by Shannah Jay
Loral was in her element planning things, so Karialla didn’t interrupt. She would certainly be glad of some help to get this place habitable.
‘I want to check that all the shutters still work in this part of the house,’ she said.
Loral stopped her muttering and peering into cupboards. ‘Good idea. You can’t be too careful, a woman on your own. Evril!’
He came through from the living areas. ‘Yes, dear?’
‘Go and fetch Harrin. Tell him I said he’s to drop everything. We can’t have our healer getting attacked.’
‘But I was going to—’
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‘Now! She can’t live here till he’s made this place secure.’
Evril heaved a loud aggrieved sigh, but did as he was told.
***
The following morning, when Karialla arrived, she found the house already full of men and women, who ‘just had an hour or two free’ to help her. She was immensely touched by their help. It was like this in the settlements. Neighbour helped neighbour. But she had expected Tenebrak to be too big for that sort of camaraderie.
‘I don’t know how to repay you all,’ she said as dusk began to fall on newly-scrubbed floorboards and walls.
One woman took it upon herself to be spokeswoman. ‘We needed a healer. Just having you here is repayment enough.’
When they had gone, Karialla went round checking that everything was locked. With Gerrell still out there somewhere, she wasn’t taking any chances. Then she sat in peace in her own kitchen and sipped a cup of honeybrew before eating half of the huge pie that Loral had sent over.
She felt happier than she had since Pavlin’s death.
As the days passed, however, she remained nervous, so kept the doors barred at night, slept with her dagger to hand, trying not to give in to her fear. She could understand fully why more and more people were now living in group domains. She would definitely have welcomed company during the long lonely evenings. Well, when she was properly settled, perhaps she could take on an apprentice or two. If she was the only healer left in Tenebrak, then she ought to start passing on her skills as quickly as she could.
Evril and Loral had been good to her in so many ways, she felt she would never be able to repay them. She kept an eye on Loral’s swelling stomach and helped her with the preparations for the birth. Things could go hard for an older first-time mother. Loral’s health was good, however, and Karialla had no sense of danger with her, as she had with some women. She’d learned during her training to trust these instincts and they’d grown stronger over the years.
Healing seemed to be an instinct, born in her.
The townsfolk continued to help her long after she moved into her new home, turning up with bits and pieces of furniture or small household items. ‘Don’t need it any more,’ they’d say, or ‘Found it in a ruin.’
Tradesfolk, too, turned up at the healer’s house unasked. ‘Just going to repair that end bit of roof, since I’ve an hour or two free and a few spare shingles!’ or ‘Got a morning free, so I thought I’d fix those leaking water pipes Evril told me about’. Now that life was more peaceful, the Elders had arranged to have the pumps repaired which brought water from the small streams and rivers in the hills to the houses. This was making life a lot easier.
Once or twice, Rojan tried to detain Karialla in the street ‘to chat’ . The first time, her own innate politeness made her stop for a moment, but when she found he only wanted to persuade her to attend the One Circle again, she moved away and refused to stop for him again, though he called out after her in a loud, angry voice.
On a sunny afternoon she was walking round the grounds of the old Healers’ Courts, as she did sometimes, knee high in plants and grasses, looking for herbs that had self-seeded to transplant to her own garden, when suddenly she stumbled over something which turned out to be the delivery chute to the wood cellars. Excited, she began to grub in the dirt, clearing the plants away until she found the wooden hatch with its big metal ring. ‘Oh, please,’ she breathed.
‘Please let there be something left!’
Unable to wait a minute to find out, she didn’t try to seek help but dug out the soil that had embedded itself around the edges of the hatch, not caring if she broke her nails, grunting with the effort. At last she had the hatch clear and tried to open it. But she couldn’t budge it. Then she noticed how embedded the earth was round the edges of the hatch itself, so found a stick and poked that out, jumping up and down on the edges to loosen the hatch.
‘Now,’ she told it, ‘now you’ve got to open.’ And with great difficulty she managed to heave the hatches open, the hinges squeaking a loud protest. Standing at the top of the wooden ladder that was nailed to the wall, she stared down into the darkness. There were piles of firewood to one side below her, neatly stacked still, with a path left through them.
It really did look as if this part of the cellars was intact.
Should she go down and explore? Her heart was pounding with excitement and she wanted to quite desperately. But would that be sensible? What if the hatch fell and trapped her inside? With her foot she nudged into place a piece of wood to prevent it from closing completely again. Still she hesitated. She really should go for help and – No! Somehow she didn’t want other people here with her. She was—for the moment at least—the last of the healers of Tenebrak, the natural heir to anything that was left. She didn’t want other people poking around, making off with things which were designed only for use by healers.
A picture of Rojan flashed into her mind. If he found out about this, he’d want to take everything, and he had enough followers to cause trouble.
Anyway, she smiled as she admitted it to herself, the truth was she couldn’t bear to wait another minute.
Checking again that the hatch couldn’t slam down on her, she kilted up her ankle-length skirt and climbed down the wooden ladder. It seemed dark away from hatch but gradually her eyes became accustomed to the dim light. It didn’t
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feel damp, nor did it look as if it had been ransacked. The wood store was still half full, pieces stacked in orderly piles, and there were axes and saws hanging neatly on the rear wall. Surely, if raiders had been in here, they would have taken such good quality tools, or at least, strewn them around?
