Owlknight

you know of a way to keep that knowledge locked up until the person is ready for it?” she asked.

He pondered her question, giving it full attention; she couldn’t see his face clearly, but she sensed he was concentrating, trying to remember something. “I think it can be done,” he said finally. “You’d have to be awfully good, though. I - don’t think I could do something like that. Maybe an Adept could.”

She grimaced; disappointed, but not surprised. “I’ll see if their Shaman knows of something that would work. You never know.”

“I might as well get up, too,” he said, levering himself up out of bed beside her, his long hair strung across his face in tangles. “There’s a lot to get done. I think that we’d better stay here until the sick are healed, so we can have Snow Fox’s full support when it’s time to move on. It can only help.” He sounded as wistful as she was, though. “Sometimes I wonder if the only time we’ll ever get to be lazy is if we get sick ourselves.”

“Don’t even think that,” she chided, and reached for her clothing, handing him his. “We can’t afford to be sick.”

They both got dressed and Keisha pushed aside the partition blanket, stepping out into the central room. The Shaman’s wife hurried to greet them, handing them bowls of porridge made with crushed nuts and sweetened with honey. It was very good, and a nice change from the breakfasts of cold meat they’d been having.

They were the first ones awake from their group, although some stirring and muttering indicated that the rest weren’t too far behind them in getting up. Keisha finished her breakfast quickly and got her rain cloak, heading out to find the Shaman and begin the morning’s treatments.

The Shaman was waiting for her at the house holding all the sick, and before she and his apprentice began work, he made a point of offering her a second breakfast, this time of a kind of bread or cake made of the same crushed nut mixture. She was not at all averse to having more to eat, knowing that she would need all the energy she could get.

As they ate, the Shaman introduced his apprentice as Lother. Henkeir’s wife made all the meals for the sick isolated here in this house, and had sent extra for Keisha, her husband, and his pupil.

“Your wife is extremely accommodating,” Keisha said dryly, thinking how much work a woman of the tribes did just to keep her own family fed, clothed, and cared for - never mind adding on the care of a dozen sick people.

“My wife tells me just how accommodating she is on a regular basis,” he replied, just as dryly. “But I agree with her, even when she is not nearby to hear it.”

Keisha covered her mouth with one hand, stifling her giggles; young Lother laughed outrignt, and Henkeir grinned behind his beard.

“I think that this may be the case with all worthy spouses,” Henkeir told them. “Perhaps they fear that if they are too silent, we will come to take them for granted.” He put aside his cup of hot herb drink and stood up. “Are you ready for the morning’s work?”

“More than ready,” she told him, and the three of them approached the first patient of the day together.

After rest - and a noon meal that she ate so fast she didn’t even taste it - Keisha went out in search of the dyheli. She was altogether gratified to learn from the Shaman that the dyheli and Karles had been housed in the communal storage house, rather than forced to spend the rainy night and day out in the weather.

The children, who shed the water like so many ducklings and evidently considered this to be balmy weather, were making a great game of going out and tearing up armloads of grass to feed to the four-legged guests. She spotted a group of them running into the storage house, shrieking with laughter, so laden with long, wet bundles of grass that they looked like so many little walking haystacks. She followed them, and soon discovered why the sport of feeding the dyheli was so popular.

The dyheli were earning their dinner by taking turns telling stories.

Of course, when a dyheli “told” a story, it appeared in the “listener’s” head, complete with pictures, sounds, and smells. The children were absolutely enraptured. This was better entertainment than anything they’d ever encountered before.

It was not yet Neta’s turn to tell a story, so Keisha was able to take her aside and quiz her on the possibility of transferring knowledge rather than language.

Neta considered the question, then diffidently asked Keisha for free access to her mind. Keisha sat down on a pile of furs and obliged - sitting, in case this turned out to cause the kind of reaction that a language transfer did, and she passed out cold.

She didn’t drop over, although Neta’s explorations left her with the oddest feeling, as if her mind was a box whose contents were being meticulously turned over and examined, one bit at a time. It felt strangely like the mountain sickness, crossed with being intoxicated on very bad wine, and then being flattened thoroughly with a rolling pin but not minding it at .all.