Ledda was tending her garden when she heard familiar voices calling her. She rose, a cluster of weeds in her hand, and stared across fields of barley and flax. Bello the Bald and his son were leading their hay cart down the lane that led to her cottage.
She waved to them and shaded her eyes, catching sight of the man in the cart. He was clinging desperately to the slats, obviously unable to sit upright, though the ride was not rough: A stranger.
Now she knew what it had meant to find the sprig of rowan on her great-grandmother's tree that morning, blooming despite the approach of autumn. She went inside, filled her basin, and washed her hands. She would need to perform a Touching.
She emerged as Bello and his son were setting down the yokes. They started to wipe the sweat from their brows, then sprang to action as Ledda cried out. Their passenger was falling off the open end of the cart. They caught him and lowered him to the packed earth.
Ledda had never seen a man display such pain. The stranger's lips were pulled back in a rictus, teeth bared. No sooner had the other men laid him out flat than he folded up, rolling onto his side. Drool stained the dirt.
He was a Roman. A soldier, judging by the armor and greaves. He was tall, with curly dark hair and hints of a muscular build, though he fit his garments poorly. Hollows pocked his cheeks and his movements spoke of bulk suddenly lost. His eyes contained a wounded-animal glassiness.
"Julia Ledicca?" the man croaked, peering up at her.
Bello answered. Ledda supposed he was saying, "Yes, this is she. The healer," but her command of Latin was meager at best. The stranger turned to her, his expression filled with pleading, his mouth opening and closing as if ready to pour out an epic if only he had the gift of her language.
"Bring him inside," she said. She held up the flap while the village men deposited the Roman on the pallet reserved for the ill. She brought her new patient a dipper of water, which he gulped down eagerly.
"The legion physicians don't know what to do for him," Bello explained. "He says it is the curse of the forest folk."
"Mother preserve us," Ledda whispered. Aloud, she added, "Tell him I'm going to lay hands upon him. He should lie as still as he can."
Ledda had heard tales that Roman soldiers shied away from the touches of wise women, or any woman at all save those they took to their beds, but the stranger complied meekly, gratefully. Ledda loosened his armor and let her palms roam. In less time than it would take to recite the healer's oath, she had located five areas where his flesh quivered unnaturally. They were hot, like wounds. Yet he had no fever. Elsewhere his skin was cool.
No snake-bite marks. No insect stings. No gathered pus beneath the skin. He had scars here and there and one knee was swollen, but the injuries were old and did not seem related to his main affliction. It was only at the five mysterious spots that his muscles did not loosen as she massaged them. On occasion the mere rubbing and manipulation involved in a Touching was enough to relieve symptoms. Not this time. She had hoped Bello's reference to the curse might be a figure of speech every sickness, some said, could be blamed on the fairy folk. But there was no doubt. This was indeed the product of elven magic.
She paused over his left ribs, holding her hands beside one of the loci of his agony. She stared and stared. As the details of her hut dimmed and the aura of the legionnaire revealed itself to her, she perceived a shape woven of the fabric of spirit: A knife.
Its bone hilt ornately carved, its flint blade sharper than steel, the weapon hovered above the ribs, point almost nicking the skin. As if eager to perform for Ledda, it plunged inward. The soldier screamed and clutched his side. Ledda jerked back, losing the Sight.
No visible cut appeared on the man's body. No blood flowed. But Ledda knew he was feeling the blade as if it physically existed.
The soldier gasped. Ledda guessed the phantom flint had withdrawn, leaving the slightly less agonizing discomfort of a fresh wound.
"How often do they stab you?" Ledda asked via Bello.
It varied. At least once a day for each of the five spots, usually just as he was beginning to gain control of the suffering, often when he had just managed to fall asleep. The dark rings beneath the soldier's eyes hinted at many nights when he had not managed to sleep at all.
Ledda rose and paced the room, rubbing her palms and fingers. A Touching often numbed her hands, but never more than this time. "He should stay here until tomorrow," Ledda told the two village men. To the farmer's son she added, "Go fetch my brother from the mill."
The youth departed, nodding respectfully. Ledda uncovered the embers of her cookfire and added two logs. She filled her tea kettle from the stream that cut across the corner of her main room the healer's houses of her people were always built over water and set it to heat.
Ledda sat beside the pallet again and indicated that Bello resume duty as translator. "Have him tell me his story."
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