The Healer of Bordrad

The Healer of Bordrad

Varda caught up with them on the walkway outside the Great Hall.

“Before either of you goes north,” she said, “you are going south.”

Blena stopped beside the railing. “We have just come from the south.”

“Then you know the way.”

Behind them, conversation drifted through the hall’s open doors. Varda glanced back, then led them towards a narrow bridge winding between the trees. She waited until the voices had faded beneath the rustle of leaves before speaking again.

“There is a healer in Bordrad. Eastern reed channels. Her name is Mereth Gorna.”

Kaelen looked down at his boots. He had spent part of that morning working dried marsh out of a buckle.

Blena noticed.

“Try to contain your excitement.”

“There is still some Bordrad travelling with us. Is another visit entirely necessary?”

“If you insist on entering the Dereliction, yes,” Varda said. “The northern watch has been using a brew of hers for short patrols along the contamination boundary.”

“How short?” Kaelen asked.

“A day. Sometimes two.”

“We need six days just to reach the centre.”

“I heard.”

“And six to come back.”

“I am pleased you have included that part.”

They stepped aside for two workers carrying a basket of lanterns between them. The bridge shifted gently under the passing weight. Varda rested her hand on the railing until they were alone again.

“What does the brew do?” Blena asked.

“Delays the sickness. Fewer headaches. Less confusion. The black marks take longer to appear.”

“Does it prevent the corruption from taking hold?” Kaelen asked.

“For a while, perhaps. Mereth can explain what she knows.” Varda turned towards them. “But I have never seen anyone use it for as long as you would need. I do not recommend trying.”

Blena opened her mouth.

“Nor,” Varda continued, “have I seen it tested anywhere near the centre. A Guardian walking the outer boundary without vomiting tells us very little about what happens six days farther in.”

“Then why tell us?” Kaelen asked.

“Because I watched both of you looking at that map. I would rather you knew something useful before ignoring sensible advice.”

Blena leaned against the railing.

“Do you remember the western training forest?”

Varda’s eyes narrowed.

“No.”

“I haven’t told you which part.”

“I remember enough to know I do not wish to discuss it.”

Kaelen looked between them.

Blena smiled.

“We were practising concealed observation. I had been sitting halfway up a tree since dawn, waiting for you to come past and tell me everything I was doing wrong.”

“You had chosen a poor position.”

“You found it useful shortly afterwards.”

Varda started walking.

Blena fell into step beside her.

“There was shouting,” she told Kaelen. “Then a great deal of crashing through the undergrowth.”

“A training exercise,” Varda said.

“You were shouting my name.”

“To establish whether you were paying attention.”

“And the Ironroot bear?”

Varda said nothing.

Kaelen’s interest sharpened. “There was a bear?”

“A very determined bear,” Blena said. “Varda came running through the forest with it close behind her. I dropped my rope, and she climbed so quickly I thought the branch would come down.”

“You took your time lowering it.”

“I was surprised. You had spent the entire morning telling us never to run from an Ironroot bear.”

“There are exceptions.”

“Apparently.”

They reached a wider platform where late sunlight fell between the branches. Varda stopped beneath a hanging fern and faced her former pupil.

“You were instructed not to repeat that story.”

“And I haven’t. Not to the other trainees. Not to the shield companies. Certainly not the part about the berry bun.”

Kaelen looked at Varda.

“The what?”

Blena’s smile widened.

“She had forgotten there was a berry bun in her pack. The bear followed the smell until it found her.”

“It was wrapped.”

“The bear did not consider that an obstacle.”

“Neither, apparently, do you.”

“I even let everyone believe you were testing my rescue skills.”

“You needed practice.”

“And you needed a tree.”

Kaelen turned towards the railing, but not quickly enough to hide his expression.

Varda pointed at him.

“You were not there.”

“No,” he said. “A considerable loss to my education.”

Blena’s smile softened.

“You owe me.”

“I have kept you alive through years of training.”

“And I kept the berry bun out of your reputation.”

For a moment Varda looked as though she might argue. Then she let out a long breath and glanced north through the branches.

“You are going regardless of what I say.”

“I want to help stop what is happening to our home.”

“That was not a denial.”

“No.”

Varda studied her. The humour had left both their faces.

“If you have to go,” she said at last, “then I will convince the Chief it is safe enough to let you try.”

