The King's Deryni (28 page)

Alaric groaned and went white as Kevin's fumbling ministrations jarred his injury. He was starting to catch his breath, but he had to concentrate hard to bite back tears. With a great act of will, he summoned enough focus to reach across with his good hand to touch his injury, but he winced at the new pain it caused.

“I've gone and done it this time, haven't I?” he whispered. “We're really in trouble now.”

“I'd better ride for help,” Kevin said uncertainly. “It's your sword arm, after all. If it's badly set, you could end up a cripple.”

Alaric screwed his eyes shut and drew in a long, steadying breath, choking back a faint whimper. He knew the older boy was right, though he hadn't had to
say
it. But he opened his eyes again as he sensed Duncan scrambling to his feet beside him, and Kevin drawing back a little, on guard, fumbling for his discarded squire's dagger. Beyond them, Bronwyn had the hand of the old shepherd woman whose sheep they had chased earlier, and was leading her urgently toward them.

That the old woman was coming, in answer to Bronwyn's urgent pleas, underlined Alaric's impression that their earlier contrition, demonstrated by rounding up the scattered sheep, had been accepted, if somewhat grudgingly. And no doubt, Bronwyn's subsequent peace offering of bread and cheese had further sweetened the woman's disposition. In fact, now that no cloud of affront lay between her and her unwitting interlopers, he supposed that the woman probably was not as ancient as he had first accounted her—though it was difficult to be certain. However many years she owned, those years had not been kind to her. Still, he sensed a basic decency beneath her rags and matted hair, a trace of gentleness behind the gap-toothed grimace she offered as Bronwyn drew her nearer.

“Oh, please hurry, grand dame!” Bronwyn repeated, tugging still. “You must help him! He's my brother.”

“Is he, indeed?” the old woman muttered, dropping a satchel at Alaric's right side and then easing to her knees beside it. “Well, let's have a look.”

She ignored Kevin's watchfulness, and the dagger now in his hand but held close along his thigh, and began a brisk examination of Alaric's injury, probing above and below the angle of the break.

“Can you feel this?” she asked.

Alaric winced and nodded, but he did not cry out, though he did go dead white several times in the course of the examination.

“It seems to be a clean break,” she confirmed, as she looked up at him, “but both bones are snapped clean through. It won't be easy to set, or pleasant.” She turned her gimlet gaze on Kevin. “I can tend it, but you'd best get back to your father's and bring men with a litter. Once it's set, it mustn't be jostled before it's had time to knit a little.”

Kevin's blue eyes flashed in slight rebellion. “It's his sword arm, grand dame,” he said pointedly. “Are you sure you can set it properly? Shouldn't I fetch one of my father's battle-surgeons?”

She gave him a contemptuous toss of her matted head. “Not if you want it to heal straight. Most battle-surgeons would just as soon cut it off. It's a bad break. A careless manipulation, and bone could pierce the skin—and then he
would
have to lose the arm. I know what I'm doing. Now, go!”

With a somewhat cowed nod, Kevin touched Alaric's shoulder in reassurance, then sheathed his dagger and got to his feet.

“I'll be back as quickly as I can,” he murmured—and headed off briskly to where the ponies were waiting, Bronwyn staring after him. As he mounted up and kicked the pony into a gallop toward home, the old woman turned her attention to Bronwyn and Duncan.

“I shall need some wood for splints,” she informed them. “See what you can find—the straighter and flatter, the better, but we'll make do with what's available. Go. I'll stay with him.”

They scrambled off to do her bidding, and the woman settled cross-legged beside her patient and continued to poke and prod at the arm for a few seconds, eliciting several just-contained hisses from her patient. She then turned her attention to the satchel beside her, muttering under her breath as she rummaged into its contents. Glad for the relative respite, and well aware of the pain that was to come, Alaric kept his good hand lightly clasped to the injury and closed his eyes, concentrating on trying to put the pain from his mind.

He wasn't very good at it yet. It was something that trained Deryni could do, for themselves and for others—and he
had
managed to block Llion's pain. But the pain of a horse bite and that of a broken arm were of two entirely different magnitudes. And it was also entirely different when the pain to be blocked was one's own.

