The Warded Man (14 page)

“The demons without echo the demons within,” he said.

Klarissa had been well loved, but after that, the town had quickly turned. Women shunned her, whispering behind her passage, and men refused to meet her eyes while their wives were about, making lewd comments when they were not.

Klarissa had left with a Messenger bound for Fort Rizon soon after the boy was weaned, and never returned. Leesha missed her.

“I wonder what Bruna wanted when she sent Jona,” Leesha said.

“I hate that little runt,” Gared growled. “Every time he looks at you, I can see him imagining you as his wife.”

“What do you care,” Leesha asked, “if imagination is all it is?”

“I won’t share you, even in other men’s dreams,” Gared said, putting his giant hand over hers under the table. Leesha sighed and leaned in to him. Bruna could wait.

Just then, Smitt stood, legs shaky with ale, and banged his stein on the table. “Everyone! Your attention, please!” His wife, Stefny, helped him stand up on the bench, propping him when he wobbled. The crowd quieted, and Smitt cleared his throat. He might dislike giving orders, but he liked giving speeches well enough.

“It’s the worst times that bring out the best in us,” he began. “But it’s them times that show the Creator our mettle. Show that we’ve mended our ways and are worthy for him to send the Deliverer and end the Plague. Show that the evil of the night cannot take our sense of family.

“Because that’s what Cutter’s Hollow is,” Smitt went on. “A family. Oh, we bicker and fight and play favorites, but when the corelings come, we see those ties of family like the strings of a loom, tying us all together. Whatever our differences, no one is left to them.

“Four houses lost their wards in the night,” Smitt told the crowd, “putting a score at the corelings’ absent mercy. But due to heroism out in the naked night, only seven were taken.

“Niklas!” Smitt shouted, pointing at the sandy-haired man sitting across from him. “Ran into a burning house to pull his mother out!

“Jow!” He pointed to another man, who jumped at the sound. “Not two days ago, he and Dav were before me, arguing all the way to blows. But last night, Jow hit a wood demon, a
wood demon
, with his axe to hold it off while Dav and his family ran across his wards!”

Smitt hopped up on the table, passion lending agility to his drunken body. He walked its length, calling people by name, and telling of their deeds in the night. “Heroes were found in the day, as well,” he went on. “Gared and Steave!” he cried, pointing. “Left their own house to burn to douse those that had a better chance! Because of them and others, only eight houses burned, when by rights it should have been the whole town!”

Smitt turned, and suddenly he was looking right at Leesha. His hand raised, and the finger he pointed to her struck her like a fist. “Leesha!” he called. “Thirteen years old, and she saved Gatherer Bruna’s life!

“In every person in Cutter’s Hollow beats the heart of a hero!” Smitt said, sweeping his hand over all. “The corelings test us, and tragedy tempers us, but like Milnese steel, Cutter’s Hollow will not break!”

The crowd roared in approval. Those who had lost loved ones cried the loudest, their cheeks wet with tears.

Smitt stood in the center of the din, soaking in its strength. After a time, he patted his hands, and the villagers quieted.

“Tender Michel,” he said, gesturing to the man, “has opened the Holy House to the wounded, and Stefny and Darsy have volunteered to spend the night there tending them. Michel also offers the Creator’s wards to all others who have nowhere else to go.”

Smitt raised a fist. “But hard pews are not where heroes should lay their heads! Not when they’re among family. My tav ern can hold ten comfortably, and more if need be. Who else among us will share their wards and their beds to heroes?”

Everyone shouted again, this time louder, and Smitt broke into a wide smile. He patted his hands again. “The Creator smiles on you all,” he said, “but the hour grows late. I’ll assign …”

Elona stood up. She too had drunk a few mugs, and her words slurred. “Erny and I will take in Gared and Steave,” she said, causing Erny to look sharply at her. “We’ve plenty of room, and with Gared and Leesha promised, they’re practically family already.”

“That’s very generous of you, Elona,” Smitt said, unable to hide his surprise. Rarely did Elona show generosity, and even then, there was usually a hidden price.

