The Legacy of Gird (111 page)

The horse standing across the hole that had once been a spring did not look like Gird's horse. It seemed made of air and cloud, storm and smoke, all the colors of the sky, and all the power of thunder. Its dark muzzle snuffed at the dry hole; its eyes accused. Aris found himself talking to it as if it were mortal.

"The iynisin cursed it; we tried to cleanse and heal . . . but I don't know how."

A sound between snort and grunt: a challenge. The delicate nostrils widened, sniffed at him, and over his shoulder to Seri. Then, with deliberation, one forefoot went into the hole. Aris could not see how deep; he could not look away from those eyes. He saw the quick withdrawal of the hoof, a flurry of mane and tail, then nothing as a final clap of thunder shook him to his face.

No rain followed: the sky arched unclouded overhead, with the sun halfway down the afternoon sky. In the arch of the hoofprint, as they watched, the damp earth darkened, sifted downward, and a line of silver appeared: the sky reflected in living water. Slowly, steadily, it widened to a circle, and the circle lifted to fill the hole. Aris felt something in himself that echoed that movement, something filling a hole he had not known was empty.

"Aris, look!" Seri tugged at his shoulder. He turned. Where there had been blasted, sterile soil, covered with ashes and the burnt remnants of trees, a few green leaves showed. It could not be; it was too soon. But there they were, looking exactly like young sprouts anywhere. Aris touched one lightly; he felt only the surging growth of a healthy young seedling just emerging from its sleep.

Seri reached back to touch the water in the spring; he wanted to stop her but was too late. She put her wet finger to her forehead, then the nearest seedling. "Alyanya's grace," she said. Aris echoed her. Whatever else had happened, Alyanya had chosen to restore her spring. The spring gurgled suddenly, almost a chuckle of amusement and content; its water overflowed the central hole and swept down the little channel, sweeping away ash and sticks. Aris wondered if they dared drink from it, or if that would be sacrilege; Seri had no such doubts, and with another brief prayer sank the kettle in the deepest part of the spring. "She doesn't want us dying of thirst and making another mess," Seri said. "Drink your fill."

The water tasted of water, clean and pure as any springwater. Aris drank, and let it wash away the night's fear, the day's frustrations. When they had had enough, they went back to the gear they had left above the hollow. Not all had been destroyed in the fight, or in the fire; they had food enough for a day or so, and a change of clothes. Aris went to fetch another kettle of water, and found that the spring had swept the old channel clear as far as the deeper pool where they'd watered their horses the day before. He called Seri; they took turns bathing, with the other keeping watch above the hollow, and changed into clean clothes. Seri had washed her hair; it lay slicked to her head, braided tightly. Aris looked at the blood-stained rents in the clothes he'd been wearing. It was hard to believe that blood was his, that he had been wounded there, and there, and there, and yet was walking around in the sun with no wounds upon him.

"We should wash those before we mend them," Seri said, "but I don't know if it's right—"

"She's brought the water back, and its—she might see it as another gift, our blood."

"It's smelly dirt, is what it is," Seri said. Aris looked at her, surprised. He had said something like that, long ago, when she'd tried to explain her peoples' rituals in building or reaping. Now she wrinkled her nose at him. "All right. I know better. But washing dirty clothes is not the same as ritually blooding a foundation."

"It might be, if we thought of it that way," Aris said.

"It's not the same. Else anyone could treat a spring as a common washpot, and claim to have a ritual in mind." She shook her head, and the first tendrils of her braid came loose. "But—we need to do it, and we'd best get on with it."

In the cold water of the larger pool, the dried blood melted into faint pink streaks and left rusty stains on the cloth. A smell of blood rose more strongly as the water soaked into the stains. Aris scrubbed at the gray shirt, the gray trousers, the blue tunic . . . he had bled more than he'd realized, and felt almost faint thinking of it. He did not look too closely at Seri's washing; he didn't want to know how much she had bled. Finally they had all the blood out that would come out, and wrung the clothes as dry as they could. Aris watched the clean springwater cut through the hazy pink, watched it clear gradually, in ripples and swirls, the last taint of blood from the pool. Alyanya must not be angry with them, if she kept the spring open.

