The Care and Feeding of Griffins (28 page)

“
No, I
did
know better,” Taryn argued.  “That’s why I was so careful!”

Aisling squawked loudly, bristling.

Ven glanced at the door where the foal still huddled and her tail swished.  “Kapi, take the griffin out and feed him.”

“
He won’t eat for us,” the foal whispered, but he came to take Aisling anyway.  The griffin struggled as he was lifted from Taryn’s arms, his talons ripping tiny holes in Taryn’s shirt as he fought to hold on.  She unhooked him, petting him once to try and calm him, and then gripped her knees and tried to sit still, ignoring his receding screeches as best she could.

Ven shut the door after the foal had gone. 
“Remove your clothing,” she ordered. 

“
Why?”

“
I would examine all of you.”  She moved to her shelves, setting several items out on the table beside Taryn—bandages, bottles, knives—and she didn’t look around to see if Taryn obeyed.

“
Do you know what you’re doing?”

“
I am Ven.” 

“
That’s terrific for you, but do you know what you’re doing with humans?”

Ven wordlessly took hold of Taryn
’s t-shirt and stripped it up and off.  She leaned in, prodding carefully at Taryn’s throat, her underarms, her breasts and her belly, frowning and murmuring to herself from time to time.  “Lie back,” she said at last.

Taryn obeyed, unfastening her jeans so that the horsewoman could remove them easily.  Her shoes and socks went next (her toes were separated and closely inspected) and then her panties.  Taryn instinctively clenched her thighs tight, but Ven firmly opened them again.

‘Relax and think of Ireland,’ Taryn thought dazedly.  She stared at the thatched ceiling, her arms tensely at her sides, as the horsewoman touched her.

“
You are not well,” was the ultimate verdict, and Ven brought her back into a sitting position.

“
I feel fine.”

“
You are sore throughout.”

“
Well, of course I’m a little stiff.  I’ve been working incredibly hard.”

“
Your blood is weak.”

“
No, I told you, I’m just Irish.”

“
Taryn.”  Ven cupped her face in both her hands and leaned in close, filling Taryn’s vision with the sight of her not-quite-human face.  “The poison is well-rooted in you and your heart is weary.  You are very ill.”

“
I don’t feel ill,” she said in a small voice.

“
Aye, you do.  But you are too tired to know it.  You have been working very hard,” she added in a kind voice.  “And by the day that you did realize the greater hurt, it would be too late for healer’s help.  If you went home today, the fever would be upon you tomorrow.  Before you roused from it, your hands will have swelled and split.  You would be dead in another day once that happened.  Two, at most.”

The speed
of infection that Ven suggested proved too much for Taryn’s mind to accept.  No one could really die in two days, not from something like this.  She looked down at her palms again, then made them into fists, rejecting them and everything Ven said they represented.  “But that’s just not poss—”

“
The gods compelled you to come when you did,” Ven said and released her.  “You may argue with them, young human, but not with me.  I am Ven, and my path is clear.”  She went to the fire and set her knives in the coals.

“
What are you going to do?” Taryn asked.  She couldn’t take her eyes off the knives.  The blades blackened and then began slowly to gleam.

“
First, I hurt.”  Ven began to wash Taryn’s hands with the hot, herbed water.  They ached where the horsewoman’s fingers pressed on them.  “Then, I heal.”

The knives came out of the fire and were rinsed in the herbed water.

“Be still as you can,” Ven said, taking Taryn’s right wrist and turning it palm up.

‘
She’s going to stab me in the hand,’ Taryn thought, shocked.  ‘For no damn reason.’

She
’d been prepared to cut off a thumb for Antilles, but this was days later and very different.  She opened her mouth to scream and then snapped it shut with a grimace as the blade went in, sizzling as it touched her.

Blood sprayed out from her swollen palms, but it was like not blood Taryn had ever seen.  It was thin, almost orange-tinted, more like tomato juice than blood, and the pain that had sunk into her hands actually seemed to ease a
little instead of increase.  Ven washed the blood away with a handful of herbed water.  It stung.

“
Patience,” Ven murmured.  She put her thumbs on Taryn’s palm and rubbed, massaging to the point of pain and then pulling the skin suddenly taut.  Taryn felt a peculiar sunken-bursting sensation and then a great bubble of greenish-white fluid seeped from the gash in her palm.

