“Die!” Carin ordered them, doing what she must—no matter the consequences. Nothing she could do would be worse than having strangleweed growing inside. Forced to choose between certain death and chancy magic, Carin chose the latter and bespelled the weed, reducing its tendrils to sand.
And then she did sneeze, mightily. Each sneeze spurted blood and mucus.
She did not bother with a handkerchief—it would have been saturated at the first blow. Carin jumped down from the wagon and stood in the road, bent over with her hands on her knees, sneezing uncontrollably. A thick, clumpy river streamed from her nose and puddled at her feet. Bloody snot splattered the crystal dolphin that swayed between her and the ground as she bent at the waist, her amulet dangling from its new, braided-jute cord.
Even with all the noise she was making, Carin could hear the silence around her.
Theil and Meg—why aren’t they sneezing? Merciful Drisha! Did I turn them to dust?
Ignoring the sand-clotted, blood-streaked, glutinous drainage from her nostrils, Carin reeled to the wagon bed and found Megella still in solid form, but doubled over the top boards, unconscious and apparently not breathing. She dragged the woman the rest of the way over the side, flinging her hard to the ground.
It worked. The impact jolted Megella to consciousness, got her lungs pumping again. The woman lay in the dirt sneezing and hacking. Bloody fluids ran from her nose and mouth, so freely that Carin’s first concern, under other circumstances, would have been to stem the flow. But now she wanted the running discharge of blood and mucus expelling the thick sand from the air passages.
Leaving Megella to sneeze herself clear, Carin stumbled after Verek’s horse. The animal had stepped a short way into a thicket and now stood with its head down, grazing the spring grass and sweet herbs that grew between the spicebushes. Verek was still somehow in the saddle, but slumped over the horse’s neck.
Carin jerked him down, giving a yank with all she had, to knock the breath back into him, as she had done with Megella. But the carpet of plants cushioned Verek’s fall. Crumpled on his side in the grass, he did not draw breath.
“Megella!” Carin screamed. “Help me!”
Without turning to see whether the wisewoman was in any condition to offer help, Carin did the only things she could think of. She kicked Verek in the chest, desperate to get his lungs working. She pummeled his back. She knelt and slapped his face.
He did not stir.
Burgeoning inside her was a headlong terror that Theil might never stir again. Carin’s fear so closely resembled the bursting of strangleweed spores deep in her stomach, the tendrils exploding upward to squeeze the life from her heart, she nearly cast the spell of sand on the organs of her own body.
But then Megella was there beside her, the woman’s weight anchoring Carin as Meg put her hand on Carin’s shoulder and leaned over to study Verek.
“Roll him,” the wisewoman mumbled, her voice ragged. “On his back.”
When they had him face up, Megella knelt astride Verek’s hips. She put the heel of her hand on his abdomen, just below his rib cage, covered it with her other hand, and thrust upward, seeming to press the entire weight of her body into his.
She did it again, another quick, hard thrust, and expelled a clot of phlegm from Verek’s mouth.
And with the third repetition, she succeeded in clearing his airway. He began to cough and to struggle.
“Sweet mother of mercy!” Carin cried. Through every nerve in her body, relief coursed with such intensity that black spots darted before her eyes.
The spots fled as Carin flung her arms around the wisewoman. “Thank you!” she exclaimed, almost crushing Meg with her hug, half wild with gratitude.
“But now,” Megella rasped as she broke Carin’s embrace and heaved herself off Verek, “roll him on his side so he can drain.”
Out came the blood and mucus, the phlegm that was so full of sand it seemed Verek had inhaled an entire beach. But this was strangleweed sand, the residue of Carin’s spellwork. He sneezed it out, he hawked it up, he coughed so hard that he could scarcely catch a breath. When he did breathe, it was a painful sound, a harsh, deep rasping.
After a long time of Theil lying curled on his side fighting for air, Carin helped him to sit up. As she propped him among the spicebushes, he wrapped his arms tight around his ribs. Pain distorted his features. Between Carin kicking and punching him, Megella delivering her bruising abdominal thrusts, and the violence of his body’s attempts to rid itself of foreign matter, Verek was in worse shape than if he’d been in a brawl.
