by Shannah Jay
Two days later he saw a group of men approaching and sensed that they didn’t mean him harm, so didn’t try to run away. His head was still throbbing and he was swaying on his feet with weariness and a feverish feeling of unreality.
***
Jerrith was making his way home when he saw the trail of footprints. One person walking carelessly, as if drunk or in fever. He nudged his companions and they nodded. One checked her dagger, another hefted his club.
When they saw the lad, he was weaving around, not seeming to know what he was doing or where he was going. He had matted blood on the back of his head and when they got closer, Jerrith could see that his eyes were filled with terror. Although he was well grown, his face looked young and vulnerable, and the grime on his cheeks was streaked by tears. But he didn’t stop or turn towards them, though he must have heard them coming.
‘Ho there!’ Jerrith called.
The lad stopped then, turning to blink at them like a night bird disturbed at noon. He was swaying on his feet and staring at them like a half-wit.
‘Are you all right, lad?’ Jerrith asked softly.
The boy said nothing.
Then Jerrith understood. He’d seen them before. Survivors. Too shocked to know what they were doing. Stunned by disaster. ‘We’re not raiders,’ he said soothingly. ‘We’re stonecutters. We come from Harrak, on the River Teneber.’
The boy tried to form a reply but no words came out, only an involuntary sigh as he crumpled to the ground at their feet.
Everyone in the group looked round in case the raiders were using the lad to bait a trap, but there was no sight of anyone, no sounds but the birds and insects. When they were sure there was no attack coming, they looked to Jerrith for guidance, as always.
‘We’d better take him home with us,’ he decided.
When they got to the village, Jerrith’s wife, Ilennia, came rushing out to meet them. She tut-tutted at the state of the lad and insisted they take him into her house—which they would have done anyway. She and Jerrith had no children of their own and she was always the one to care for those who were hurt.
***
Balas regained consciousness to find himself lying in a soft bed with a kind-faced woman sitting beside him. He sat bolt upright with a muffled shriek. The prickling sensation was back in his neck. ‘The raiders! They’re coming.’
‘There’s no one here,’ she murmured. ‘You’re safe now.’
‘No! They’re coming here. I can feel it. And they use tricks to get in. That’s how they got into my village.’
He looked so desperate, so wild-eyed, she called her husband in from his workshop.
Jerrith listened to what Balas had to tell him and asked a few questions to get at the sense of the tale. He thought about it for a moment then nodded. ‘We’ll take precautions. Don’t worry, lad.’
‘You won’t let them—’
‘We won’t let anyone loose in our village. And we have stout stone walls to keep raiders out. They’ll never take us by force.’
Balas sighed and closed his eyes again. The prickling sensation had lessened a little.
‘Here, you need to drink this,’ Ilennia said, lifting his head up and setting a beaker to his lips.
The herbal mixture sent him off to sleep again.
Jerrith called the villagers together. ‘The lad lost his family in a raid. Apparently the village was taken by a trick.’ He explained what had happened and folk nodded. ‘He says he can sense danger coming towards us now.’
Someone made a sceptical face. ‘Oh yes?’
Jerrith shrugged. ‘It costs little to make sure.’ As they nodded agreement to that, he added, ‘We’ll bring our stock inside and lock up early tonight, eh?’
When the raiders came, just before dusk, a small group pretending to be injured refugees, Jerrith gave a low whistle.
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‘It’s happening just as the lad said.’
Those near him nodded and their faces grew grim.
The group of ‘injured’ people was let into the village and once they were behind the town wall out of sight of the woods, they found themselves surrounded by angry people with sharp knives.
‘One noise from you and we’ll kill you here and now,’ Jerrith said.
They looked at his expression and kept their mouths closed. Yet, as they were prodded towards a solid stone storeroom, the glances they exchanged said they were sure this incarceration wouldn’t last long.
‘Look at their eyes,’ the man next to Jerrith whispered when they stood at the door, looking in on their prisoners, bound now and gagged. ‘You can see the madness there.’
