The Spirit Stone

by Katharine Kerr

  ‘In a bit. You look ill. What did you do, drink yourself blind last night?’

  ‘Just that.’

  ‘I thought you might, so I saved out a few herbs for you. Here, sit down. I’ll just fetch a bit of hot water from Affyna’s kitchen.’

  Gwairyc sat down on the ground. His head was aching so badly that it was hard to think, but he wondered if he hated the old man. It seemed that he should hate someone for this indignity. What by every god did this daft old bastard want with him, anyway? Nevyn came back with a clay cup and handed it to him. A drift of sweet-smelling steam came up from a murky greenish liquid.

  ‘Drink all of it, lad,’ Nevyn said. ‘You’ll feel better in a bit.’

  Gwairyc managed to choke the sweet stuff down. For a moment, he felt sicker than before, but remarkably quickly, his headache began to ease and his stomach to settle down.

  ‘Ye gods!’ He handed the cup back to Nevyn. ‘You could make a fortune with this brew.’

  ‘Indeed? Well, I’ve never wanted a fortune. It’s a pity you had to drink yourself sick.’

  ‘Can you blame me?’

  Nevyn caught his gaze and looked at him, merely looked, but all at once Gwairyc turned cold. He felt that the old man was looking through his soul, seeing old secrets, old faults, old crimes that he couldn’t even remember committing.

  ‘Listen, lad.’ Nevyn’s voice stayed free of any feeling. ‘What I’m doing with you is for your benefit. I know you won’t believe me at first. Hate me if it makes you feel better. Just do as I say, and remember that I’m doing this for your benefit.’

  The gaze from ice-blue eyes bored holes through his very soul.

  ‘I will,’ Gwairyc said, ‘but it’s for the king’s sake, not yours.’

  ‘Not your own?’

  Gwairyc tried to answer, found no words, then handed back the empty cup, the only gesture he could think to make.

  ‘Well, that was unfair of me.’ Nevyn turned away and released him. ‘Just remember what I told you. Now. I’ve bought you a new shirt and a cloak. Pack those fine ones away. You might be doing this for the king’s sake, but you won’t wear his blazon again for a good long while.’

  The shirt turned out to be plain rough linen, and the cloak the coarse brown of farmers’ clothing. Once Gwairyc had changed, he loaded the mule while Nevyn went inside to say farewell to the priest of the temple. By the time they left the mews, the townsfolk had started their day, bustling along the streets or standing gossiping in front of one house or another. When Gwairyc started to mount up, Nevyn caught his arm.

  ‘We’re walking to the gates. Too crowded to ride.’

  ‘The common folk can just get out of our way.’

  ‘Common folk? Those are proud words from a herbman’s servant.’

  Gwairyc had to bite his lip to keep from swearing at him.

  Once they were clear of the city walls, they mounted and, with Gwairyc leading the mule, took the west-running road. Nevyn set a slow pace, letting his horse amble along in the hot summer morning. On either side of the road, the rich green fields of Casyl’s personal demesne rolled off to the horizon. Gwairyc felt sick to his heart: soon the army would ride north without him. All the bitter splendour of battle—his one real love, his whole life—had been stolen from him by an old herbman’s whim. He began to have thoughts of murdering Nevyn and leaving his body somewhere beside the road. But what then? he told himself, You could never go back to court. For the sake of the king he worshipped, he was going to have to play this bitter game out to the end.

  Gwairyc urged his horse up beside Nevyn’s. ‘May I ask where we’re going?’

  ‘West. I never have any particular place in mind when I travel. There are sick folk all over the kingdom.’

  ‘I suppose there must be, truly.’

  ‘But we’ll spend part of the summer in the old forest. It still covers plenty of ground once you get off to the west.’

  ‘The forest, my lord?’

  ‘Just that. I have wild herbs to gather, you see.’

  Gwairyc couldn’t stop himself from groaning aloud. Off in the forest, all alone with this cursed old man, not even a pretty wench to use for a bit of comfort!

  ‘What are you doing?’ Nevyn said. ‘Cursing the very day you were born.’

  ‘Somewhat like that.’

  Nevyn laughed and said nothing more.

  That first day they headed south, skirting Loc Gwerconydd, then turned west. Gwairyc soon learned that travelling with Nevyn meant meandering from village to village at a comfortable walking pace for the horses. In each village the inhabitants clustered round to buy Nevyn’s herbs and ask his advice on their various aches and pains. Much of the time Gwairyc himself had little to do but tend the horses and the mule. He began to wonder if he’d die of boredom before his seven years were up. As they usually did when he was bored, his thoughts turned to women.

