priests claim we owe retribution,’ his sister said, muffled. She swiped at wet eyes, then knotted her damp palms in her skirt. ‘Grace fled, they say, since corruption divided the faithful.’
Tarens slammed the axe into the top of a fence-post with the raw force to split oak. ‘I won’t swallow the doom in the priest’s windy scriptures! Or their guilt, which wrings piteous offerings out of the masses.’ He rejected the afflicted belief, that the blight of disease was justified punishment for the Great Schism caused when heaven’s sent avatar turned apostate and denounced the blessed Light’s doctrine. ‘Cattle sicken,’ he added, ‘in years when they’re stressed, or when a fulsome herd overgrazes their pasture.’
Other rumours sprung from barbarian sources claimed the ailments stemmed from the waning surge of the flux lines. The land’s health, they held, was starved thin near the towns, where the flow of the mysteries no longer flourished. But no initiate talent from that ancient heritage dared to step forward or challenge the fires of rampant theology. Not with the practice of herb witchery and magecraft crushed under an interdict with a death sentence.
‘Just go,’ Kerelie urged, breaking off the debate. ‘Tell the apothecary we also need a flask of syrup to ease a raw throat.’
Tarens cupped her harrowed cheek in rough hands. ‘Calm yourself. Our straits will come right. I’ll have the remedies for Efflin’s sniffle back here before sundown. Just don’t wear yourself to exhaustion, shut in with his carping complaints.’
‘He’s too sick to grouse,’ Kerelie snapped, stressed enough to shake off his comfort. ‘Take the coppers I’ve saved in the crock. We’ll let Efflin haggle over the tax we can’t pay after he’s back on his feet.’
Since the oxcart was too unwieldy and slow, Tarens ran the errand to Kelsing on foot. He left their scant hoard of pennies untouched, and instead tucked the coins from the vagabond into his jacket. He covered the leagues by road at a jog, spurred on by brisk anxiety. Yet despite his diligent care to make speed, ill fortune delayed his timely return.
The muddy road froze iron-hard after dark, and a mis-step twisted his left ankle. He limped into the yard weary and empty-handed under the icy glow of the late-risen moon.
He expected a chill house, kept dark to spare fuel, as his numbed fingers fumbled the latch. Not the blast of close heat that burnished his face when he opened the door. The fire built up to nurse a fevered invalid clamped fear like a fist in his gut. Efflin’s condition had worsened, proven out by the sick pallet made up in front of the hob. His brother lay limp as wax under blankets, with Kerelie’s stout form stamped in bleak silhouette as she spun from his side in frustration.
‘Tarens! What’s kept you? The kettle is filled. Get that dose of cailcallow leaf heating. The cough syrup’s no use. Efflin’s weakened. His breathing’s too laboured to swallow.’
Tarens faltered, rocked short, his desolate news fit to shatter her. ‘I have no remedies.’ Ahead of Kerelie’s searing reproach, that he must have indulged himself drinking, he blazed, ‘The Mayor of Kelsing’s formally listed our family name on the debt rolls.’ Which twist of fate meant no merchant in town had the right to accept honest coin from them before the treasury received its lawful due. ‘I tried to bargain!’ Dropped to his knees, Tarens closed his strong arms around his disconsolate sister. ‘Folk believe our luck’s left us. My plea was not heard. The apothecary slammed his shop-door in my face. When I argued, he claimed that his cailcallow stores were too low to waste on a grown man with a sniffle. The new leaves won’t sprout in the wild until spring. There’d be babes with the croup far more needy. Could I guess? I’d have battered my way in had I known Efflin’s straits had turned desperate!’
Further lament would not stem the crisis. Kerelie’s tears were not frightened hysteria. The laboured rasp of Efflin’s clogged chest ripped through the thick, humid silence. Four times before, that sound had heralded death for a beloved relative.
‘You’re shivering!’ Kerelie chided at due length. ‘Light above, Tarens! Take care for your health.’ She pushed him away, the surge of her anger turned to drive off futility. ‘Doubtless, you won’t have eaten a thing. Bless your vagabond friend. We have him to thank for the gift that tonight none of us will go hungry.’
That moment, belatedly late, Tarens smelled the aroma of wild leeks and savoury stew. Astonished, he blurted, ‘You let that shiftless rascal inside?’
Kerelie dabbed at her wet lashes, defeated. ‘I had little choice, didn’t I? By afternoon, Efflin was unconscious and shivering. Someone needed to help me shift the mattress and move him in here by the fire. Your crazy fellow spent the rest of the day by the well, washing himself and his clothes. He’s too thin.’
‘He was naked? In this chill?’ Despite harrowed upset, Tarens snorted and grinned. ‘How long did you stare?’
Kerelie slapped him. ‘And I should have fed all the livestock blindfolded, while the imp stitched the holes in his breeks with the harness awl?’ She added, ‘I looked the other way, best I could. He’s shameless as a creature born wild. But not uncivilized. He also scoured the scale off my pot. By the time I finished up in the barn, he had diced up his game and hung the filled cauldron on the pot-hook to simmer.’
Tarens inhaled in appreciation. ‘Rosemary and sage? And fresh leeks? You hate cooking! Aunt Saff always claimed you couldn’t tell a sweetening herb from a grated red pepper!’
‘Your scampish guest must have scavenged the lot,’ Kerelie retorted, offended. ‘Who knows from where? He was busy foraging. Somehow, he found plants that the frosts hadn’t touched. Just hope his filched cache was honestly abandoned.’
‘Resourceful of him,’ Tarens declared. While his sister treated his brother’s clogged chest with goose grease and a hot compress, he unfolded stiff legs and arose to help himself from the bubbling cauldron. No one would profit if he should fall sick. Neither could a weary man get himself warm on a rumbling belly. Somehow, some way, he would find the means to reward the stranger’s persistent kindness, though at the moment the odd little man was not present to receive his thanks.
Through a savoury mouthful, Tarens accused, ‘You didn’t send the poor vagabond packing? Or make him sleep out in the hayloft?’
‘I didn’t,’ cracked Kerelie, stung to reproach. ‘He left on his own. I brought him a blanket to bed down in the pantry, but if he understood, I’ve not seen him. He slipped off again and made himself scarce since the sun set.’
Tarens considered the fellow’s rag clothing, and shivered. The night was bitterly clear, the freeze lent a harsh bite by the wind since the rain-storm. Unkind weather for a thinly clad wretch, turned out of doors without shelter. But a search at this pass was not practical with a sprained ankle, and the chill that still gripped him bone deep from his errand. Kerelie looked thrashed. Her sore need for relief could not wait. Tarens begged her to rest straightaway, then rose from the trestle, tossed his dish in the wash-tub, and shouldered his turn with the invalid.
Nothing prepared him. Even Kerelie’s urgent distress failed to brace his nerves against the sick-room fetor of purged broth and excrement. Too well he recognized the sunken cheeks, waxy sweat, and flushed skin of the dying, tucked limp in damp sheets. This was the face of the fever that killed, with the terrible, clogged rasp of breath the sole assurance that life had not fled untimely.
Tarens’s fortitude failed him. Crouched by the mattress, he gathered his brother’s slack, clammy hand into trembling fingers. ‘Efflin, Light save us, don’t bring us to this!’ If his brother did not know he was loved beyond measure, he must recognize he was needed!
