Lois Bujold - Legacy

“Well, this is a clean break and a straight setting,” she reported. “Doing well, for what, two weeks?”

“Nearer three.” It seemed a lot more than that.

“If not for that”—she nodded at his hook—“I’d send you home to heal on your own, but you’d like these splints off sooner, I’d imagine.”

“Oh, yes.”

She smiled at his heartfelt drawl. “I’ve done all the groundwork I can for today on your young friend Saun, but my apprentice will be pleased to try.”

Dag gave this the grimace it deserved; she grinned back unrepentantly. “Come, Dag, they have to practice on someone. Youth to experience, experience to youth.” She tapped his arm cuff. “How’s the stump? Giving you any trouble?”

“No. Well…no.”

She sat back, eyeing him shrewdly. “In other words, yes. Off with the harness, let me see.”

“Not the stump itself,” he said, but let her unbuckle the harness and lay it aside, and run her experienced hands down his arm and over its callused end. “Well, it’s sometimes a little sore, but it’s not bad today.”

“I’ve seen it worse. So, go on…?”

He said cautiously, “Have you ever heard of a missing limb still having…ground?”

She rubbed her bony nose. “Phantom limbs?”

“Yes, just like that,” he said eagerly.

“Itching, pain, sensations? I’ve heard of it. It’s apparently very maddening, to have an itch that can’t be scratched.”

“No, not that. I knew about that. Met a man up in Luthlia once, must be twenty-five years back, who’d lost most of both feet to frostbite. Poor fellow used to complain bitterly about the itching, and his toes that he didn’t have anymore cramping. A little groundwork on the nerves of his legs usually cleared it right up. I mean the ground of missing limbs.”

“If something doesn’t exist, it can’t have a ground. I don’t know if someone could have an illusion of ground, like the illusion of an itch; folks have hallucinations about all sorts of bizarre things, though, so I don’t see why not.”

“A hallucination shouldn’t be able to do real groundwork.”

“Of course not.”

“Well, mine did. I did.”

“What’s this tale?” She sat back, staring.

He took a breath and described the incident with the glass bowl in the Bluefield parlor, leaving out the ruckus that had led up to it and concentrating on the mending itself. “The most of it was done, I swear, with the ground of my left hand.” He thumped his left arm on the table. “Which isn’t there. I was deathly sick after, though, and cold all through for an hour.”

She scowled in thought. “It sounds as though you drew ground from your whole body. Which would be reasonable. Why it should take that form to project itself, well, your theory about your right arm being lost to use forcing a, um”—she waved her hands—“some sort of compensation seems like a fair one. Sounds like a pretty spectacular one, I admit. Has it happened again?”

“Couple of times.” Dag wasn’t about to explain the circumstances. “But I can’t make it happen at will. It’s not even reliably driven by my own tension. It’s just random, or so it seems to me.”

“Can you do it now?”

Dag tried, concentrating so hard his brow furrowed. Nothing. He shook his head.

Hoharie bit her lip. “A funny form of ground projection, yes, maybe. Ground without matter, no.”

Dag finally said what he hadn’t wanted to say, even to himself. “Malices are pure ground. Ground without matter.”

The medicine maker stared at him. “You’d know more about that than I would. I’ve never seen a malice.”

“All a malice’s material appearance is pure theft. They snatch ground itself, and matter through its ground, to shape at will. Or misshape.”

“I don’t know, Dag.” She shook her head. “I’ll have to think about this one.”

“I wish you would. I’m”—he cut off the word afraid—“very puzzled.”

She nodded shortly and rose to fetch her apprentice from the anteroom, introducing him as Othan. The lad looked thrilled, whether at being allowed to do a ground treatment upon the very interesting patroller, or simply at being allowed to do one at all, Dag couldn’t quite tell. Hoharie gave up her seat and stood observing with her arms folded. The apprentice sat down and determinedly began tracing his hands up and down Dag’s right arm.

“Hoharie,” he said after a moment, “I can’t get through the patroller’s ground veil.”

“Ease up, Dag,” Hoharie advised.

Dag had held himself close and tight ever since he’d crossed the bridge to the island yesterday. He really, really didn’t want to open himself up here. But it was going to be necessary. He tried.

Othan shook his head. “Still can’t get in.” The lad was starting to look distressed, as though he imagined the failure was his fault. He looked up. “Maybe you’d better try, ma’am?”

“I’m spent. Won’t be able to do a thing till tomorrow at the earliest. Ease up, Dag!”

“I can’t…”

“You are in a mood today.” She circled the table and frowned at them both; the apprentice cringed. “All right, try swapping it around. You reach, Dag. That should force you open.”

He nodded, and tried to reach into the lad’s ground. The strain of his own distaste for the task warred with his frantic desire, now that the opportunity was so provokingly close, of getting the blighted splints off for good. The apprentice was looking at him with the air of a whipped puppy, bewildered but still eager to please. He held his arm lightly atop Dag’s, face earnest, ground open as any gate.

On impulse, Dag shifted his stump across and slammed it down beside both their arms. Something flashed in his groundsense, strong and sharp. Othan cried out and recoiled.

“Oh!” said Hoharie.

“A ghost hand,” said Dag grimly. “A ground hand. Like that.” His whole forearm was hot with new ground, snatched from the boy. His ghost hand, so briefly perceptible, was gone again. He was shaking, but if he put his arms out of sight below the table, it would only draw more attention to his trembling. He forced himself to sit still.

The apprentice was holding his own right arm to his chest, rubbing it and looking wide-eyed. “Ow,” he said simply. “What was that? I mean—I didn’t do—did I do anything?”

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” mumbled Dag. “I shouldn’t have done that.” That was new. New and disturbing, and far too much like malice magic for Dag’s comfort. Although perhaps there was only one kind of groundwork, after all. Was it theft, to take something someone was trying with all his heart to press upon you?

“My arm is cold,” complained Othan. “But—did it help? Did I actually do any healing, Hoharie?”

Hoharie ran her hands over both her apprentice’s arm and Dag’s, her frown replaced by an oddly expressionless look. “Yes. There’s an extremely dense ground reinforcement here.”

Othan looked heartened, although he was still chafing his own forearm.

Dag wriggled his fingers; his arm barely ached. “I can feel the heat of it.”

Hoharie, watching them both with equal attention, talked her apprentice through a light resplinting of Dag’s arm. Othan gave the flaking, smelly skin a wash first, to Dag’s intense gratitude. The boy’s own right arm was decidedly weak; he fumbled the wrappings twice, and Hoharie had to help him tie off the knots.

“Is he going to be all right?” Dag asked cautiously, nodding at Othan.

“In a few days, I expect,” said Hoharie. “That was a much stronger ground reinforcement than I normally let my apprentices attempt.”

Othan smiled proudly, although his eyes were still a trifle confused. Hoharie dismissed him with thanks, closed the door behind him, and slid back into the seat across from Dag. She eyed him narrowly.