“Are you sure that’s proper?” Stefny asked loudly, causing everyone to turn eyes to her. When she wasn’t working in her husband’s tavern, Stefny was volunteering at the Holy House, or studying the Canon. She hated Elona—a mark in her favor in Leesha’s mind—but she had also been the first to turn on Klarissa when her state became clear.

“Two promised children living under one roof?” Stefny asked, but her eyes flicked to Steave, not Gared. “Who knows what improprieties might occur? Perhaps it would be best for you to take in others, and let Gared and Steave stay at the tavern.”

Elona’s eyes narrowed. “I think three parents enough to chaperone two children, Stefny,” she said icily. She turned to Gared, squeezing his broad shoulders. “My soon-to-be son-in-law did the work of five men today,” she said. “And Steave,” she reached out and drunkenly poked the man’s burly chest, “did the work of ten.”

She spun back toward Leesha, but stumbled a bit. Steave, laughing, caught her about the waist before she fell. His hand was huge on her slender midsection. “Even my,” she swallowed the word “useless,” but Leesha heard it anyway, “daughter did great deeds today. I’ll not have my heroes bed down in some other’s home.”

Stefny scowled, but the rest of the villagers took the matter as closed, and started offering up their own homes to the others in need.

Elona stumbled again, falling into Steave’s lap with a laugh. “You can sleep in Leesha’s room,” she told him. “It’s right next to mine.” She dropped her voice at that last part, but she was drunk, and everyone heard. Gared blushed, Steave laughed, and Erny hung his head. Leesha felt a stab of sympathy for her father.

“I wish the corelings had taken
her
last night,” she muttered.

Her father looked up at her. “Don’t ever say that,” he said. “Not about anyone.” He looked hard at Leesha until she nodded.

“Besides,” he added sadly, “they’d probably just give her right back.”

Accommodations had been made for all, and people were preparing to leave when there was a murmur, and the crowd parted. Through that gap limped Hag Bruna.

Child Jona held one of the woman’s arms as she walked. Leesha leapt to her feet to take her other. “Bruna, you shouldn’t be up,” she admonished. “You should be resting!”

“It’s your own fault, girl,” Bruna snapped. “There’s those sicker than I, and I need herbs from my hut to treat them. If your bodyguard”—she glared at Gared and he fell back in fright—“had let Jona bring my message, I could have sent you with a list. But now it’s late, and I’ll have to go with you. We can stay behind my wards for the night, and come back in the morn.”

“Why me?” Leesha asked.

“Because none of the other lackwit girls in this town can read!” Bruna shrieked. “They’d mix up the labels on the bottles worse’n that cow Darsy!”

“Jona can read,” Leesha said.

“I offered to go,” the acolyte began, but Bruna slammed her stick down on his foot, cutting his words off in a yelp.

“Herb Gathering is women’s work, girl,” Bruna said. “Holy Men are just there to pray while we do it.”

“I …” Leesha began, looking back at her parents for an escape.

“I think it’s a fine idea,” Elona said, finally extricating herself from Steave’s lap. “Spend the night at Bruna’s.” She shoved Leesha forward. “My daughter is glad to help,” she said with a broad smile.

“Perhaps Gared should go as well?” Steave suggested, kicking his son.

“You’ll need a strong back to carry your herbs and potions back in the morning,” Elona agreed, pulling Gared up.

The ancient Herb Gatherer glared at her, then at Steave, but nodded finally.

The trip to Bruna’s was slow, the hag setting a shuffling crawl of a pace. They made it to the hut just before sunset.

“Check the wards, boy,” Bruna told Gared. While he complied, Leesha took her inside, setting the old woman down in a cushioned chair, and laying a quilt blanket over her. Bruna was breathing hard, and Leesha feared she would start coughing again any minute. She filled the kettle and laid wood and tinder in the hearth, casting her eyes about for flint and steel.

