Elizabeth Moon - Oath of Gold

“Sit down, child, and we’ll talk some.” Paks sat against the trunk of a tree, and he stretched on the ground nearby. “You are stronger of body than when you came, Paksenarrion; are you aware of it?”

“Yes, sir.” Paks felt herself flushing. “I’ve been eating too much.”

“No, not too much. You were far too thin; you need more weight even now. But the day you came, you could not have endured what you did yesternight without collapse.”

“But that was my mind—”

He made a disgusted noise. “Paksenarrion, your body and mind are as close as the snail-shell and the snail. If you poke holes in the snail-shell, will the snail live?”

“No, but—”

“By the Tree, you must be better, to argue with me!” He chuckled a moment, then turned serious again. “You did not say, when I first saw you, how you planned to die—if you’d thought about it—but it was clear that you were near death for some reason. Some trouble I could see at a glance: your thinness, your weakness. Some seemed clear, more was certain. I began with what was easily cured; good food and rest heal many wounds of body and mind both. Then you were frightened even by that rabbit on the path as you came in. Is that true now?”

“No . . . not here, with you. I don’t know what it would be like outside.” Paks tried to imagine it, tried to see herself walking down a street somewhere. The panic fear she had felt before did not return. “I can think of being somewhere else, at least.”

“Very well. Your body is beginning to heal, and with it the mind heals also.”

“But I thought you said the wounds would need more?”

“Yes. They will. But that will sap your strength again, for a little, and I wanted to build it first. It is a delicate thing, Paksenarrion, to choose the best time. First to gain your trust, so that even the pain I must cause you will not awake the panic. Then to let food and rest do what they may with the parts of your body that were not wounded, so that the strength there offsets—Do you understand any of this?”

“Not really. I would think if the food and rest could heal—”

“It should heal all? Ordinarily it might. But the kuaknomi have difficult magic, and their poisons outlast normal human lifespans. The poison takes the strength from you, and will, until we get it out. And until your body is clean of it, your mind shares the poison.”

“Oh.”

“And you fear what I might do to heal you,” he added shrewdly.

“Yes. Sir, I—I went through that once. They were saying it was in my mind, but the same thing. Evil. Something to be ripped out. And now you—”

“Hmmm. Yes. But I can show you what I will do. Look at that scar on your arm—the one that hurt you so that night.” Paks shoved up her sleeve and looked. It had been redder the following morning, but now had faded to a dull pink. When she prodded it with a finger, it held no underlying soreness.

“Is it truly healing?” she asked.

“Yes. In a few weeks it should be pale as your old scars. I could not use quicker methods, after what they had done.”

“But the others?”

“You remember the pain of that one? It was almost like the original wound, wasn’t it?” Paks nodded. “And you have many others. To work on them all at once will be very painful for you. I could force you into a sleep, but then we are faced with the trouble in your mind. If you still wish to die, you could go then, while I was busy with your wounds. I cannot care for both, alone. I would prefer to have your cooperation, mind and body, before I begin.” He seemed to look past her, over her head, into some distance. “I might have called on another Kuakgan for aid, or on the elves—or even Marshal Cedfer—but until I knew where your trouble lay, and from what cause, I had no right to do so.”

“But you can heal the wounds,” said Paks, confidently.

“Yes.”

“Will that heal the—the other? Is that what caused it, truly?”

“I don’t know. I think you were already weakened so by the wounds, by the poison in them, that even without the Marshal-General’s intervention your mind would have been affected in time. Without probing deeply into it, I am not sure what she did. But anything that would remove a deep-seated evil would be likely to affect other things; evil spreads like ink in water, staining everything it touches. Your body was damaged again, by that: you said when you woke from her treatment you could not walk at first. What I hope is that thorough healing of the body will allow your mind to heal, too. Whether what you have lost will regenerate or not, I cannot tell. But you are already better, in both, and that gives me hope.”

Paks stared at the ground before her. “I’m still scared. Not the pain, so much—that comes anyway—but the other.”

“I know. I can treat one at a time, but that will take months. And I must warn you that the poison itself will resist, given time for it. The last ones will be much harder to cure than the first. Yet to do this, without your free consent, is likely to widen the rift in your mind. It is for this that I waited, hoping that you would be able to trust me.”

“How long would it take?”

“All at once? A day of preparation for me; you would have to keep quiet within doors, and let me meditate. I have most of the materials I need; I could gather the rest today. Then a day or two for the healing itself: I cannot tell, until I have seen and tested each wound, exactly how long. You would be very weak for the first day afterwards, but your strength would come quickly.”

“And I would sleep through it?”

“The healing itself, yes. I would recommend it. Even if you were willing to endure all the pain awake, your reaction could break my attention to the healing.”

“I wish—” she began, and then stopped. She took a deep breath and went on. “I wish it could be done, and over, and I didn’t have to decide.”

His voice was gentle. “No. It is not the way of the Kuakkganni to force a good on someone if there is time for choice. Each creature has its own way to travel; we learn much of them, but we do not change the way. And for humans, the way involves choice.”

“You forced me to eat, that first day.”

“Then there was no time. I had to buy that time, to find out what was wrong. Now you are beginning to heal, and I judge you well enough to make a choice for yourself. I will give you advice, and have, but you are free to follow it or not, as you are free to take what time you need for the decision.”

Paks had taken a twig from the ground, and was digging little holes in the dirt at her feet. She made a row of them, then another row. For a moment she saw them as positions in a formation, then scraped the twig across the design.

“You think I should let you do it now?”

“I think you should ask yourself if you can trust me. I think you should ask yourself if you can trust your own mind to hold on until your body has a chance to heal. If when you are well again you still wish to waste your bones on the hills, I’ve no doubt some orc or wolf will be glad to assist.”

“I don’t, now,” she said very softly.

“Good.”

“I think—I know I want to be well again. If it can happen. If what is wrong is that poison, then—I must let you do it. Whatever it is.”

For the rest of the afternoon, they gathered herbs and other materials from the grove. Most of it was unfamiliar to Paks; the Kuakgan explained little, merely pointing out the plants to take. That evening he went to the inn for food, after telling her to stay inside. When he came back, one of the potboys from the inn was with him; Paks heard his voice outside. The Kuakgan had him leave his burden on the step, and when he had left, called Paks outside to carry it in.