“Can you give him anything?” Carin muttered as she crouched to one side of him with Meg on the other. “Something to bring up the guck from his lungs?”
Megella nodded. “Mint’s best.”
The wisewoman stood and took a step toward the wagon, then paused to look down at her blouse, which was heavily stained from her nasal discharges.
“Did you get them all?” Meg asked, husky-voiced. “The spores?”
“All of them inside us?” Carin replied, slightly surprised by the question. “I’m sure I did. In fact, I would bet there’s not a strangleweed spore for miles around now. I didn’t hold back when I felt those things sprouting up my nose.”
“Good.” Megella gave Carin a thin smile and added, “I am pleased to have you fully back with us, widgeon. I have missed your strength.”
The two of them set up camp in a circle that was centered on Verek. Carin helped Meg build a fire, then hauled buckets of water from a secluded pond that she located far off the road. Between turns, as she headed back to fetch more water, she stopped to wipe away the bloody drainage from Verek’s nose, to brush his hair out of his face, to hold him close during new fits of coughing.
Of them all, Theil’s exposure had been the worst. He had stayed the longest in the dead swath, crumbling the strangleweed between his fingers, breathing the spores that his actions released. Undoubtedly they had all gotten spores down in their chests, not just up their noses, but Verek’s lungs were almost certainly the most damaged.
Where he had spores, now he has sand, Carin thought. Like tiny scrapers raking him inside and oozing blood into his lungs.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I had to kill the weed-sprouts before they killed us. I never thought about the sand I’d leave inside you.”
Verek could not speak for coughing. But he put his hand on Carin’s shoulder and squeezed. His eyes were watering. In the look he gave her, she could read only pain.
It made her feel raw inside—as shredded as she imagined his lungs must be.
While Megella made tea, Carin pried herself from Theil’s side long enough to unhitch the horses and lead them to water. The pond was so far from camp, she did not feel easy tethering the horses near it to graze. For many days now—weeks—they had seen no one on the road, and this scarred landscape seemed incapable of supporting any wild animal that was large enough to threaten the horses. Nevertheless, Carin wanted them where she could at least hear them. She let them drink their fill, then staked the horses at intervals among the spicebushes, scattering them to make best use of the available grazing.
She returned to camp to find that Megella had stripped Verek of his shirt and was rubbing his bare chest with an aromatic oil.
“The mint in this smells wonderful,” Carin said, hurrying to take over from her. “It cools my nose.”
Meg dropped handfuls of freshly picked peppermint leaves into a pot of steaming water. “Happily for us, it grows all through here. Slather some of that oil on yourself while you’re at it, widgeon, then come get a cup of the tea.”
They spent at least two hours soothing themselves with mint: adding fresh-crushed leaves to a balsamic ointment from Megella’s stocks of remedies and applying it liberally, inhaling the vapors, brewing and drinking strong mint tea. Carin’s nose and sinuses felt much comforted, although they continued to drain freely.
Megella tried to get Verek to drink some cooled
tea. He opened his eyes briefly, made an unsuccessful effort to take the cup from her, and spilled the tea down his front.
“Well,” the woman said, her ear to his chest as she listened to breathing so labored, Carin had been able to hear it from halfway to the pond, “at least he is inhaling the vapors. That will help to clear his lungs.”
Straightening, Meg added, “Rub him down again, widgeon. Then we will bind his ribs, in case we cracked any. It was either that, or let him suffocate.”
As Carin bent over him, Verek tried to keep his eyes open long enough to look into hers. But he ended by squinting and then quickly shutting them.
“It’s all right,” Carin whispered, trying to sound cheery as she moved his dolphin amulet aside to rub more salve on his chest. “All this mint is making my eyes water. Yours are probably burning. But Megella wants you to keep breathing it. It does help. I’ll bring a damp cloth to cool your eyes.”
