Ahead of her, Crob was sweating. Maug clenched his jaw so that the sides of his face throbbed. Few were in the streets, only a blind beggar and a soldier or two dozing on their feet.
When they arrived at ‘death-in-a-cage,’ Camlach was awake. No guards were within view, but Marwen could hear drunken laughter not far off. The fever in the lad made his face swollen and dry, and his eyes gleam. There were new purple bruises on his arms and chest, old ones had become yellow and brown, and an ugly gash to his temple oozed blood. He tried to smile when they came close, but he did not stir.
“Since you came, I have been afraid to sleep for fear it would be my last. Is it now that you will release me?”
“Now,” Marwen said tenderly. She saw that he had hardly dared to hope.
“I’m not sure I can walk,” he said.
“Maug and I will help you, lad,” Crob said.
Maug had been standing apart, as if on lookout. He coughed softly and reluctantly came closer. “Hurry,” he said, the sweat glistening in the furrows of his forehead.
Marwen looked past him to a wingwand soaring. The magic in her became peaceful, and she felt a cool serenity still her heart. In that moment she was utterly sure of her power.
She placed three fingers gently on the padlock. The lock had forgotten the language of its birth as rock and raw metal, and knew now only the language of a tool that has listened to the whispering out of a thousand souls.
“I am old, I am old,” it told Marwen.
In the language of creation, Marwen told the lock how she could return it to its mother earth, and in the next moment, the padlock’s rusted pins gave way and fell into her palm. She dropped the lock into her apron pocket; the ip hissed and rewound itself into a smaller ball. Marwen quietly swung the bars aside while Crob leaned in with his arms outstretched, and Maug stood nervously beside him ready to help, albeit grudgingly.
It took all their strength to help him out, for though Camlach was wasted and thin from many days of fasting, still he was lanky, taller by a head than Maug and Crob, and built in the shoulders like a man already. He leaned on them heavily, but Marwen had no wits to help them. The very air sang to her of danger. She thought she could hear footsteps.
“Where can we hide?” she whispered to Crob.
Then Crob and Maug, too, heard the footsteps and increased their pace. “There is no place to hide,” Crob said with such a heavy accent that Marwen would not have been able to understand him had she not already known the answer.
“We shall have to leave him,” Maug said.
“If the guards come near, show them your pet,” Crob said to Marwen between clenched teeth. It was clear that the young man was becoming too heavy for them.
At that moment two voices rang out in rage, and Marwen knew that the empty maw meant to be Camlach’s tomb had been discovered. Soon, she knew, their cries would be echoed in every street, and they would be safe nowhere.
“Faster!” Crob said.
Camlach threw his head back and groaned. “No, leave me here. I think my ankle is broken.”
“Will we all die for one?” Maug snarled. His face was wet and gray.
“Not much farther, lad,” Crob whispered to Camlach. He looked at Marwen desperately.
From every direction Marwen could hear booted feet running and angry calls, but the feeling of peace had fallen over her again like a soft cloak, and she realized she knew where she was in the maze of streets. She knew where she was and who, around the next corner, she would find.
“This way,” she whispered to Crob, and then she ran ahead and around the corner. There, like a queen on a throne, sat the blind old blanket woman, Politha.
Marwen looked into the woman’s calm unseeing eyes as she approached, breathless. “Grandmother, let your hands be blessed. Please answer me this question. Who wove these fine blankets?” she asked, but she knew the answer already.
“I wove them, child,” she said.
Marwen bent on one knee and picked up the old woman’s hands. The wrinkled skin felt like spidersilk over bone.
“And what else do you weave, Politha? Do you weave the tapestry, or am I mistaken?”
The woman’s voice was still old when next she spoke, but there was a gravity in it. “You have strong magic, child. What need has driven you to seek the help of a crippled Oldwife?”
But Marwen had no need to answer, for Crob and Maug came round the corner with Camlach hunched half-conscious over their backs. Curses and cries of alarm from many guards rang from the rock walls. They were close.
“Politha,” Crob said, panting, “will all your prayers help us now?”
The old woman took only a moment to understand much. She stood up achingly and opened her palms out to him as Marwen had seen her do before when Crob passed.
“Good Crob,” she said, “this is the blanket you have bought with your generosity.”
Marwen saw then that the open palms were not a sign of helplessness but that they appeared to bear weight, as though the air were heavy above them and the fingers held substance.
The woman stretched her hands out like a dancer and flung something at them that settled on them like the warmth of the sun as it emerges from behind a thick cloud.
“Come under my magical coverlet,” she whispered.
Five guards rounded the corner the next moment, swords in their hands and rage in their mouths. But with scarcely more than a glance in Politha’s direction, the guards passed by and, in a few moments, were out of sight.
Chapter Eight
In the beqinninq of time, the mother, wanting to give her children a gift, chose the brightest and most precious of her treasures, and gave them the ability to believe.
As soon as they arrived at Crob’s home, Politha put Crob and Marwen to work making tea, poultices, and heating bricks. Maug did not offer to help but sat in a corner with his knife hacking at a block of hardsoap. Politha hovered over Camlach, weaving strong spells of healing and working them with her hands. For many winds Marwen watched and helped. When finally they straightened and left his side, the lad slept peacefully by the fire and the purple bruises around his face had already become less swollen and dark. Crob took his wares to market so as not to be asked after.
“We have done well, sister,” Politha said to Marwen. The old woman’s hands shook with fatigue.
“I am not a sister, yet,” Marwen said, “but only apprenticed. You know spells of healing I have never heard before. Will you teach me?”
“What do you know, child?” Politha asked. She did not ask to see Marwen’s tapestry as proof of her calling.
“The spells for good blood and teeth and sure vision. The hearthside Songs that relieve a child’s pain or cool a fever.”
Politha nodded. “Those are good, but they won’t bring back the dying.”
Marwen thought briefly of Sneda. Why had they worked for her then?
“Come,” the old woman said laying her hand on Marwen’s arm. “We’ll see how you do.” She sent Maug for water and began to teach Marwen a few of the more difficult spells for health, one for dissolving tumors and stones, one for healing broken bones, and another spell for fertility and conception. She taught her where to find in the Songs of the One Mother the spells for strong hearts and livers, and for problems of the bowel. “Still, in all things, the Mother decides,” Politha reminded Marwen often. The spells came to Marwen easily, like a childhood language returning to memory. Before long, Marwen was rehearsing spells of her own making. Politha put her hand on Marwen’s.