Valdemar 11 - [Owl Mage 02] - Owlsight Read online

  Alys looked around the barn at her contentedly drowsing charges, and sighed. “I suppose if there’s anybody else that needs the space here, we’re to make room for them?”

  “I won’t allow an animal in that has something yours can catch,” Keisha assured her. “It might happen that we need the room, but this place is big enough that you won’t have to vacate.”

  Alys and the other shepherds looked satisfied with that. Alys had something of her own to offer. “If someone gets flooded out, remember we have extra beds at the Fellowship, all right? It’s only fair, with us getting to use the barn and all.”

  “I’ll tell the Mayor, and thanks in advance,” Keisha replied. “You won’t need me anymore, so I’d better get back to where people can find me.”

  She waved good-bye to the other shepherds, as they settled themselves in for as long as the rain lasted, the dogs making nests in the straw around the flock of sheep. It could be worse for them, Keisha thought, as she faced the storm, bowing her head under the frigid deluge. They could have to watch the sheep out in this mess. At least they’ll be warm and dry, even if they do have to feed the oven and haul over fodder and straw.

  And in the long run, it was a good thing that the sheep were here and not in the field; only about a quarter of the ewes had lambs at their side, the rest were still all heavily pregnant. Sheep always picked the worst time to lamb, and it was even odds that they’d decide to drop in the middle of the storm. If there were any problems, there wouldn’t be any hunting about on storm-drenched hillsides to find the missing ewe!

  They might not lose any this year, if they all decide to drop while they’re in the barn; that would be a blessing.

  When she got back to her workshop, there was a patient waiting for her, huddled in the chair by the fire. And it was Piel, one of Shandi’s most romantic and least-sensible suitors, who was, if possible, the very last person she wanted to see. She tried not to let her resignation show.

  No need to ask what brought him; his red nose and swollen eyes, steady sneezing and rasping cough told the whole story. “Oh, Piel,” she sighed, putting her hands on her hips and shaking her head. “You are a right mess, aren’t you?”

  “I subbose id’s by own fault,” he wheezed miserably, blowing his nose on his handkerchief. “I wad oud on our hill, and when id starded do rain, I wad thinging so hard aboud her thad I didn’ nodise—”

  “I promise you that it’s all your own fault,” she said severely. “You are more than old enough to know better than to play a fool’s trick like that, and Shandi wouldn’t thank you for catching pneumonia and dying! Only idiots in ballads get sick and pine gracefully and painlessly away for love, Piel. I can guarantee that pneumonia takes longer and hurts a lot.”

  “Bud—somedimes I thig id wouldn’ be a bad thig—” he said forlornly, his voice trailing off, as she turned away and got some of her stronger medicines.

  “Oh, you don’t, do you?” She was not going to let him wallow in self-indulgent misery, not in her workshop. “And just how would your parents feel about that? How would Shandi, may I ask? Just how do you think I’d explain that to her, that I let you die of a stupid chill? Idiot! It isn’t as if she left you for another suitor! And it isn’t as if she flew off to the moon!”

  “Bud she mid as well be on da moon!” he cried plaintively. “Why wadn id you thad wad Chosen instead ob her? Why couldn id hab been you? Nobody’s in lob wid you!”

  “I will have none of that nonsense here!” she told him briskly, turning around with a particularly nasty-tasting potion in her hand. She was in no mood for any of this, and he had, by the Havens, earned a good scold. “First off, if I had been Chosen, who would be taking care of you this minute? Second, it’s none of your business, and nobody asked you who should and should not be Chosen; you leave that to the Companions. Third, if you’re so desperately in love with Shandi, you’d do far better by spending your time thinking of a way to make a good livelihood in Haven where she is, than sitting around on hills moping! Showing up in Haven in a good suit of clothing with the money in your pocket to take her to a fine inn for supper would charm her and finally impress my father. Dying stupidly would not, and moon-calfing about on hills in the rain when other folk are working does not!”

