The First Book of Lost Swords - Woundhealer's Story (15 page)

      
None of this sounded at all to Zoltan like the sort of thing that any respectable wizard, or any elderly person, ought to shout. But Zoltan, above all, did not want to meet the bad people again.

      
“Yes sir,” he said. And with slumping shoulders he turned and walked on, in the way that he was being guided. It was easy walking that way—it was all downhill. When he looked around with another question, the figure of the wizard was gone again.

* * *

      
Much of the morning had passed. Zoltan’s boots—after he had paused to take them off, drain them thoroughly, and dry them as well as possible—were becoming wearable again. Walking south continued to be easy. He thought, from time to time, about trying to turn east again, but so far he hadn’t quite dared. So he hiked on through an open but inhospitable landscape, going he didn’t know where, and he was getting very hungry. The provisions he had stuffed in his pockets on leaving home had long ago been reduced to watery garbage.

      
The pins and needles and the stiffness had worked out of his arms and legs by now. But now all of Zoltan’s limbs, his whole body, were beginning to grow weak with hunger.

      
He looked about him hopefully for fruit on the strange low bushes, or for any of the kinds of plants whose roots he knew were edible in a pinch. He had not yet reached the starving stage, where he would be willing to go grubbing after insects, but he wasn’t sure that stage was far away. Nothing more appetizing than insects had appeared. And already his thirst was coming back. The land around him did not promise anything in the way of water.

      
Except—yes. He was coming over a low rise of ground now, and straight ahead of him, perhaps a kilometer away, a short, straight line of fresh trees were just coming into view, like the boundary of an oasis.

      
Maybe this was why the wizard had insisted that he go south. Keeping the trees in view, Zoltan held a steady pace.

      
Presently, having crossed what seemed like several extra kilometers of barren landscape, he began to approach the supposed oasis closely. When Zoltan actually came within a stone’s throw of the line of trees, he found them low and thick, making up a formidable thorny hedgerow a straight half-kilometer or so in length. Their sturdy freshness certainly indicated a nearby source of water.

      
Zoltan turned at a right angle and walked beside this tall hedge until he came to a small gap, where he cautiously pushed his way through. The barrier was not as thick or difficult as he had expected, and he discovered that he had just crossed the boundary of a surprisingly well-kept farm. The border hedgerow was much more pleasant to look at from inside. From this angle it was a flowering hedge, thick enough to keep livestock from straying, but he could catch glimpses of the desert outside. The barrier did not appear to be at all difficult for a human to push through, once you made up your mind that you really wanted to do it.

      
Within the outer boundary of trees, the land was divided into fields and plots by shorter, thinner hedges. The entire farm, Zoltan saw, peering around him, extended over at least a square kilometer; it included pastures, orchards, cultivated fields planted in several kinds of crops, and, in the distance, a cluster of farm buildings. There were enough trees near the buildings to partially obscure them.

      
Zoltan started walking in the general direction of the buildings, along a path that wound gently between the bordered fields. Meat-cattle grazed contentedly in a lush pasture. Then the lane that Zoltan was following broadened, leading him between more short hedges toward the small house and the farmyard. Even more surprising than the cattle and the pasture were the bountiful crops in the well-cultivated fields. Here and there he could see small irrigation ditches, which explained some of the difference between the land of the farm and that outside its boundaries.

* * *

      
At a little distance he beheld a single human figure moving, hoe in hand, working its way methodically down a double row of some kind of vegetables, just where a plot of garden bordered on an orchard.

      
Zoltan hesitated briefly, then turned aside from the cow path and entered the field where the lonely worker labored. Treading carefully between the rows of vegetables—noticing in passing how healthy they all looked—he approached the man cautiously and saw nothing in him to be alarmed about. He was a bent figure, somewhat gnarled, with calloused hands and a sun burnt neck. Whether he was landowner, serf, or hired hand was not obvious at first sight; the man was dressed in rough clothing, but Zoltan had plenty of experience with powerful people who were disinclined to wear finery.