Kaelen shifted. “You have just told us you do not know whether it is.”

“I will convince him that visiting Mereth and preparing properly gives you a better chance than slipping away with a map and your usual confidence.” Her gaze returned to Blena. “Do not make me regret it.”

“We will listen to the healer,” Blena said.

“And if she says she cannot give you enough protection?”

“Then we find another way.”

Varda held her eyes a moment longer before nodding.

“Good.”

She turned back towards the Great Hall.

“One more thing,” Kaelen said. “What is the brew made from?”

Varda looked over her shoulder.

“Bordrad frogs.”

He waited.

“Which part?”

“Ask Mereth.”

“That sounds like an answer intended to postpone disappointment.”

For the first time, Varda smiled.

“It is.”

• • •

Four days south brought them back to the broad waters of Bordrad where the height of the reeds and grasses began to mask the horizon and any sense of direction with only the blue sky above.

Kaelen had remembered the mud with considerable clarity. He had forgotten the noise.

Frogs called beneath the landing stage, each apparently determined to be the last creature heard before the world ended. Reed stems clicked together in the breeze. Insects whined around his ears, settled on his sleeves and investigated the narrow space between his collar and his neck.

Somewhere out in the marsh, a bird gave three hollow knocks.

Something beneath the dock knocked back.

Kaelen looked down.

“What was that?”

“Something underneath us,” Blena said.

“I had reached that conclusion.”

A ferryman carried their packs to a narrow boat, pausing to flick a beetle from the seat.

“Going far?”

“Mereth’s house,” Blena said.

The man looked at Kaelen.

“Sick?”

“Not yet.”

“Good time to visit her, then.”

He offered them tea from a yellow-stained pot.

“No,” Blena said quickly.

Kaelen remembered her warning from their first journey and took his place in the boat without asking what was in it.

The ferryman pushed off. The landing slipped behind a wall of reeds, and the water opened into a channel so still that the sky appeared to continue broken only the ripples of insects.

Blena sat near the bow with her hand trailing above the surface. Now and then she pointed out a bird or a flowering plant, naming things Kaelen could barely distinguish from the vegetation beside them. She knew which mats of floating green would bear a person’s weight for a few steps and which would close over their head.

He was completely impressed with her comfort and familiarity with her crestrealm.

The air smelled of brackish salt water, crushed leaves and the deep, sour breath of disturbed mud. White flowers floated among broad copper-coloured pads. Small silver fish darted from the boat’s shadow. They passed groups of houses raised on stilts, with washing hung beneath their roofs and narrow ladders descending directly into the water. “They go out fishing each day directly from their homes,” Blena pointed out excitedly.

At the third village, a child sat on the bottom rung of one of the ladders, eating something from a bowl. A frog nearly as large as the bowl sat beside him.

Kaelen watched it turn its head as they passed.

“That one looked thoughtful.”

“Perhaps it was wondering why you were staring,” Blena said.

Mereth’s house stood beyond the settled channels on a low island stitched together by roots. A wooden walkway connected the door to a landing surrounded by wicker enclosures.

Most of the enclosures appeared empty.

The woman kneeling beside one of them had both arms in the water.

“Leave the basket,” she called without looking up. “If it is another marsh hen, tell your aunt I mend people.”

“We haven’t brought a hen,” Blena said.

“Thank the Veyl, too many come this way seeking remedies for animals that are fit only for the pot.”

Mereth stood.

She was narrow-shouldered and sun-browned, with grey hair braided tightly against her head. Mud reached one elbow. A pair of metal bound glass lenses hung from a cord at her throat, and a fat green frog rested in her cupped hands. Kaelen saw the lenses and thought of Anderix.

Mereth looked from Blena’s armour to Kaelen’s travelling cloak.

“Oh, you are not my regular type of patient, what brings you to the Bordrad Marshes?”

“Varda sent us,” Blena said.

The healer’s expression changed.

She lowered the frog into the enclosure and secured its lid.

“How far north?”

Kaelen glanced at Blena who translated. Then she looked back to Mereth.

Mereth sighed.

“That far.”

• • •

Inside, bundles of marsh plants hung from the rafters above shelves of jars, bowls and carefully labelled wooden boxes. The floorboards had been scrubbed pale except near the door, where a living green from the marsh was steadily winning.