  Not that I expect him to exert himself that much, she thought scornfully, for she shared her father’s opinion of Piel. The fellow was in love with the idea of being in love, and with Bardic notions of romance, not really in love with Shandi. It’s easy to lie around on hills and weep. And it impresses other fools with how deep your feelings are. One month from now, he’ll be desperately in love with one of Shandi’s friends, or one of Lord Breon’s maids at the keep.

  “Here,” she said abruptly, thrusting the mug at him. “Drink this. All of it. Now.”

  He looked from the mug to her face, saw no hope of reprieve, and gagged it down. It was truly awful, and she’d made no effort to sweeten it.

  “Now go home, get into bed, and sleep,” she ordered. “When your mother gives you soup and tea, don’t play with them, drink them—I know she’s already got the medicine she needs for you, she came to get it last night.”

  Piel gave a long-suffering sigh, and draped himself with his rain cape as if it were his shroud. She saw him to the door, and nobly refrained from slamming it behind him.

  The rest of the day was spent in dosing similar illnesses—and in listening to the complaints of the sufferers. Most of the complaints were actually more fretful and pathetic than anything else; neighbor Tansy pretty well summed them up when she came for cough syrup.

  “I wish young Darian would get back here and set himself up like he’s supposed to,” she grumbled. “Even if he couldn’t have sent this storm elsewhere, he’d at least have been able to warn us about it, and he’d be able to tell us how long it’s likely to last!”

  When darkness fell, she finally made a dinner for herself—a good one, not just the soup but a nice slice of fried ham and some scrambled eggs and toast. The only thing she’d had all day was those seedcakes and a couple of bites of soup in between patients, and she was so hungry she was close to being nauseated.

  She didn’t let her irritation with Piel spoil her meal either, though she’d been damned annoyed with his self-indulgent bleating. The sheep didn’t make that much of a complaint, she told herself, as she took careful sips of the hot soup. And as for that business of “why weren’t you Chosen, nobody is in love with you—” Ooh, I could have strangled him if I weren’t so tolerant, and he weren’t a patient!

  The rain still hadn’t let up, though it had lessened a bit. A storm this big will probably get Haven, too. I wonder how Shandi is doing? It was too soon for a letter, but Keisha couldn’t help wishing one would come.

  I wish I had someone else I could talk to. She sighed and took her dishes to the sink to wash. If I’d been Chosen, I’d have my Companion—

  Fantasy, foolishness. There was never a chance that she’d have been Chosen; any hesitation on the part of the Companion had been her imagination. Why would any Companion Choose me? she thought sourly. Not only is nobody in love with me, nobody even likes me. There wasn’t a chance that Companion would have Chosen me; Mum and Da named me right. “Keisha, ” that’s me, the tree all over thorns and no fruit worth anybody’s effort. If people didn’t need me so badly, they’d never come near me.

  Uncomfortable thoughts, uncomfortable feelings, and she knew if she didn’t get her mind off them she’d sink into a well of self-pity as deep as Piel’s.

  So she picked up one of her Healing texts and put her mind into study, until she was so tired and sore of eye that she practically crawled up the ladder to her bed.

  After four days, the rain finally stopped; the sun put in a brilliant appearance in cloudless skies, and a dry, warm breeze made colds—or at least, complaints of colds—disappear. It never failed to amaze and amuse Keisha that a couple of sunny, warm days in spring or fall could make everyone forget about feeling ill. U
nless, of course, they were very ill indeed.

  Piel did not put in a second appearance, nor was he anywhere in the village when Keisha was about, which either meant he had taken Keisha’s lecture to heart and was actively seeking a way to make his living in the greater world (not likely) or that he so feared another tongue-lashing that he wasn’t going to come anywhere near her (far more likely). The sheep got over their illness, and there were many more to herd out of the barn than went in, for many of the pregnant ewes took the opportunity to drop lambs. The folk from the Fellowship took such good care of the threshing barn that the Mayor declared they could make free use of it whenever they had another such emergency.

  In short, everything was back to normal.

  Everything but Keisha herself, that is.