“The box on the mantel,” Bruna said, and Leesha noticed the small wooden box. She opened it, but there was no flint or steel within, only short wooden sticks with some kind of clay at the ends. She picked up two and tried rubbing them together.

“Not like that, girl!” Bruna snapped. “Have you never seen a flamestick?”

Leesha shook her head. “Da keeps some in the shop where he mixes chemics,” Leesha said, “but I’m not to go in there.”

The old Herb Gatherer sighed and beckoned the girl over. She took one of the sticks and braced it against her gnarled, dry thumbnail. She flicked her thumb, and the end of the stick burst into flame. Leesha’s eyes bulged.

“There’s more to Herb Gathering than plants, girl,” Bruna said, touching the flame to a taper before the flamestick burned out. She lit a lamp, and handed the taper to Leesha. She held the lamp out, illuminating a dusty shelf filled with books in its flickering light.

“Sweet day!” Leesha exclaimed. “You have more books than Tender Michel!”

“These aren’t witless stories censored by the Holy Men, girl. Herb Gatherers are keepers of a bit of the knowledge of the old world, from back before the Return, when the demons burned the great libraries.”

“Science?” Leesha asked. “Was that not the hubris that brought on the Plague?”

“That’s Michel talking,” Bruna said. “If I’d known that boy would grow into such a pompous ass, I’d have left him between his mother’s legs. It was science, as much as magic, that drove the corelings off the first time. The sagas tell of great Herb Gatherers healing mortal wounds, and mixing herbs and minerals that killed demons by the score with fire and poison.”

Leesha was about to ask another question when Gared returned. Bruna waved her toward the hearth, and Leesha lit the fire and set the kettle over it. Soon the water was boiling, and Bruna reached into the many pockets of her robe, putting her special mixture of herbs in her cup, and tea in Leesha’s and Gared’s. Her hands were quick, but Leesha still noticed the old woman throw something extra in Gared’s cup.

She poured the water, and they all sipped in an awkward silence. Gared drank his quickly, and soon began rubbing his face. A moment later, he slumped over, fast asleep.

“You put something in his tea,” Leesha accused.

The old woman cackled. “Tampweed resin and skyflower pollen,” she said. “Each with many uses alone, but together, a pinch can put a bull to sleep.”

“But why?” Leesha asked.

Bruna smiled, but it was a frightening thing. “Call it chaperoning,” she said. “Promised or no, you can’t trust a boy of fifteen summers alone with a young girl at night.”

“Then why let him come along?” Leesha asked.

Bruna shook her head. “I told your father not to marry that shrew, but she dangled her udders at him and left him dizzy,” she sighed. “Drunk as they are, Steave and your mum are going to have at it no matter who’s in the house,” she said. “But that don’t mean Gared ought to hear it. Boys are bad enough at his age, as is.”

Leesha’s eyes bulged. “My mother would never …!”

“Careful finishing that sentence, girl,” Bruna cut her off. “The Creator abhors a liar.”

Leesha deflated. She knew what Elona was like. “Gared’s not like that, though,” she said.

Bruna snorted. “Midwife a village and tell me that,” she said.

“It wouldn’t even matter if I was flowered,” Leesha said. “Then Gared and I could marry, and I could do for him as a wife should.”

“Eager for that, are you?” Bruna said with a wicked grin. “It’s no sad affair, I’ll admit. Men have more uses than swinging axes and carrying heavy things.”

“What’s taking so long?” Leesha asked. “Saira and Mairy reddened their sheets in their twelfth summers, and this will be my thirteenth! What could be wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Bruna said. “Each girl bleeds in her own time. It may be you have a year yet, or more.”

“A year!” Leesha exclaimed.

“Don’t be so quick to leave childhood behind, girl,” Bruna said. “You’ll find you miss it when its gone. There’s more to the world than laying under a man and making his babies.”

“But what else could compare?” Leesha asked.

Bruna gestured to her shelf. “Choose a book,” she said. “Any book. Bring it here, and I’ll show you what else the world can offer.”