A shallow metal basin occupied the centre of the table. It was half filled with the brackish swamp water from outside. Three frogs watched Kaelen from within the bowl. Their unwavering eyes watching Kaelen as he sat down at the table. He moved his stool slightly farther back to remove himself from their line of sight.

Mereth noticed his discomfort with the amphibians she had collected. She spoke directly to Kaeln in a broken Common Tongue.

“Zey are not intelested in your.”

“One of them has been following me with its eyes.”

“You are large, big andt moving. Zat is enough to concern frog.”

Blena sat opposite him.

“It probably keeps them off the menu.”

Mereth set down a small glazed pot and removed its lid.

The smell reached Kaelen before he saw the contents.

Blena leaned back.

“What died in that?”

“Nosing. Zat is rather de point.”

The paste was greenish brown, with a sheen that suggested it might be considering becoming liquid.

Kaelen bent closer despite himself.

“Varda said it delays the corruption.”

“In some circomstances.”

“Which circumstances?”

“Ze vones I have tested.”

He looked up.

Mereth pulled out the third stool, sat down and spoke in a Bordrad influenced Ironroot directly to Blena.

“You may as well begin looking disappointed now. I have no dereliction anti-paste preparation tested anywhere but along the edges of the dereliction. Varda and some she knows have used it when venturing into the deadlands but none has ever gone far north. I have reports from them that it is successful but we don’t know for how long and how far.”

“Then what have you established?”

That question pleased her more and she smiled and walked over to a wooden shelf with rolled scrolls and yellowed papers and a few well used books. She brought down a ledger.

“The watch sent me dereliction contaminated plants, soil and a few small infected rodents. I began testing with water, because the creatures avoided it thinking there was some connection there. But water did not explain much at all. Marsh plants sometimes blackened in regular damp soil. Some creatures sickened more slowly depending on which water they were given to drink, boiled versus swamp for example. After a while I tested the dereliction on some of our Bordrad frogs. Many of them did not sicken nearly as quickly.”

“Because they live in water?” Blena asked.

“They leave it. They sit on marsh banks and swamp growth and they eat insects. I observed that some of them swallow insects that have fed on contaminated plants, the ones that fly south to the swamps to lay eggs. Yet the frogs remained well. Other creatures that came to me infected already all died after different lengths of time but the frogs were rarely affected by it. I even caught and fed infected insects to some of the Swamp Ducks and they did not fare well. Only the frogs lived on after other creatures began to change.”

Mereth dipped a clean wooden spatula into the paste.

“Their skin produces a coating. Something in that coating interferes with the dereliction. Something in their digestion may do the same, though I have not yet separated one effect from the other.”

Kaelen had followed along with some of Mereth’s discoveries and he thought he had the gist of it so he asked.“You are feeding people something you do not completely understand?”

“What did he say?”

Blena translated. “He said it is fortunate for us that you have done all this research.”

“I would be a very unsuccessful healer if I did not test my medicines first.”

Blena folded her arms.

“He dislikes not knowing what is being said around him. That is why he is listening so hard.”

“Then he will find the marsh upsetting.”

“What else is in the paste?” Kaelen asked.

“Bitter reed-heart. Mireleaf. Mineral salts. And the secretion from the frogs’ skin.”

“Did she say excretion?” Kaelen asked Blena.

“No. Secretion. It gathers along their backs.”

Mereth continued. “Not every frog will serve. We take it only from those that feed upon insects touched by the dereliction. What the insects carry passes into the frog and is changed there. It remains dangerous, but less eager.”

“And the plants make it safe?” Kaelen asked.

“Safer,” Mereth corrected. “The reed-heart and mireleaf make the stomach labour over the paste. They prevent it from surrendering everything to the body at once.”

“And that prevents infection?”

“No. It allows a little of the corruption through at a time. Little enough that the body can meet it.”

Kaelen frowned. “Meet it how?”

Mereth considered him before answering. “Have you ever watched a village prepare after finding an enemy’s scout? At first, no one knows what they have seen. Then the warning passes. Doors are barred. Blades are fetched. By the time the raiders arrive, the village knows what it is fighting.”

“You believe the body does the same?”

“I have watched it happen. Those who swallow the paste may suffer a fever or aching joints at first. Then the sickness retreats. So long as some of the paste remains within them, their bodies continue to recognise the dereliction and fight it.”

