One of the few buildings in decent repair in the village belonged to Tris, a healer of rare talent. His reputation had spread beyond the village, and the nobles from the hold sought him out for the healing of their gout, indigestion and boils, for which services he charged them royally.
Without Tris, Tallonwood would have suffered far worse than it had this past winter. Using the gold and jewels he charged the nobles, he bought grain from the hold’s stores and cattle to slaughter.
When the hold’s reserves were too lean to allow the hold castellan to sell any more, Tris risked the wrath of Lord Karsten and hunted the forest animals himself. He maintained that years of sneaking around catching herbs unaware lent him stealth that served him well against both the forest animals and the two-legged beasts that the overseer hired to keep the peasants from helping themselves.
In the front room of his two-room cottage, Tris wiped down the counter that kept his customers’ children out of the various pots and jars that he stored on the shelves. The rag that he used was not as stained as his powerful hands, which were presently an interesting shade of lilac. He’d found a patch of avendar on his walk this morning, an herb useful for making burn salve and dark purple dye.
To his immense surprise, the healer had found contentment in the little village. He was even fond of the neat little cottage that stood on the other side of a small hill from Tallonwood. The location allowed him the illusion of privacy and the convenience of being upstream from the village waste.
Tris looked up, rubbing his beard, as the door chimes announced the entrance of the headman’s mother, Trenna.
Old and crippled as she was, she carried herself with an air that made even the lord treat her with respect. If she’d been born in another place, she would have been trained as a mage. In Darran she was the village wisewoman, advising the elders on such things as which goat would give more milk and which should be butchered, or when the first snow would fall.
If Tris knew that her accuracy was due to something other than observation and experience, then she knew that there was more than herbs in Tris’s recipes. The magic that they used was different, but it was magic just the same.
It had been Trenna, searching for an elusive plant, who found Tris where his own people had left him: bound and waiting to die. Her magic sometimes expressed itself in the rare ability to see into future possibilities. That gift allowed her to discern his nature and see hope for her village. She offered him a bargain.
If she freed him, he would serve her village for a year as healer. The conditions would be difficult. Her people were hostile to magic, so he would have to hide his nature—at the same time helping them to the best of his abilities.
Tris had been waiting patiently for death. Even if he could have escaped, his rash act of kindness would have exiled him from his people forever. Dying did not seem so harsh—until he’d been offered a chance at a life. He agreed to her terms.
The bonds that held him were designed to resist magic, but not the simple steel knife that Trenna used when hunting plants for her potions. After she healed his wounds with her crude herb lore (Tris had difficulty working the healing magic on himself), Trenna told the village elders that he was a relative, a healer who had grown tired of his travels and had come to stay there.
The elders accepted her story. Trenna was getting too frail to carry out the duties of healer, and there was no one skilled enough to take her place. They accepted Tris gratefully; in their desperation they were willing to overlook his foreignness.
Tris wasn’t sure Trenna understood what he was, but she knew that he would cause no harm to the people of Tallonwood, and that was all that mattered to her. His year was long over, but he remained in Tallonwood. He had nowhere else to go.
“Lady.” He greeted Trenna in his peculiarly accented Darranian. He took the swollen hand that she extended over the counter and kissed it gently in true courtier sty le.
“Sir,” she smiled up at his gentle flirting; he was taller than any man in the village, and she was a small woman. “How are you this fine spring morning?”
“Remarkably well. I just got back from wandering in the woods and I discovered another patch of thyme; the old one was getting picked over. Can I mix a powder for your rheumatism? I found some tharmud root last week that should make this batch more potent.”
“If you please,” she answered. When he turned to his work, she flexed her hands carefully. They were noticeably less swollen than they had been before he’d touched her.
Tris was usually careful that the villagers saw nothing that they wouldn’t expect to see. For Trenna, though, he could be as theatrical as he liked—she enjoyed it almost as much as he did. So his ingredients were mixed with flashes of light and strange noises, and the end result had an eerie green glow when he put it into the leather bag.
“Now,” he said handing it to her, “remember to take this in the morning and at night. You can take one other dose during the day if you must. If you need it more often than that, come back and see me. Steep the powder in hot water for as long as you can hold your breath before you drink it.”
She smiled at him, giving him a glimpse of the beauty she had once been, and started to take the bag. When their hands touched, she let the pouch fall unheeded to the floor and clutched him with a strength that belied her swollen joints. He felt the pulse of her magic under his fingers.
Her body hummed with tension as she spoke in a strained voice. “Two come from Sianim… a man and… the dancer. You must aid them stem the tide of the cat god… Beware the creatures he calls from the Swamp.” She swallowed and gasped for air, like a fish on land. Sweat glistened on her forehead and she shifted her urgent grip to his forearms, her tongue twisting around a few phrases of his native language.
The magic released her, and she shook as if she’d been out in a blizzard. Before she could fall, Tris rolled across the counter, heedless of the small planter he sent tumbling to the floor, caught her and gently lowered her to the padded oak bench that spanned the far wall. He sat next to her and kept his arm around her until she quit shaking.
“Sorry,” she said when she could.
He shook his head in exasperation. “Lady, I thank you for your advice—you have nothing to apologize for. Do you remember what you said?”
She shook her head. “No. Sometimes I can remember—or at least see pictures, but… I saw a flash of red and green gems… No, I think they were eyes.” She shook her head again. “That’s all. I hope that it will do you some good.”
Again he took her hand and kissed it, “That, Lady, is best left for time to tell us. May I see you home?”
She smiled and stood up slowly, but steadily enough. “No. For some reason I am feeling much better now. If you could retrieve my powder for me, I will pay you and go”
Tris gave her the powder but shook his head when she offered him a bit of copper. “No. Send your grandson over if you’d like. There’s a corner of the roof that needs rethatching before the next rain. He’s grown to be quite a craftsman under Edgar’s tutelage.” She and he both knew that he’d pay her grandson when he came, but after a moment she nodded and left.
Tris watched her leave, and with a soft voice he repeated the phrases that Trenna had spoken in his own language: the first lines of the bonding ceremony. He had been alone for so long… Was there to be an end to it?
After a moment of stillness, he found a broom and began to remove the remnants of the planter from his floor, gently picking up the plants and setting them aside for repotting.
The dining hall in Lord Karsten’s hold was large enough to seat six hundred people, but only one of the six ancient, rough-hewn tables was being used. This room showed the improvements that Lord Karsten was making throughout Westhold.