LEESHA WOKE WITH A START as Bruna’s old rooster crowed to mark the dawn. She rubbed her face, feeling the imprint of the book on her cheek. Gared and Bruna were still fast asleep. The Herb Gatherer had passed out early, but despite her own fatigue, Leesha kept on reading late into the night. She had thought Herb Gathering was just setting bones and birthing babes, but there was so much more. Herb Gatherers studied the entire natural world, finding ways to combine the Creator’s many gifts for the benefit of His children.

Leesha took the ribbon that held back her dark hair and laid it across the page, closing the book as reverently as she did the Canon. She rose and stretched, laying fresh wood on the fire and stirring the embers into a flame. She put the kettle on, and then went over to shake Gared.

“Wake up, lazybones,” she said, keeping her voice low. Gared only groaned. Whatever Bruna had given him, it was strong. She shook harder, and he swatted at her, eyes still closed.

“Get up or there’ll be no breakfast for you,” Leesha laughed, kicking him.

Gared groaned again, and his eyes cracked. When Leesha drew her foot back a second time, he reached out and grabbed her leg, pulling her down on top of him with a yelp.

He rolled atop her, encircling her in his burly arms, and Leesha giggled at his kisses.

“Stop it,” she said, swatting at him halfheartedly, “you’ll wake Bruna.”

“So what if I do?” Gared asked. “The old hag is a hundred years old and blind as a bat.”

“The hag’s ears are still sharp,” Bruna said, cracking open one of her milky white eyes. Gared yelped and practically flew to his feet, distancing himself from Leesha and Bruna both.

“You keep your hands to yourself in my home, boy, or I’ll brew a potion to keep your manhood slack for a year,” Bruna said. Leesha saw the color drain from Gared’s face, and bit her lip to keep from laughing. For some reason, Bruna no longer frightened her, but she loved watching the old woman intimidate everyone else.

“We understand one another?” Bruna asked.

“Yes’m,” Gared said immediately.

“Good,” Bruna said. “Now put those burly shoulders to work and split some wood for the firebox.” Gared was out the door before she finished. Leesha laughed as the door slammed.

“Liked that, did you?” Bruna asked.

“I’ve never seen anyone send Gared scurrying like that,” Leesha said.

“Come closer, so I can see you,” Bruna said. When Leesha did, she went on, “Being village healer is more than brewing potions. A strong dose of fear is good for the biggest boy in the village. Maybe help him think twice before hurting someone.”

“Gared would never hurt anyone,” Leesha said.

“As you say,” Bruna said, but she didn’t sound at all convinced.

“Could you really have made a potion to take his manhood away?” Leesha asked.

Bruna cackled. “Not for a year,” she said. “Not with one dose, anyway. But a few days, or even a week? As easily as I dosed his tea.”

Leesha looked thoughtful.

“What is it, girl?” Bruna asked. “Having doubts your boy will leave you unplucked before your wedding?”

“I was thinking more on Steave,” Leesha said.

Bruna nodded. “And well you should,” she advised. “But have care. Your mother is wise to the trick. She came to me often when she was young, needing Gatherer’s tricks to stem her flow and keep her from getting with child while she had her fun. I didn’t see her for what she was, then, and I’m sad to say I taught her more than I should have.”

“Mum wasn’t a virgin when Da carried her across his wards?” Leesha asked in shock.

Bruna snorted. “Half the town had a roll with her before Steave drove the others away.”

Leesha’s jaw dropped. “Mum condemned Klarissa when she got with child,” she said.

Bruna spat on the floor. “Everyone turned on that poor girl. Hypocrites, all! Smitt talks of family, but he didn’t lift a finger when his wife led the town after that girl like a pack of flame demons. Half those women pointing at her and crying ‘Sin!’ were guilty of the same deed, they were just lucky enough to marry fast, or smart enough to take precautions.”

“Precautions?” Leesha asked.

Bruna shook her head. “Elona’s so eager to have a grandson she’s kept you in the dark about everything, eh?” she asked. “Tell me, girl, how are babies made?”

