In the museum. In the voting hall. The museum’s statue was a much better likeness, she noted before a different thought overtook it.
Ask him! her internal voice shouted. Ask, before he goes and it is too late!
The words, forced past fear and awe, gasped out of the woman.
“My daughter!” she said. “She has a bad leg. Will you heal her?”
Rielle looked at Valhan. He held the woman’s gaze until she lowered her eyes. There would be a price, the woman knew. There was always a price.
“What can you offer in return?” The different language sounded strange coming from him. He spoke slowly. The woman’s mind automatically supplied words she expected he might use, and he chose those he needed.
“Anything!” She held her hands out palms upwards, but her confidence was waning as she realised she had nothing to offer. Nothing one such as he could ever want or need.
“A favour,” he said. “In the future.”
Rielle had not seen those words in the woman’s mind. Perhaps he’d drawn them from others nearby. The woman nodded in agreement. “I’ll do it. I, Semla, swear it.”
“Where is your daughter, Semla?”
“At my home.”
The route flashed through the woman’s mind. Valhan reached past Rielle and held out a hand. Semla stared at his hand in disbelief, then before she could lose courage she grabbed it. Fingers encircled Rielle’s arm and then the alley brightened. The woman’s eyes went round as they slid through the wall.
Bleached walls, doors and windows, people and animals swept past. Rielle watched for the reactions of the people they passed. Few saw the passing half-visible trio. Mostly children, she noted. Everyone else was too busy.
They stopped and returned to the world in a small room. In the centre was a brazier, a conical hood suspended above it funnelling smoke through the roof. A bed fitted snugly between three of the walls, a window and open door pierced the wall on the opposite end of the room. A child sat in the doorway, her back to them.
“Oerti,” Semla called.
The child twisted around and stared at them in astonishment, wondering how her mother and these strangers had slipped past her unnoticed. Had she fallen asleep? Then a spot of brightness appeared above the brazier and expanded to form a small, glowing ball. Mother and child gaped at the magical light. The child recovered first, her eyes moving from Valhan to Rielle. Sorcerers!
“Come here, Oerti,” Semla said.
The girl stood, grabbed a crutch leaning near the door and approached cautiously. Her right foot was twisted and smaller than her left.
“Who are they?” she whispered.
“A healer and…”–her mother glanced at Rielle–“his friend. Go lie on the bed.”
The girl obeyed, setting the crutch down on the bed beside her. She was frightened, but trusted her mother, who everyone said was sensible. It was her father who was the fool. Yet the way her mother looked at the man worried her–afraid and excited. Not much scared her mother.
Valhan moved to the bedside. The girl watched him with wide eyes, thinking she would hit him with the crutch if he did anything wrong to her, or her mother. His gaze was fixed somewhere inside her, moving slowly down to her leg. She winced at his scrutiny of the ugly, twisted thing that was her right foot.
Pain ripped through it with no warning. She gasped and sucked in a breath to yell, but as quickly as it had come, the pain vanished. Her mother had grabbed her hand and was murmuring reassurances. Oerti slowly relaxed. She could feel bones and more moving around in her leg. The sensation was disturbing, but it brought a flood of hope. Can this really be happening?
Rielle extracted herself from Oerti’s mind and looked with her own eyes at the girl’s leg. It was now almost straight, and had grown to the same size as the left. Impossible! But she could see it morphing and changing, defying her inability to imagine how such a thing could be possible. Memories of Valhan changing his appearance sprang to her mind–a trick that probably took less effort than this healing. And agelessness… It’s not something as visible and obvious as this, but somehow seeing this makes it easier to believe that Valhan, and Dahli, truly aren’t getting physically older.
She understood, then, that Valhan had been right not just about the unfairness of her marrying Baluka when she didn’t love him, but that she had needed to know exactly what she would have missed out on in doing so. What she could do.
Staying with the Travellers would have been unfair on me as well as Baluka. Baluka had believed it would be a waste for her not to realise her potential as a sorcerer. He was right. And he could not have taught me this.
She touched the little paintbrush pendant hanging from the chain around her neck. It had been a constant reminder of the Travellers. Each time she saw it she’d felt a pang of guilt or sadness, but she had continued to wear it because she did not want to forget the debt of kindness she owed to the family. Now she felt no guilt, only acceptance.