      
The man, intent on his labor, did not notice Zoltan’s approach. His back to Zoltan, he kept at his hoeing, the implement in his rugged hands attacking weeds, churning the rich black soil with a regular chuffing sound.

      
Remembering his manners, Zoltan kicked a clod of earth when he was still a few meters from the man, making a slight noise. Then he cleared his throat and waited.

      
The man looked round at him with only minor surprise. “Well! What be you doing here, then?” he asked mildly enough. His words came in what was certainly a country dialect, though Zoltan could not place its locality.

      
“Trying to get home, sir.” The sir was something of an afterthought; but the man’s tone had certainly not sounded like that of a serf or slave.

      
“Home,” said the man, leaning on his hoe. “Ah, home!” he cried, as if now he suddenly understood everything. Then with an air of profundity, he said “Ah!” again and turned away and shot up a long arm. Pulling down a waterskin, obviously his own supply, from where it hung on the stub of a tree limb in the shade, he offered it to Zoltan with a quick gesture. “You’ve come a far way, then. What’s your name?”

      
“My name is Zoltan. Thank you,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand after the most delicious and invigorating drink he’d ever had in his life. For a moment he’d wondered if it was something more than water.

      
“Zoltan—good old Tasavaltan name.” The man nodded judiciously. “I am called Still, young sir. Just plain Still is quite good enough for me, though it’s Father Still that some folk call me. Appears that old age is starting to creep up. But I keep busy and I hardly notice, most days.” The old man laughed heartily—Zoltan decided that he must really be an old man after all, despite the vigor of his gardening. “But you’ll be wanting food, too—and I’ve already finished off the last of my lunch. Go on to the house, go on to the house, and she’ll take care of you.” He accompanied this advice with violent gestures, as if he thought that Zoltan might after all not be able to understand his words.

      
Zoltan obediently turned and started for the house, then paused uncertainly to look back. He was reassured when the fanner, already hoeing away industriously, waved him on with a motion of his hand and went on working. There was apparently no time to waste.

      
Back on the cow path, Zoltan realized that the house was farther off than it had appeared at first—indeed, the whole place now looked even larger than it had at first glance.

      
As he moved on toward the house Zoltan kept looking for other laborers. He looked to right and left, in one field after another of beautiful crops, but he could see no one. Probably, he thought, most of the hands were still taking their noontime rest under one of these rows of trees. Certainly there had to be a large force of people at work to keep the place in the magnificent condition that it was.

      
Tall, multicolored flowers of a kind that Zoltan had never seen before surrounded the perfectly kept patch of short lawn right at the front door of the house. Bees were busy here; and the perfume of the flowers was as different as could be from that of the pale blooms along the river. The front of the house was flanked by two shade trees, their foliage starting to turn orange and yellow with the onset of fall. The door was wood, solidly built and painted white, and it stood ajar just slightly, in a hospitable way. Somewhere out of sight, toward the rear of the house, dogs were starting to bark to signal Zoltan’s arrival—it sounded more a mindless welcome than a challenge.

      
There was no bell or knocker on the farmhouse door. Zoltan rapped firmly on the white frame, and immediately the white door, perhaps jarred slightly by his knocking, swung open farther as if in welcome. A sunlit parlor was revealed, furnished with enough chairs and tables for a large family, though at the moment it was unoccupied. Then footsteps, soft but brisk, were coming down a hall.

      
The woman who emerged from the interior of the house was silver-haired and generously built, garbed in a flower patterned dress of many bright colors, which was half-hidden by an apron. She looked at Zoltan with an expectant smile, as if she might have been anticipating some messenger who bore good news. Zoltan could not guess whether she was the mistress of this house or only a servant, and for the moment at least it hardly seemed to matter.

