Owlflight

by Mercedes Lackey

  “And why should I?” Justyn had repeated.

  “Why did you volunteer to hold the bridge?” was all Kyllian asked, and although Justyn had not quite understood the question then, discovering the answer had formed a large part of his life from then on.

  But at the time, given his utter lack of anything else he thought he could do, and the fact that the great Wizard Kyllian certainly seemed to want him to volunteer, that was what he had done.

  First, though, he needed to begin a new course of learning. He had apprenticed himself to the leeches and herbalists and wisewomen on the battlefield, absorbing their knowledge of matters other than the injuries of combat when they weren’t all up to their elbows in blood and body parts. He acquired herbals and other books, brought what was left of his magic up as far as he could, and when Herald-Mage Elspeth and Hawkbrother Darkwind and Adept Firesong did whatever it was they did to end the war with Hardorn, he was there for the celebration of victory, then volunteered his services to both the Healers and the Heralds. After all, he was at least a little bit of a mage, as well as a certified bonesetter and herb-Healer, and Selenay of Valdemar had decreed that Valdemar still needed mages. Kyllian had been right, and he was assured that Valdemar could use anyone with either of those skills, and desperately. Ancar’s mages hadn’t confined their attentions to killing Valdemaran fighters; they’d made a point of going after the tents of the Healers and other noncombatants, contrary to every accepted convention of war. Far too many of the Healers and leeches who had volunteered were not going back to their homes again.

  Those services that he offered were gratefully accepted, and the Healers sent him off so far into the West that he wasn’t certain he was still on a map of Valdemar. A whole string of folk went, most with about as much magical power as he had, and some with less; a Healer and a Herald went with them and found them towns and villages who wanted and would support folk like himself. The last village on the list was Errold’s Grove, and it was here that he found that Kyllian had been only too right. People had already died needlessly of stupid things—a compound fracture gone septic, a winter epidemic of fever, an infected foot. The people here needed him and wanted him, and the Healer and Herald went back to Haven to look for more volunteers to fill all those empty places where Healers had once been.

  At first, things hadn’t been as bad for the village and the villagers as they were now. Traders still came for the dye-stuffs, and there was both ready money and the goods coming in from outside to spend it on. The villagers had seemed impressed by the little magics he could still do, such as finding lost objects and predicting the weather. He had been given a house and was promised that, like the woodcutter, all his needs would be taken care of. A strange and scruffy black cat had simply appeared one day, a cat that seemed unnaturally intelligent, and he took it as a good omen, that he had gotten himself a proper familiar, that his magic might once again amount to more than the where-withal for a few parlor games. He set about looking for an apprentice to teach, and saw the light of magery dancing in the eyes of a young child, the son of a pair of fur trappers. He had every confidence that he would one day be able to persuade them that their boy should have a chance at a better life than they held, and get young Darian for his apprentice. It seemed as if the gods were finally smiling on him again, and he rechanneled his ambitions into another path. If he could not become a great mage, he could train one. It didn’t take having the Talent and the Gift to be able to train the person who did. He transmuted his dream into the dream of being the mentor to a powerful magician, and thought that he would be content.

  But then the mage-storms began, and his fortune dropped along with that of his village. When one or two monstrous creatures invaded the village, no one wanted to go out into the Pelagiris Forest and encounter more—and since the dye fungus wouldn’t grow outside of the Forest, that pretty much put an end to the dye-trade. With no money and no traders coming in, the villagers were forced to become self-sufficient, but self-sufficiency had its cost, in time and hard physical labor. The narrower the lives of his villagers became, the less they in their turn were willing to forgive. The demands on him became greater, and he was less able to meet them. And when Darian was orphaned and was bound over to him by the villagers, the boy reacted in exactly the opposite way he would have expected—not with gratitude, but with rebellion.

  That, perhaps, was the worst blow of all. The boy had seemed so tractable with his parents, so bright, and so eager to learn! And with his parents gone and no relatives to teach him a trade or care for him, he should have been relieved and grateful to get so gentle a master as Justyn, who never beat him, never starved him into submission, never really scolded him.

  Justyn was nearly finished with Kyle’s wound, but the problem presented to him in the shape of young Darian was nowhere near as easy to deal with.

  Was it only that the villagers were right, that the boy had bad blood in him? Just how “bad” was the “bad blood,” if there was such a thing? Was it insurmountable? Should he give up, and see the boy bound over to the smith, perhaps? Certainly the smith would not tolerate the kind of behavior Darian exhibited now—but how could that be fair to the boy?

  Was it only that he was strong-willed and stubborn, unwilling to turn his hand to another path when the one he had been on was closed to him? It would have been natural enough for him to plan to follow in his father’s footsteps, and certainly there was every indication that he knew quite a bit about the business of trapping and preparing furs. If it was only that, could his stubborn nature be overcome? Surely Justyn could make him see reason—the Forest was too dangerous to go out in, now, and the deaths of his parents should prove that to him, if only he could be made to acknowledge the fact. If two people with all the experience and caution they displayed could not survive there, Darian had no chance of prospering, and surely Justyn could make him understand that.