“And when the stomach has consumed it all?”

“The warning fades. The body lowers its guard. If the corruption is still around them, it begins to take hold.”

“Does the paste destroy it?”

“No.”

“Remove it?”

“No.”

“Protect against whatever first alters the plants?”

“I do not know. It merely teaches the body how to resist what reaches it, and the lesson lasts only while the paste is still being digested.”

Kaelen looked at the pot. “How long does a dose last?”

“On the outer patrols, until the next meal, with a margin I would prefer you never tested.”

“That is not a measurement.”

“It is the measurement between returning hungry and not returning at all.”

“It is the measurement I have information on, look here.” She opened the ledger towards him.

The pages were crowded with dates, doses, names and observations. Some entries had been crossed out. Others carried small, severe marks in red.

Kaelen stopped preparing his next objection.

Mereth tapped one of the red marks.

“This man felt well and decided he no longer needed it. These two took more when they became frightened and vomited their entire supply. This one concealed the trembling in her hands because she did not want to turn her patrol around.”

Blena leaned closer.

“What happened to her?”

“She lived. She no longer patrols.”

Outside, something splashed beneath the house.

Mereth let them sit with all that before continuing.

“You take the measured amount. You keep taking it while you feel well. If you become confused, if your hands shake, if you begin disagreeing about things you can both plainly see, you leave. More paste will not make a dangerous place safe. I also suspect eating too much of a regular diet or drinking a lot of water will move the paste from the stomach and could return you to a vulnerable state earlier.”

Kaelen nodded slowly. “So six days in and we can only eat a small amount and the paste,” he said. “Six out and we can’t drink too much water. Supplies for eighteen, if we can carry them. It's a difficult task.”

“For two people?”

“Yes, Blena and I.”

Mereth looked at the little pot.

Then she looked towards the empty wicker enclosures outside.

“Well,” she said. “You had better be good at catching frogs.”

• • •

They went out before sunset, when the heat loosened and the marsh began moving in earnest.

Mereth supplied two collecting baskets, a shallow bowl, a small net and a warning that the brown frogs were useless.

“How brown?” Kaelen asked.

“Any shade of brown, if you catch one of those you should put them back.”

Blena took the baskets.

Kaelen looked at the long narrow boat and started postulating how long it would be before it rolled over.

Mereth shook her head and gestured for them to enter the swamp. “The adults you need are breeding in the reed beds. Too shallow for the boat. Too thick to pole through.”

He looked at the marsh.

A bubble rose through the mud beside the walkway and burst with an intimate, unpleasant sound.

“Of course.”

Blena stepped off the boards.

The ground accepted her boot with a soft oozing sound that almost mirrored the bubble.

Kaelen followed and immediately sank to the ankle.

“Spread your weight,” she said.

“Across what?”

“The ground.”

“I appear to have gone through it.”

She cut two long dead reeds, tested them and handed him one.

“Probe ahead. Step where I step.”

“How can I tell what my probing is telling me?”

“If there is some resistance then it is a good place to step if it moves or sinks, wait and wait and probe a new area.”

They followed her into the reeds and tall grasses which quickly covered their path in until the only way one could tell if the direction from which they had just come was to see the ripples and broken reeds.

They were soon well beyond the healer's hut, the reeds rose above their heads. Their feathered tops caught the evening sun while the water below had already turned dark. Flies gathered in trembling clouds over pockets of open mud. Long-legged insects skated across the surface, leaving tiny dents that closed behind them.

Blena pushed through it all with the ease of someone moving through familiar rooms.

She paused to break a leaf, crushed it between her palms and rubbed the sharp-smelling juice along her neck.

“For the biting flies,” she said, handing Kealen two more of the leaves.

Kaelen rubbed it over one wrist.

“Does it work?”

A fly landed on the back of his neck and he shuddered.

Blena looked at him.

“If you put it on all the right parts.”

By the time they reached a round pool where the water deepened and the reeds stopped growing, he smelled like a bruised hedge.

Frogs crowded the banks. Small ones clung to reeds. Larger ones sat half submerged beneath leaves, their throats swelling pale and round before each call.

Kaelen crouched to prepare for a capture and every frog within reach vanished before he was resting on his calves.

Blena remained standing beside him.

“You announced that.”

“I bent my knees.”

