom is very old - even ancient - generations of weavers have used it. I keep a store of seasoned wood for the shuttles and so on.”
“Found wood,” he said slowly. “It must have been dreadful, when the castle was built. What about the village?”
“That is cut out of the woods as well, of course. But people must live, and grow food. A healer has no problem with that, but the wanton logging of the slopes - that would draw many healers out, Rhodri, to confrontation with the loggers.”
“I understand that. So far as I know, the Knighthood does not make profits from logging. At least, not here. I understood the castle was built so that the Knights could go out into the woods and onto the Smoking Mountain to hone their skills.”
“Against tusker-men?”
He looked at me, affronted, and then smiled ruefully.
“Against tusker-men, if they can be found, Mistress Gria. Dire-wolves are an adequate substitute. But - I wonder.”
I looked alertly at him. “What do you wonder? You are not a usual Yesylt Knight, Rhodri, don’t forget that. You came by a different route to their castle.”
“Yes. In my own land, the big killers, like the dire-wolves, were all killed out a generation ago. The land changed when they had gone. The deer and cattle overgrazed it, pushing the woodland back, and then only bracken and rank gorse would grow. In recent years, parks have been fenced off, to try and bring the woodland back. You should go to my land, Mistress Gria, and advise them.”
I laughed and shook my head as I stood up.
“I am only a beginner in the ways of the healers, Rhodri! But I will pass on your concerns. Now - you look tired again - let me check your bandages and then I have a task or two you can perform for me, even resting as you are.”
So I checked his wounds, the bandages still firmly fixed, then handed him some easy work, sorting the threads by thickness, and taking the stone I retired upstairs to meditate on the crystals and try to interpret what I would need to heal the mysterious shaking fever that afflicted the villagers.
SIX

I went upstairs carrying the stone. Bee had opened the shutters up here and the cool spring air had lightened the room, bringing the sweet scent of new risen sap from the trees outside.
I crossed to the open window and looked out over the paddock and into the woods on the other side. This clearing had been made generations ago, and the open land had been cultivated with a vegetable garden, compost heaps, the paddock for any wounded animals. The stable was a good idea, I decided, and I would make it more permanent with some live willow this year.
I turned away. I was putting it off, I knew it. If going through the loom was difficult and draining, interpreting a crystal sounder was nearly as much trouble. I sighed and cleared a space on the carpet Mistress Destev had brought with her from her days as the daughter of a rug-maker in a far distant land where it was hotter and dustier than these cool mountainous valleys. I ran a hand over the pattern of reds, blues and purples, summoning the thought of her aural colour from beyond the loom.
I opened the stone and laid both halves out on the carpet and studied the way the crystals were arranged. I passed a hand over them, and began to meditate, murmuring the cantos I had been taught, and concentrating on the sounder, listening to the notes the crystals gave off, absorbing them into my healer learning.

I roused and looked around, breathing deeply. The hut had not changed, but the sunlight had moved across. I reached for parchment and quill and in defiance of my healer learning, but from some deep need in myself, began to write down the receipts of the herbs I would need and how to prepare them. The language I wrote in was indecipherable to anyone in the valleys, the priest had already told me that. I knew I wrote proper words, but they came out in impenetrable squiggly shapes. I put the parchment away with other writings I had made, in a cavity in the floor, and stood and stretched, pacing up and down to get the stiffness out of my bones. I walked over to the window again and glanced out, then stiffened. Someone stood on the margin of the woods, watching the hut. I could make out a dark shape, and at first I thought it was the tusker-man but this man stood upright, a cloak swirled around him, a hood drawn forward. He was too tall to be the tusker-man. I ran through the men of the valley, but all of them were short and broad, and besides they would be at the spring planting in this good weather. As I moved closer to the window the man stepped back into the woods, and I could not see him any more. I frowned and laid a hand on the live-willow of the window frame. No emanations came from it, so the man was not inimical to the woods. The roots of the trees would have communicated it to me, through the weaker roots of the grasses. Nothing disturbed the long slow growing of the trees.
I shrugged and turned to put the stone with others I had been given or inherited, carefully tying a loop of wool around it to keep it closed, in case I or any other healer in the future might need it. I brushed the others, similarly tied, each with a piece of the knowledge a healer needed.

I came down the stairs and Bee had put the kettle over the fire and was readying the mugs for a hot drink, buttering bread as well. I smiled at her, and glanced across at Rhodri.
