Mercedes Lackey - Owlsight

Four days after the storm ended, Lord Breon’s Healer Gil arrived for his monthly visit. He was late by a day, but she’d expected that; he’d probably had the same sorts of patients that she’d had - maybe more serious, since Lord Breon’s men were duty-bound to be outside no matter the weather - and to rescue any of Lord Breon’s folk who’d gotten themselves into difficulties.

She was replacing her depleted stocks of already-prepared medicines when he tapped on the doorframe and walked on in. She knew both the tap and the step, and even if she hadn’t, she’d have known it was him by the feeling of steadiness and patience that he always brought with him. He might be a cranky curmudgeon on the outside, but inside he was the steady rock on which all hysteria drove itself in vain.

At that moment, however, she needed both hands and her eyes to get her comfrey and lobelia concentrate into its jug. “Welcome, Gil,” she greeted him without turning. “Give me a moment, will you? I have both hands full.”

Gil helped himself to one of the two chairs and she heard him sit down. “Am I?” he asked. “Am I welcome, that is?”

Hmm. Is he expecting a fight out of me? If so, why? She put the jug up, then measured her herbs and put the finished mixture into a steeping bag, tying the drawstrings tight. No point in starting a new batch now, but she’d have it ready to go when Gil left. “I haven’t killed anyone this month, directly or indirectly, and I don’t have any plans to do so today, so of course you’re welcome,” she retorted, turning to greet him properly. “Mind you, I was tempted once or twice during the rain, but I managed to contain my feelings.”

Gil was a withered little raisin of a man, whose normal movements were so deliberate that it shocked people when, in an emergency, he moved with the speed of a hummingbird. His hair was an iron-gray, his legs bowed, his eyes small and black and seemingly able to see whatever it was you most wanted to keep secret. He didn’t look like a Healer; he looked like a weatherbeaten old horse tamer, and, in fact, he did tame horses using a Shin’a’in method he’d learned on Lord Ashkevron’s estate of Forst Reach where he’d grown up (where horse tamers were honored and very, truly needed). Children and animals trusted him immediately, and he had the no-nonsense aura of competence and authority to make even Lord Breon’s most battle-hardened fighters listen to and obey him. There couldn’t have been a better Healer for that particular position in the entire Kingdom, even if his Gift was so weak it was negligible.

“I see you’re wearing Greens now - so to speak,” he continued, raising his eyebrows. “Not exactly orthodox color, though.”

She brushed her hand down the front of her tunic selfconsciously. “I thought I’d use some old clothing of my own for a dye experiment before I ruined those nice uniforms the Collegium sent.” She shrugged. “Why use those new uniforms for work when I have plenty of old things that can take a beating?”

“You know, a uniform isn’t there to make you conform, it’s to reassure your patients as a symbol. Heralds know that; that’s why they wear Whites; people wouldn’t take them half so seriously if they didn’t show up in uniforms. I take it that with the rains you had the usual crop?” he asked, looking her up and down, still with that penetrating expression on his face.

“And one young idiot,” she replied with a laugh, and sat down and told him about Piel. He grunted with disgust when she described how Piel had gotten sick and soaked in the first place, and broke into a cackle of unexpected laughter when she told him the lecture she’d read the romantic fool.

“Bright Havens, I wish I’d been here!” he chortled, slapping the arm of the chair with his hand. “Sounds to me as if you’re getting your proper attitude, young lady. If people won’t give you the authority and respect you need to make them listen, then by the gods, take it! You can apologize after they’re better. What good’s a Healer that no one listens to? That was where poor old Justyn got into trouble; he was too soft on people.”

“Well, all I can say is I’m grateful that Piel hasn’t decided he’s lifebonded to Shandi. He’s quite enough of a wet mess as it is, and I swear to you, even if he was shaved bald he’d have more hair than wits. Why Shandi ever encouraged him in the first place, I’ll never know.” She sighed, and ran both hands through the hair at her temples in exasperation. “Maybe it’s just that she was too kind, and afraid to break his heart. Other than young Piel’s crisis, the Fellowship’s sheep got that dry cough I told you about, and the preparation you recommended cleared it up in them as fast as it did my folk’s flock.”

“Just watch that particular medicine in the early stages of pregnancy, it tends to make cattle miscarry, and it might do the same in sheep,” he cautioned. “Late stages, no problem, but the first month - ”

“If it’s a choice between possibly losing the sheep or losing the lamb, I think most people would prefer the latter, but I’ll be sure and give them that option if the situation comes up,” she promised. “But that might be the reason why so many of the pregnant ones decided to drop lambs in the barn - which was a fine thing as far as their keepers were concerned.”

“Heard anything from your sister yet?” he asked, changing the subject so quickly that she immediately suspected an ulterior motive.

She shook her head. “It’s a little too soon, I’d think,” she replied, watching him with care. “I should think they’d have her so busy at first that she’d be going from the moment she got up to the moment her head hit the pillow.”

I wonder why he’s asking ? Is it curiosity or something more?

“And I should think she’d want her sister with her so much that she’d be sending you letters three times a day,” he began. She held up her hand, stopping him at that point.

“Don’t start.” she said shortly. “I won’t listen, and we’ve been through this a hundred times. How would you cope with me gone? You couldn’t, and you know it.”

“But you have the Gift, and I can’t teach you to use it,” he countered stubbornly. “We’ve tried, and I can’t tell you what you need to know, and so far you haven’t made any progress with the texts either.”

“Then we’ll wait until someone with the Gift can come here to teach me for a couple of months,” she retorted, just as stubbornly. “Right now I’m doing as well or better than Justyn did for all of his training at the Collegium, and right now, that’s what this village needs and can’t afford to do without. Whatever happens here, I can at least buy time for a fully trained, fully Gifted Healer to get here. And you have to admit that in some cases that’s all you could do!”

Gil shook his head, but he gave up the argument as a lost cause yet again. He was silent for a space, then scratched his head uneasily. “I’m just afraid that if you keep on like this, your Gift is going to get you into trouble,” he said at last, sounding far more worried than she was used to hearing from him.

“How - how could I get into trouble?” she asked, uncomfortably certain that she already knew the answer.

“I’m not sure - since my own Gift is so trifling, they never went into details,” he said, frowning with concentration, probably as he tried to recall his long-ago training at the Collegium. “I just remember that they told me an untrained Gift has the potential to cause the owner problems.”

She wondered guiltily if she ought to tell him about her strange new sensitivity, and how her nerves always seemed to be raw and open to other people. But if I do, he‘ll probably find a way to pack me off to Haven and then what would happen? No, I can get through this. It can’t be too long now before someone is sent here to show me what to do. Half the Healers in Valdemar aren’t trained at the Collegium, and they do all right! I can manage. I have to.