‘Yes. Stay here and keep an eye on them just to make sure no one wriggles out of those bonds. The rest of us will go back to the walls and keep watch.’
Perrol leaned against the wall. ‘There’s no way they could get out of here, even if they do get free.’
‘Still, we don’t want them pulling the gags from their mouths and shouting a warning to their companions, do we?’
‘No.’
‘The others will find they’ve bitten off more than they can chew tonight. Stone is stronger than wood, and stoneworkers are stronger than other folk.’ There was great satisfaction in Jerrith’s tone as he said that, and as he left, he patted the corner of a wall he’d helped build himself.
The little town of Harrak lay on the slope to one side of the quarry, with a sheer rock face dropping down behind one wall. It was surrounded by high stone walls. No stranger could approach without being seen, but even so, the trick would have worked to gain the raiders entry and they’d have opened the gates had it not been for the boy’s warning.
When the raiders approached, those on the walls waited until they were quite close before drawing their bows and killing several of the would-be attackers where they stood. The raiders fought back, but only half-heartedly, and after a short time they stopped attacking and walked away, shouting insults.
‘Will they stay in the district?’ someone wanted to know.
‘They don’t usually,’ said Jerrith, who had travelled as far as Tenebrak in his time and was something of a leader in the town. He’d only stopped making the trips to sell dressed stone when the Discord Wars started. Now the stoneworkers sold only to nearby villages, but they were patient people who knew how to bide their time, so they were laying in stores of dressed stone ready for the peace would surely come again one day, for with it would come much building and rebuilding. And in the meantime they could do without luxuries and feed themselves by their farming.
‘Raiders don’t seem able to concentrate on one thing for long,’ he added scornfully. ‘When the madness sets them a-wandering, they do their killing on a whim, choosing one place, passing another by. It’s the ones who settle and form permanent groups who are to be feared most.’
The people of Harrak sat in solemn council that night and tried the raiders they’d captured. Balas was shaken awake and brought in to identify them. ‘Yes, these are the ones who destroyed my village.’ Sobbing, he launched himself at the nearest man, trying to kick and thump him, but Jerrith pulled him back.
‘We’ll deal with them now, lad.’
‘They killed my family. They killed everyone in Merniak, even the babies.’
‘I know.’ Jerrith held him close for a moment, patting his back, then he guided into the house again. ‘Leave them to us. They won’t escape, I promise you.’
Balas wept himself to sleep in Ilennia’s arms.
***
Next day the prisoners were gone and so was Balas’s unease. He sat quietly by Ilennia’s warm cooking hearth in the cosy kitchen, for although the day was mild, he felt chilled inside. And tired. Very tired.
When Jerrith came home that evening he looked grim. Balas stared at him. ‘What did you do with them?’ he whispered.
‘We killed them, lad, as we would any vermin. There’s no known way to redeem those lost to discord madness and we can’t spend o
ur lives guarding them.’
Balas stared at him, then nodded. ‘At least they won’t be able to murder anyone again.’ He sniffed away a tear.
Though he hadn’t fitted in with the leatherworkers, he’d loved his parents and knew they’d loved him, and he’d lost many friends, as well as a brother and a sister.
Jerrith looked at his wife and she nodded encouragement to speak, for they’d discussed what to do next while the lad was sleeping. ‘What do you want to do with yourself now, lad?’
Balas shook his head, which was still aching and thumping. ‘I don’t know. I can’t seem to think straight. Can I stay here for a day or two?’
‘Do you have any relatives elsewhere?’
‘No. None.’
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‘Would you like to stay here with us permanently, then?’ Ilennia asked.
‘You mean—live with you and Jerrith?’
‘Yes.’
Balas looked at her and relief made his voice husky. ‘Yes, oh yes! Please.’
‘My wife and I have no children,’ said Jerrith. ‘Will you be our foster-son?’
Balas burst into gruff strangled sobs like the child he still was half the time, and when Ilennia hugged him to her capacious bosom, he gave a muffled assent and let her hold him for a while. Then he raised his head, determined that they should know how inept he was. ‘But I can’t work the leather. I just can’t.’