  Was it that he wanted everything to come to him easily, as magic came to those in children’s tales? Was he too lazy to work? If that was the case, Justyn wasn’t sure how to remedy it, but that didn’t seem right either. The boy wasn’t actually lazy, but look at what he’d said this afternoon: that he didn’t see any reason to expend a great deal of effort to do something much more easily accomplished with normal means, and perhaps it was only that Justyn hadn’t been able to persuade him that those little exercises were the only way of building his ability and control to handle anything bigger.

  Or was there something else going on, something that Justyn didn’t understand?

  Justyn could see some things for himself—the boy didn’t like being made to feel that he was somehow “different” from the other children in the village. Perhaps part of his rebellion stemmed from the fact that his Talent for mage-craft was bound to set him farther apart from the others. Given the contempt with which the villagers regarded Justyn, he had no reason to assume that they would give him any more respect if and when he became a mage.

  And he certainly reacted badly whenever his parents were mentioned. But his parents, too, had been “different,” very much so. The entire village had regarded them with suspicion and displeasure, anticipating that they would only bring more trouble than they were worth with them eventually. Some of the villagers had not been entirely certain that Darian’s parents were human—the argument was that no human would ever choose to go out into the Pelagiris when there were safer ways of making a livelihood. A fallacious argument, to be sure, but the folk of Errold’s Grove seemed to have a grasp on logic that was tenuous at best. But was it that Darian wished his parents had been the same as everyone else, and he was angry that they had been “different” and had made him “different” by default? Or was there some other thought going through his mind?

  “Bad blood, and reckless, that’s what’s in that boy,” he heard with half an ear, and it occurred to him at that moment that every time anyone in the village so much as mentioned Darian’s parents and lineage, it was with scorn and derisio
n, and the certainty that “no good would ever come of those folks.” Why, no wonder the boy reacted poorly! Every time the boy heard himself talked about, it was with the almost gleeful certainty that he would come to a bad end, or be nothing but trouble. As reluctant to show any sort of feeling as he was, still, for Darian those words must seem like a blow to the face, or more to the point, to the heart.

  Still, one would think that the boy would feel a little proper gratitude. Justyn certainly treated him well. He was hardly overworked, he had plenty of free time to himself, enough to eat, proper clothing to wear, and a comfortable place to sleep. There was no telling if he’d had all those things with his parents, but one would think he would be happy enough to have them now.

  Wait, think a moment. It is one thing to feel gratitude, it is another to be told over and over again just how grateful you should be, if only you weren’t too much of a little beast to be appreciative. He’s only a child, he can’t understand how much of a burden one extra mouth to feed is for the people here. Folks with children would have to work that much harder to feed and clothe him, folks whose children are grown expect to be taken care of in their old age, not become caregivers all over again. He hadn’t any skills that were useful to the folk here when he was left in their hands, so he wouldn’t contribute anything toward his own keep for months or even years—but how is a child supposed to understand that?

  And as a child, his parents were naturally everything to him, the center of his young life, and being told they were idiots and deserved to get swallowed up by the Forest must surely make his blood boil. He must feel impelled to defend them, and yet since he was a mere child, he would be considered impudent and disrespectful if he did.

  Another thing that Justyn had noticed about him was that he had a great deal of difficulty in remaining still and concentrating. Perhaps that was characteristic of all young boys, but most were apprenticed to learn skills that involved physical work, not mental work. The boy had a restless heart, and the truth of it was that he was not well-suited to insular village life. He spent most of his free time, not with the three or four boys near his own age, but out in the “forbidden” Forest; whether he was just wandering, or exploring with a purpose, Justyn didn’t know, but he certainly seemed to prefer the company of trees and birds to that of his own kind.

  And there are certainly times when I don’t blame him for that.

  Justyn tied off the last of the stitches, and clipped all the threads as short as possible so that they wouldn’t catch on something.

  “Now,” he said to all three of them, although he wasn’t at all sanguine about Kyle understanding anything he said. “I know you’ve heard this before, but it bears repeating. You all three know what happens when a wound goes septic. Kyle, please realize that if you let this wound sour, at best, you would be very, very sick and I would have to open up the wound, drain it, and cut or burn out part of the infected tissue. It would hurt a very great deal, both while I was doing it and afterward. You’d have much worse than a scar, then, and it would take much longer to heal. You would probably end up with a limp, or even lame, if the infection grew bad enough.”

  Kyle grunted and nodded his agreement, his brown hair flopping into his vacant brown eyes. He brushed it away, and although the motion was slow, his hand was steady, arguing for a certain level of sobriety.

  “Now pay attention to what I have to tell you,” he insisted. “You may have heard this before when someone else was hurt, but chances are you don’t remember it as well as you think you do. Harris, Vere, I am counting on you to remind Kyle of all of this.”

