you?” said this face in something like Mirayan. “Where you come from?”
Strange accent, but at least she understood.
“The Archipelago,” said Yani. “I am not Mirayan.”
Wrinkled face said something urgent. Yani couldn’t understand a word. What was this? Wasn’t she in Miraya anymore?
“You healer?” said Thin face.
“Yes,” lied Yani, thinking they might take her out of the manacles. It wasn’t exactly a lie. All Tari could strengthen people by channelling their life force into them.
The men had a heated discussion in the strange language. Yani thought she heard the name Symina several times. Were they Daria’s friends or her enemies? She counted seven of them. Those she could see looked like farmers, an unkempt-looking lot with bad teeth and pinched faces. Archipelagan farmers never looked as miserable as this. Was this what the Mirayans wanted for the Archipelago? Pray she survived to stop them!
The thin faced man shook the manacle again.
“Daria Symina make this?” he asked. Sweet life. Should she lie? Or had she found friends?
“Yes,” she said.
Suddenly there was a shout from behind them in the village. Fear lit in the faces of the men.
“Get up! You come with us.”
Though the knife was suddenly gone from her throat, they kept firm hold of her hands, twisting them behind her back and tying them with a strong cord. Two heavily laden oxen waited in a nearby clearing. Moving quickly, her captors blindfolded Yani with a filthy scarf and bundled her onto the broad back of one of the oxen along with what felt like several bags of flour. Wonderful! Captive once again! She forced herself to relax and listen to the life spirit. The whispering of the life spirit of this strange forest sounded different from that of the forests in Yarmar yet its essential nature was familiar.
Several times she heard something howling in the distance. Each time the men around the oxen swore softly and muttered Daria Symina’s name. The howling sounded like something much worse than hunting dogs. Fortunately the sound was a long way off and her captors were taking precautions. At every little stream they came to, and they crossed several, they turned and splashed along in the water for a while.
Up and up they climbed until at last they stopped and pulled Yani off the ox. One pair of hands took her round the shoulders and another round the ankles and she was carried into what, from the echoing of their footsteps and the cool damp air, must be a cave. She could hear the sibilant hiss of whispering voices in front of her and the oxen plodding behind.
Finally she was set down on the ground and someone unbound her hands and pulled the bandage off her eyes.
Even the dim torch light made her blink. A cluster of men were looking at her and talking intently amongst themselves. Their pinched greyish faces were shadowy in the flickering torch light.
As her eyes adjusted she saw that they were in a huge dark space. People were gathered around the talking men, but others, many others, sat around the walls on mats, their indistinct faces turned to Yani as if staring intently. Cages filled with small animals and chickens were arrayed among them and to one side Yani could see pens for larger animals.
The men seemed to have come to an agreement.
“Come!” said a man, whose face was fleshier than the others and who seemed to be their leader. He pulled her up from the ground and tugged her deeper into the cave towards some mats where two small bundles lay side by side.
Two children lay with the unnatural tidiness of the very ill, their faces and arms covered in bloody bandages. Where their skin was not bandaged, it was badly scratched.
Yani knelt down, carefully lifted the bandages on the first child, a boy, and sucked in her breath. Some large, vicious animal had savaged him, leaving such terrible wounds that he might not survive. The little girl beside him was less badly wounded, but she would probably never walk again. Even Yani, who had no significant magical powers, could feel the death magic about these wounds. It was obvious what these people wanted.
“I can strengthen the life forces of these children,” she said in Mirayan. “But I cannot promise the boy will survive. The dead hand of the Abyss is on him.”
“Try!” said the fleshy man.
“You must release me then,” she said, holding out her manacled wrists.
More heated discussion. Even the three women who were crouched beside the children, their heads covered in scarves, took part in it. Who could blame them? How could they know that she was not some evil creature like Daria Symina? She looked down at the children again. She had only a rough knowledge of the art of healing so she was glad to see that the children had already been washed and skilfully bandaged. She had only ever used her healing power in the heat of an emergency to strengthen the life spirit of the injured until they could be treated by trained healers.
Even though she was wearing iron manacles, when she touched the boy, death filled her mind with its cold, unyielding power. She pulled away quickly, feeling unaccustomed panic and forced herself to relax and try again.
She touched the boy’s bandages one by one and felt a cold, hard something that was part of the Abyss was lodged in the child’s shoulder. That would have to come out before anything could be done for the boy, otherwise it would just absorb all the life spirit she gave him, like a sponge absorbs water. She looked up. The villagers were still arguing about taking her manacle off, but an older woman with a lean, brown face and bright eyes was watching her closely.
“This child has a piece of darkness in him,” said Yani
The woman understood her immediately.
“Where?” she said, in the clearest Mirayan Yani had yet heard.
Yani pointed to the place. The woman pulled off the bandage and with expert fingers gently prodded the wound. The unconscious child did not even stir under her hands.
“Perhaps you are right,” she said. She must be the village healer. She unrolled a bundle of cloth beside her and brought out a long thin probe which she offered to Yani.
“Since you can feel it, it would be best if you dug for it.”
Yani looked down at the boy. Through the taint of the iron, she could feel that his life force was a thread, stretched thin, ready to break. And if it did? These people would surely turn against her. They had already fallen silent, watching her and the healer.
“No,” she said. “I cannot do it with these iron things on. The probing will surely kill him.”
The healer sighed. Then she spoke loudly in the unknown tongue. Instantly people were galvanised into action. A man grabbed Yani and, leading her over to a rock on the other side of the cave, took the hammer and chisel out of her sack.
The fleshy man scowled at Yani. “If you treat us ill, we find revenge.”
“I will not harm you.”
The man with the hammer spoke. The fleshy man took her shoulder and pushed her down against the rock so hard that the manacle clanged.
“He say hold still less you want lost ear.”
Pray the hammer man had a steady hand!
The chisel hit the manacle with teeth jarring blows, but it came off easily. So did the wristlets. Then the wonderful feeling of the life spirit free now of the taint of iron came flooding freely back into her.
Her first instinct was to flee, but she could not leave those children. Before she sat down to work on the boy, she drew the Tari sign of the life spirit on the ground of the cave, four concentric circles representing the four elements Earth, Air, Water, Fire with the cross of Life itself bisecting it. She whispered the morning chant to herself. The words brought the life spirit even closer, its gentle cleansing power washing away her fear. She could feel the earth all around her and somewhere