  Most of the village lasses struck him as dirty and bedraggled, but one evening a finer prize came to the bait of Nevyn’s herbs. She was young but full into womanhood, with high breasts set off by a tight kirtle, and she wore her long chestnut hair pulled back from her heart-shaped face. Unlike those of the usual village lasses, her face and her hands looked well-washed. While Nevyn dispensed advice and sold herbs, she lingered at the edge of the crowd. Gwairyc caught her eye and smiled at her. He was hoping for a smile in return or at least a blush, but she looked straight past him.

  Maybe she’s near-sighted, he thought. When her turn came to consult the herbman, Gwairyc stood right behind him and smiled again. Again, he might as well have been made of glass for all the response he got. After she bought her herbs, he took a step in her direction, but she held her head high and walked off fast.

  ‘Well, well,’ Nevyn said. ‘I take it she wasn’t interested.’

  ‘I should have known you’d notice. She wasn’t, at that.’

  ‘You’re just a herbman now, lad. The lasses won’t be fawning on you like they did with one of the king’s own captains.’

  Gwairyc opened his mouth to say something foul, then shut it again rather than give the old man the satisfaction of having riled him. Nevyn laughed anyway and turned away to begin packing up the unsold herbs.

  Some ten mornings after, they stopped at a farm. Behind an earthen wall stood a round, thatched house, a tumbledown barn, a pig sty, and a chicken house. The pigs lay in stinking mud, but the chickens were out scratching and squawking in the dirt yard. When Nevyn shoved open the gate, a pair of scruffy black dogs rushed out of the barn, but they barked and wagged in friendly greeting. Right behind them came a stout woman in a torn brown dress. A leather thong tied back her greasy black hair. Her thick fingers and her hands were as calloused and scarred as a blacksmith’s. When she opened her mouth to talk, Gwairyc saw that she was missing half her teeth.

  ‘Oh Nevyn, Nevyn,’ she stammered out. ‘Oh ye gods, this is an answer to my prayers, I swear it!’

  ‘Here, Ligga, what’s so wrong?’

  ‘Our lad’s sick, cursed sick. I’ve been praying and praying to the Goddess to help us.’

  ‘Well, maybe She made me decide to stop by. Gwarro, unload the mule’s packs. Take those horses to the barn.’

  Gwairyc tied the horses up in the stinking cow-barn, then carried the canvas packs inside the house. He found himself in a big half-round room, set off from the rest of the house by a filthy wickerwork partition. Under a smoke hole lay a pair of blackened hearthstones where a low fire burned. A little girl, wearing a clean if stained brown dress, was standing by the hearth and stirring soup in an iron kettle perched over the fire on an iron tripod. She gave Gwairyc a terrified glance and pointed at the far side of the room.

  Gwairyc shoved aside the much-mended grey blanket that served as a door and carried in the packs. He found Nevyn and Ligga standing by a big square bed. A little boy lay on coarse dirty blankets. Snot and tears mingled on his fever-red face. Gwairyc could smell him and Ligga both, a reek of sweat, dirt from the
animals, and in the boy’s case, excrement.

  Nevyn gestured at Gwairyc to put the packs down, then sat on the edge of the bed next to the lad, who promptly turned his head away.

  ‘Come along, Anno. It’s old Nevyn. I want to make you feel better.’

  Anno shook his head in a stubborn no.

  ‘Your mouth hurts, Mam says. Let me have a look.’

  Anno whimpered and flopped over to bury his face in the blankets.

  ‘Anno, listen,’ Nevyn said. ‘I’m going to look at your mouth whether you want me to or not. You’re very sick, lad. You don’t even know what you’re doing, do you? Come along—you know I won’t hurt you if I can help it.’

  When the lad began to sob, Nevyn caught him and pulled him into his lap. After a brief struggle, Nevyn took the lad’s jaws the way you’d take a horse’s and pried them open. Anno moaned and pissed all over himself and the old man. Nevyn barely seemed to notice.

  ‘Thank the gods, it’s just a bad tooth. I was afraid you had the clotted fever in your throat, lad, but it’s just this nasty tooth. You’ll be all better once we have it out.’

  ‘Don’t!’ Anno screamed. ‘Mam!’

