If he did, Gar thought, he would go as a hero, hailed as one of the peacemakers—the very crime for which he had been exiled. He drank the dregs of his tea and stood, kicking dirt on the campfire. “Then let’s go find a way to make it happen.” Kerlew rose, too. “Which way lies peace?”
“Everywhere and nowhere.” Gar tucked the camping gear back in his pack. “It might lie down any road, so the direction doesn’t matter, only the journey.”
They left their campsite in considerably better spirits than they had come to it and set off down the road singing. After all, anyone really wanting to ambush travelers would have set sentries on the trackway, so what did it matter if they made some noise?
The argument seemed to lose its logic when the roadside leaves parted and half a dozen people stepped out into the road before them, rifles leveled.
11
Can you cure them, lady?” the grandmother asked in a frosty tone. That, plus the sharp anxiety in her eyes, told Alea how hard she was working to maintain her dignity when she was frightened for her children and grandchildren.
A dozen of the adults and children had sores on their faces and hands. Alea studied the slack jawed faces of the adults, then asked one woman, “Do your gums bleed?”
“How did you know?” The woman stared at her in amazement, and the others muttered to one another incredulously. “It’s part of this disease,” Alea explained. “Have your teeth grown loose?”
“She’s a witch!” a man hissed, shaken.
“No, only a healer.” Alea turned to the grandmother. “It’s nothing to fret about, Lady Grandmother. They’re not eating right, that’s all.”
“Not eating right!” the old woman exploded. “I see to it they’ve plenty! Cornbread, beans, and molasses, just as their parents and grandparents had!”
“If they did, you must have seen this sickness before,” Alea said, and from the haunted look in the grandmother’s eyes knew she had guessed rightly. “What kinds of fruits do you grow?”
“Why, apples and pears, like every other clan!”
“No oranges or lemons?”
The grandmother frowned. “What are those?”
Alea guessed the climate was too cold for citrus fruit. “What vegetables, then? Do you grow tomatoes?”
“Aye, for a bit of garnish.” The old woman made a face. “Who would want them for anything more?”
“Like them or not, you’d better serve them with the noon meal and the evening meal every day from now on,” Alea told her, “and make sure the young ones finish theirs, too.”
The old woman frowned. “Will that heal them?”
“Oh, yes,” Alea said. “You’ll see some improvement in a matter of days, but it will be a month or two before all the symptoms are gone.”
“Tomatoes!” The old woman made it sound like an obscenity, then sighed. “Well, you don’t bring in a healer to ignore her advice. We’ll try it for a fortnight, at least.” She turned to one of the younger men. “Jonathan, till a bed and plant more of the blasted things.”
“As you will, Grandmother.” The boy made a face on his way to the door. Apparently he shared her opinion of tomatoes. “Now then, Moira.” Grandma turned to the seer, one problem disposed of and out of her mind, another problem before her. “Not that you’re not welcome, mind you, but how is it you’ve come back so soon?”
“By the good graces of this healer, Grandma.” Moira smiled, amusement showing for a second before she throttled it into bland politeness. “She is graciously allowing me to attend her as a traveling companion.”
“Graciously, is it?” Grandma gave Alea a suspicious look, as though tolerating Moira’s company automatically made her suspect, but she admitted, “It is better for young women to travel together, though. A solitary road is a long one—and dangerous.”
“We trust that even bandits will not assault a healer, Grandma,” Alea said demurely.
“Trust no one, when you’re on the road,” Grandma retorted. “Still, Alea, I find it hard to believe you can tolerate this young preacher’s cant.”
“We do talk of peace,” Alea admitted, “but I don’t find it burdensome. I, too, would like to see all the clans put the past behind them and live in harmony. I suppose every healer would, though.”
Grandma frowned. “Why, how is that?”
“Why, because we spend so much effort in trying to mend wounds and save lives,” Alea said, surprised. “How could we delight in feuds that undo all our work and kill more?”
Grandma pursed her lips, mulling it over. “Hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“It makes you wonder if there’s any point to your work when you see it all undone,” Alea told her. “Yesterday I saved a young woman who had just given birth and was bleeding her life away. Two years from now, I might come this way again and find she’s been killed in battle. Why then did I go to all the labor of saving her life?”
“Why, to give her two more years,” Grandma said, “and her clan another rifle to help defend them.” But her expression was dubious.
“What of her baby, then?” Alea said. “I’ve served as a midwife often enough. What good was helping a baby be born if I come by fifteen years later and see him cut down in a firefight?”
Grandma winced at that one. “Aye, and what point in the months of waddling about with a great weight before you, and of the pain of birthing, and the years of toil and patience and throttling down anger and nurturing, when the little ones are killed before they’ve scarcely had a chance to live?” She gave herself a shake. “But like it or not, it’s the way life is, child. We can’t change it, and must try to fare through it as best we may.”
“Must we?” Moira said, suddenly intense.
Grandma turned to her glaring, and Alea said quickly, “Maybe we can’t change it, Grandma, but we have to try anyway.” Grandma turned back to her. “What point, if you can’t succeed? It’s wasted labor.” Then she caught the echo of her own words and looked uncertain.
“Aye,” Alea said softly, “and it’s wasted labor trying to save people’s lives and heal their wounds. It’s a question of which labor I’m willing to waste, Grandma, that’s all.”
“Well, then, if you think that, why try at all?”
“Because I’m alive,” Alea said simply, “and to stop trying is to stop living.”
“There’s some truth in that,” Grandma said grudgingly. “All right, let’s say you’re going to try to stop the fighting. How would you go about it?”
“Why…” Alea stared in surprise, then recovered and answered, “The same way I go about healing—find the cause, then seek the remedy.”
“Well, that makes sense,” Grandma allowed. “You can’t fix something if you don’t know how it broke. But what causes a feud, child?”
“I’ll have to ask you that,” Alea said gently. “What started your feud with the Gregors?”
“Started it?” Grandma asked, as though surprised that anyone wouldn’t know. “Why, Colum Gregor shot Great Uncle Hiram in the woods when Hiram was only out hunting, not doing anybody a lick of harm!”
“Going about peaceful work, not bothering anybody?” Alea frowned. “Why did Colum shoot him, then?”
“Because he was a wicked one and a villain, that’s why!”
“And a low-down, sneaky, treacherous snake, too,” said one of the clansmen, coming near. “Shot Uncle Hiram in the back, he did.”
“Those Gregors are all backstabbers,” said a middle-aged woman, coming forward in indignation. “They’d kill you as soon as look at you, and steal your daughters into the bargain.”