He was asleep, the sorted threads by his side. Stalker was curled up on him, lifted an eyelid to survey me, and then closed it again. I nodded in satisfaction. Sleep would do him good. I came across to sit down, and Bee made the drink. Silk-stripe yawned and walked over, rubbed himself against me, wound himself around my hand and sat back, watching Bee, almost with an air of critical assessment. She smiled at the smoke-cat and hummed, and then we sat drinking and eating the bread and butter. All too soon the butter would be finished, I thought, and we would need more, I would have to go and buy and sell. I had lengths of cloth from the winter weaving, when it was too cold and snowy to go far out of the hut. We had found the wounded rock-goat on one of our forays into the wood, and used the magic healing bandages on his damaged leg.
Thinking of the paddock and the horse and rock-goat I remembered the man.
“There was a man out there,” I said quietly to Bee. She nodded and pointed to the exact spot.
“You saw him? It wasn’t the tusker-man. He didn’t harm the woods.”
Bee shook her head and indicated someone playing an instrument. I relaxed, because her pantomime could only be one of the wandering ballad searchers, or poet-hunters as they were sometimes called. They wandered the valleys collecting the old songs, the old tales, and the newer ones as well, to weave into their learning and teachings. The only thing that troubled me was that I had heard rumours the poet-hunters had withdrawn from this area of the mountains. They were not welcome in the castle, I knew that, and I had thought they had gone forever. It would be a pity if it were so, because I enjoyed their company. In exchange for food and a cup of the sap-wine I brewed, and a bed for the night, they would entertain us with songs, poems, and tales of the natural wonders of the countryside.
I finished the drink and the food, and felt stronger for it.
“I need to go and look for these herbs, and begin steeping them,” I told Bee. “And look to the rock-goat.”
We went out together, and to the paddock first. The horse was grazing, and I looked with approval at the stalings he had left. Those, mixed into the compost heap, would do the vegetables a power of good this year. We crossed the paddock to where the rock-goat was chewing on something. Bee pointed and hummed, danced a few steps, and I could see the remnants of the bandages hanging from its mouth.
“Dratted creature! Oh well, that must prove its good health! Now - if we open the paddock, will it go, or do we need to toil up the mountain leading it on a string?”
Bee and I dismantled a section of the rails and Bee made encouraging noises, I flapped my skirt, but the rock-goat eyed us from its brilliant green eyes and continued placidly chewing, pulling its lips back to show big yellow teeth. I laughed and gestured Bee to stop.
“All right! He can stay as long as he likes, I suppose, I won’t chase him out if he feels safe in here. If that leg is only just healed it’d be cruelty itself to make him try the mountains. He can stay, and maybe - we can comb out his coat - without the herbs from the mountains it won’t be any good for the magic bandages - but it would mix wonderfully well with the last of the sheep wool.”
Bee nodded, and slipped the rail back into place, and held out a hand to the rock-goat. It trotted over and sniffed, but she did not hold any food and it trotted away.
I laughed again and looked around at the day. It was sunny, the wind was not too cold, and I held out a hand to Bee.
“Come, child, let’s walk!”
She glanced at the hut, then took my hand and we crossed the clearing and walked out along the edge of our clearing. Small birds hopped into the area where the last of the tubers were clamped. I needed to turn the soil and let in the air and sun, and then look to my store of seeds and dried tubers for this year. We entered the edge of the wood and looked for the first of the wind flowers, for the first leaves to be cracking open the tight buds where they had sheltered.
I took deep breaths of the woodland air. This was what I was born for, this was the destiny Mistress Mione had fashioned for me when she had taken me in on that stormy night of wind and rain, lightning crackling from the mountain tops, reaching up to the gods’ domains, reaching to the feasting halls of the Great God.
I staggered and nearly lost my footing, crying out and clutching at my head, but the image was gone. I leaned against a tree, shaking my head, and Bee clutched at my hand, her humming going up into a maddening whine like an insect as she tugged at me.
I straightened and blinked blurry eyes, looking around the woods that for an instant had seemed alien and inimical to me, a healer of the woods.
“I’m - I’m all right,” I said huskily. “At least, I think I am. I was remembering - something - from before, from when I wasn’t a healer. You know, I don’t know whose daughter I was? I can’t remember them, I can’t recall what trade they had, I have no skill in my hands except what Mistress Mione taught me.”
I stared vaguely around the woods, and shook my head. Bee was clinging to me, and I stroked her fine bright hair.
