“Ground-strip,” said Arkady, “like a groundsetter. In forty years I’ve only seen this three times, and thank the absent gods that the first time I was with my own mentor, who talked me through it. I could not have done it else.”
“So that ground…would end up in me.”
“Just like your experiments with food, I’m afraid, yes. It’s quickly absorbed.” But not, it seemed, quickly forgotten, judging by the bleak shadows rippling through Arkady’s bright ground.
Dag took a swallow of tea against his rising gorge. Fawn pried the cup from his fingers and took one herself, possibly for the same reason.
“I’ve never been sure,” said Arkady, “if I wanted to pray I’d never encounter one of those again, or pray that the next woman would at least encounter me. In time.”
Dag had always known that senior medicine makers kept secrets of their craft not discussed with outsiders. He was beginning to see why. “I always thought medicine making would be less harrowing than patrolling.”
“Today was happy.” Arkady finished his tea and grunted to his feet. “Hold on to that.”
Dag followed suit. For the first time, he wondered why the brilliant Arkady was wifeless. Since he’d arrived at New Moon, he’d been too blighted busy to notice that inexplicable absence. He would ask Challa, he decided. Some other time. Because there were certain possible answers he wasn’t up to hearing, just now.
Two nights later Dag sat with Arkady at the round table and armwrestled himself. Or at least, tested his right-side ground projection against his left. The left side always won, which was a bit boring. He glanced at Fawn, sitting by the fire and spinning up a bag of cotton she’d acquired at the farmer’s market, and thought he could devise a better practice drill and go to bed early with her at the same time, very efficient. Arkady cleared his throat as the projections failed under Dag’s inattention. But before Dag could recover himself, a knock sounded at the door. Arkady nodded, and Dag rose to answer it.
Two people, his half-furled groundsense told him. But without urgency, unlike most night knocks for Arkady. He opened the door to find, to his surprise, Tawa Killdeer’s husband and sister.
“How de’, folks! Come on in.”
The sister shook her head. “We can’t stay. But the Killdeer tent wanted you to have this, Dag.” She thrust a long narrow bundle wrapped in hemmed cloth into his hand. “We heard you were in want of one.”
Heard from who? Dag felt through the wrapping and knew the contents at once.
“Tawa’s great-uncle left it to the tent a year or so back,” explained the husband. “He was an exchange patroller to the north, back in his youth.”
“Well—thank you!” It was hardly a gift he could refuse, even if he’d wanted to. Which he did not. A diffident smile turned his lips. “Thank your tent, and Tawa.”
“We will.” New father and new aunt walked away into the chilly night, happy, unbereaved.
Yes, thought Dag, his hand closing on the gift.
He brought the bundle to the table and unwrapped it in the lantern light. Fawn came to his shoulder, smiling at his smile. As the human thighbone was revealed, her smile faded. Dag ran his hand along the smooth length: clean, dried, cured, and ready to carve into a knife blank. Strong, too; bones donated by the very old were often too fragile to carve. Someone had scratched the donor’s name and tent-name into the far end with a pin. That part of the bone would be cut away when the tip was shaped to a malice-killing point. Dag would burn the name on the finished blade’s side, he decided, so that it would not be lost to memory.
In a distant and somewhat strained voice, Fawn said, “You going to make that up into a knife?”
“Yes. Maker Vayve as much as said if I could get a bone she’d help me.” Which was not a lesson to be scorned—in either direction.
“And bond to it?”
“Yes.” He stroked the smooth surface. “It’s an honorable gifting. It feels right, see. For something that intimate, you want it to feel right.” Crane’s bones, for example, buried with him on the banks of the Grace, would have felt…well, Dag wasn’t just sure what they’d have felt like to a stranger, but they would have given him the horrors.
Fawn bit her lip, drew breath. “I know that’s a thing you wanted, and I can’t say nay to it. But…promise me you’ll not prime that thing while I’m still aboveground and breathing!”
“I’m not likely to, Spark.” But after she…That doesn’t bear thinking about. In the natural course of events, it was likely they’d both grow old together.