“
Oh
yuck
!” Taryn cried, absolutely aghast.

“
Stillness,” Ven reminded her.  “Still as you can.  We are yet in time, but now there will be pain.”  She took a small pad and soaked it in the herbed water, then pressed it to the wound.

Pain, she
’d said, and pain there was.  It went through her all the way to the pit of her stomach, swift and brilliant as lightning.  Taryn thought she screamed, wrenching bodily back (but holding her hand very still, still as she could) and straining her jaws open, but the sound was all in her mind.  Her voice was locked, frozen like the rest of her body, and she couldn’t force so much as a breath out of her.  Ven washed and rubbed, washed and pushed, washed and squeezed, and Taryn fell out into a sky of white and screamed her screams of silence.

When it was finally done, the pain ebbed down into a hot throbbing oddly reminiscent of horse
’s hooves, and Taryn sagged forward, clutching at her wrist with her (as yet) uninjured hand.  She shook all over, hurt all over.  The strain of keeping herself so rigidly still had been as good as an hour’s hard run.  She thought she might even be sweating, or perhaps only crying.  She couldn’t seem to concentrate enough to tell which for sure.  She had eyes only for her hand, now looking so little and harmless and pink, looking so incapable of producing this awful, blistering ache.

“
You bore that as well as any warrior,” Ven remarked, and took up a clean knife and Taryn’s other wrist.

She knew what was going to happen this time and for some reason, that made it hurt even more.  She grit her teeth against the pain, but it got in anyway, drawing a keening moan from her tight lips as easily as Ven
’s fingers drew pus from her wounds.  She was pouring sweat when it ended, in spite of the chill in the autumn air.

Ven soaked pads in the herbed water and placed them on Taryn
’s palms, searing into her open wounds, and then she washed Taryn’s face and neck with cool water.  The horsewoman’s hands were warm, soothing.  A mother’s hands.  Taryn leaned into them unthinkingly, letting her eyes slide shut.  Her teeth were chattering.  She couldn’t help that.

“
Okay,” she said shakily.  “You talked me into it.  One more night.”

Ven clasped her shoulders and helped her to lie back, arranging her hands so they lay palm up under the awful weight of the wet pads.  Then her hoofbeats retreated and Taryn heard the door open.  Voices conferred and Ven returned to her. 
“I have sent for a bedroll,” she said.  “To make you more comfortable.  And broth and bread.  I imagine you may not desire to eat, but I must insist.  There will be a fever, a bad one, and your strength must be shored.”

Ven
’s hands smoothed across her brow, brushing away stray strands of hair.  “Ease thee,” she said softly.  “The next small while shall be difficult, but all will be well.”

‘
How comforting,’ thought Taryn, gazing at the bloodless gashes in her hands with lingering disbelief.  Then Ven was there, cleaning and wrapping them, and Taryn shut her eyes and tried to relax.

39.  The House of Tears

“
H
ere, my lord.”

Antilles turned himself to the horsewoman
’s quiet direction, entering the sick lodge and stopping in the doorway.  The human lay on a high table padded into a sort of bed.  She was covered with a blanket that she kept trying to kick off.  Her face was shiny, her hair damp.  Sweat overpoured the table like runners of blood.

“
Will she recover?” he asked.  He did not explore what answer he wished to hear.

“
I believe so.” Ven came from the fire with washing rags and brushed at the sleeping human’s face.  The human mewled, trying to escape with all the desperation of a woman attacked by knives, but Ven pursued with gentleness and eventually, she quieted. “The fever is very serious. I knew that I would bring it, but it could not be helped.  The wounds demanded lancing and she is not strong.”

“
Nay?”

“
Give praise to the Burning God, but travelers yet weaken in foreign lands,” Ven said simply.  “And she is underfed.  Badly underfed.”  She bathed the human’s face and Taryn arched her neck and moaned.  “She should return to her world.”

“
She never will.”  Tonka came into the lodge, the griffin in his hands as living punctuation to his words.

Aisling spied his human mother lying pale and strained on the table.  His feathers went forward and he squawked, quietly at first and with increasing urgency as Taryn continued to lie silent.  The griffin struggled briefly in the chieftain
’s grip, then stared around at all of them with an eerily-readable expression of horrified comprehension.  When those eyes came to Antilles, they sparked.  “
Fuck
!” the griffin screamed in Taryn’s own voice, furious and then just as swiftly despairing.  “Ouch!  Ouch!”