They spread their clothes on the grass, up above the hollow, in the evening sunlight, and considered whether to start walking back to Fin Panir or spend the night near the spring. Aris yawned so, that Seri finally suggested napping awhile.

"You had no sleep last night," Aris said. "I had some—I'll watch first."

"You're half asleep already," Seri said. "You wouldn't be able to stay awake—" And in the end Aris curled up where he sat and fell asleep.

Sunlight woke them both. Aris stretched, blinked, and sat up. Why hadn't Seri wakened him? She was awake now, looking around with a puzzled expression. "I slept," she said. "I wasn't supposed to, but—"

"It's all right. We're here, we're alive." He felt completely rested, alert, better than he had felt in a long time, as if sleeping on the living earth had restored him. He stood, and looked down into the hollow. A thin haze of green covered the black scars of the fire; along the line of the brook, it thickened to a brilliant streak of emerald and jade. It had come back so quickly—how could that be? Was the damage done by the iynisin so superficial? He could not believe that; he had touched that earth, the agonized limbs of tortured trees—those had not been minor wounds. The elves had not thought them minor. So this recovery meant some power had intervened, restoring what it could not heal.

He felt an urge to go back to the spring one last time before they set out for Fin Panir. After they had eaten, he and Seri went down the slope, sniffing the fresh green smell of growing things that replaced the stench of death and burning from the day before. Even the horses' skeletons had crumbled, erasing the memory of their contorted, unnatural transformation and death. The spring rose, pulse after pulse of pure water trembling the surface, shaking the reflections of their faces as they leaned over it. Aris felt at one with it, with the power of Alyanya to bring life and growth, with the water and the growth of plants, with sunlight and the wind that blew through it, with Seri—as always with Seri.

When he looked up, two horses stood across from him, a bright and a dark bay.

Two horses, where no horses had been. Aris shivered. Surely they should have heard horses walking up on them. One of the horses reached across the tiny trickle of water and nosed his hair. The other reached toward Seri. He and Seri looked at each other, he suspected her thoughts were the same as his. But neither spoke. As in a dream, he put out his hand, and the horse—his horse, the dark bay—nuzzled it. He turned away from the spring, and the horse followed. He put his saddle on it, as if he had the right, and the horse stood quietly, switching its long, untangled tail at flies. Seri, when he looked, was saddling the bright bay as if she'd done it for years. And the bridles—he had thought the bridles burned with the dead horses, but discovered the bridle—or
a
bridle—in his pack. It fit the dark bay as if made for it. Still without a word, he and Seri lashed their packs to the saddles, then mounted.

Aris turned the horse's head toward Fin Panir. It did not move. He thought about it. Was it a demon horse, sent by the iynisin? He could not believe that. But it had been sent by
someone
, he was sure. Perhaps he ought to be thinking what that someone wanted. He didn't really want to go back to Fin Panir now, he realized. He had something else to do, though he could not think what.

"I don't want to go back," Seri said. Her eyes sparkled; her cheeks had color again. "Let's go on, and see where these horses take us." She reined hers around, and it pricked its ears to the north, winterwards.

"Good idea." Aris rode up beside her. His horse strode off with a springy stride that made riding a pleasure. He knew he should be stiff and sore, but he wasn't. He felt he could ride forever. Seri's braid swayed to the movement of her horse. For a time they rode in silence. Aris puzzled over all the things that had happened, most of which made no sense to him, but he did not feel ready to talk about them out loud. He felt as if he'd fallen into someone's story, as if powers he could not imagine were working on their own plans, using him as a stone on the playing board.

Seri spoke first. "If we were together like this all the time, it would help if you could fight better, and I could also heal."

Aris laughed. "It would be better if both of us could do everything anyone can do."

"I'm serious." Seri made a face at him. "If you were a better fighter, you wouldn't almost get killed right away—if you had, who'd have healed me? And if I could heal, then I could heal you—or someone else that needed it."

"I don't think good healers make good fighters," Aris said slowly. "I think it's—it's how, when I'm practicing, I can almost
see
the wound that I could cause. And I know what it costs me to heal it."