“Very loudly.”

She lowered herself slowly beside a patch of floating weed. Her hand entered the water well away from the nearest frog and moved beneath it.

A moment later she lifted a green, broad-backed creature into the evening light.

It sat in her palm with an expression of concern, eyes darting and its pouch fully inflated.

“That,” she said, “is a useful frog.”

Kaelen opened the basket.

The frog kicked once, struck the lid and landed on his sleeve.

He went rigid.

Blena caught it before it reached his collar.

“You will frighten it.”

“I shall try to make my distress of having a poisonous escapee running up my body less upsetting.”

They needed enough secretion to fill Mereth’s marked jar. According to the healer, that would require several dozen healthy adults, perhaps more if the frogs proved as uncooperative as people.

By the time Blena had caught nine, Kaelen had caught one brown frog. He did manage to pick up a floating root which had caused him to run to the nearest high land when it pulled up a stick he was convinced was a snake trying to eat the root.

He released the root with more force than necessary.

“There are paved streets in Thalorian Tide.”

Blena’s arm was buried to the elbow beneath a bank.

“Yes.”

“There are rooms with baths. Proper beds with sheets made of linen. Windows with screens that close.”

“Very impressive.”

“You can sit down without first establishing what lives beneath the chair.”

She brought out another frog.

“The only things waiting for you in Thalorian Tide are a prison cell and a court case.”

“A prison cell may have a dry floor.”

“You stole crystals. They might give you a damp one.”

“Borrowed.”

“Tell the court.”

He reached towards a frog resting on a root.

It sprang between his hands and disappeared.

Blena made a quiet clicking sound against her teeth.

Another frog answered from the reeds.

Kaelen turned.

“You can speak to them?”

“No. But I can make a noise they recognise.”

“What did you say?”

“Probably something disgraceful. They keep answering.”

For a while they worked without speaking. Sunset thinned above the reeds. Pale moths appeared, drifting over the pools like scraps of loosened blossom. Somewhere beyond sight, a large animal waded slowly through deeper water which Kaelen hoped wasn’t a water scaleback.

Kaelen found that if he remained still long enough, the marsh forgot to be concerned about him.

A frog surfaced beside his boot.

He lowered his hand carefully.

This time he caught it.

“Blena.”

She turned.

He held up the frog.

“Green,” he said. “Large and alive.”

“An excellent beginning.”

“It is my second.”

“The first was brown which is why it isn’t in the basket which makes this one your first..”

“It was still a frog.”

When he stepped towards her, his boot stayed behind.

His foot did not.

Cold mud folded over his socks.

He looked down.

Blena pressed her lips together.

“Do not,” he said.

“I haven’t.”

“You are preparing to.”

The marsh made a sucking noise around his trapped boot.

That ended her restraint.

Her laughter startled frogs from three separate banks.

Kaelen stood on one leg, holding his successful frog away from his body.

“I am delighted you feel at home.”

Still laughing, she braced a hand against a root and reached into the mud.

“Pass me the frog.”

He did.

“Now stop pulling straight up. You are making it worse.”

After some patient work and a noise Kaelen hoped never to hear from anything attached to his clothing, the boot emerged.

Blena emptied it.

Something dark clung to his ankle.

She stopped laughing.

“What?” he asked.

“Hold still.”

“What?”

“A leech.”

Kaelen looked down.

The creature was shorter than his little finger. This did nothing to improve the discovery.

“Remove it.”

“I intend to.”

“Now please.”

“Hold still, then.”

He caught her shoulder while she knelt. She worked a fingernail carefully beneath the leech’s mouth, freed it and dropped it into the water.

A thin red line ran down his ankle.

“It will probably have a salubrious effect if I don’t bleed to death.”

“Its a small amount.”

“I saw some healers use leeches at the academy to increase blood flow and circulation.”

Blena checked the other ankle.

“You should check under your knees, groin and armpits when we get back.”

He stared at her.

“Why would you say that?”

“Because they are the other places they like, lots of blood in those spots.”

She pulled her own collar aside, found a leech near her shoulder and removed it with the same mild annoyance she might have given a loose thread.

Kaelen watched her.

“Does anything here trouble you?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

She lifted the collecting basket.

“People who drop the frogs.”

• • •

They were still short when darkness settled.

The frogs were louder now, but the largest called from beyond a broad patch of trembling green.