Furthermore, if he did succeed in blocking his own pain, would that reveal his true nature to his strange benefactor? He had intimated to the king that the hill folk of the borders were more accepting of fey powers such as the Deryni possessed, but was that really true? He had gained that impression over the years, but this old woman might be as bigoted as the Bishop of Nyford. It was one thing to make a sweeping statement affirming the benign nature of hypothetical strangers, and quite another to gamble one's life on such a belief.

And then there was the matter of a future reckoning, when he got back to Culdi. With his father and Duke Jared still away with the king in Meara, and even Llion temporarily at Morganhall, he would be obliged to confess to Lady Vera, how he had come to fall out of a tree in a field where he was not meant to be.

He grimaced at that thought, for while his mother's sister was a kind and gentle woman, who loved Alaric and his sister as she loved her own son and her stepson, she, too, had very strict rules about how young Deryni should comport themselves in a world that was hostile to their kind. The penalty for their disobedience was not likely to be physical, but her disappointment was apt to sting far worse than any birch switch or belt leather.

Anticipation made Alaric grimace again, and he looked up to see the old woman stirring something with a twig in one of the cups the children had tossed aside after their noon repast.

“What is that?” he asked, as she reached down with her free hand to raise his head from behind his neck.

“Something for the pain,” she replied, though her gaze shifted from his as she said it. “Drink. You will feel nothing, after this.”

Predisposed to accept the instructions of adults, the boy laid his good hand on hers, where it held the cup, and started to set his lips to the rim. But then some inkling of her true intent crossed the link of their physical contact and he froze, his eyes darting to hers in sudden, shocked comprehension.

“It's poison!” he gasped, pushing the cup aside. “You want to kill me!”

As he drew back in alarm, his head slipping from her grasp to hit the grass with a thump, he sent out a tendril of thought as he had done for the squirrel, and felt her hostility. He tried to roll away from her, cradling his injured arm as he attempted to sit up, but her touch on his shoulder seemed to drain strength from him. As he subsided, helpless, he could feel her fingers twining in his hair, lifting his head upturned, her other hand again bringing the cup toward him: the cup that he now knew held his death, if he drank it.

“But, why?” he managed to whisper, tears runneling tracks down the dirt on his face. “I never harmed you. I never wished you ill. It can't be for the
sheep
!”

She only shook her head, tight-lipped, shifting her hand to pinch at the hinges of his jaw and force his mouth to open.

“Please, no,” he whimpered, as the cup came nearer.

But in that instant, reason or reality or divine providence suddenly prevailed. Sunlight filtering through the tree's leafy canopy flashed bright gold on the plain band his assailant wore on her right hand, and the maniacal gleam in her rheumy eyes abruptly went out. With a muted little cry, she flung the cup aside and released him, burying her face in her hands as her shoulders shook with sobs.

“I'm sorry, Darrell,” she whispered, pressing the ring against her lips. “I am
so
sorry! Oh, forgive me, my love, my life. . . .”

Astonished, Alaric shifted onto his back and watched her cry herself out, sensing that the moment of immediate danger had passed, grimacing against the pain as he tried to cushion his broken arm with his good hand. When she finally dried her eyes on an edge of her tattered skirt, he caught her gaze with his. Once upon a time, he realized, she had been a fine-looking woman.

“You know what I am, don't you?” he asked softly.

She gave a curt nod, but shifted her gaze from his.

“This . . . Darrell—was he killed by a Deryni?”

She shook her head, stifling another sob. “No,” she whispered. “
He
was Deryni, and died to save another of his kind.”

Alaric gave a wary nod. “I think I understand.” He drew a deep breath. “Listen, you don't have to help me if you don't want to. Kevin will bring the battle-surgeon, even though you said not to. I'll be all right.”

“Without a sword arm, young Deryni?” She drew herself up with returning dignity. “Nay, I cannot let you chance that. My Darrell would never approve. How can you carry on his work without a proper sword arm?”

As he raised one fair brow in question, she tucked a small leather pouch back into her satchel and began pulling out rolls of surprisingly clean bandages.