Leesha blushed. “The man, I mean, your husband … He …”

“Out with it, girl,” Bruna snapped, “I’m too old to wait for the red to leave your face.”

“He spends his seed in you,” Leesha said, her face reddening further.

Bruna cackled. “You can treat burns and demon wounds, but blush at how life is made?”

Leesha opened her mouth to reply, but Bruna cut her off.

“Make your boy spend his seed on your belly, and you can lie with him to your heart’s content,” Bruna said. “But boys can’t be trusted to pull from you in time, as Klarissa learned. The smarter ones come to me for tea.”

“Tea?” Leesha asked, leaning on every word.

“Pomm leaves, leached in the right dose with some other herbs, create a tea that will keep a man’s seed from taking root.”

“But Tender Michel says …” Leesha began.

“Spare me the recitation from the Canon,” Bruna cut her off. “It’s a book written by men, without a thought given towards the plight of women.”

Leesha’s mouth closed with a click.

“Your mum visited me often,” Bruna went on, “asking questions, helping me around the hut, grinding herbs for me. I had thought to make her my apprentice, but all she wanted was the secret of the tea. Once I told her how it was made, she left and never returned.”

“That does sound like her,” Leesha said.

“Pomm tea is safe enough in small doses,” Bruna said, “but Steave is lusty, and your mother took too much. The two of them must have slapped stomachs a thousand times before your father’s business began to prosper, and his purse caught her eye. By then, your mum’s womb was scraped dry.”

Leesha looked at her curiously.

“After she married your father, Elona tried for two years to conceive without success,” Bruna said. “Steave married some young girl and got her with child overnight, which only made your mum more desperate. Finally, she came back to me, begging for help.”

Leesha leaned in close, knowing her existence had hinged on whatever Bruna said next.

“Pomm tea must be taken in small doses,” Bruna repeated, “and once a month it is best to stop it and allow your flow to come. Fail this, and you risk becoming barren. I warned Elona, but she was a slave to her loins, and failed to listen. For months I gave her herbs and checked her flow, giving her herbs to slip into your father’s food. Finally, she conceived.”

“Me,” Leesha said. “She conceived me.”

Bruna nodded. “I feared for you, girl. Your mum’s womb was weak, and we both knew she would not have another chance. She came to me every day, asking me to check on her son.”

“Son?” Leesha asked.

“I warned her it might not be a boy,” Bruna said, “but Elona was stubborn. ‘The Creator could not be so cruel,’ she’d say, forgetting that the same Creator made the corelings.”

“So all I am is some cruel joke of the Creator?” Leesha asked.

Bruna grabbed Leesha’s chin in her bony fingers and pulled her in close. Leesha could see the long gray hairs, like cat’s whiskers, on the crone’s wrinkled lips as she spoke.

“We are what we choose to be, girl,” she said. “Let others determine your worth, and you’ve already lost, because no one wants people worth more than themselves. Elona has no one to blame but herself for her bad choices, but she’s too vain to admit it. Easier to take it out on you and poor Erny.”

“I wish she’d been exposed and run out of town,” Leesha said.

“You would betray your gender out of spite?” Bruna asked.

“I don’t understand,” Leesha said.

“There’s no shame in a girl wanting a man twixt her legs, Leesha,” Bruna said. “An Herb Gatherer can’t judge folks for doing what nature intended they do when they are young and free. It’s oath breakers I can’t abide. You say your vows, girl, you’d best plan on keeping them.”

Leesha nodded.

Gared returned, just then. “Darsy’s come to see ya back to town,” he told Bruna.

“I swear I sacked that dim-witted sow,” Bruna grumbled.

“The town council met yesterday and reinstated me,” Darsy said, pushing into the hut. She was not as tall as Gared, but she was not far off, and easily topped his weight. “It’s your own fault. No one else would take the job.”

“They can’t do that!” Bruna barked.

“Oh, yes they can,” Darsy said. “I don’t like it any more than you, but you could pass any day now, and the town needs someone to tend the sick.”

