The Bonemender (3 page)

“Thank-you, I guess I haven’t.” Gods of the air, she felt half-starved. Her quick breakfast, eaten at daybreak before an early ride along the river, seemed years ago. “Have they looked after you properly?”

“More than properly,” he assured her. “I have not eaten so well in many long weeks, nor enjoyed such pleasant company. I had not realized that the King of Verdeau himself was our host. How is Danaïs? Has he awakened at all?”

She saw his concern. “He fares well,” she said quickly, reaching for the tray. Even covered, it smelled wonderful. “The wound is mending cleanly, and he did awaken earlier and speak to me. The medicine I gave him will make him sleepy, though, and the rest can only do him good.” She tucked in, forcing herself not to gobble: venison in a rich gravy with oatmeal biscuit, the first potatoes of the summer crop, new carrots and a goblet of wine, heavily watered. That would be Tristan’s doing, she thought; he knew she steered clear of strong drink when she was working.

“I will sit with him, then,” said Féolan, “so you can have a proper night’s sleep.” She began to protest, but a quick gesture of his hand forestalled her.

“Please,” said Féolan. “Let me help in this small way. If Danaïs takes a turn for the worse and needs your skill, I will know it. Surely a servant can fetch you, if need be?”

“Actually, if you pull the cord hanging in the corner there, it will ring in my room and wake me.”

“Perfect. You can sleep in peace, then.”

Gabrielle nodded in agreement. The room took on a comfortable silence, while Gabrielle ate and Féolan watched his friend. An afterthought nagged at her. “How will you know?”

“How will ... I’m sorry, what?”

“You said you would know if Danaïs needed me.”

“Oh. The same way I know that you are tired out.” He smiled. “I will feel it.”

She stared at him. He shrugged. “We can feel other people’s emotions,” he said. “If Danaïs is in pain or ill or frightened, I will catch an echo of those feelings.”

Blessed Mother, thought Gabrielle, with a thrill of recognition. She had experienced this herself but only in moments of deepest
concentration, in her healing trance. Then the link between her mind and the patient’s body was seamless, intimate, and shadows of his feelings would sometimes gust through her as she worked. But here was a man—no, a whole people—who apparently sensed others’ feelings as casually as she herself might note the approach of rain.

She longed to ask Féolan more about it, but he was right, what she needed now was a bath and bed. She finished her dinner, and after leaving dosage instructions for Danaïs’ medicine, headed for her chamber.

F
ÉOLAN SAT LONG
by his friend’s side, holding one hand between his own two. His expression was distant, as if listening to music far away. He was no healer like Gabrielle, but like most of his people he had some ability to lend strength or encouragement to another in need, especially to one he knew and loved. He did so now, letting his friend know even in sleep that a companion walked beside him still. He sat into the night, until the whole castle was quiet with slumber, until he was sure Danaïs rested easily.

Then he prepared to rest himself. He hesitated, looking at the bed Gabrielle had slept in. Would it be considered improper among these people to use it himself? There were no other linens or blankets to be seen in the room. It seemed pointless, even laughable, to simply move the covers and pillow to a different bed—there were four in the little clinic altogether—and after days of sleeping in the bush he was ill-inclined to slump in a chair all night. In the end, he pulled off his boots and slept on the bed, but under the blanket only, leaving both sheets pulled up. He smiled wryly at this awkward attempt at etiquette—an attempt
that was probably all wrong and that, in any case, no one would even witness unless he overslept.

As he lay in the dark clinic, his mind idled over the day. He had been sure Danaïs would die. Though he hated to think of it, the memory of the boar charging replayed over and over in his mind, along with the nightmare struggle to staunch the wound and get Danaïs on the horse, for what? To ride aimless over the trails in search of a road, hoping against hope it led to a nearby settlement and a bonemender who could against all expectation ... And the trails had, against all hope, led him straight to Gabrielle. A Human healer.

“Be honest,” he corrected himself, summoning to memory the lustrous copper and gold highlights in her dark hair, the warmth of her smile. “A very beautiful Human healer.” He fell asleep thinking of the intriguing young woman who had saved his closest friend.

T
HE
next morning Gabrielle found them both awake and talking quietly together in their own language. This time Danaïs smiled when he saw her.