“Don’t, dearest, don’t cry,” I said gently. “I know - we are both orphans of the storm, me with a real storm where Mistress Mione found me, and you - ”
I paused, unwilling to voice it aloud. I had been in time to rescue Bee when the villagers had been going to throw her over the precipice as a witch-child. Just over half a year ago, she had appeared out of nowhere, dressed in strange clothes, unable to speak, unable to make herself understood. In a community where everyone, including myself, had dark hair and eyes, and skin tanned by the sun, she had stood out with her golden hair and pale skin and pale eyes the colour of the coats of the smoke-cats. It had been the smoke-cats who had alerted me to her peril, bounding ahead of me, and I had arrived in time to save her. At the time I had been wounded myself, having had a brush with the flesh-corroding sap from the Caloric bush where I had been careless in gathering the leaves I needed. I only had the use of one hand, and Bee had proved her usefulness straight away.
I glanced down at her, and dropped a kiss on her hair, and we walked on into the woods, noting the places wind and frost had damaged the trees and brought down branches. I piled some out of the path, noting the place to come and collect the dead wood later.
A low haunting sound alerted us to the poet-hunter and we turned a corner of the path and he was sitting cross-legged on a fallen trunk, playing on a whistle. He saw us, and nodded a welcome, and as I came up to him I saw he was not the usual poet-hunter who frequented the village, but someone younger and more active by the look of his strong hands and the amount of wear on his leather shoes.
“Good day to you, Mistress Healer,” he said in a low voice. “You have a guest - I did not approach - the Icewind horse - I knew him at once.”
“He is called M’Lesna. The guest I have is his rider, the Yesylt-Knight called Sir Rhodri. He was injured in defending himself against a dire-wolf.”
The poet-hunter played a few off-key notes.
“The dire-wolves. They grow in numbers in the far valleys, and have eaten all their prey. The haunts of men need guard against them, soon they will be foraging far and wide for their young.”
He blew a two-tone note.
“I will warn the villagers. Thank you. And you? Do you need food? Healing?”
He looked up at me.
“I had help and shelter last night, at the camp fire of a strange creature, half wild boar, half man. I had thought I had seen all the creatures the Great God put on this world, but this one was a stranger to me.”
“A tusker-man,” I said. “One of my previous Mistresses set a guard on their valley - perhaps she indeed created them - I cannot tell.”
He nodded. “The great healers, it is said, could call speech and thought into beings. I may come by this evening and give you songs for singing?”
“That would be wonderful! We have heard few voices other than our own this winter past.”
He nodded again and bent to his music and Bee and I walked on and around and so back to the clearing and Rhodri was standing in the doorway, holding onto it, staring out. I broke into a trot and came up to him.
“I woke - and no one was there.”
“We went for a walk in the woods, such a nice day. There now - lean on me - you can see M’Lesna is in good health? Bee - oh, you’ve fetched the seat - sit down, Rhodri, and enjoy the sunshine. Let me check your wounds.”
He sat down and I touched his side where I could feel no pulse of sickness, but the bandage was still firm.
“A day, perhaps, until that comes off. This one on your head - yes, looser today, much looser.”
“The bandage knows when to come off?”
“Indeed.”
“How? What magic do you weave into it?”
“I weave nothing into it. The rock-goats up on the mountains graze on some substance we know nothing about, and it goes into their wool.”
“You fetch them and shear them?”
I laughed ruefully as I sat down on the grass near him. “I wish it were that simple, Rhodri! No one can catch the rock-goats, they inhabit the worst of the crags and scree slopes. We gather the wool they shed. Sometimes there is a large bounty, if they go through the thorn bushes looking for tender growth. At other times it is a tuft here, a tuft there.”
“And the magic?”
“Persists in the wool, almost indefinitely. We wash and card, and spin it, and then weave it on the small tablet looms.”
“What happens when my wounds heal?”
“The bandage falls off, and is then an ordinary piece of cloth. You can coil it up and store it, and use it for an ordinary bandage. People sometimes bring the used ones back to me, and I dye them and stitch them into a bedcover.”
He sat looking out over the clearing and the edge of the path. Beyond it lay the ravine where the river had cut its path, and further down was the castle. I looked up at him and wondered what he was thinking, then he smiled and shook his head and looked down at me and I blushed all over and jumped to my feet crossly, and stalked away, because although it is not unknown for a healer to have husbands, or lovers, I had never felt the need of male companionship.