Accidental Sorceress (Hardstorm Saga Book 2) by Dana Marton

Author:Dana Marton [Marton, Dana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dana Marton
Published: 2015-03-16T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

(The Herb Woman and the Soothsayer)

I woke before the children and tried to leave the room quietly. Graho shifted away from the door so I could open it.

“Where to?” he asked as he sat up.

“I must earn coin for my journey.” There. That should tell him that I was determined to remain my own person.

“Tera, I wish to—” He reached for my hand.

I quickly stepped through the doorway. “I best hurry.”

I swung by the privy, then hurried down to the camel yard, where the travelers were already drinking hot tea and eating breakfast. The men around the fires turned to me fully instead of watching me over their shoulders, narrow-eyed, as they had the day before. One who looked old enough to be a grandfather many times over rose from the nearest fire, then shuffled toward me.

When he reached me, his head dipped in a small bow, a hopeful expression in his rheumy eyes that were nearly closed under the many folds of his eyelids. “Makmin says you are a true healer.”

I gave the man an encouraging smile. “Where does it hurt?”

“My back.” He touched the lower quarter of his spine, and his face wrinkled into a look of pain.

I had him turn, then I probed the area, listening carefully for his quick moans and where he hissed.

“Can you help, mistress?” he asked when I finished.

“I will need a small jar of pig lard,” I told him, and he shuffled off with a nod to obtain it.

I had walked forward but a few steps when the next traveler stepped up to me, a young man with the thinnest lips I had ever seen, but eyes so large and dark, he resembled an overgrown owl, especially with his shaggy white sheepskin cape flaring out behind him like wings.

“I am Jano. Makmin say you help me.” He spoke the merchant tongue with difficulty, and ducked his head as if embarrassed, but lifted his pants leg, showing me the fist-size boil on his shin, the skin red and shiny.

“I will need fire,” I told him after a moment of inspection.

He gestured toward the fire he had just left, the dozen other men sitting around it, all wearing similar capes, eating small black sausages. They looked to be relatives or, at the very least, from the same tribe.

I pointed to a more secluded corner of the camel yard.

The young man called over a servant and sent him off to bring us some fire. I called after the servant, asking for water too and something to boil it in. While waiting for that, we walked over to the spot and sat down.

“How long?” I asked my patient.

He thought for a moment. “Eight days.”

“What happened?”

“Thorn bush.” Again, he looked embarrassed. “Do you think is it much ugly?”

I began to shrug—an abscess was an abscess—but he added, “I go bride claiming.”

Ah. “When will you see her?”

“Twelve day time,” he said miserably.

And I understood that he feared his bride might find him repulsive. “In twelve days’ time, you will be healed and dancing with your bride.

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