Theil grunted mutely, still with his eyes shut. But when Carin returned with one of Meg’s kerchiefs that she had soaked in clear water, and laid it over his lids, he managed to rasp out a barely audible, “Thank you.”
Those two words worked to settle Carin’s heart, to calm the wildness of its thudding and ease the tension that had her in knots.
She got a blanket from the wagon and spread it on the grass, making him a bed where he lay. She pulled off his boots and removed his sword belt, and with Megella’s help got him repositioned on his side to promote drainage. He was sticky with coughed-up blood and sand-thickened mucus—they all were.
While Megella made them a cold but filling supper of flatbread, cheese, and dried plums, Carin washed phlegm off Verek’s face and listened to him wheeze. It was a horrible sound that hinted of permanent lung damage.
He ate nothing that night, and it was doubtful whether he slept much. His rasping coughs and whistling breaths were loud in the darkness.
Carin stayed with him, frequently rising from their blanket to dab a cool cloth on his face or to rub mint salve on his chest. Just before dawn, Verek slipped into a light doze that seemed to bring him some relief.
At breakfast, Theil managed a cup of tea and two bites of barley bread that Carin soaked in warm broth. Though his eyes were red and watery, at least he could hold them open now. When he opened his mouth to speak, however, nothing came out, not even a croak.
Grimacing, Verek pointed at his throat, then raised his eyebrows in a question.
“You will have a sore throat for days, I expect,” Megella told him. “It is no surprise that you have lost your voice. What Carin did to the spores was necessary to save all our lives, but the results must have been like gritstone on your vocal cords—and in your lungs.”
Verek raised his eyebrows again, then pointed simultaneously at Carin and Megella.
“I guess we didn’t breathe as many spores as you did,” Carin answered his silent question. “I felt them wriggling up my nose, and Meg was sneezing like she had a snootful. But you got the worst of the spores—and most of their sandy dregs.”
Verek nodded. Then he covered his throat with his hand and shot Megella another look.
“You want to wrap it? Yes, that might help. Make you feel better, if nothing else. Let me see what I have.” The wisewoman dug through her sacks and bags.
Leaving her to it, Carin poured the last of the hot tea into Verek’s cup, kissed him, ran her fingers through his tangled hair, and set about striking camp. She had been prepared to help Megella nurse him through a days-long recovery here in the mint patch. But Theil seemed stronger this morning, strong enough to resume travel.
And a renewed sense of urgency was upon Carin. The sooner they returned to the magic of Ruain, the sooner she might hear Theil’s voice again—his reassuring, commanding voice that could be razor-edged with fury, but also tender, when he wanted.
By herself, Carin got the cobs hitched to Megella’s wagon. The two animals were so accustomed to their job, they could practically harness themselves.
The bobtails also went willingly to their places at the back of the wagon. The heavy, plodding pair seemed almost devoid of personality. They never balked at following behind in the dust, they never even tossed their heads in annoyance. They seemed content to walk when the wagon rolled, stop when it stopped, and graze whatever they found underfoot, wherever they were tethered for the night.
Verek’s horse, however, was an alert, intelligent animal. The silver-dapple seemed to sense that something was amiss when Carin, not Verek, came to collect it. The horse threw back its head and snorted, and seemed on the verge of bolting.
Patiently, Carin coaxed it back to the road. And when it saw Verek sitting on the ground beside the wagon, the horse went straight to him.
Theil pulled himself upright, using the wagon for support and wheezing with the effort. He sounded like a wind-broken horse.
And now he smelled strongly of onion as well as mint. Megella had crushed a ferociously hot variety of wild onion and mixed it with honey and peppermint into a syrup that she’d smeared over Verek’s throat. She’d then wrapped a scarf around his neck like a muffler to hold the heat in. And to judge by the sheen of sweat on Verek’s face, Megella had also mixed spoonfuls of the syrup into his tea and made him drink the concoction.
The silver-dapple stood quietly while Verek scratched behind its ears. Carin looked from Theil’s face, which was flushed with the heat treatment, to his hands. They appeared ashen, tinted with gray. If it weren’t for the syrup burning his throat and reddening his face, he would be a sickly gray all over, she suspected.