  ‘You’ve got to!’ Ligga said. ‘You listen to your elders! Forgive us, Nevyn, I—’

  ‘Hush, hush! It’s not his fault. The gum’s gone so pussy that he’s fevered and half out of his mind. The tooth’s loose, anyway, so it won’t be a hard thing to do. Then we’ll work on the fever. All of his humours are out of balance, you see, with a superfluity of the hot and moist.’

  This sonorous explanation seemed to comfort Ligga, even though Gwairyc doubted if she knew what it meant. When Nevyn started to let Anno go, the lad tried to slither off the bed. Nevyn caught him and hauled him back.

  ‘Gwarro, come sit down. Take him and hold him still while I get the things I need.’

  Choking on revulsion, Gwairyc took the skinny little lad in his arms. He sat down on the edge of the bed and wondered if it had bugs. Anno squirmed, tried to bite his wrist, then began to cry. The urine and the pus both reeked. I promised the king, Gwairyc reminded himself. I swore a vow to the king—he made himself repeat the thought over and over. It seemed to take Nevyn forever to get out a pair of forceps, a bottle of spicy-scented oil, and some scraps of cloth. For the operation itself, Gwairyc pressed the lad’s shoulders down on the bed; he was forced to watch while Nevyn deftly pulled a broken stump of tooth from his jaw. An ooze of green pus came with it.

  ‘You see the green material, oh apprentice of mine?’ Nevyn said. ‘It’s the perturbed hot humour combined with an excess of the moist. Teeth are of course ruled by the cold earth humour in crystalline form, and their natural enemy is the moist.’

  Gwairyc tried to speak, but he could only swallow—hard, and several times.

  ‘You look pale, lad,’ Nevyn said to Gwairyc.

  Gwairyc bit his lip and looked away. In the doorway, Ligga was quietly sobbing to herself. She must love the stinking little brat, he thought. Well, cows watch over their calves, too.

  ‘We’ll stay here tonight, Ligga,’ Nevyn said. ‘I’ll tend that fever with herbs.’

  ‘My thanks.’ She pulled up the hem of her skirt and blew her nose on the frayed and stained brown cloth. ‘Ah ye gods, my thanks.’

  Gwairyc silently cursed him. He’d been hoping they’d get free of the farm straightaway and camp somewhere clean.

  After several doses of herbs, Nevyn finally got Anno to fall asleep. The old man changed into a fresh pair of brigga, handed the soaked ones to Gwairyc, and told him wash them out.

  ‘And you’d best do yours while you’re at it,’ Nevyn said. ‘You’ve got a spare pair, haven’t you?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘There’s a stream out back,’ Ligga said. ‘Here, I’ll get you some soap.’

  A scrap of soap in one hand, the dirty clothes in the other, Gwairyc strode out of the house into the relatively clean air of the farmyard. Ligga followed him out and pointed. ‘Go straight out the back gate. You’ll see my pounding rocks on the stream bank.’

  ‘Pounding rocks?’

  ‘Now, here, haven’t you washed clothes before?’ She gave him her half-toothless grin. ‘Get them wet first. You work the soap in good, then put them on the flat rock and beat the soiled bits with the round rock.’

  Cursing under his breath, Gwairyc took the brigga down to a tiny streamlet, meandering through wild grass. He found the rocks, knelt down, and tried to follow her instructions. His rage built and flamed until he could barely see what he was doing. How could he be here, him, the hero of the Cerrgonney wars, washing some farm-brat’s piss out of a pair of old brigga? He considered waiting till dark and running away, but a bitter truth stopped him. If he broke his vow, he’d have nowhere to go, unless of course he wanted to sink to the level of a silver dagger. Even being a herbman’s servant would be better than that.

  All at once, he realized that he was weeping, a final blow of shame. He threw the wet brigga onto the grass and sobbed aloud until he heard footsteps rustling through the grass. He wiped his face on his sleeve and looked up to see Nevyn, standing there with his hands on his hips.

  ‘Oh here, lad. This is a good bit harder on you than I thought it’d be.’

  The old man’s sympathy delivered the worst cut of all. Gwairyc wanted to kill him. I’m doing this for the king, he reminded himself. With a sigh, Nevyn sat down next to him in the grass.

  ‘The lad’s going to live. Do you care one jot?’

  ‘I don’t. Ye gods, how can you do things like this? With your skill, you could be the king’s own physician or suchlike.’

  ‘There’s many a man who wants to physic the king. How many want to help folk like these?’

  ‘Well, and why should they? This lot is hardly better than bondfolk.’

  ‘I treat bondfolk who need me, too.’

  Gwairyc stared at him. Daft and twice daft!