“Lady Gabrielle,” he said. “Féolan has told me what you did yesterday. You have saved my life, and if I can ever serve you it will be my honor.” Gabrielle thought he delivered this rather formal speech as if he had planned it out ahead of time. Probably he had, she realized. If you have to say something important in a language not your own, you probably do figure it out ahead of time.

She smiled warmly. “You owe me nothing. To be able to do this—it’s all the reward I need. But I thank you for your courtesy.” She checked for fever, took his pulse and finally looked at the wound itself. Féolan, watching, gasped as the bandage came away.

Danaïs tensed. “Is it bad?”

“Nay, Danaïs,” whispered Féolan, looking from the leg to Gabrielle with frank astonishment. “Nay. ‘Tis healing wondrously fast.”

Gabrielle’s long vigil by the bedside had been rewarded. The wound was clean, uninflamed and visibly shallower than yesterday. It was a long, long way from the life-threatening gash Danaïs had arrived with.

“Could you eat some broth, or a little bread, do you think?” asked Gabrielle.

Danaïs grinned. “I think I could eat almost anything!” he replied.

“That’s what I like to hear from a patient. I’ll have breakfast sent down,” said Gabrielle.

“Could you have them send a tray for me too, Gabrielle?” asked Féolan. “You go have breakfast with your family.”

K
ING
J
EROME WAS
lifting a rather large piece of ham to his mouth as Gabrielle entered the room. “So you decided to favor us with your presence at last,” he growled, fork suspended in midair. “Your family not worthy of your company anymore, is it?” Blue eyes glared at her from under wiry brows, and Jerome’s freckled complexion darkened to angry brick red. This performance had fooled many people, but not Gabrielle.

“Good morning, Father,” she replied. “It’s good to see you too.”

Tristan cackled. “Why don’t you give it up, Father? It never works.”

Solange, Gabrielle’s mother, patted her husband’s shoulder. “There, dear. You do look very fierce, you know. Just not to us.”

She turned to her daughter. “How is your patient, Gabrielle?” she asked. “We met the other one, Féolan, last night at dinner. He is quite charming. But he said his friend was terribly hurt.”

“He’s doing fine, I’m glad to say.” Gabrielle helped herself to bread and eggs. “Eating breakfast even as we speak, I hope. Oh, and that young lad, Philippe, who fell off the roof, just a dislocated shoulder, after all. Though it’s my belief he jumped.”

“You saved the leg, then?” asked Jerome. He looked at his daughter with open pride as she nodded. “It’s plain amazing, isn’t it? I don’t know where you come by that gift, girl, but you leave any bonemender I’ve ever met in the dust.”

“It’s not a competition, Father,” Gabrielle said primly, but she was pleased nonetheless and she let it show.

“And they really are Elves,” marveled Solange. Small and dark-haired, with neat, quick gestures, Queen Solange hailed from the north mainland, while Jerome’s sandy coloring, big bones and blunt manner all proclaimed his “Islander” ancestry. “I’ve never met one before, though my parents used to speak of seeing them now and again. I wonder what brought them our way?”

“I intend to find that out today,” announced Tristan.

Gabrielle snorted. “Subtle as ever, Tris.” She adored her brash younger brother, but their personalities could hardly have been more different.

T
HAT DAY THEY
fell into a kind of rhythm that set the pattern for the days that followed. Féolan stayed through the morning, helping his friend pass the long hours of recovery. When Gabrielle arrived with lunch for them all, he was singing, accompanying himself on a slim instrument he called a lythra, and the sweet lilt of it was so lovely that she could not bring herself to interrupt but stood by the door listening until the soup got cold. Tristan showed up at lunch too and, as Danaïs seemed to be doing well, was permitted to stay. “But no interrogations, Tris. The man needs peace.”

By the time they had eaten Danaïs looked tired, and Gabrielle shooed the others away. Tristan was more than happy to commandeer Féolan. He offered to ride out with him and show him the surrounding estates, and Féolan was pleased to join him. Gabrielle,
meantime, got down to business: first more medicine to relieve the relentless torment of the wound. Then she bathed Danaïs, changed his bandages, and while he napped, worked on healing his leg.

Dinner they took in turns, but Féolan would not budge from Danaïs’s side through the long evenings. Gabrielle often joined them for a couple of hours, talking quietly or listening to them sing. Though she knew none of the words, the music seemed to speak directly to her heart.

