hand towards his son. Arlen drew back, looking away, and Jeph recoiled as if burned.
Arlen knew his father was ashamed. It was just as Ragen had said. Maybe Jeph even hated himself, as Cholie had. Still, Arlen could find no sympathy. His mother had paid the price for Jeph’s cowardice.
They rode the rest of the way in silence.
Coline Trigg’s two-storey house, in Town Square, was one of the largest in the Brook, and filled with beds. In addition to her family upstairs, Coline always had at least one person occupying her sickbeds on the ground floor.
Coline was a short woman with a large nose and no chin. Not yet thirty, six children had made her thick around the middle. Her clothes always smelled of burnt weeds, and her cures usually involved some type of foul-tasting tea. The people of Tibbet’s Brook made fun of that tea, but every one of them drank it gratefully when they took a chill.
The Herb Gatherer took one look at Silvy and had Arlen and his father bring her inside. She asked no questions, which was just as well, as neither Arlen nor Jeph knew what they would say if she did. As she cut at each wound, squeezing out sickly brown pus, the air filled with a rotten stench. She cleaned the drained wounds with water and ground herbs, then sewed them shut. Jeph turned green, and brought his hand to his mouth suddenly.
‘Out of here with that!’ Coline barked, sending Jeph from the room with a pointed finger. As Jeph scurried out of the house, she looked to Arlen.
‘You, too?’ she demanded. Arlen shook his head. Coline stared at him a moment, then nodded in approval. ‘You’re braver than your father,’ she said. ‘Fetch the mortar and pestle. I’m going to teach you to make a balm for burns.’
Never taking her eyes from her work, Coline talked Arlen through the countless jars and pouches in her pharmacy, directing him to each ingredient and explaining how to mix them. She kept to her grisly work as Arlen applied the balm to his mother’s burns.
Finally, when Silvy’s wounds were all tended, she turned to inspect Arlen. He protested at first, but the balm did its work, and only as the coolness spread along his arms did he realize how much his burns had stung.
‘Will she be all right?’ Arlen asked, looking at his mother. She seemed to be breathing normally, but the flesh around her wounds was an ugly colour, and that stench of rot was still thick in the air.
‘I don’t know,’ Coline said. She wasn’t one to honey her words. ‘I’ve never seen anyone with wounds so severe. Usually, if the corelings get that close …’
‘They kill you,’ Jeph said from the doorway. ‘They would have killed Silvy, too, if not for Arlen.’ He stepped into the rooms, keeping his eyes down. ‘My son taught me something last night, Coline,’ Jeph said. ‘He taught me fear is our enemy, more than the corelings ever were.’ Jeph put his hands on his son’s shoulders and looked into his son’s eyes. ‘I won’t fail you again,’ he promised.
Arlen nodded and looked away. He wanted to believe it was so, but his thoughts kept returning to the sight of his father on the porch, frozen with terror.
Jeph went over to Silvy, gripping her clammy hand in his own. She was still sweating, and thrashed in her drugged sleep now and then.
‘Will she die?’ Jeph asked.
The Herb Gatherer blew out a long breath. ‘I’m a fair hand at setting bones,’ she said, ‘and delivering children. I can chase a fever away and ward a chill. I can even cleanse a demon wound, if it’s still fresh.’ She shook her head. ‘But this is demon fever. I’ve given her herbs to dull the pain and help her sleep, but you’ll need a better Gatherer than I to brew a cure.’
‘Who else is there?’ Jeph asked. ‘You’re all the Brook has.’
‘The woman who taught me,’ Coline said, ‘Old Mey Friman. She lives on the outskirts of Sunny Pasture, two days from here. If anyone can cure it, she can, but you’d best hurry. The fever will spread quickly and if you take too long, even old Mey won’t be able to help you.’
‘How do we find her?’ Jeph demanded.
‘You can’t really get lost,’ Coline said. ‘There’s only the one road. Just don’t turn at the fork where it goes through the woods, unless you want to spend weeks on the road to Miln. That Messenger left for the Pasture a few hours ago, but he had some stops in the Brook first. If you hurry, you might catch him. Messengers carry their own wards with them. If you find him, you’ll be able to keep moving right until dusk instead of stopping for succour. The Messenger could cut your trip in twain.’
‘We’ll find him,’ Jeph said, ‘whatever it takes.’ His voice took on a determined edge, and Arlen began to hope.
A strange sense of longing pulled at Arlen as he watched Tibbet’s Brook recede into the distance from the back of the cart. For the first time, he was going to be more than a day’s journey from home. He was going to see another town! A week ago, an adventure like that was his greatest dream. But now all he dreamed was that things could go back to the way they were.
Back when the farm was safe.
Back when his mother was well.
Back when he didn’t know his father was a coward.
Coline had promised to send one of her boys up to the farm to let Norine know they would likely be gone a week or more, and to help tend the animals and check the wards while they were away. The neighbours would throw in, but Norine’s loss was too raw for her to face the nights alone.
The Herb Gatherer had also given them a crude map, carefully rolled and slipped into a protective hide tube. Paper was a rarity in the Brook, and not given away lightly. Arlen was fascinated by the map, and studied it for hours, even though he couldn’t read the few words labelling the places. Neither Arlen nor his father had letters.
The map marked the way to Sunny Pasture, and what lay along the road, but the distances were vague. There were farms marked along the way where they could beg succour, but there was no way to tell how far apart they were.
His mother slept fitfully, sodden with sweat. Sometimes she spoke or cried out, but her words made little sense. Arlen dabbed her with a wet cloth and made her drink the sharp tea as the Herb Gatherer had instructed him, but it seemed to do little good.
Late in the afternoon, they approached the house of Harl Tanner, a farmer who lived on the outskirts of the Brook. Harl’s farm was only a couple of hours past the Cluster by the Woods, but by the time Arlen and his father had gotten underway, it was mid-afternoon.
Arlen remembered seeing Harl and his three daughters at the summer solstice festival each year, though they had been absent since the corelings had taken Harl’s wife, two summers past. Harl had become a recluse, and his daughters with him. Even the tragedy in the Cluster had not brought them out.
Three-quarters of the Tanner fields were blackened and scorched; only those closest to the house were warded and sown. A gaunt milking cow chewed cud in the muddy yard, and ribs showed clearly on the goat tied up by the chicken coop.
The Tanners’ home was a single storey of piled stones, held together with packed mud and clay. The larger stones
