Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [30]
Dag gave another brief headshake. “No. Older trouble. The boy’s carrying a nasty monster of a tapeworm, inside him there.”
Fawn recoiled, making an appalled face. “Eew!”
Dag had dealt with mosquitoes, bedbugs, and lice, but the closest thing to an internal parasite he’d routed routinely was chiggers. All could be repelled with mere persuasion, or an even simpler bounce. They were nothing like this. “It’s got quite a grip in there.” He eyed Hod. “You, boy, have you been having crampy bellyaches?”
Hod nodded fearfully, then looked around as if afraid to have admitted anything. Tanner and Mape had wandered near and stood watching and listening.
“Yeah?” said Dag. “And bleeding? You bleed when you crap, sometimes?”
Another reluctant nod.
“Ever tell anyone?”
Hod shook his head more vigorously.
“Why not?”
A long silence. “Dunno.”
“Scared?” Dag asked more gently.
Reluctant pause. Nod. And a whisper, “Who’d I tell, anyways?”
Dag’s brows twitched up. “Hungry all the time even with plenty of food to eat, weak and tired, bleeding…y’know, it doesn’t take a Lakewalker medicine maker to diagnose a tapeworm. It just takes someone noticin’.”
“Not shiftless,” said Fawn. “Starving.”
Tanner looked a bit sick, and Mape, curiously, looked even sicker.
Dag’s arm circled again. “From the signs, I’d guess he’s been feeding this pet for a year or more. How long have you been feeling poorly, Hod?”
Hod shrugged. “I always feel poorly, but usually it’s my nose. Belly’s been aching off and on since this time last year, I guess.”
“Uh-huh,” said Dag.
“Can you get rid of it?” asked Fawn. “Oh, please! It’s so horrid!”
“Maybe. Give me a minute to think.”
Ground-ripping the vile thing was right out. It was much larger than any mosquito, and besides just the idea of taking in tapeworm-ground was revolting, even if his own ground would convert it eventually. Dag essayed a trifle of persuasion, to no effect; the worm was not normally mobile. Besides, you wouldn’t just want it out; you’d want it safely dead, to keep it from spreading.
So if smoothing and reinforcing disrupted ground caused flesh to heal, disrupting ground might…? The blighted thing was large compared to its constricted intestinal world, but in absolute terms, small. Just a tiny ground disruption. Squeeze it, roll it, twist it—turn it inside out—there. He felt the head of the creature pop, and a spurt of blood from its anchorage as it tore away. He pinched off the little vessels in Hod’s gut, aiding the wound to clot. Then recaptured the thin worm-body and went right down the line to destroy each segment. In a weird way, it felt a bit like spinning thread. With his ground-hand, inside someone else’s body…I don’t think I want to think about what I’m doing, here. But the worm was dying, and he managed to keep its roiling, writhing ground from sticking to his own.
Hod made a wary noise, and his hands twitched; Fawn caught one, to keep it at his side, and gave him a big happy reassuring smile. Whit bit his lip, possibly on a bark of laughter, but Hod offered a confused half-smile to Fawn in return, as who could help doing so? And made no further move to fight off Dag.
“Done,” Dag whispered at last, and sat up, folding his left arm inside his right. His exhausted ground projection petered out, as if his ghost hand were evaporating into mist, into nothing. Absent gods, I feel sick. His groundsense range seemed down to ten paces, or maybe ten inches. But at least he hadn’t groundlocked himself to the blighted worm. Count your blessings. One…
Next time, he would hold out for a medicine shop and some simple dose of vermifuge, a course of treatment he suspected even a Lakewalker medicine maker would prefer. Dag had a vague notion that senior makers saved their costly groundsetting skills for serious dangers, like tumors. More than ever, he regretted turning down Hoharie’s offer of real maker’s training; then he’d know what to do, instead of having to blunder around by guess. But Hoharie’d had no use for his farmer bride. Blood over the dam.
Tanner and Whit settled Hod for the night.