Antilles felt the accusation pierce him deep as any knife.  He reached his hand toward the struggling beast and the griffin snapped at him with a high, grieving cry.

“Hush,” Ven said distractedly, and Aisling twisted around to stare at her.  “Rest she needs more than aught else.  You have seen her and we are tending her.  Now be still.”

How much the griffin understood of this was a mystery, but it did go limp.  It stared down at the human, clutching Tonka
’s hands and whispering, “Too-ra loo, ouch, too-ra loo-ra,” as its beak opened and closed.

“
If,” Ven began slowly.  “If we could convince her that the animal would be cared for—”

“
What know you of griffin-rearing?” Antilles asked bluntly.

“
What knows she?” Ven countered.

Tonka turned and carried the griffin out of the sick lodge, handing it away to a foal standing just outside.  He shut the door and leaned his hand against it. 
“That animal is soundly ‘printed,” he said quietly.  “It will not eat from any hand but hers.  We could not rear the thing, not even if we knew how.”

“
She does not know this,” Ven argued.

Tonka sent her a hard look. 
“And I would not deceive her.”

Ven slapped down her wet washing rag, her voice softened even in anger, honed by her stillness into steel. 
“There are a thousand,
thousand
griffins in the world!  There is only
one
good human!  Would you see her so willingly destroyed?”

“
She will never leave Arcadia,” Tonka said again, without emotion.  He returned to the table, his eyes heavy where they lay on the human’s strained face.  “She has come and she means to stay and rear her animal.  She says there are a thousand, thousand humans in her world and only one griffin.”

“
Fa!”  Ven washed the human’s fevered brow, her flanks shuddering with frustration.

“
What would you have me do?” Tonka asked.  “Kill the beast so that she will depart?”

Ven
’s head came up in an instant.  “Aye!” she snarled, and then twisted away and stared at the floor.  “Nay,” she said, and sighed.  “But ‘tis a hard thing, my chieftain.  For all my life, I have hated humans from the comfort of a distance.  Now I have met one, this one.”  Her hand brushed at Taryn’s hair.  “One I should be proud to know if only she were Farasai.  It confuses me and confusion I hate more than humans.”

Tonka grunted low agreement and Antilles shifted, his gaze going by its own will to the human
’s hand, to the thumb she had been willing to strike off for him.

Ven looked up, anguished, her voice scarcely audible with her effort to be quiet. 
“She is a fair thing, can you not see?  She has a courage!  She has a soul!  And she is utterly unprepared to
be
here!  We cannot let her stay in her ridiculous tent with her miserable scratch of crop!  Tis cruel!”

“
It is not,” Tonka said, “our choice.”

“
Arcadia will kill her!” Ven said in her breathy, hushed shout.  “And if we allow it to happen, then
we
are killing her as well!  I will not do it, chieftain!  Not for thee, not for thee—”  Her eyes snapped to Antilles.  “—not even if the Great God Pan rose from his blackened bones to command me!  I am Ven!  I stood an oath at that accepting to do no harm to any innocent and this one is innocent!”

Innocent.  A fair thing.

Antilles let two steps take him to the human’s side, gazing at her bandaged hands as he approached.  He remembered how she had knelt, how still and pale her face had been as she raised his axe.  She would have done it.  She had swung and he had been so stunned to see it that he had nearly let her.  This human.  This helplessly sincere and wholly unprepared human.  This fair thing.

All over a griffin.

“My lord.”  Ven’s appeal was soft and heart-felt, her hand at his arm as plaintive as her voice.  “Will you not remove her?”

“
Nay, healer.  She will not
be
moved.”  Antilles drew a breath, let it out slowly, and turned away.  “Gods, I wish she were not here,” he muttered.  “Invaders I am content to kill or to repel.  This one…”

He rubbed at his face, avoiding all their eyes, avoiding the sight of those limp and bandaged hands.  He made his legs move, taking him to the door and away from her.

“I shall keep you informed of her recovery,” Tonka said, moving to take the place at Taryn’s side that Antilles had just vacated.

“
I shall keep myself informed,” Antilles heard himself say sourly.  “I am not leaving.”

Not until he knew whether she would be well.  And just why he would have it that way, he didn
’t know and did not let himself care, but that was just how it would have to be.

Damn her.