Magic's Price

Sometimes you could hear him screaming when the wind was right. Master Dark had decided to recreate a legend, about a demigod whose eyes were torn out, and whose flesh was food for the birds by day and regrew every night. . . .

Not even Tan ate crewlie-pie after that, though the carrion-birds grew sleek and fat and prospered as never before.

No, Damen did not want Master Dark to be unhappy. Not ever.

Old Man Brodie bent over and ran his hands along the roan colt's off foreleg. He let his Healing senses extend - carefully - into the area of the break, just below the knee.

And let the energy flow.

A few moments later, he checked his progress. Bone callus; good. And under if ... hmm . . . knitting nicely. No more running about creekbeds for you, my lad; I'll bet you learned your lesson this time.

He withdrew - as carefully as his meager skills would allow him to. The horse shuddered and champed at the unexplainable twinge in its leg, sidled away from the old man, then calmed. Ach ... too rough on leaving. He regretted his lack of polish every day of his life since he'd failed as a Healer, the way he'd barely get a job done, never completely or with anything approaching style.

And never without causing as much pain to his patient as he was trying to cure-pain which he shared, and pain which he could, after several years of it, bear no longer.

His teachers had told him that he was his own worst enemy, that his own fear of the pain was what made it worse and made him clumsy. He was willing to grant that, but knowing intellectually what the problem was and doing something about it proved to be two different matters.

And that hurt, too.

Finally he just gave up; turned in his Greens and walked north until the road ran out. Here, where no one knew of his failure and his shame, he set himself up as an animal Healer, making a great show of the use of poultices and drenches, purges and doses, to cover the fact that he was using his Gift. His greatest fear had been that someday, someone would discover his deception, and uncover what he had been.

He stood up, cursing his aching back; and the colt, with the ready forgiveness of animals, sidled up to him and nibbled his sleeve. Brodie's breath steamed, illuminated by the wan light from the cracked lantern suspended from the beam over his head. He was glad the farmer had brought the colt into the barn; it would have been hellish working on a break kneeling in the snow. “That'll do him, Geof,” Brodie said, slinging the bag that held his payment-a fat, smoke-cured ham-over his shoulder. The farmer nodded brusquely, doing his best to mask his relief at not having to put down a valuable animal. “He won't be any good for races, and I'd keep him in the barn over winter if I was you, but he'll be pulling the plow like his dam come spring, and a bad foreleg isn't going to give him trouble at stud.”

The colt sniffed at the straw at his feet.

“Thankee, Brodie,” Geof Larimar said, abandoning his pretense at calm. “When I found 'im, allus I could think of was that 'is dam's over twenty, an' what was I gonna do come spring if she failed on me? I 'predate your comin' out in th' middle of th' night an' all.”

“I appreciate the ham -” Brodie replied, scratching the colt's ears, “and I'd rather you called me when the injuries are fresh, it's easier to treat 'em that way.”

“I coulda swore that leg was broke, though,” Geof went on inexorably, and Brodie went cold all over. “He couldn't put a hair worth o' weight on it -”

“Bad light and being hailed out of bed are enough to fool any man,” Brodie interrupted. “Here - feel the swelling?” he guided the farmer's hand to the area he'd just treated, still swollen and hot to the touch from the increased blood flow he'd forced there. “Dislocation, and a hell of a lot easier to put back in when it's just happened than if he'd had it stiffen overnight.”

“Ah,” the farmer said, nodding sagely. “That'd be why 'e couldn't put weight on it.”

“Exactly.” Brodie relaxed; once again he'd managed to keep someone off the track. He yawned hugely. “Well, I'd best be on my way. Could stand a bit more sleep.”

Geof showed him out and walked with him as far as the gate. From there Brodie took the lonely little path through the creek-bottom to his isolated hut.

Not isolated enough, he brooded. That Dark bastard managed to find me. . . .

For he hadn't been able to keep his secret from everyone. Three years ago, a handsome young man had come strolling up to his very door and proceeded to tell him, with an amused expression, everything he didn't want anyone to know. Then informed him that he would make all this public - unless Brodie agreed to “do him a favor now and again.”