“I’ve outlived better than you,” Bruna sneered. “I’ll choose who I teach.”

“Well I’m to stay until you do,” Darsy said, looking at Leesha and baring her teeth.

“Then make yourself useful and put the porridge on,” Bruna said. “Gared’s a growing boy and needs to keep his strength up.”

Darsy scowled, but she rolled her sleeves and headed for the boiling kettle nonetheless.

“Smitt and I are going to have a little chat when I get to town,” Bruna grumbled.

“Is Darsy really so bad?” Leesha asked.

Bruna’s watery eyes turned Gared’s way. “I know you’re stronger than an ox, boy, but I imagine there are still a few cords to split out back.”

Gared didn’t need to be told twice. He was out the door in a blink, and they heard him put the axe back to work.

“Darsy’s useful enough around the hut,” Bruna admitted. “She splits wood almost as fast as your boy, and makes a fair porridge. But those meaty hands are too clumsy for healing, and she has little aptitude for the Gatherer’s art. She’ll make a passable mid-wife—any fool can pull a babe from its mother—and at setting bones she’s second to none, but the subtler work is beyond her. I weep at the thought of this town with her as Herb Gatherer.”

“You won’t make Gared much of a wife if you can’t get a simple dinner together!” Elona called.

Leesha scowled. So far as she knew, her mother had never prepared a meal in her life. It had been days since she’d had a proper sleep, but Creator forbid her mother lift a hand to help.

She had spent the day tending the sick with Bruna and Darsy. She picked up the skills quickly, causing Bruna to use her as an example to Darsy. Darsy did not care for that.

Leesha knew Bruna wanted to apprentice her. The old woman didn’t push, but she had made her intentions clear. But there was her father’s papermaking business to think of as well. She had worked in the shop, a large connected section of their house, since she was a little girl, penning messages for villagers and making sheets. Erny told her she had a gift for it. Her bindings were prettier than his, and Leesha liked to embed her pages with flower petals, which the ladies in Lakton and Fort Rizon paid more for than their husbands did for plain sheets.

Erny’s hope was to retire while Leesha ran the shop and Gared made the pulp and handled the heavy work. But paper-making had never held much interest for Leesha. She did it mostly to spend time with her father, away from the lash of her mother’s tongue.

Elona might have liked the money it made, but she hated the shop, complaining of the smell of the lye in the pulping vats and the noise of the grinder. The shop was a retreat from her that Leesha and Erny took often, a place of laughter that the house proper would never be.

Steave’s booming laugh made Leesha look up from the vegetables she was chopping for stew. He was in the common room, sitting in her father’s chair, drinking his ale. Elona sat on the chair’s arm, laughing and leaning in, her hand on his shoulder.

Leesha wished she were a flame demon, so she could spit fire on them. She had never been happy trapped in the house with Elona, but now all she could think of was Bruna’s stories. Her mother didn’t love her father and probably never had. She thought her daughter a cruel joke of the Creator. And she hadn’t been a virgin when Erny carried her across the wards.

For some reason, that cut the deepest. Bruna said there was no sin in a woman taking pleasure in a man, but her mother’s hypocrisy stung nonetheless. She had helped force Klarissa out of town to hide her own indiscretion.

“I won’t be like you,” Leesha swore. She would have her wedding day as the Creator intended, and become a woman in a proper marriage bed.

Elona squealed at something Steave said, and Leesha began to sing to herself to drown them out. Her voice was rich and pure; Tender Michel was forever asking her to sing at services.

“Leesha!” her mother barked a moment later. “Quit your warbling! We can hardly hear ourselves think out here!”

“Doesn’t sound like there’s much thinking going on,” Leesha muttered.

“What was that?” Elona demanded.

“Nothing!” Leesha called back in her most innocent voice.

They ate just after sunset, and Leesha watched proudly as Gared used the bread she had made to scrape clean his third bowl of her stew.

“She’s not much of a cook, Gared,” Elona apologized, “but it’s filling enough if you hold your nose.”