Fawn clenched her left wrist protectively to her breast. “Mornin’, Dar. I had a question for you.”
Dar grunted and rose; the woman, with a curious glance at Fawn, rose too.
“So what is it?” Dar asked.
“It’s kind of private. I can come back.”
“We were just finishing. Wait, then.” He turned to the woman and hefted the knife. “I can deconsecrate this in the afternoon. Do you want to come back tonight?”
“Could. Or tomorrow morning.”
“I have another binding tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll make it tonight, then. After supper?”
“That would do.”
The woman nodded briskly and started away, then paused by Fawn, looking her up and down. Her brows rose. “So you’re the famous farmer bride, eh?”
Fawn, unable to figure her tone, gave a safe little knee-dip.
She shook her head. “Well, Dar. Your brother.” With this opaque pronouncement, she strode off up the path.
By the bitter twisting of Dar’s lips, he drew more information from this than Fawn could. Fawn let it go; she had much more urgent worries right now. She approached Dar cautiously, as if he might bite. He set the knife on the porch boards and eyed her ironically.
Too nervous to plunge straight in, Fawn said instead, “What was that woman here for?”
“Her grandfather died unexpectedly in his sleep a few weeks ago, without getting the chance to share. She brought his knife back to be rededicated.”
“Oh.” Yes, that had to happen now and then. She wondered how Dar did that, took an old knife and bound it to the heart of someone new. She wished he and she could have been friends—or even relatives—then she could have asked.
Never mind that now. She gulped and stuck out her left arm. “Before Dag rode off to Raintree, I asked him if he couldn’t fix it so’s I could feel him through my marriage cord the way he feels me. And he did.” She prayed Dar would not ask how. “Last night about two hours after midnight, I woke up—there was this hurting all up my arm. Sarri, she woke up about the same time, but all she said was that Razi and Utau were still alive. Mari, too, Cattagus says. It didn’t do this before—I was afraid that—I think Dag’s hurt. Can you tell? Anything more?”
Dar’s face was not especially revealing, but Fawn thought a flash of alarm did flicker through his eyes. In any case, he did not snipe at her, but merely took her arm and let his fingers drift up and down it. His lips moved, tightened. He shook his head, not, seemingly, in defeat, but in a kind of exasperation. “Gods, Dag,” he murmured. “Can you do worse?”
“Well?” said Fawn apprehensively.
Dar dropped her arm; she clutched it to herself again. “Well…yes, I think Dag has probably taken some injury. No, I can’t be sure how much.”
Offended by his level tone, Fawn said, “Don’t you care?”
Dar turned his hands out. “If it’s so, it won’t be the first time he’s been brought home on a plank. I’ve been down this road with Dag too many times. I admit, the fact that he’s company captain is a bit…”
“Worrisome?”
“If you like. I can’t figure what Fairbolt…eh. But you say the others are all right, so they must be taking care of him. The patrol looks after its own.”
“If he’s not lost or separated or something.” Fawn could imagine a hundred somethings, each more dire than the last. “He’s my husband. If he’s hurt, I should be lookin’ after him.”
“What are you going to do? Jump on your horse and ride off into a war zone? To lose yourself in the woods, drown in a bog or a river, be eaten by the first wolf—or malice—whose path you cross? Come to think, maybe I should have Omba saddle up your horse and put you on it. It would certainly solve my brother’s problems for him.”
And it was extremely aggravating that just such panicked thoughts had been galloping through her mind all morning. She scowled. “Maybe I wouldn’t be as lost as all that. When Dag fixed my cord, he fixed it so’s I can tell where he is. Generally, anyhow,” she added scrupulously.
Dar squinted down at her for a long, silent, unnerving moment; his frown deepened. “It has nothing to do with your marriage cord. Dag has enslaved some of your ground to his.” He seemed about to say more, but then fell silent, his face drawn in doubt. He added after a moment, “I had no idea that he…it’s potent groundwork, I admit, but it’s not a good kind.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Naturally not.”
Fawn clenched her teeth. “That means, you have to explain more.”
“Do I?” The ironic look returned.
“Yes,” said Fawn, very definitely.