  Since the onset of the storm, she’d felt edgy most of the time. Whenever she treated a patient, she’d start to reflect the emotional state of that patient herself, and it wasn’t pleasant. The only reason she’d even known that she was being influenced in that way was because she’d been perfectly calm and contented on the third morning of the storm, and had her mood utterly reversed by the first patient to enter the door. Once someone left, she was fine, but while they were in the same area she had to keep a steady head and remind herself that she was not the one feeling rotten. It was worse if she had to touch the patient; that opened her up to all manner of things she didn’t understand and did not in the least like.

  This was making things unexpectedly uncomfortable at home. Rain made the trip to and from the farm pure misery, made chores at the farm a burden, and kept all the boys in the house when they weren’t at the farm. Cooped up like that, for lack of any other amusement, they picked fights with each other. When the boys argued, she found herself getting angry for no reason at all; when her mother got upset, her eyes threatened to overflow. She discovered that beneath her father’s calm exterior, he often suffered from a tensely knotted, aching gut, by experiencing these things herself. That, at least, was useful; she took him aside and convinced him he needed her help unless he wanted to start spitting up blood one day. At least he stopped suffering and felt immensely calmer after following her prescriptions, even if she didn’t.

  Four days after the storm ended, Lord Breon’s Healer Gil arrived for his monthly visit. He was late by a day, but she’d expected that; he’d probably had the same sorts of patients that she’d had—maybe more serious, since Lord Breon’s men were duty-bound to be outside no matter the weather—and to rescue any of Lord Breon’s folk who’d gotten themselves into difficulties.

  She was replacing her depleted stocks of already-prepared medicines when he tapped on the doorframe and walked on in. She knew both the tap and the step, and even if she hadn’t, she’d have known it was him by the feeling of steadiness and patience that he always brought with him. He might be a cranky curmudgeon on the outside, but inside he was the steady rock on which all hysteria drove itself in vain.

  At that moment, however, she needed both hands and her eyes to get her comfrey and lobelia concentrate into its jug. “Welcome, Gil,” she greeted him without turning. “Give me a moment, will you? I have both hands full.”

  Gil helped himself to one of the two chairs and she heard him sit down. “Am I?” he asked. “Am I welcome, that is?”

  Hmm. Is he expecting a fight out of me? If so, why? She put the jug up, then measured her herbs and put the finished mixture into a steeping bag, tying the drawstrings tight. No point in starting a new batch now, but she’d have it ready to go when Gil left. “I haven’t killed anyone this month, directly or indirectly, and I don’t have any plans to do so today, so of course you’re welcome,” she retorted, turning to greet him properly. “Mind you, I was tempted once or twice during the rain, but I managed to contain my feelings.”

  Gil was a withered little raisin of a man, whose normal movements were so deliberate that it shocked people when, in an emergency, he moved with the speed of a hummingbird. His hair was an iron-gray, his legs bowed, his eyes small and black and seemingly able to see whatever it was you most wanted to keep secret. He didn’t look like a Healer; he looked like a weatherbeaten old horse tamer, and, in fact, he did tame horses using a Shin’a’in method he’d learned on Lord Ashkevron’s estate of Forst Reach where he’d grown up (where horse tamers were honored and very, truly needed). Children and animals trusted him immediately, and he had the no-nonsense aura of competence and authority to make even Lord Breon’s most battle-hardened fighters listen to and obey him. There couldn’t have been a better Healer for that particular position in the entire Kingdom, even if his Gift was so weak it was negligible.

  “I see you’re wearing Greens now-so to speak,” he continued, raising his eyebrows. “Not exactly orthodox color, though.”

  She brushed her hand down the front of her tunic self-consciously. “I thought I’d use some old clothing of my own for a dye experiment before I ruined those nice uniforms the Collegium sent.” She shrugged. “Why use those new uniforms for work when I have plenty of old things that can take a beating?”

  “You know, a uniform isn’t there to make you conform, it’s to reassure your patients as a symbol. Heralds know that; that’s why they wear Whites; people wouldn’t take them half so seriously if they didn’t show up in uniforms. I take it that with the rains you had the usual crop?” he asked, looking her up and down, still with that penetrating expression on his face.

