Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [92]
“Why not?”
His voice went strangely soft. “Because there would be more dead. Dag and I figured, based on Wolf Ridge, to lose up to half the company in this. That’s how I expect to know, when…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “Obio Grayheron will take command. He’s good, even if he doesn’t have that edge that…ah, gods, I hate this helpless waiting.”
“You, too?” said Fawn, her eyes widening.
He nodded simply.
A knock sounded on the doorjamb, and a quiet voice. “Problems, Fairbolt?”
Fairbolt looked up in relief. “Hoharie! Thank you for stopping over. Come on in.”
The medicine maker entered, giving Fairbolt a vague wave and Fawn a curious look. Fawn had been introduced to her by Dag and shown the medicine tent, which to Fawn’s mind nearly qualified as a building, but they had barely spoken then. Hoharie was an indeterminate age to Fawn’s eyes, not as tall as most Lakewalker women. Her summer shift did not flatter a figure like a board, but the protuberant eyes in her bony face were shrewd and not unkind. Like Dag’s eyes, they shifted colors in the light, from silver-gilt in the sun to, now, a fine gray.
Fairbolt hastened to set her a chair by the map table, and moved boxes of pegs to free two more. Fawn directed an uncertain knee-dip at her and sat where Fairbolt pointed, just around the table’s corner.
“Tell your tale, Fawn,” said Fairbolt, settling on her other side.
Fawn gulped. “Sir. Ma’am.” Fighting an urge to gabble, Fawn repeated her story, her right hand kneading her left as she spoke. She finished, “Dar accused Dag of making malice magic, but I swear it isn’t so! It wasn’t Dag’s fault—I asked him to fix my cord. Dar puts it in the worst possible light on purpose, and it makes me so mad I could spit.”
Hoharie had listened to the spate with her head cocked, not interrupting. She said mildly, “Well, let’s have a look then, Fawn.”
At her encouraging nod, Fawn laid her left arm out on the table for Hoharie’s inspection. The medicine maker’s lips twisted thoughtfully as she gazed down at it. Her fingers were thin and dry and hardly seemed to press the skin, but Fawn’s arm twinged deep inside as they drifted along. Fairbolt watched closely, occasionally remembering to breathe. Hoharie sat back at last with a hard-to-read expression.
“Well. That’s a right powerful piece of groundwork for a patroller. You been hoarding talent over here, Fairbolt?”
Fairbolt scratched his head. “If it’s so, Dag’s been hoarding himself.”
“Did he mention that thing about the glass bowl and the ghost hand to you?”
Fairbolt’s eyebrows shot up. “No…?”
“Huh.”
“Is it”—Fawn swallowed—“what Dar said? Bad magic?”
Hoharie shook her head, not so much in negation as caution. “Now, mind you, I’ve never seen a malice’s mind-slave up close. I’ve just heard about them. Though I have dissected mud-men, and there’s a tale. This almost reminds me more of matching grounds for healing, truth to tell. Which is like a dance between two grounds that push on each other. As contrasted with a shaped or unshaped ground reinforcement, where the medicine maker actually gives ground away. Could be when a malice matches ground, it’s just so powerful it compels rather than dances, pushing the other right over. Though there is a disparity in this as well…I wouldn’t be able to tell how much unless I had Dag right here.”
Fawn sighed wistfully at the notion of having Dag right here, safe.
Fairbolt said in a somewhat choked voice, “Isn’t a hundred miles away a bit far for matching grounds, Hoharie? It’s usually done skin to skin, in my experience.”
“That’s where the almost comes in. This has both, mixed. Dag’s put a bit of worked—rather delicately worked—ground reinforcement into Fawn’s left arm and hand, which is what she feels dancing with his ground in the cord. It’s all very, um…impulsive.”
Perhaps taking in the confusion in Fawn’s face, Hoharie went on: “It’s like this, child. What you farmers call magic, Lakewalker or malice, it’s all just groundwork of some kind. A maker draws the ground he works with out of himself, and has to recover by