Dag finally said what he hadn’t wanted to say, even to himself. “Malices are pure ground. Ground without matter.”
The medicine maker stared at him. “You’d know more about that than I would. I’ve never seen a malice.”
“All a malice’s material appearance is pure theft. They snatch ground itself, and matter through its ground, to shape at will. Or misshape.”
“I don’t know, Dag.” She shook her head. “I’ll have to think about this one.”
“I wish you would. I’m”—he cut off the word afraid—“very puzzled.”
She nodded shortly and rose to fetch her apprentice from the anteroom, introducing him as Othan. The lad looked thrilled, whether at being allowed to do a ground treatment upon the very interesting patroller, or simply at being allowed to do one at all, Dag couldn’t quite tell. Hoharie gave up her seat and stood observing with her arms folded. The apprentice sat down and determinedly began tracing his hands up and down Dag’s right arm.
“Hoharie,” he said after a moment, “I can’t get through the patroller’s ground veil.”
“Ease up, Dag,” Hoharie advised.
Dag had held himself close and tight ever since he’d crossed the bridge to the island yesterday. He really, really didn’t want to open himself up here. But it was going to be necessary. He tried.
Othan shook his head. “Still can’t get in.” The lad was starting to look distressed, as though he imagined the failure was his fault. He looked up. “Maybe you’d better try, ma’am?”
“I’m spent. Won’t be able to do a thing till tomorrow at the earliest. Ease up, Dag!”
“I can’t…”
“You are in a mood today.” She circled the table and frowned at them both; the apprentice cringed. “All right, try swapping it around. You reach, Dag. That should force you open.”
He nodded, and tried to reach into the lad’s ground. The strain of his own distaste for the task warred with his frantic desire, now that the opportunity was so provokingly close, of getting the blighted splints off for good. The apprentice was looking at him with the air of a whipped puppy, bewildered but still eager to please. He held his arm lightly atop Dag’s, face earnest, ground open as any gate.
On impulse, Dag shifted his stump across and slammed it down beside both their arms. Something flashed in his groundsense, strong and sharp. Othan cried out and recoiled.
“Oh!” said Hoharie.
“A ghost hand,” said Dag grimly. “A ground hand. Like that.” His whole forearm was hot with new ground, snatched from the boy. His ghost hand, so briefly perceptible, was gone again. He was shaking, but if he put his arms out of sight below the table, it would only draw more attention to his trembling. He forced himself to sit still.
The apprentice was holding his own right arm to his chest, rubbing it and looking wide-eyed. “Ow,” he said simply. “What was that? I mean—I didn’t do—did I do anything?”
“Sorry. I’m sorry,” mumbled Dag. “I shouldn’t have done that.” That was new. New and disturbing, and far too much like malice magic for Dag’s comfort. Although perhaps there was only one kind of groundwork, after all. Was it theft, to take something someone was trying with all his heart to press upon you?
“My arm is cold,” complained Othan. “But—did it help? Did I actually do any healing, Hoharie?”
Hoharie ran her hands over both her apprentice’s arm and Dag’s, her frown replaced by an oddly expressionless look. “Yes. There’s an extremely dense ground reinforcement here.”
Othan looked heartened, although he was still chafing his own forearm.
Dag wriggled his fingers; his arm barely ached. “I can feel the heat of it.”
Hoharie, watching them both with equal attention, talked her apprentice through a light resplinting of Dag’s arm. Othan gave the flaking, smelly skin a wash first, to Dag’s intense gratitude. The boy’s own right arm was decidedly weak; he fumbled the wrappings twice, and Hoharie had to help him tie off the knots.
“Is he going to be all right?” Dag asked cautiously, nodding at Othan.
“In a few days, I expect,” said Hoharie. “That was a much stronger ground reinforcement than I normally let my apprentices attempt.”
Othan smiled proudly, although his eyes were still a trifle confused. Hoharie dismissed him with thanks, closed the door behind him, and slid back into the seat across from Dag. She eyed him narrowly.
“Hoharie,” said Dag plaintively, “what’s happening to me?”
“Not sure.” She hesitated. “Have you ever been tested for a maker?”
“Yes, ages ago. I’d no knack nor patience for it, but my groundsense range was a mile, so they let me go for a patroller. Which was what I’d desperately wanted anyway.”
“What was that, nigh on forty years ago? Have you been tested lately?”
“No interest, no point. Such talents don’t change after youth…do they?”
“Nothing alive is unchanging.” Her eyes had gone silvery with interest—or was that covetousness? “I will say, that was no ghost, Dag. That was one of the live-est things I’ve ever seen. Could it do shaped reinforcements, I wonder?”
Did she think of training him as a medicine maker, in the sort of subtle groundwork that she herself did? Dag was taken aback. “Dar’s the maker in my family.”
“So?” Her shrewd look that went with this made him shift uncomfortably.
“I don’t control this. It’s more like it works me.”
“What, you can’t remember how wobbly you were when your groundsense first came in? Some days, my apprentices are all over the map. Some days I still am, for that matter.”
“Fifty-five’s a bit old for an apprentice, don’t you think?” Hoharie herself was younger than Dag by a decade. He could remember when she’d been an apprentice. “And any road—a maker needs two good hands.” He waved his left, by way of a reminder.
She started to speak, but then sat back, frowning over this last.
“Patrolling’s what I do. Always have. I’m good at it.” A shiver of fear troubled him at the thought of stopping, which was odd, since hunting malices should be the scariest task there was. But he remembered his own words from Glassforge: None of us could do the job without all of us, so all of us are owed. Makers and patrollers alike, all were essential. All essential, all expendable.
Hoharie shrugged surrender, and said, “In any case, come back and see me tomorrow. I want to look at that arm again.” She added after a moment, “Both of them.”
“I’d take it kindly.” He gestured with his sling. “Do I really still need this splint, now?”
“Yes, to remind you not to try anything foolish. Speaking of experience. You patrollers are all alike, in some ways. Give that ground reinforcement some time to work, and we’ll see.”
Dag nodded, rose, and let himself out, conscious of Hoharie’s curious gaze following him.
6
D ag returned from the medicine tent reluctant to speak of the unsettling incident with the maker’s apprentice, but in any case, no one asked; instead, five persons took the chance to tell him that he needed to teach his wife to swim. Dag thought the idea fine, but Fawn seemed to find the fact that he still wore splints and a sling to be a great relief to her mind.
“Well, you certainly can’t go swimming with that rig on,” she said firmly. “When will you have it off, did they say?”
“Soon.”
She relaxed, and he did not clarify that soon could well mean tomorrow.
Sarri’s little boy, having been coaxed earlier into hauling rocks for their fire pit and warmly praised for his efforts by his fathers, had crept back to the task, toddling across the clearing with stones as big as his little fingers could clutch and flinging them in with great determination. It set off a small crisis when his excess offerings were removed. His outraged tears were diverted by a treat from Fawn’s dwindling store of farm fare, and Dag, grinning, hauled him back to his assorted parents. That evening, Dag and Fawn boiled tea water on their first home fire, even if supper was cold plunkin again. Fawn looked as though she was finally beginning to understand all the plunkin jokes.