A little to her surprise, he shrugged acquiescence. “It’s malice magic. Forbidden to Lakewalkers for very good reasons. Malices mind-enslave farmers through their grounds. It’s part of what makes farmers as useless on patrol as dogs—a powerful enough malice can take them away and use them against us.”
“So why doesn’t that happen to Lakewalkers?” she shot back.
“Because we can close our grounds against the attack.”
Reluctantly, she decided Dar was telling the truth. So would the Glassforge malice have stolen her mind and will from her if it had been given a bit more time? Or would it simply have ripped out her ground on the spot as it had her child’s? No telling now. It did cast a disturbing new light on what she had assumed to be farmer slander against Lakewalkers and their beguilements. But if—
Cattagus’s oblique warning about the camp council returned to her mind with a jerk. “How, forbidden?” How fiercely forbidden, with what penalties? Had she just handed Dag’s brotherly enemy another weapon against him? Oh, gods, I can’t do anything right with these people!
“Well, it’s discouraged, certainly. A Lakewalker couldn’t use the technique on another Lakewalker, but farmers are wide-open, to a sufficiently powerful”—he hesitated—“maker,” he finished, puzzlement suddenly tingeing his voice. He shook it off. His eyes narrowed; Fawn suddenly did not like his sly smile. “It does rather explain how Dag has you following him around like a motherless puppy, eh?”
Dismay shook her, but she narrowed her eyes right back. “What does that mean?” she demanded.
“I should think it was obvious. If not, alas, to my brother’s credit.”
She strove to quell her temper. “If you’re tryin’ to say you think your brother put some kind of love spell on me, well, it won’t wash. Dag didn’t fix my cord, or my ground, or whatever, till the night before he left with his company.”
Dar tilted his head, and asked dryly, “How would you know?”
It was a horrible question. Was he reading her ground the way Cumbia had, to so narrowly target her most appalling possible fears? Doubt swept through her like a torrent, to smack to a sudden stop against another memory—Sunny Sawman, and his vile threats to slander her about that night at his sister’s wedding. That ploy had worked admirably well to stampede Fawn. Once. I may be just a little farmer girl, but blight it, I do learn. Dag says so. She raised her face to meet Dar’s eye square, and suddenly the look of doubt was reversed from her to him.
She drew a long breath. “I don’t know which of you is using malice magic. I do know which of you is the most malicious.”
His head jerked back.
Yeah, that stings, doesn’t it, Dar? Fawn tossed her head, whirled, and stalked out of the clearing. She didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking back, either.
Out on the road again, Fawn first turned right, then, in sudden decision, left. In the time it took her to walk the mile down the shore to patroller headquarters, her courage chilled. The building appeared quiet, although there was a deal of activity across the road at the stables and in the paddocks, some patrol either coming in or going out, or maybe folks getting ready to send the next company west to the war. Maybe Fairbolt won’t be here, she told herself, and climbed the porch.
A strange patroller at the writing table pointed wi
th his free hand without looking up from his scratching quill. “If the door’s open, anyone can go in.”
Fawn swallowed her rehearsed greetings, nodded, and scuttled past. Blight this naked-ground business. She peeked around the doorjamb to the inner chamber.
Fairbolt was sitting across from his pegboard with his feet up on another chair and a shallow wooden box in his lap, stirrings its contents with one thick finger and frowning. A couple more chairs pulled up beside him held more such trays. He squinted up at his board, sighed, and said, “Come in, Fawn.”
Emboldened, she stepped to his side. The trays, unsurprisingly, held pegs. He looked, she thought, very much like a man trying to figure out how to fill eight hundred holes with four hundred pegs. “I don’t mean to interrupt.”
“You’re not interrupting much.” He looked up at last and gave her a grimace that was possibly intended to be a smile.
“I had a question.”
“There’s a surprise.” He caught her faint wince and shook his head in apology. “Sorry. To answer you: no, I’ve had no courier from Dag since his company left. I wouldn’t expect one yet. It’s still early days for any news.”
“I figured that. I have a different question.”
She didn’t think she’d let her voice quaver, but his brows went up, and his feet came down. “Oh?”