Blena tested it with her pole.

The whole surface shivered.

Kaelen held out the basket.

“How many?”

“Thirty-one.”

“Mereth said several dozen.”

“She also gave us a line on a jar. We haven’t filled it yet.”

Across the floating mat, a deep call sounded beneath a fallen willow.

Blena looked towards it.

Kaelen knew that expression.

“No.”

“It is shallow beneath the willow.”

“Between us and the willow?”

She tested again.

The pole went down farther than either of them liked.

Blena moved along the edge instead, following roots beneath the water. Kaelen stayed close enough to hold the back of her belt while she leaned across a narrow gap.

“Do not let go,” she said.

“I had not planned to.”

“You sometimes revise plans.”

“Usually when the ground disappears.”

Her fingers closed around a root.

She shifted her weight, crossed and turned to help him.

For a moment he stood with one foot on each side, his legs gradually spreading as the mud softened.

Blena caught both his wrists.

“Towards me.”

“I am attempting that.”

“Stop trying to save the clean part of your trousers.”

“There is still a clean part?”

She pulled.

He arrived on his knees in the shallow water beneath the willow.

Mud climbed to his waist. Cold water entered places he had been defending since sunset and now he thought he definitely would be checking everywhere for leeches when he got back.

Above them, frogs began dropping from the low roots into the pool.

Kaelen looked at them.

Then he looked at the net still hanging unused from his pack.

“Wait.”

Blena had already reached for one.

He spread the net beneath the next overhanging root while she moved her hand slowly above it.

The frog jumped away from her.

Straight into the net.

They looked at one another.

“You drive them,” Kaelen said. “I catch them.”

“Finally. A scholarly contribution.”

They worked their way beneath the willow, shoulder to shoulder in the mud. Blena guided the frogs away from the roots. Kaelen held the net below their escape.

When the basket began shifting heavily against his hip, they stopped.

On the way back, Kaelen caved to his desire to retain as many power crystals as possible and took out a small blue crystal from his pouch. He thought of Blena, Alster, Drue, Tajan and Anderix and then he waved his hand at the wet swamp before them. The soil bubbled and water slid to the sides of a rising ground before them. The ground was still soft but a pathway of walkable mud made their return a much more pleasant experience. Even Blena was grateful for the improved trail and she slapped him on the back as she moved past him, “good call.”

He was most keen to get back to Mereth's hut and into dry leechless clothes.

• • •

Mereth met them at the landing with a lantern swinging on a stick above her head.

Kaelen handed Mereth his sodden outer clothes and stood beside the fire in his clinging linen smallclothes, trying very hard to appear as though nothing about the situation troubled him.

It was not convincing.

He pinched the fabric away from one leg and peered down into the gap.

Blena watched him for several moments. “Lose something?”

“No.”

“Then what are you hoping to find?”

“Nothing.”

“That is a great deal of searching for nothing.”

Kaelen turned his back to her and checked the other side.

Mereth returned carrying a folded cloth for drying. She took one look at him and held it out.

“If you give me those as well, I can rinse them and check the seams.”

Kaelen stared at her. “These?”

“The smallclothes you are attempting to crawl inside.”

Blena made a strangled sound behind him.

Mereth sighed. “I am a healer. I have treated boils, festering wounds, ruptures, bites and things lodged in Aethorian lungs. Whatever you possess beneath those clothes will not astonish me. Stop fussing.”

“I am not fussing.”

“You are inspecting yourself like a merchant who suspects he has been sold damaged fruit.”

Blena’s laughter escaped in a sharp burst.

Kaelen snatched the drying cloth and wrapped it around his waist. “I can check the rest myself.”

“Can you?” Mereth asked. “There are portions of your anatomy you cannot properly see without either a mirror or an alarming degree of flexibility.”

“I am satisfied.”

“You fell waist-deep into leech water.”

“I am less satisfied than I was before you said that.”

Mereth extended one hand toward the smallclothes. “Give them here. Do you want me to check anywhere else?”

“No.”

“You answered before I finished asking.”

“The answer was ready.”

Blena leaned against the wall, laughing openly now. “Surely this is no time for modesty, Kaelen. You heard her. She has seen everything.”

“I am delighted for her.”

“Most healers charge extra for such thorough service.”

“Blena.”