      
He said to her: “The man out there in the field—Still, he said his name was—sent me here. I need—”

      
He never did get the chance to spell out what he needed. Perhaps his needs were all too obvious. The woman, talking much faster than Zoltan in his present state could follow, swept him in with great gestures of the straw broom in her hand. He followed her to the kitchen, where in a moment the broom had vanished, to be replaced by a plate of small cakes, and then another of sliced melon. Next thing he knew, he was seated in a sturdy wooden chair at a broad wooden table, with plates in front of him. The kitchen was a huge room—the house, he realized, must be a little larger than it had looked from outside. A small fire crackled in the huge cooking hearth, and the air was full of magical vapors, of a kind that the visitor had sometimes experienced in the kitchen at High Manor. Here—he had never been so hungry—the aromas were of doubly concentrated magic.

      
Mother Still was a large woman, much bulkier than her good man out in the field. But like him she was hard to place in terms of age. Now she was bustling everywhere. For a moment Zoltan thought that she was in two places at once. “Call me Goodwife Still, or Mother Still—it’s all one to me, my laddie. Have some cheese; it goes well with that melon.” Zoltan, his mouth full, discovered that it did indeed. Experienced people had told him that if you were really starved it was a mistake to stuff your belly to its limit as soon as you had the chance. But, by all the gods, this was a special case. Maybe starvation that occurred under enchantment wasn’t the same as the more dreary, ordinary kinds of the affliction, and required special treatment.

      
Meanwhile he observed that his hostess was starting—what else?—to cook dinner. The carcass of some small four-legged animal, pale and plump, was being adroitly skewered on a spit.

      
That Zoltan—he got the impression that it would be the same for anyone else in her presence, or in her house—might have the bad luck to be attacked by hunger appeared to strike the goodwife as a personal affront. The boy, with arrays of dishes growing on the table before him, was bombarded with offers of cold milk to drink—drawn up in a stone crock from some deep well—and a clean fork appeared on the table in front of him, and yet another plate, this one holding a slab of fruit pie that Zoltan, after the first bite, was prepared to swear was the most delicious thing that he had ever tasted.

      
“A little something to keep you going until dinner’s ready.” For all the incomprehensible amount of work that she was somehow getting done, Mother Still never seemed to hurry. Now she had joined Zoltan sitting at the table, a mug of tea in her large, roughened hand; and now finally she allowed the talk to shift away from things that he might like to eat or drink. “Is someone chasing you, child? How do you come to be here in this condition?” She was still indignant that the world had treated him so poorly.

      
Zoltan, who had not realized that his condition was quite so obviously bad, told her the story as best he could, beginning with the strange experience he had shared with the younger children in the cave. Mother Still made appropriate sounds of sympathy as she heard about that and about the magical events that had afflicted Zoltan later on, but he wasn’t sure that she really believed him—given the nature of the story he had to tell, he was prepared to understand anyone’s not doing so.

      
But Mother Still asked questions as if she might believe him. When he mentioned the name of Burslem, she frowned and shook her head. The two of them sat there in the kitchen talking for some time, and they were still sitting there when from outside there came the lowing of cattle, a sound that in Zoltan’s experience usually accompanied the animals’ being driven back to the barn.

      
He got to his feet, loosened his belt a notch, did his best to suppress a belch, and offered to help bring the cattle in.

      
Mother Still smiled at him approvingly. “The old man’ll be glad of help. Just trot out, then.”

      
He went out the back door and pitched in to help. Still, unsurprised, welcomed the assistance and sent Zoltan out to another field where there were more milk cows that needed prodding. All the animals were fat and healthy; by now Zoltan would have been surprised to find otherwise.

      
There was a well just outside the kitchen—a cool, stone-lined shaft complete with windlass and bucket—and when the cattle had been brought into the barn Zoltan hauled up two pails of water and carried them into the kitchen and set them beside the big stone sink. It was the kind of thing he hated doing when at home, but he’d plenty of experience of it for all that. There weren’t always a lot of servants ready to wait on you at High Manor.