‘We Harraki don’t work leather. We work stone.’
Balas stared down at his clumsy hands and Jerrith covered one of them with an equally lumpy hand. ‘I’ll show you how to work the stone. You have good strong hands. Stoneworker’s hands.’
CHAPTER 10 The Healer’s House
Within a few weeks of the incident with Gerrell, Karialla was working full time as a healer and Loral had found herself a young man to serve in her place.
At first Karialla tried seeing the people who needed her help in a chamber at the inn, but that soon began to strain even Loral’s goodwill, because patients who were waiting to see her took up space in the big common room without buying anything, not to mention sitting there looking ill and making the other customers feel uncomfortable.
In the end Evril, who had borne the brunt of Loral’s irritation, took it upon himself to solve the problem. He came home one afternoon looking particularly smug and announced, ‘I’ve found you somewhere to live and work, Karialla.’
She and Loral had been sharing a cup of honeybrew in the kitchen. They both stared at him in amazement at the sudden announcement. As the silence lengthened Karialla saw he was expecting some sort of reaction or praise from them and was looking just a little aggrieved that no one had responded, so went to hug him. ‘Oh, how clever of you, Evril! Where?’
He hugged her back and smiled at his wife over her shoulder. ‘The old Derrion house.’
It meant nothing to Karialla, but Loral nodded. ‘I know the one you mean. But it was burnt down, wasn’t it?’
‘It looks much worse than it is—which has probably kept other trouble-makers out of it. In fact, only one wing was badly burnt, and even that’s repairable. The rest is still perfectly all right—well, it will be with a bit of work. All the woodwork’s smoke-stained and there’s a bit of a mess inside.’ He puffed out his chest and beamed at them. ‘So I persuaded the Town Elders to give it to Karialla for a Healer’s Court. Sadly, there were no survivors in the Derrion family.’
‘When can we go and see this house?’ Karialla asked, feeling a sudden surge of longing for a home of her own.
‘Why not now?’ Loral stood up. ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No need for that, Lor,’ Evril said hastily. ‘You need your rest.’
‘I want to make sure the place is all right for Karialla. I’m not leaving practical details to you men. We can’t have our one and only healer living in a tumble-down ruin. It wouldn’t be right.’ She fixed Evril with a stare that had him shuffling his feet. ‘You aren’t trying to keep me out of this, are you?’
‘Oh, no, Lor. Why would I do that?’
They all three walked across the market square and up the Street of Bellflowers. The trees that gave it its name had been somewhat hacked around in the troubles, but new growth had nearly filled the gaps in the foliage now.
When Evril stopped and pointed with a proud gesture, Karialla exclaimed in delight. She’d always loved this house, though she’d never been inside before. It was such a pretty design, unusual for Tenebrak in that it was three stories high, with wide verandas across the front between the two wings. The roof was covered in wooden shingles, not thatched with raas leaves, and the walls were made of wooden boards. Houses in Tenebrak didn’t always have solid walls, not in such a warm climate. Woven mesh walls were good enough to maintain privacy and let the cool breezes through. But even the windows here were covered with wooden shutters, tightly fastened. Karialla closed her eyes in relief at that. She would, she knew, feel more secure with shutters. And the nearby houses were close enough for her to call for help and expect a response.
‘Derrion was a merchant. He had a morbid fear of being robbed,’ Evril explained, ‘so he built his house strongly. I thought you’d feel better in a place like this, what with Gerrell and all.’
Karialla didn’t try to hide her feelings. ‘Yes, I shall.’ No one had seen Gerrell since the day he’d tried to take over the town as faction leader, and that worried her. He might have left the district, as some believed, but she felt he was still nearby, waiting to try again. She couldn’t get his last threat out of her mind. I’ll be back, girlie! One dark night, you’ll turn round and find me behind you. But with such solid walls as these, he wouldn’t find it easy to get to her without
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making a lot of noise.