“I was just remembering that horrid ballad.”
“Which horrid ballad?”
“The one about the two patrollers.”
That still didn’t narrow the choices much, but he realized which one she meant—a dramatic tale in which two partners, separated from their patrol, found a dangerous malice. Neither carried a primed knife, but both bore bonded ones. The argument over which self-sacrificing loon was to share on the spot and which was to carry the news back to the grieving widow or betrothed, depending, had taken three heart-wrenching stanzas. It was a popular song in the north; people danced to it. Not that similar events had never happened in real life, but Dag suspected the circumstances were not so tidy.
“It was just a song,” he protested.
Her mouth set mulishly. “Promise me anyway.”
“I promise, Spark.” He kissed those lips to soften them.
After, she drew back to search his eyes, then nodded. “You’d best believe it.”
8
Fawn returned late one evening from the medicine tent along with Dag and Arkady—there had been another child with an intractable fever—to find the dinner basket left by their door with a letter propped up on it.
Arkady read the inscription and raised his brows. “For you,” he said, handing it to Fawn. “Courier must have brought it by.”
Surprised, she made out her name and Dag’s, and Arkady’s Place, New Moon Cutoff Camp, in Whit’s crabbed handwriting. Whit was a reluctant correspondent; any letter from him had to be important. She took it to the round table while Arkady stoked the fire for his endless tea. Dag set down the basket, lit the brace of table candles, then came to her shoulder, looking concerned. “Anything wrong?”
“No, not really,” she reported, tilting the paper to catch the flickering light. Whit’s scrawl was actually legible, in a painful sort of way. “Whit says Berry found a buyer for the Fetch who wants it for a houseboat.” The Fetch had been much better built than most makeshift crafts launched from the upper Grace feeder creeks by venturesome Oleana hill boys. Berry would be happy that her papa’s last boat wouldn’t be broken up for timber, or worse, firewood. Daisy-goat was slated to be sold with her floating home, alas. “He also says Berry’s found them all work with a keeler boss she trusts, heading upriver soon to catch the last of the winter fall. All on the same boat—Whit and Bo and Hod for hands, Hawthorn for boat boy, and her for the fiddler.” Berry had been holding out for just such a collection of berths, though exactly when she would find it had still been up in the air when Dag and Fawn had left Graymouth. Whit had talked idly about the whole crew joining the long-planned overland ride up the Trace, but the money would be much better this way. “Whit says if we want to change our minds, we should meet them in Graymouth before the end of the week, and if not, to write and let him know when to look for us back at Clearcreek.”
“Ah,” said Dag.
She glanced up at him. “I better write back soon, or the letter might not reach him before they shove off. So…what are we doing, Dag? When we started out for New Moon, I thought we might be here a few days, but it’s already been more ’n a month.”
Dag delayed answer by going to the sink to wash his hand before dinner, a ritual Arkady insisted upon with more than maternal firmness. Fawn followed suit. They laid out the contents of the basket, and Arkady brought over the tea, before Dag spoke. “I’ve hardly finished training up for medicine maker.”
Arkady, pou
ring, snorted. “You’ve hardly started. I’d give you two years. Most apprentices take three or four.”
“Two years!” said Fawn.
Dag merely nodded. “I begin to see why.”
“Really,” said Arkady, “medicine makers don’t ever stop learning from each other, and from their patients. The common ailments become routine very quickly—and I will say, you’re the most relentless student I’ve ever had—but some experiences can’t be sped up. You just have to wait for them to occur.”
Dag bit into his bread and butter, chewed, swallowed. “When would you guess I’d be fit to start actual groundwork?”
Arkady didn’t answer right off. Instead he went to his shelf, took down a familiar little book, and paged through it. He eyed Dag steadily for an unnerving minute, then, with some danger of mixing ink and crumbs, jotted a few notes and blew on the page to dry them. “Tomorrow,” he said.
Dag looked startled but pleased. “What about all my so-called dirty ground you were so worried about?”