  “And one young idiot,” she replied with a laugh, and sat down and told him about Piel. He grunted with disgust when she described how Piel had gotten sick and soaked in the first place, and broke into a cackle of unexpected laughter when she told him the lecture she’d read the romantic fool.

  “Bright Havens, I wish I’d been here!” he chortled, slapping the arm of the chair with his hand. “Sounds to me as if you’re getting your proper attitude, young lady. If people won’t give you the authority and respect you need to make them listen, then by the gods, take it! You can apologize after they’re better. What good’s a Healer that no one listens to? That was where poor old Justyn got into trouble; he was too soft on people.”

  “Well, all I can say is I’m grateful that Piel hasn’t decided he’s lifebonded to Shandi. He’s quite enough of a wet mess as it is, and I swear to you, even if he was shaved bald he’d have more hair than wits. Why Shandi ever encouraged him in the first place, I’ll never know.” She sighed, and ran both hands through the hair at her temples in exasperation. “Maybe it’s just that she was too kind, and afraid to break his heart. Other than young Piel’s crisis, the Fellowship’s sheep got that dry cough I told you about, and the preparation you recommended cleared it up in them as fast as it did my folk’s flock.”

  “Just watch that particular medicine in the early stages of pregnancy, it tends to make cattle miscarry, and it might do the same in sheep,” he cautioned. “Late stages, no problem, but the first month—”

  “If it’s a choice between possibly losing the sheep or losing the lamb, I think most people would prefer the latter, but I’ll be sure and give them that option if the situation comes up,” she promised. “But that might be the reason why so many of the pregnant ones decided to drop lambs in the barn—which was a fine thing as far as their keepers were concerned.”

  “Heard anything from your sister yet?” he asked, changing the subject so quickly that she immediately suspected an ulterior motive.

  She shook her head. “It’s a little too soon, I’d think,” she replied, watching him with care. “I should think they’d have her so busy at first that she’d be going from the moment she got up to the moment her head hit the pillow.”

  I wonder why he’s asking? Is it curiosity or something more?

  “And I should think she’d want her sister with her so much that she’d be sending you letters three times a day,” he began. She held up her hand, stopping him at that point.

  “Don’t start.” she said shortly. “I won’t listen, and we’ve been through this
a hundred times. How would you cope with me gone? You couldn’t, and you know it.”

  “But you have the Gift, and I can’t teach you to use it,” he countered stubbornly. “We’ve tried, and I can’t tell you what you need to know, and so far you haven’t made any progress with the texts either.”

  “Then we’ll wait until someone with the Gift can come here to teach me for a couple of months,” she retorted, just as stubbornly. “Right now I’m doing as well or better than Justyn did for all of his training at the Collegium, and right now, that’s what this village needs and can’t afford to do without. Whatever happens here, I can at least buy time for a fully trained, fully Gifted Healer to get here. And you have to admit that in some cases that’s all you could do!”

  Gil shook his head, but he gave up the argument as a lost cause yet again. He was silent for a space, then scratched his head uneasily. “I’m just afraid that if you keep on like this, your Gift is going to get you into trouble,” he said at last, sounding far more worried than she was used to hearing from him.

  “How—how could I get into trouble?” she asked, uncomfortably certain that she already knew the answer.

  “I’m not sure—since my own Gift is so trifling, they never went into details,” he said, frowning with concentration, probably as he tried to recall his long-ago training at the Collegium. “I just remember that they told me an untrained Gift has the potential to cause the owner problems.”

  She wondered guiltily if she ought to tell him about her strange new sensitivity, and how her nerves always seemed to be raw and open to other people. But if I do, he’ll probably find a way to pack me off to Haven and then what would happen? No, I can get through this. It can’t be too long now before someone is sent here to show me what to do. Half the Healers in Valdemar aren’t trained at the Collegium, and they do all right! I can manage. I have to.