‘Poor old Derrion.’ Evril was still staring at the house. ‘Making this place stronger did him no good in the end. They just set fire to it and killed him and his family when they ran outside to escape the flames. I think Farran intended to live here himself and use it as faction headquarters, so he had his men put the fire out again, but he died soon afterwards, so it never got used.’
‘I was glad when Farran died,’ Loral said. ‘I know that’s not a right way to think, but we all were. We thought the troubles had ended. But afterwards there was more fighting and we still have Gerell, don’t we? Did you know, Karialla, that we forgave some of the raiders and let them settle in the town?’
‘Forgave them?’ Karialla had never heard of that happening before. How could you forgive someone who was likely to hurt people again? It wasn’t possible to cure discord madness.
‘That was Rojan’s idea,’ Evril said. ‘He absolutely insisted we forgive them if they repented. He said he’d pray with them and keep an eye on them from then on.’ He snorted. ‘Hah! That man just likes to tell others what to do. But he didn’t take part in any of the fighting to protect the town, did he? No. He let others get killed in his place.’
Loral shrugged. ‘He says the gods have forbidden him to kill. He is First Elect, after all.’
‘Only of that stupid Circle of his. He’s not Senior Elder of the town—though I daresay he’d like to be. He loves bossing people around.’
Loral frowned at her husband. ‘Oh, you can never see any good in him. But you have to agree that his plan worked.
We did get rid of the factions and the ones who came back have settled down all right.’
‘I suppose so. Well, they had settled till Gerrell started getting ideas.’
They all fell silent again, staring at the blackened evidence of Discord in front of them.
‘Well,’ said Karialla after a few moments, ‘it’s perfect for my needs, so I’m truly grateful to you, Evril.’ She smiled and looked down the street. It was close to centre of the town, just behind the traders’ green and the market square.
The grounds were overgrown now and not as large as the grounds of the original Healers’ Courts, but the narrow bloc
k ran back far enough to build other dwellings and house a small domain if other healers turned up later.
Oh, please, she prayed, please let other healers come here and join me in Tenebrak! Surely she wasn’t the only one to survive the wars? But she didn’t say that aloud, and she didn’t even know why she was praying, for she certainly didn’t believe in Rojan’s arrogant gods.
Evril broke the sombre mood by pulling a big key out of his pocket and waving it in front of them. ‘Well, are you two coming inside or not?’
‘We certainly are,’ snapped Loral. ‘I was beginning to wonder if you were going to take all day to open that door.’
The three of them went into the hallway, a wide elegant space with room for people to sit and wait. ‘Perfect,’
breathed Karialla.
Loral wedged the door open behind them, flooding the place with light. ‘We’ll have to clean this up. It’s disgusting.’
The whole house was filthy, with crawler webs festooned everywhere. It was inhabited by many small animals and insects, and there were scuttling noises as the three people began to explore it, to find piles of droppings or nest litter everywhere. The burnt-out wing would need major repairs and new flooring to make it habitable, but the other wing and the central area were fairly sound, though a vine was pushing in at one rear window.
When they’d finished the tour, Karialla hugged Evril again, to his blushing delight, then hugged Loral, too, for good measure. ‘How soon can I move in?’
‘As soon as you like.’ Evril made a ceremonial bow and handed over the key.
‘Tomorrow, after I’ve cleaned up a bit,’ Karialla decided. She grinned at the other woman, ‘And don’t pretend you won’t be glad to see the back of me, Loral. Sick people aren’t good for an inn’s custom.’
Loral smiled, but her mind was on more practical matters. ‘Well, there’s some of the old furniture left, but don’t tell me folk haven’t taken stuff away, because anyone with half a eye can see that a lot’s gone missing. Let’s go and look at that kitchen again.’
She led the way along to the back of the house where the huge kitchen was littered with the same debris as elsewhere else, plus shards of broken crockery. ‘We’ll come back and scrub the kitchen out this very afternoon, Karialla. Evril can manage at the inn on his own for a while.’