“As I hoped, the best remedy was time. Your ground is cleaning itself out quite nicely, and will continue to do so as long as you don’t contaminate yourself again. The permanent cure, of course, is to stop doing that.”
Dag took a slow sip of tea. “That’s…not enough, Arkady. If I’m ever to treat farmers and not leave them crazy with beguilement, I’m going to have to go on absorbing all sorts of strange ground.”
Arkady glowered at him.
“It was all mixed together in my head for a while,” Dag went on, “but looking back, I’m less and less sure how much of my upset was from taking in strange ground, and how much was just from dealing with Crane and his bandits, which was plenty to give any thinking man nightmares.”
“Mind and ground—and emotion—do intersect on the deepest levels,” Arkady conceded. He glanced, oddly, at Fawn.
Dag nodded. “Because for all the things I took in—barring Crane—it seems to me I just kept getting stronger and better at groundwork all the way downriver. ’Cept for the part about being untidy, just what about having dirty ground unfits me for medicine making?”
“Every bit of strange ground you take in changes your own ground, and so how it works. The results risk being uncontrolled.”
Dag frowned. “Everything I do and learn—blight, every breath I take—changes my ground. My ground can’t not change, not while I’m alive. Could be dirty ground is just something to live with, like the bugs and blisters and weather and weariness on patrol.”
“Rough-and-ready may do for patrolling. Not for the delicate control needed for groundsetting.”
“Groundsetting isn’t so sweet and delicate as all that, that I’ve seen.”
“Your projection changes everything you touch with it.”
“My hand changes everything I touch with it. Always has. Anyway, I want to change folks.”
“Dag, you can’t treat farmers. Not at New Moon Cutoff.”
“What if Fawn falls ill? I will sure enough treat her!”
Arkady waved this away. “That’s different.”
“Oh? How? Groundwise.”
Arkady sighed and rubbed his brow. “I can see I’m going to have to give you the set speech. For my usual apprentices it starts out, When I was your age…but I suppose that won’t do for you.”
“When you were my age?” Fawn suggested helpfully.
Arkady eyed her. “A little older than that. Not much, I grant.”
Dag eased back and occupied his protesting mouth with another bite of bread. He nodded to signal that Arkady had his full attention.
Arkady drew a long breath. “When I was much younger, and stupider, and vastly more energetic, my wife and I were training up together as medicine makers at a camp called Hatchet Slough, which is about a hundred and fifty miles northeast of here.”
What wife? Fawn hadn’t seen hide nor hair of a Missus Arkady since she’d arrived, nor, more tellingly, heard any word. Dag nodded understanding—of the geography? Or of something else? She wasn’t sure if Arkady saw the little flinch that went-with. Tales of the ill fates of first wives would likely do that to Dag. Fawn gulped and shut up hard.
“We were both newly come into our full maker’s powers. Bryna had a special talent for women’s ailments. There were already hints that I’d be a groundsetter when I grew into myself. It seemed we had more enthusiasm than sick or injured to treat at Hatchet Slough. An excess of energy that’s hard to imagine, now…
“Being young, we talked about the problems of our neighboring farmers. She thought it a grand idea to offer treatments to them—perhaps set up a little medicine tent at the camp farmer’s market, next to the table for herbs and preparations. Our mentors put their feet down hard on that before it became more than talk, of course, but you can see how far our thinking had gone. Your notions aren’t new, Dag.”
Dag’s eyes lit. “But with unbeguilement, you could really do that!”
Arkady made a little wait-for-the-rest gesture. “A desperate farmer woman with a dying husband who’d heard our loose talk came to Bryna for help. She went.”
“Is this one of those failed-and-blamed tales?” Dag said uneasily. Fawn shivered. Accusations of black sorcery could get a lone Lakewalker beaten up—or burned alive, if the mob was vicious enough. Lakewalkers in pairs or groups were much harder to tackle.
“No. She succeeded. The man wasn’t even beguiled.” Arkady drew another fortifying breath. “Word got out. Another frantic farmer came, and another. I started going out with her. One sick woman became deeply beguiled, and began haunting the camp. Her husband decided she’d been seduced, and tried to waylay and kill me. Fortunately, there were some patrollers nearby who rescued me and drove him off.