"Ah. Then that's why fighters—at least Marshals—should be healers as well. If we're to lead yeomen into battle, we should know what will follow. Not just what it looks like, but what it takes to heal it."

Aris shook his head. "But that makes it too easy, like the old stories of the Undoer's Curse: if you can make something right too easily, there's no reason to worry about doing wrong beforehand. Marshal Geddrin told me that, when I'd have healed every cut he got trying to shave himself: if I depend on you, he said. I'll never learn to keep a sharp edge and a steady hand."

Seri leaned forward and stroked her horse's mane where the wind had ruffled it. "But it's not easy for you; I've seen what it takes out of you. That's not the same as the Undoer's Curse. I still think there should be a balance. Those who must fight should also be healers, and those who heal should also be fighters. Otherwise I'm too proud of my fighting, and you're too proud of your healing. Or not you, maybe—"

"But the old healers are, some of the ones I worked with. You're right. Alyanya's the Lady of Peace, they say, and those who heal must never take service of iron . . . remember Gird, that time, when he told us about his boyhood? How his parents were angry that he wanted to be a soldier?"

"Yes, but it's Gird who healed the peoples at his death," Seri said, "and he couldn't have done that if he hadn't been a fighter first. Not because he wanted to kill people, but because—" She looked far over the rolling grass, then shook her head. "I'm not sure how to say it. I just know it's true. He had to be a farmer
and
a fighter to do what he did."

"The service of blood," Aris said softly. "Both ways—I hadn't thought of it before, but they're related. To give blood to the fields, to bring the harvest—that's like giving blood to the people—"

"But it doesn't always work."

"Nor does farming. Things go wrong, in peace and in war both. But what Gird did, he showed that it's the giving that matters. You can't hold yourself back." Aris smacked his thigh with his fist as the thoughts boiling in his head finally came clear. "That's it, Seri! That's the link between healing and fighting: the good healer withholds nothing that could help. If I don't go because I'm tired or sick, or if I am unwilling to risk the loss to myself because I don't like the person who needs me, then I'm a bad healer. If the fighter tries to protect himself—herself—then that makes a bad fighter. Even the training, working on the skills—both are long-term crafts, practiced because they may be needed, not today, but someday."

"Yes," Seri said. "And the other link is that the fighter who heals will never forget the cost of it—and the healer who fights will never condemn others for fighting at need."

They looked at each other as if seeing anew. "I still don't know what this is all about," Aris said finally, "but somehow I don't think Arranha will be able to help us with it. It's too much of Gird for that."

They rode the rest of that day without meeting anyone. Aris had no idea, now, where they were in relation to Fin Panir, and he did not feel it mattered. He was going this way because he was supposed to go this way, and his horse agreed.

The next day, they saw sheep spread across a slope far ahead of them, and angled that way without talking about it. By afternoon, they were close enough to see the hollow below, with a tight cluster of stone buildings; they could hear dogs barking as the sheep moved down slowly toward the hollow.

"They must think we're brigands," Seri said, frowning. "They wouldn't be penning them that early, else."

"We'd better change their minds," Aris said, "or we'll be spending another night on the hard ground." He turned his horse downslope. Seri followed. From their height, they could see the scurrying figures, the dogs working the sheep far too fast . . . and one broke away at a gate, bounding up the hill toward the riders, followed by a dark streak of sheepdog. A shrill whistle from below brought the dog to a halt, growling, then it raced back down the hill. The sheep, moving with the single-minded intensity of the truly stupid, made for the gap between Aris's horse and Seri's. Seri flung herself off her horse and made a grab for it.

"Idiot!" Aris said. Grabbing a determined sheep is harder than it looks, and jumping on one from above is chancy at best. Seri had a double-handful of wool and a faceful of stony hillside as the sheep, bleating loudly, did its best to jerk free. Aris swung off his horse and grabbed for a hind leg, then the other. With the sheep in a wheelbarrow hold, Seri could get a foreleg and then they could flatten the sheep out and decide how to get her back down to the fold.