Hope began to grow in her, but as she peered through the first doorway, she let out a low growl of exasperation. It was infuriating that she had no lamp. She went through the doorway into the next cellar and it seemed to her there was quite a large space. Then she realised that this was the herb cellar. She felt her way across to the racks and touched dry leaves and twigs. Yes, definitely the herb cellar.
Frowning, she tried to think what came next? The still room? No, that was further along. A storeroom of some sort.
She poked her head through the doorway she found by feeling along the wall. Somehow the darkness here didn’t make her nervous.
When she climbed out of the chute again, she was clutching a book she’d found by touch in that third cellar. It had been lying open on a bench that she’d felt her way along. Maybe the raiders hadn’t realised the cellars went on for such a long way? These rear areas had been used for storage, to keep potions cool and to hold the many medicinal herbs in the dry atmosphere essential to their good preservation.
When she got out, she brushed the dirt from her skirt, which she’d had made in the paler shade of Healer’s blue used by the Second Cadre. Pulling the hatch down, she covered it with dried grasses and leaves, then walked quickly back to her home.
At dusk, when people wouldn’t wonder to see her carrying a lantern, she returned to the Healers’ Courts, forgetting about possible dangers to herself in her eagerness to explore.
She didn’t light the lantern until she’d felt her way down the rungs. She didn’t dare swing the wooden hatch back into place above her to hide the glow, because she wasn’t sure she’d be able to lift it from below. But she dou
bted there would be anyone around to see the light from her lantern. Other people had told her they didn’t like walking through the grounds of the old Healers’ Courts. Noises had been heard there, strange noises. Well, she’d heard them herself when she first arrived in Tenebrak. It was as if the past was still trapped here, crying out for release.
She held up the lighted lantern and walked from one cellar to another with tears in her eyes, penetrating to the fourth space, the still room! How she’d loved to work on distilling and bottling medicines! But beyond that, she stopped with a soft cry of disappointment. Here, the roof had caved in. Rubble and soil barred her way. Perhaps this explained why this part hadn’t been looted, though what had caused the collapse, she couldn’t imagine.
She went back several times to the cellars until she knew exactly what was left there. She took a few things home with her: books, pestles and mortars, jars, bits and pieces that no one would question when they saw them, because so many people had donated items to her.
When she made a still room at her new home, it really began to feel like a Healer’s Court, but it was very quiet when the patients were not there. Too quiet for her liking and she found herself jumping at any unusual noise. But she made no attempt to find apprentices. Who was she to teach others? She still had too much to learn herself?
From time to time she would take the books out and read them with the frustrated yearning of one close to delicious fruit that was just out of reach. You didn’t dare try to learn your trade by practising on living bodies. It was one thing to know the theories, but you needed help and guidance to develop the more advanced healing skills. Only in an emergency would she ever go beyond her own training.
It had been easy to learn these skills in the old days, when multitudes of sick people from the whole region used to come to the Healers’ Courts for treatment and you could observe and help deal with every sort of problem. Now she had to rely on chance to bring her the cases which might extend her skills, and people still didn’t like to travel too far from their homes, even to seek a healer’s help.
Her worry about Gerrell faded, but never quite went away. It was commonly believed in the town that his group had now disbanded and the survivors had gone elsewhere. Surely, if he were living nearby, Gerrell would have to steal food to supply his group’s needs? Unless he was living off the land?
She asked people what they thought, trying to sound casual, and they laughed at the mere idea of that. Gerrell was no woodsman, no, and not much of a gardener, either. A fellow as ignorant and lazy as him couldn’t live a ten-day from his own foraging and wouldn’t bother to grow for himself the vegetables that flourished easily in most Tenebrak gardens. It had always surprised people who knew him that Gerrell had found the energy to join the raiders in the first place, but he was a big man, and must have proved a good fighter.
As the days continued to pass without incident, with no thefts of food or property reported to the Elders and no tales of attacks, Karialla continued to feel easier, but she still took care to bar the doors and shutter the windows carefully at nightfall, still jerked awake sometimes, thinking she’d heard a noise outside.
***
When Evril told Karialla that the Elders were thinking of building a new trading centre and had decided to use the site where the old Healers’ Courts had stood, she felt deeply upset. Bustling people and carts coming and going,
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warehouses and storerooms being built where once Healers had lived gracious and fulfilling lives. Oh, she hated the idea of that!
She began transferring everything for which she might have a use from the cellar to her own house. It was amazing that no one had noticed what she was doing, but they’d grown used to seeing her out and about at odd hours, grown used to her coming home pushing a little handcart loaded with a harvest of herbs gathered in long-neglected gardens where no one was alive to care about the plants. And no one ever looked underneath the herbs to see why they were piled so high.
Since changes were happening all the time in Tenebrak, she went to some of the Elders and told them about her hopes of one day building new Healers’ Courts on the ridge. It meant so much to her to have that particular piece of land that she could hear her voice tremble and falter as she made her plea. When she looked at their faces pain lanced through her, for she could see the refusal even before they spoke it aloud.