“Get in the wagon, Theil,” Carin murmured. “You can’t ride like you are. Just lie down and be quiet, and breathe those onion fumes. I want you to heal so I can hear you bark at me again. You’ve always been good at that. It’s one of the things I love about you—that growl in your voice when you’re blisteringly angry.”
He tried to smile. Then he beckoned her over. By his gestures, Carin took his meaning.
“You want me to ride him?” She stroked the silver-dapple’s smoothly arched neck.
Verek nodded. He gave the horse a final pat, then stumbled to the back of the wagon. With Megella’s help and Carin’s, he hauled himself up and practically collapsed into the mounds of blankets with which Meg habitually padded the wagon bed for her own comfort. The wisewoman pulled out one of her many shawls and draped a corner of it over his eyes to shade them from the sun that was almost directly overhead now. They were getting a late start.
By the time Meg finished fussing over him, Verek was asleep. At least, he seemed to be, although it was difficult to tell, by the harsh sounds he made, whether he was snoring or he was fighting to draw a proper breath.
Megella climbed into the driver’s seat and took up the lines. “Whenever you are ready, widgeon,” she murmured.
“Then let’s go home.” Carin boosted herself up and reined the horse north. The silver-dapple stepped out briskly.
From the lead position, the road ahead looked quite different. Throughout this long journey, Verek had been the guide. Carin, trading off with Megella to drive the wagon, had grown accustomed to following, doing little more than stare at Verek’s back, giving no thought to how many miles they would cover each day or where they would stop for the night. Now those decisions would largely be hers.
To a great extent, however, the landscape dictated their stopping points. They paused wherever they found water and grazing for the horses. They hurried past the dead swaths blighted by strangleweed. Heartened, Carin noticed that the dead patches became fewer and smaller as the road curved sharply to the northeast.
But just as she was beginning to think they would ride out of the scarred areas altogether, they came upon a narrow, weed-devastated tract of land. And for the first time in a long while, they saw living strangleweed. At the edge of the damage that it had inflicted, a clump of the parasite hung listlessly from a dead branch. It was spindly and yellowish.
Carin reined up. For a mo
ment she studied the clump from horseback. Then she slid down and walked to within an arm’s length of it. She reached for it, and the clump sprang to life. A tendril shot forth and coiled tightly around her wrist.
“Carin—no!” Megella shouted from the wagon seat.
But the warning had been unnecessary. Carin’s reflexes had already answered the threat. In less than a heartbeat, the weed was sand—a cone-shaped pile under the branch the clump had occupied. Carin shook a few stray grains of sand off her wrist as she strode back to the wagon.
“That was foolish, girl,” Meg snapped. “Letting it touch you. Why take a risk when you do not need to?”
Carin shrugged. “I’ve decided I’m not going to work the spell of sand anymore unless I’m actually touching the thing that I want to kill. It’s safer that way, I think.”
The commotion had roused Verek. He was sitting up in the back of the wagon and gazing fixedly at Carin. In the tilt of his head and the flash of his bloodshot eyes, she could tell that he had followed her reasoning. He gave her a slight, approving nod, and Carin could almost hear his thoughts.
“Good,” Theil might say to her if she had not sandpapered his vocal cords and shredded the linings of his lungs. “A little restraint is no bad thing in a young, powerful, untrained wysard.”
Megella, too, seemed to catch her drift.
“Mis—er—miscarries of the spellwork might indeed be avoided by wrestling bodily with your opponent,” the woman said, sounding a little skeptical. “But you would not so easily have extricated me from the strangling weed that seized me in the reed-beds—as we crossed the scrublands toward the Eastern Sea—had you limited your curse to what you could touch.”
“Curse?” Carin muttered. “I hadn’t thought …” She paused. “But it is, isn’t it? A curse, I mean. I cursed Flynn and obliterated him.”
The Wisewoman (Waterspell 3) Page 23