“Married Lakewalkers feel each other through their wedding cords—if they’re alive, anyhow. Stands to reason you’d be listenin’ out for any such news from your patrollers—if any strings went dead—and folks would know to pass it on to you right quick.”
He looked at her in some bemusement. “That’s true. Dag tell you this?” “No, I figured it. What I want to know is, couriers or no couriers, have you gotten any such mortal news from Dag’s company?”
“No.” His gaze sharpened. “Why do you ask?”
This was where it got scary. Fairbolt was the camp council, in a way. But I think he’s patrol first. “Before he left, Dag did some groundwork on my cord, or on me, so’s I could feel if he was alive. Same as any other married Lakewalker, just a little different route, I guess.” Almost as briefly as she had for Dar, she described waking up hurting last night, and her moonlit talk with Sarri and Cattagus. “So just now I took my cord to Dar, because he’s the strongest maker I know of. And he allowed as how I was right, my cord spoke true, Dag was hurt somehow last night.” She hardly needed to add, she thought, that for Dar to grant his brother’s farmer bride to be right about anything, it had to be pretty inarguable.
All the intent, controlled alarm she’d missed from Dar shone now in Fairbolt’s eyes. His hand shot out; he jerked it to a stop. “Excuse me. May I touch?”
Fawn mustered her nerve and held out her left arm. “Yes.”
Fairbolt’s warm fingers slid up and down her skin and traced her cord. His face tensed in doubt and dismay. “Well, something’s there, yes, but…” Abruptly, he rose, strode to the doorway, and stuck his head through. His voice had an edge Fawn had not heard before. “Vion. Run over to the medicine tent, see if Hoharie’s there. If she’s not doing groundwork, ask her step down here. There’s something I need her to see. Right now.”
The scrape of a chair, some mumble of assent; the outer door banged before Fairbolt turned back. He said to Fawn, somewhat apologetically, “There’s reasons I went for patroller and not maker. Hoharie will be able to tell a lot more than I can. Maybe even more than Dar could.”
Fawn nodded.
Fairbolt drummed his fingers on his chair back. “Sarri and Cattagus said their spouses were all right, yes?”
“Yes. Well, Sarri wasn’t quite sure about Utau, I thought. But all alive.”
Fairbolt walked over to the larger table and stared down; Fawn followed. A map of north Raintree was laid out atop an untidy stack of other charts. Fairbolt’s finger traced a loop across it. “Dag planned to circle Bonemarsh and drop down on it from the north. My guess was that the earliest they could arrive there was today. I don’t know how much that storm might have slowed them. Really, they could be anywhere within fifty miles of Bonemarsh right now.”
Fawn let her left hand follow his tracing. The directional urge of her cord, alas, did not seem to respond to marks on maps, only to the live Dag. But she stared down with sudden new interest.
Maps. Maps could keep you from getting lost even in places you’d never been before. This one was thick with a veining of roads, trails, rivers, and streams, and cluttered with jotted remarks about landmarks, fords, and more rarely, bridges. Dar might be right that if she just jumped on her horse and rode west, she would likely plunge into disaster. But if she jumped on her horse with an aid like this…she would still be running headlong into a war zone. A mere pair of bandits had been enough to overcome her, before. I would be more wary, now. The map was something to think hard about, though.
“What could have happened to Dag, do you think?” she asked Fairbolt. “Dag alone, and no one else?”
He shrugged. “If you want to start with most likely chances, maybe that fool horse of his finally managed to bash him into a tree. The possibilities for freak accidents after that are endless. But they can’t have closed in for the malice kill yet.”
“Why not?”
His voice went strangely soft. “Because there would be more dead. Dag and I figured, based on Wolf Ridge, to lose up to half the company in this. That’s how I expect to know, when…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “Obio Grayheron will take command. He’s good, even if he doesn’t have that edge that…ah, gods, I hate this helpless waiting.”
“You, too?” said Fawn, her eyes widening.
He nodded simply.
A knock sounded on the doorjamb, and a quiet voice. “Problems, Fairbolt?”
Fairbolt looked up in relief. “Hoharie! Thank you for stopping over. Come on in.”