  “All right,” Vere agreed, looking as if he felt put upon. Harris just grunted, clearly bored with the entire procedure. Knowing the two as he did, Justyn figured that Vere would try to remember to tell Kyle everything, and Harris would do so only if he happened to think about it.

  Justyn sighed, and hoped they wouldn’t forget what he was about to tell them. At least Kyle’s constitution was so robust that he could take a little neglect. “Once a day, the wound is to be washed in wine, just as I did before I closed it, and allowed to dry in the air.”

  “Right,” Kyle said vaguely. “Wash, and air-dry. Don’t bandage it wet.”

  “After it is dry, then put the salve I have given you on it, and put a dressing made of fresh, clean cloth over it. Don’t put bear fat, or goose grease, or tallow, or river-weed, or anything else your granny used to use for wounds on it. Do you understand that? Forget your granny’s and your mother’s famous remedies, and stick with mine. Trust me on this, and remember that the Heralds sent me here for just this reason. I’ve seen and treated more wounds like this than there are people in the village.”

  “Just the salve you give him,” Vere sighed, as Kyle nodded so earnestly that Justyn had some hope that the man might actually remember what he’d been told.

  “At night, before you sleep, I want you to change the dressing again, with fresh, clean cloth. I want you to have all the rags you use for dressings washed thoroughly in boiling water and hung to dry in the sun.” Sometimes he wondered if they’d pay more attention to the things he told them to do if he gave them some kind of nonsense to say over each task, as a kind of charm against sickness. But no, he was afraid that if he did that, they would trust in the charm and forget cleanliness. How could he get them to believe that there were invisible animals living in filth that made wounds fester, if he couldn’t get them to believe in him?

  Thank the gods they at least knew the signs of infection and gangrene. “Examine the wound carefully each time you change the dressing, and if you see anything wrong, come to me at once. Remember, you’re watching for infection, and that can include swelling, red streaks coming up or down your leg from the wound, skin that’s hot to touch and more sore than it should be. Understand?”

  “Come to you at once,” Kyle repeated, nodding vigorously.

  “All right,” Justyn said, and sagged back in his chair. He waved a hand at them. “You can all go now.”

  Harris and Vere each took one of Kyle’s arms and heaved him up out of his chair. Justyn didn’t offer him any more of the precious poppy-powder; he didn’t have much, and he had to save it. There was no telling when the next trader would come with the powder he’d ordered almost a year ago.

  Rather surprisingly, Kyle made it erect without too much in the way of a wobble, and he didn’t lean on the two farmers nearly as much as Justyn thought he would.

  The benefits of an iron constitution and a head like a granite boulder, I suppose, he thought dispassionately. He’d probably have healed up all right without me, which is likely what Vere and Harris will be telling each other.

  He leaned back in his chair and massaged the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Kyllian had been right; this was a place where he—and a successor—were desperately needed, and it was a place where they would get little thanks and no credit for what they did. People honored the spectacular, not the everyday. Raise a dead man and bring him back to life, and they would hold you in awe. Keep him from dying in the first place with a little simple hygiene, and they ignored you.

  What was he to do? He had known what he was up against when he arrived here. And what was he going to do about a successor? If he couldn’t somehow bring the boy around, he would have to find someone willing to do the hard work without any magic at all.

  Women tended to be more community minded than men, and in this village at least, they were used to taking on the more objectionable of community tasks; perhaps he ought to check among the girls and see if any of them were willing to learn all he could teach them about bonesetting and herbs and the like. It wouldn’t hurt Darian to see that he had a rival for Justyn’s tutelage. That might get him interested again when nothing else seemed to.

  The only problem with that idea was that it would be hard for a young girl to get a mature man to listen and obey her when it came to following instructions. That had been the idea behind sending a man here in the
first place.

  If only I could regain my magic! If I could impress the people here, that might bring Darian around. If he just thought that he had a chance of being seen with respect as long as he learned what I have to teach, that might change his attitude.

  He turned his attention to the apple sitting on the plate on the end of the table where Harris had put it. He narrowed his focus and concentrated on the fruit, as he had so often and so easily, feeling a now-familiar headache arc across his head, just behind his right eyebrow. He didn’t remember the blow that had felled him, but he fancied that it had felt a lot like that stabbing pain.

  He willed the apple to rise. This time! Surely this time!

  It wobbled a bit on the plate, but did not move.

  Still, he continued to concentrate on it, and it rocked faster and faster but still refused to rise, until the pain behind his right eye was enough to blind him. With a sigh, he dropped the apple with his mind, and it stopped moving.

  “I’m an old fraud,” he said out loud. “I’m a failure and an old fraud, my apprentice hates me and hates magic, and you—” he looked at his cat, which was licking itself again “—probably aren’t even a familiar. And even if you are, you’re a failure, too. If a whirlwind came out of the sky and swallowed us all up, no one would ever notice, that’s how unimportant we are. What do you think of that?”

  The cat went on cleaning itself, sticking a scraggly, fleagnawed leg straight up in the air, arse toward Justyn. He chuckled bitterly, for the cat’s silence seemed the only fitting comment.