Healer (Part 2)

Chapter 1: Healer (Part 2)

In fact, Mancy had the smell of death on her.

"Hey! Did you hear me?"

That was when Adrian realized that Mancy had asked a question. "I'm sorry," he said, wrenching his attention back to the conversation. "What was that?"

"I said, is it all right if I put her back on her regular feed?" Mancy said, a little huffily.

"Oh. Ah. Two more days of the mash, and then she can go back," he said. Grain was hard to find after a quarter century of war. Nobody was getting fat in Fellsmarch these days.

"I was telling Hughes at West Gate about you," Mancy said. "I told him you was just a lytling, but you can work miracles with horses."

I'm not a lytling, Adrian thought. Maybe I don't have my growth, but I'm already thirteen.

"He's got a moonblind horse that an't getting any better, and he asked me to ask you if you might come by and take a look."

The West Gate was two days' ride away. And Adrian was hoping to leave town in a week.

"I can't go out there right now, but I'll send over an ointment that might help," he said. He paused, clearing his throat. A lytling healer might be good enough for horses, but... "How's the leg?"

Mancy grimaced. "It's all right, I guess. It's closed over, but it's still giving me a lot of pain. Plus, I can't seem to get my strength back. I been back to the healing halls three different times, but they don't want to see me."

Mancy's collarbones stuck out more than before, and Adrian noticed that she leaned on the stall door for support. "Mind if I take a look?"

Mancy blinked at him. "At me? You do people, too?"

Adrian bit back the first response that came to mind. "Sometimes."

"All right then. Be my guest." Mancy sat down on an overturned bucket, and rolled back her uniform breeches. When he went to touch her leg, though, she flinched back. "You an't going to—do anything, are you?"

"Like?"

"Hex it or something?" Valefolk were wary of wizards, for good reason.

"I'm just going to take a look, all right?" The wound was closed, the skin tight and hot, the leg puffy all the way into the ankle. Adrian brushes his fingers over it, murmuring a charm, and saw that the infection had gone into the bone. He'd seen it before, in hires, and they always had to be put down.

Adrian looked up at Mancy, chewing his lower lip. The leg would have to come off, but he knew she wouldn't take that verdict from a thirteen-year-old untrained wizard.

"Mancy," he said, "your leg needs to be seen right away. Go back to the healing halls, and ask for Titus Gryphon. Don't get shuffled off to anyone else, and don't take no for an answer. Tell him I sent you, that he needs to look at your leg. Do it now."

Mancy blinked at him, her brow furrowed. "Now? But right now I need to muck out the—"

"That can keep," Adrian said. "If you want, I'll put in a word with Jarret." The stable master owed him a favor.

"You don't need to do that," Mancy said. She swallowed hard. "I'll just let him know where I am. If you really think I need to go now."

"You do." Adrian put a hand on her shoulder, soothing her. "You'll be all right."

With Mancy on her way to Gryphon, Adrian continued his search for his father. Outside again, it seemed even colder than before. The wind howled down from the Spirits, sending bits of greenery from the recent Solstice celebration spinning down the street.

He really, really needed to get a yes from his father before his mother the queen found out what he was up to. His father, the High Wizard, was a little more flexible when it came to rules. Like the one that said what wizards weren't supposed to receive their amulets until they turned sixteen.