Rojan joined them unasked and it was he who replied, speaking to her slowly and scornfully as if she were a foolish child. ‘Look, Karialla, you’ve already got a Healers’ Court, and a fine large house it is, too, for one woman’s use. I’d have found you a much smaller place if it’d been up to me. What happens on the ridge is not your concern.’
‘Why do you always say ‘Healers’ Court’ ?’ she demanded. ‘We always had Healers’ Courts before, several of them.’
He raised one eyebrow scornfully. ‘Well, it’s obvious you won’t be able to run more than one court on your own, now isn’t it? I mean, the days of having a series of specialist Healers’ Courts as we did before the wars are gone for ever.
We must rely on ourselves more. Prayer can do as much as your healing, when people truly surrender themselves to the will of the gods. Maybe this was all meant to be, to turn people back along the true path, the path we of the One Circle follow.’
Two of the Elders rolled their eyes at one other, for Rojan wasted no opportunity to proselytise and they’d heard this all too often from him. ‘You’ve got all you need for now, healer,’ one of them told Karialla. Unlike Rojan’s, his voice was gentle and respectful, but it was still firm in its denial.
‘And people are coming back to prayer,’ Rojan insisted, his voice cutting harshly across something else the other had been going to say.
‘Prayer can’t mend a broken leg,’ Karialla said flatly, ‘or ease a difficult birth.’
‘How do you know? Have you tried it? You’ve told me you believe in nothing.’
She closed her eyes and fought to remain calm. ‘Why can’t I have some of that land on the ridge? There’s plenty to spare.’
‘Because we’ve got plans for it,’ Evril said. ‘Now, we must get on with this discussion.’ He motioned to her politely to leave and she did so with a heavy heart.
Later she asked him if she should take the matter to the whole Council of Elders and he took it upon himself to explain the reasoning behind the refusal to her, since she wasn’t well versed in commercial matters. ‘The land up there is far too valuable to use for that purpose, Karialla. Your needs are quite simple, really. Even if you find another healer or two to join you, that house you’re in will be big enough and you’ve space to build behind it if you need more room.
That’s why we gave it to you.’
‘But I have a feeling about the ridge,’ she insisted. ‘The air always feels fresher up there. It’d be better for sick people.’ She didn’t tell them of the pictures the deleff had shown her. No one would believe that.
‘Karialla, people are going to be building fine mansions up on the ridge one day, not Healers’ Courts or learning centres. They’ll pay the town good coin for that privilege. We can’t afford to simply give away such valuable land.’
She remembered the pitying smiles some had exchanged when she asked about the land and stopped arguing.
Sometimes she wondered if they were right. Perhaps she really was aiming too high.
But whenever she went to bed feeling she should moderate her ambitions, she would dream of what might be, dream of the great stone building, hear its sonorous bell calling her, and wake in the morning with renewed vigour, ready to continue the struggle.
Mostly she was too busy to brood or give way to despair—not exactly happy, but busy and feeling useful, at least.
CHAPTER 11 Deverith’s Return
That summer saw a fine crop of babies and Karialla was much in demand for her midwifery skills. One day she had to go out of town to attend a tricky birthing with a woman who hadn�
�t been well throughout the pregnancy. After a hard night’s work she delivered a pair of healthy girl children, identical twins. It was a good thing a healer had been there to ease the birth and prevent the woman from damaging herself, so she felt great satisfaction about her efforts.
Birthing was her strongest skill, she decided, and the one which interested her most. If the Healers’ Courts hadn’t been destroyed, she would probably have ended up with midwifery as her First Cadre speciality.
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The father of the new-born twins was a shrewd farmer, rich enough to pay her in coin in spite of the years of troubles. She looked ruefully at the small shining silver piece in the centre of her hand as she walked back towards town. Even with the money she’d brought with her, at this rate she’d be a hundred years old before she had enough money to set up some proper new Healers’ Courts!
It seemed sheer chance - although she changed her mind about that later - that she happened to be passing by as a man emerged from the undergrowth by the side of the road, escorted by two huge deleff. She recognised them at once.
‘Eress! Hanar!’ The massive heads signalled a greeting, then they turned round and pushed back into the woods, leaving her alone with the man.
‘Can I help you?’ Without waiting for an answer, she moved forward to support him, for he looked near to collapse, white-faced and thin to the point of emaciation.
He stared at her as if he’d seen her somewhere before. ‘If you’d be so kind, lass. I’m still rather weak, I’m afraid.’
His voice was faint and breathy she noted automatically as she helped him to sit down by the side of the road. ‘Have you come far?’
‘Been travelling for about ten days, but only slowly. The deleff allowed me to ride on their backs from time to time or we’d not have got here at all. I’m not usually so feeble, but I’ve been ill. A strange lung fever I picked up in the wildwoods. I was rather short of food - and hope - when those two deleff came to my aid. I thought at first I was hallucinating, but they carried me to a ruined farm, where there was still grain in the bins and fruit on the trees, and then later they brought me here.’