“What? I am concerned for your wellbeing.”

“You are enjoying my suffering.”

“I can do both.”

Still chuckling, Blena pushed a damp strand of hair behind her ear. Her smile vanished.

She touched the spot again, more carefully this time.

Mereth noticed. “What is it?”

Blena slowly drew her hand away. “There appears to be something attached behind my ear.”

Kaelen looked over his shoulder.

Mereth stepped closer, inspected the offending creature and reached for a small wooden implement. “Another leech.”

Blena went very still. “Behind my ear?”

“A young one.”

Blena’s eyes shifted toward Kaelen, then down toward the drying cloth wrapped around his waist.

Her amusement returned, though with considerably less confidence.

“On reflection,” she said, “you may wish to let the healer look you over.”

Kaelen tightened his grip on the towel. “Your concern continues to overwhelm me.”

Mereth removed the leech with one practised motion. “How you two managed to make it into adulthood I will never know. A creature no longer than my smallest finger has defeated you.”

“It chose a particularly treacherous battlefield,” Blena muttered.

Kaelen pointed toward the door. “In you go. I’ll be there in .01 time.”

“Gladly,” Blena said. “Although if she finds one, I expect a full report.”

“You will receive a funeral invitation.”

The leeches dealt with and saved for future brews, Mereth examined their catch.

“Very good.”

Blena leaned against a post.

“Please tell him. He caught most of the last ones.”

Mereth lifted a frog gently into the lamplight.

“Well done.”

Kaelen discovered that, after an evening in the marsh, sincere praise concerning a frog was something he was willing to accept.

They worked late.

Mereth showed them how to drag a flat wooden spoon over the frog’s back to collect the slippery coating without injuring the animals, then placed each frog in a clean holding enclosure to recover before release. Kaelen measured salts while Blena crushed leaves in a heavy mortar.

By the time the marked jar was full, the whole house smelled bitter and green.

On a shelf above the worktable stood another jar containing pale crystal dust.

Kaelen pointed with the measuring spoon.

“Does that go in?”

“No.”

Kaelen recalled, “Ressa found that malformed crystal slows the black growth.”

“So did I. Outside the body.” Mereth moved the jar farther from his elbow. “I have not established what it does inside one.”

Kaelen nodded.

“That is reassuringly precise.”

“I thought you might be happier with medical certainty than swamp conjecture.”

They stayed another day while the healer prepared and sealed the supply. The mineral salts left a fine white crust around the mixing bowls. Mereth portioned the paste into small glazed pots, marked the doses and divided them between two padded cases so the loss of one pack would not take everything.

Eighteen days for two people.

Kaelen counted twice.

Blena watched Mereth scrape the final bowl.

“Could you put honey in it?”

“I could.”

“Would that interfere with it?”

“It may make the bitterness more palatable but I am unsure what it would do for efficacy. You should take some now as it takes more than a day to start having an impact.”

The first dose was taken at the table.

Kaelen swallowed his with difficulty. “I think we should have added the honey.”

The flavour seemed to arrive in stages, each one correcting his hopeful belief that the previous stage had been the worst.

Blena held hers in her mouth.

Mereth watched.

“Swallow.”

Blena did.

Her eyes watered.

“No.”

“You have already swallowed it.”

“I object afterwards.”

Kaelen reached for water.

Blena seized his wrist, took the cup and drank first.

He waited until she gave it back.

“Remember not too much water!” Blena got out between swallows.

“I think eating a leech would have been preferable to that.”

“Would you like to explore that supposition?" She looked at him over the cup.

He decided not to pursue it.

Before they left, Mereth pressed the ledger flat and copied her instructions onto a piece of treated cloth.

“If you turn back,” she told them, “that is a useful result. Bring me your observations.”

“And if we reach the centre?” Kaelen asked.

“Bring me those too.”

Her hand remained on the cloth until he looked at her.

“Do not spend the journey home proving how long you can do without it.”

• • •

Thy Quest: A Recipe from the Swamp
Invent a disgusting swamp recipe that would make even Kaelen lose his appetite. Give your concoction a name, list at least five swamp ingredients with quantities, and write step-by-step instructions for preparing it. Describe its smell, texture and taste, and explain what useful or magical effect might persuade someone to swallow it. Use your imagination to create a fictional recipe worthy of Mereth’s hut.