“I shan't offer you another painkiller,” she said with a sour smile. “I will not ask you to trust me in that, after what has already passed between us. I
will
set the arm, though. And I give you my word that it will heal straight and true, if you follow my instructions.”

“Your word . . . yes,” he replied. “And I sense that your word is a precious bond, as was
his
.” He turned his head as Duncan and Bronwyn returned with an assortment of more or less straight pieces of wood.

“Ah, good. Let me see what you've found,” she said briskly, as the two children laid the wood to her other side. “Yes, this one will do, and this, and this. You, boy—do you have a knife, like your brother?” she asked Duncan, holding out her hand as he produced a short eating-dagger. “It has an edge, does it?” she went on, testing its blade with approval. “Take those four bits of wood and whittle them smooth along one side. Carve off all the knots and twiggy bits, and make them the length of your friend's arm from elbow to fingertips.”

Alaric found himself drifting a little while the splints were prepared, but he roused when the old woman bade Bronwyn cradle his head in her lap.

“Girl, you try to ease him now,” she said gruffly, probing above the break and sliding one hand down to his wrist. “A pretty girl can take a man's mind from the pain. My Darrell taught me that.”

He had stiffened at her first words, anticipating the pain to come, but he only turned his face to his sister's and closed his eyes, making himself draw a deep breath, bidding his tension drain away as he let it out. After another breath, he thought he felt a tentative touch from an alien mind, just at the edge of awareness, but he managed not to shrink from it, sensing no threat in the touch.

Then she gave his wrist a slight squeeze of warning and began pulling the arm straight, at the same time rotating it slightly and guiding with her other hand as she eased the ends of bone into place. He could not suppress the hiss of indrawn breath between clenched teeth, and his back arched off the ground with the pain; but he did not cry out, and the injured arm did not tense or move except as she manipulated it.

He lasted until Duncan had helped hold the splints in place while she bound his arm to them, immobilizing the arm from bicep to fingertips, but he finally passed out as she tied off the last bandages and eased the bound arm gently to his side.

The next thing he knew, he became aware of voices talking about him, as if he were not there, and gentle fingers probing lightly at the dull ache beneath his bandages.

“Nay, boys will be boys, sir,” he heard the old woman saying. “The young lord fell out of the tree. I but lent my poor skills to right his hurt. He will mend well enough.”

Alaric opened his eyes to see Macon, Duke Jared's retired battle-surgeon, glancing up at the split tree limb above their heads—and beyond him, Jared's seneschal, Lord Deveril. A contrite and silent Kevin watched from beyond Deveril's elbow, looking like he wished he were anywhere but here.

“An expert job, m'lord,” Macon said approvingly, with a glance up at Deveril. “If nothing shifts, he should heal as good as new.” He glanced at the boy's benefactor. “You didn't give him any of your hill remedies, did you, Mother?”

The old woman shook her shaggy head. “No, sir. He is a brave lad, and would have nothing for his pain. A fine soldier in the making, that one. He will fight many a battle in his manhood.”

Lord Deveril looked at her strangely as Macon motioned for men to bring a litter nearer, stepping aside so that they could set it down along Alaric's left side.

“Aye, he likely will, at that,” Deveril replied, almost to himself.

Macon, meanwhile, had produced a tiny, stoppered glass flask from his belt pouch, and gestured for Bronwyn to raise her brother's head as he drew out the stopper.

“Here, lad, drink this down—the whole thing. No need to feel the pain while we jostle you home—though it would be no more than you deserve, after such a damn-fool stunt.”

Alaric needed no further encouragement to do as the battle-surgeon ordered, upending the flask with his good hand and draining it. Very quickly he could feel the potion going to work, allowing him to drift into a not-unpleasant fog of blessed easement from the pain as the men shifted him onto the litter, Macon steadying his injured arm. He felt some jostling as they secured the litter to the pair of horses brought to convey it, but he was fading fast—though still focused enough to beckon the old woman closer as his rescuers prepared to move out. She took his good hand and bent down at his gesture, straining to catch his words.