“It all came to a head when there was a riot at the camp gates by the kin of some desperately ill folks, trying to break in and carry us away by force. It was repulsed with a lot of bloodied heads on both sides—one patroller was killed, and two farmers. The camp council decided to break the impasse by smuggling us out in the night. We were taken in secret to Moss River Camp to continue our training. The Hatchet Slough Lakewalkers misdirected anyone inclined to search for us. And that was the end of our experiments with farmers.” Arkady sat up straight and fixed Dag with a glare. “As I don’t care to relive that nightmare, you will stay away from farmers as long as you reside at New Moon Cutoff. Is that very clear?”
Dag returned a short nod like some unhappily disciplined patroller. “Yes, sir.”
Arkady said in a more conciliating tone, “Of course that does not apply to Fawn. She doesn’t trail a jealous farmer spouse, nor does she have kin here to foment a riot. She’s not likely to create a camp problem.” He added after a moment, “At least, not in that sense.”
Fawn’s brows drew down in puzzlement. “But what happened to your wife, sir?”
Dag gave her an urgent head shake, but whether it meant No, don’t ask! or I’ll explain later, she wasn’t sure.
But Arkady replied merely, “She works at Moss River Camp these days.” Voice and expression both flat and uninviting, so Fawn swallowed the dozen questions that begged.
“As guests here,” Dag said, “Fawn and I are of course obliged to abide by your camp rules. I won’t give you trouble, sir.”
Fawn wasn’t at all sure how to take the skeptical lift of Arkady’s brows, but his tension eased; he accepted Dag’s assurance with a nod. The maker opened his mouth as if to add something, but then apparently thought better of it, taking a belated bite of his dinner instead.
It wasn’t till they were settling down in their bedroll, laid out in the spare room at the house’s farthest end, that Fawn found the chance to ask more.
“So what was all that about Missus Arkady? Missus Maker Arkady, I guess. For a horrible minute I thought Arkady was going to tell us she’d been murdered by farmers, but seemingly not.”
Dag sighed and folded her in close to him. “I had the tale from Challa a few days back. Seems Arkady and h
is wife worked together happily in the medicine tent here for years and years. They were partners, as well as spouses, close as close. But they had some of the same problems that Utau and Sarri had.”
“No children?” A sorrow that the Hickory Lake couple had solved radically by taking another member into their marriage, Utau’s cousin Razi; not the usual course, Fawn had gathered. But their toddlers were darling, however many parents they possessed.
Dag nodded. “Not just no conceptions. Miscarriage after miscarriage, getting worse as she grew older. Arkady was especially frustrated, Challa says, because as a senior medicine maker he thought he ought to be able to fix it somehow. Seems that’s why the miscarriages got more dangerous, actually. When the troubles weren’t let go early, they were worse when they did break. It’s not an uncommon problem—I’ve seen it in camps all over the north. Two exceptional people get string-bound, and their tent-kin settle back happily to wait for the exceptional children to start popping out, and nothing happens. Kauneo and I…” He bit his lip.
She stroked his brow. “You don’t have to say.”
He nodded gratefully, but went on anyhow. “We didn’t have long enough together to find out if we’d be more of that. There was one month we had hopes…anyway, Arkady’s wife Bryna. She was getting older, time was running out, then suddenly she asked him to cut strings with her.”
Lakewalker divorce. Fawn nodded.
“Arkady wasn’t too happy, I reckon, but he didn’t fight it. They divided up New Moon and Moss River medicine tents between them, more or less, and very soon after, she got string-bound with a widowed patroller from over there. They had two children before she had her change of life. I guess they’re nearly grown by now.”
Fawn tried to decide if this was a happy ending or not. Half a one, maybe. “You wonder why Arkady didn’t remarry.”
“Even my groundsense doesn’t help me figure what goes on in his head. I do see he’s a right sensitive man, and maybe only partly from training his groundsense to a pitch like I’ve never seen.”
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