The medicine maker entered, giving Fairbolt a vague wave and Fawn a curious look. Fawn had been introduced to her by Dag and shown the medicine tent, which to Fawn’s mind nearly qualified as a building, but they had barely spoken then. Hoharie was an indeterminate age to Fawn’s eyes, not as tall as most Lakewalker women. Her summer shift did not flatter a figure like a board, but the protuberant eyes in her bony face were shrewd and not unkind. Like Dag’s eyes, they shifted colors in the light, from silver-gilt in the sun to, now, a fine gray.
Fairbolt hastened to set her a chair by the map table, and moved boxes of pegs to free two more. Fawn directed an uncertain knee-dip at her and sat where Fairbolt pointed, just around the table’s corner.
“Tell your tale, Fawn,” said Fairbolt, settling on her other side.
Fawn gulped. “Sir. Ma’am.” Fighting an urge to gabble, Fawn repeated her story, her right hand kneading her left as she spoke. She finished, “Dar accused Dag of making malice magic, but I swear it isn’t so! It wasn’t Dag’s fault—I asked him to fix my cord. Dar puts it in the worst possible light on purpose, and it makes me so mad I could spit.”
Hoharie had listened to the spate with her head cocked, not interrupting. She said mildly, “Well, let’s have a look then, Fawn.”
At her encouraging nod, Fawn laid her left arm out on the table for Hoharie’s inspection. The medicine maker’s lips twisted thoughtfully as she gazed down at it. Her fingers were thin and dry and hardly seemed to press the skin, but Fawn’s arm twinged deep inside as they drifted along. Fairbolt watched closely, occasionally remembering to breathe. Hoharie sat back at last with a hard-to-read expression.
“Well. That’s a right powerful piece of groundwork for a patroller. You been hoarding talent over here, Fairbolt?”
Fairbolt scratched his head. “If it’s so, Dag’s been hoarding himself.”
“Did he mention that thing about the glass bowl and the ghost hand to you?”
Fairbolt’s eyebrows shot up. “No…?”
“Huh.”
“Is it”—Fawn swallowed—“what Dar said? Bad magic?”
Hoharie shook her head, not so m
uch in negation as caution. “Now, mind you, I’ve never seen a malice’s mind-slave up close. I’ve just heard about them. Though I have dissected mud-men, and there’s a tale. This almost reminds me more of matching grounds for healing, truth to tell. Which is like a dance between two grounds that push on each other. As contrasted with a shaped or unshaped ground reinforcement, where the medicine maker actually gives ground away. Could be when a malice matches ground, it’s just so powerful it compels rather than dances, pushing the other right over. Though there is a disparity in this as well…I wouldn’t be able to tell how much unless I had Dag right here.”
Fawn sighed wistfully at the notion of having Dag right here, safe.
Fairbolt said in a somewhat choked voice, “Isn’t a hundred miles away a bit far for matching grounds, Hoharie? It’s usually done skin to skin, in my experience.”
“That’s where the almost comes in. This has both, mixed. Dag’s put a bit of worked—rather delicately worked—ground reinforcement into Fawn’s left arm and hand, which is what she feels dancing with his ground in the cord. It’s all very, um…impulsive.”
Perhaps taking in the confusion in Fawn’s face, Hoharie went on: “It’s like this, child. What you farmers call magic, Lakewalker or malice, it’s all just groundwork of some kind. A maker draws the ground he works with out of himself, and has to recover by growing it back at the speed of life, no more. A malice steals ground from the world around it, insatiably, and puts nothing back. Think of a rivulet and a river in flood. The one’ll give you a nice drink on a hot day. The other will wash away your house and drown you. They’re both water. But no one sane has any trouble telling one from the other. See?”
Fawn nodded, if a bit uncertainly, to show willing.
“So is my company captain hurt or not?” said Fairbolt, shifting in impatience. “What’s going on over there in Raintree, Hoharie?”
Hoharie shook her head again. “You’re asking me to tell you what something looks like from a glimpse in a piece of broken mirror held around a corner. In the dark. Am I looking at all of it, or just a fragment? Does it correspond to anything?” She turned to Fawn. “What hurts, exactly?”