  ‘I’ll admit to being surprised when you looked so ill,’ Nevyn continued. ‘After all, you’ve ridden to many a battle. You must have seen the dead and dying, the wounds and suchlike.’

  ‘I don’t understand it, either. You’re right enough about the things I’ve seen.’ Gwairyc thought for a moment. ‘But you expect that, in a battle. You’re used to it. And you don’t let yourself dwell on it, like. This—’ He paused and suddenly saw the answer. ‘In battle, you’re fighting for your clan or your king. So much hangs on the outcome of a war. So all the death and the cuts and suchlike—they’re in a good cause, like. They matter.’

  ‘And this lad doesn’t matter?’

  ‘Why would he? Folk like these—one dies, there’s always more. They breed like rabbits.’

  Nevyn cocked his head to one side and considered him for a long moment. Although the old man’s face displayed no particular feeling, Gwairyc began to wonder if he’d somehow shamed himself.

  ‘Well, um, mayhap, they’re more like horses.’ Gwairyc tried again. ‘You appreciate a good one, but if you lose him, you can get another.’

  Nevyn blinked a few times, quickly.

  ‘It’s shameful!’ Gwairyc burst out. ‘I’m noble-born, but now I might as well be a farrier or a stablehand.’

  ‘Ah. Treating the sick is shameful.’

  ‘Well, not for you.’

  ‘But for you it is.’

  ‘Of course. You’re not a noble-born man.’

  ‘You’re quite sure of that?’

  Gwairyc suddenly remembered the king, pouring the old man ale with his own hands. In a kind of panic he tried to speak but found he could only stammer.

  ‘It appears you see the flaw in your argument.’ Nevyn smiled in a twisted sort of way, then stood up. ‘You might think about all this a bit. Now, wring the water out of those brigga. Then spread them out flat on the grass to dry. I’m going back to the house.’

  Once the brigga were drying, Gwairyc returned to the cow-barn. He unsaddled the pair of riding horses and unloaded the mule. He found a reas
onably clean spot in a corner to pile up the gear, then looked over the various stalls. He had no idea if these folk brought the cows in at night or left them out. A skinny youngish man with a weatherbeaten face and cropped brown hair, slick with grease, came into the barn.

  ‘Be you Nevyn’s apprentice? I’m Myrn. Ligga’s man.’

  ‘I’m Gwairyc.’

  Myrn nodded in what might have been a greeting. ‘I’ll put them horses up for you. My thanks for saving my lad.’

  ‘That was Nevyn’s work, not mine, truly.’

  Myrn nodded again and took a pitch-fork from the floor. Gwairyc hurried out and left the horses to him.

  On the morrow, Anno seemed to be recovering, but Nevyn left various packets of herbs for his care just in case. When Ligga tried to offer him her few saved coppers as payment, Nevyn refused. That gesture Gwairyc could understand. Taking coins from folk like these would be as ignoble as stealing a hunting dog’s food.

  They left the farm and took up their slow road west again. Mile after mile, village after village, farm after farm—Nevyn seemed to know every commoner in the kingdom, and all of them were, in Gwairyc’s opinion, filthy. Gwairyc saw more injuries and illnesses than he’d ever known existed, with disgusting symptoms all: cuts gone septic, clustered boils, fevers, vomiting, loose bowels, swellings, foul dark urine, and dropsies, to say naught of the ever-present diseased teeth. He tried at first to shut the symptoms out of his mind, but the sights and smells haunted him. At times he dreamt about them. It’s the shame of the thing, he told himself. Why else would they sicken me so much?

  Yet one afternoon, as they rode down a lane between two fields pale green with sprouting wheat, he remembered the first battle he’d ever seen, or rather, its aftermath, the dead men, the dying horses. Once the battle-rage had worn off, he’d felt a stomach-churning disgust far stronger than any of Nevyn’s patients aroused in him. He’d been not much more than a lad, then, and he would rather have died than let any of the men around him see his feelings. And in time, he’d learned how to armour his soul. I’ll grow used to this, too, he told himself. After all, I’ve got no choice.

  Late one hot afternoon, when rain clouds were boiling up from the south, they came to a sprawling village on the banks of a broad but shallow stream. The place was too small to offer an inn, but the tavernman, who knew Nevyn well, let them shelter in his hayloft. After Gwairyc stabled the horses and mule, Nevyn bought them each a tankard of ale. They sat outside the tavern on a little bench across from a market square, empty except for a couple of brown dogs, lying near the public well. In the stiff wind the poplars growing all round the town shivered and bowed.