On the third evening, Danaïs asked after the horses.

“They are well cared for here,” Féolan assured him. “And I check on them daily.”

“You seem very attached to your horses,” Gabrielle remarked. She remembered the day of the accident, when Féolan had seen to the horses even when his friend was near death. She loved her own horse, but not that much.

“How not?” asked Danaïs. “They are loyal, patient friends, who give themselves to our needs. We must be friends in return.”

“You talk as though they were Human,” said Gabrielle, then laughed at her own words. “Or should I say, Elvish?”

Féolan smiled. “It’s true, though. We are careful of our horses in Human settlements because Humans do not see animals as we do and sometimes mistreat them. I have seen gentle beasts beaten with sticks more than once.”

Gabrielle could not deny it, remembered her own hot indignant tears when as a child she had first witnessed such a thing.

“You ride with no reins,” Gabrielle said. “How do you do that?”

Féolan shrugged. “They carry us of their own will, and they understand what we ask of them. If there is trust between horse and rider, there is no need to be pulling this way and that.”

They understand what we ask
. Gabrielle’s mind refused to accept the phrase at face value, but in her heart she knew it was the plain truth. She remembered how Féolan had spoken to his horse at the gatehouse and how the horse had stood like a statue for so long.

“You talk to them,” she whispered. They nodded. Gabrielle thought of her gray mare, Cloud, and felt unaccountably close to tears. She said no more.

By the fourth day Danaïs was sitting up and gingerly moving the leg. As his body grew stronger, his cheerful personality emerged. So did his love of good conversation. His command of Krylaise, the language of Verdeau, improved hour by hour. Even Tristan, with his limited tolerance for sitting in any one place for long, was happy to take shifts in the sick room when its patient was awake.

A
ND
T
RISTAN, TRUE
to his word, wasted no time in unearthing information about their guests’ travels. At the breakfast table one morning, he reported his findings.

“They are scouts for the Elves. Féolan is the head scout, but I gather they are few in number. He says the Elves have become so isolated, living in little hidden pockets in the northern forests, that without the scouts they wouldn’t know what’s going on in the larger world.”

“A scout,” grunted Jerome. “Not much more than a foot soldier, is it? And we seat him at our table like a high nobleman.”

Gabrielle winced. The stock her father placed on rank had bothered her ever since she had become a bonemender. Traveling with her teacher, Marcus, to the outlying villages treating commoners and nobles alike had taught her that nobility, and its opposite, could be found among all people.

“I’m not so sure about that,” Tris replied. He reached for the teapot. “He seems to know the decision-makers and a lot about their overall strategies, at any rate. He’s the person who saw the need for the scouts in the first place and persuaded their leaders, the Council, I think he called it, to establish regular forays.” Tris gulped at the scalding tea, wedged most of a slice of bread into his mouth and swallowed just enough to draw air before adding, “He seemed about to say more at that point but stopped himself. Said something about it not being the time. Very intriguing.”

“You may find out soon enough, Tristan,” said Solange. “Féolan has requested a formal audience with us. He says he has news that could affect the security of the kingdom.”

“I’ve asked the First General and the Head of King’s Council to attend,” said Jerome. “You two should be there as well. You know him best, and we will need to judge the credibility of this ‘news’ of his. Ten bells, in the west study. Let’s hope it’s worth our while.”

T
RISTAN
was right; Féolan knew how to conduct himself at high levels. Ushered into the formal, wood-paneled chamber by a page, Féolan made his greetings with his customary grave courtesy as he was introduced to Jerome’s advisors: First General Fortin, a stocky, plain-spoken man whose incisive mind had proved invaluable many times over Jerome’s reign; and Head Councilor Poutin, who inclined his head over his long nose with ill-disguised boredom. Féolan appeared completely at ease as he took his seat at the heavy oak table across from four of the most powerful men in Verdeau. His report, however, was brisk and to the point.

“Your Grace, I have already told your son that I am a scout for the Elves of Stonewater. That is true, but it is only part of my role, which you might call in your language First Foreign Ambassador. It is a small role these days, as the Elves have little contact with other people, but it does give me authority to discuss matters of state with foreign powers.” Féolan glanced around the table, inviting questions.