The Warrior's Path (3 page)

At dawn I went to the window and took the shutter down. For the first time since they brought her home, I saw her clearly. Her pallor frightened me. I sat down again beside her and touched her brow. I had thought to find her warm with fever, but her skin was cold to the touch and damp.

All night her sleep had been fitful. Now she seemed lost in a deeper sleep. Whether it was a healing sleep or the approach of death I couldn’t tell, but I had done all I knew how to do. I curled up at her feet and fell asleep.

The healer dipped her fingers into the bowl, pulled out a pinch of the spent herbs, and tasted them.

“You’ve done her no good by this,” she told me. “You may have given her a few more days of pain. That’s all.”

I deserved her reprimand, and I accepted it.

“Have you seen wounds like this before?” she asked me.

I shook my head.

“In a day or two it will be poisoned. The poison will kill her, and her death won’t be an easy one.”

The healer’s eyes held mine until she saw that I had understood her.

“She’s yours to care for now,” she said, and left the room.

Then I wondered if I’d done wrong. If I had been careless of my warrior’s pain, I had done her a far greater wrong than she had done to me. What I knew to be true was that I had wanted her to live, not for her own sake or because I cared for her, but so that I might have the satisfaction of her knowing that she owed her life to me.

My pride may have done more harm than good, and for that I was sorry, but I was still proud enough to resist my guilty feelings. If my warrior died, the healer was right and I was wrong, not only in her eyes and my own, but also in the eyes of the entire household. It was a shame I would not bring upon myself willingly, even if I did deserve it.

The healer had given her to me, so I began to do everything for her I could think of. I brewed her bloodwort tea to renew her blood and tea of dried comfrey root to mend her bones. I asked Sparrow to dig some fresh comfrey root and gather leaves of comfrey, sage, and shepherd’s purse. From the root I made a salve to treat her wound. The leaves I saved for poultices.

Day and night I stayed beside her. At night I lay across the bed at her feet and dozed, so that if she moved she would awaken me. Sparrow brought my meals to me. Sometimes she tried to persuade me to go to my own bed and rest. I refused. I believed that as long as I was there beside my warrior, death would not dare to cross the threshold, but that if I left her, she would leave me.

I had never tended anyone so ill. When she burned with fever, I bathed her with cool water and gave her a tea of willow bark. When she shook with chills, I lay beside her and warmed her with my body. I washed her wound with sage water and treated it with poultices to draw the poison out. I soaked bread in broth and fed her, though she would take only a mouthful at a time. I talked to her spirit. I named the colors of the world that I could see from the window. I reminded her of every good thing about living I could think of, so that she would be less willing to leave this world behind. Day after day went by, and my warrior didn’t die.

I lost track of time. Later Sparrow told me it had been nearly a fortnight. Then one morning, just before dawn, Maara woke me. She was restless, and I worried she would hurt herself, so I lay down beside her to hold her still. She turned away from me onto her side and fell into a deep sleep. She felt warm, but not feverish. Her breathing was quiet and easy. It was the first time I had held her without feeling that my arms around her were all that kept her spirit trapped within her body. I knew then that she would live. I thanked the Mother for my warrior’s life and followed her into sleep.

I woke to find her watching me. I had slept so soundly I hardly knew where I was. From the light pouring through the cracks in the shutter, I saw that it must already be midmorning.

I sat up and reached out to touch her brow to check for fever. She drew back and turned her face away from me. Instantly I was furious with her. All the bitterness I had ever felt toward her surged into my chest. For days I had contended with the Dark Mother for her life. I opened my mouth to tell her so and choked on my tears. As soon as I wiped them away, more fell. I didn’t understand myself where those tears came from.

Then Maara looked at me. She spoke so softly I almost didn’t hear her.

“Sorry,” she said.

The Lady Merin came into the room. When she saw that my warrior was asleep, she whispered, “The healer told me she would die.”

“She very nearly did,” I said.

“The healer says you saved her life.”

I shook my head. I would not take credit for it. Whatever I had done had been done for the wrong reasons, and there was no merit in it.

“She’s stronger than the healer thought,” I said. “It was her own doing, not mine.”

The Lady looked at me, surprised, but she left the room without saying anything more.

Maara was still too weak to do anything for herself. I fed her and bathed her and tended her wound, just as I had done before, but now she was aware of me. Every intimate thing I had to do for her she made more difficult. Her eyes never left my face. Her dark and solemn eyes followed me with questions, though she hardly said a word.

I no longer felt that I could lie with her in her bed, so I brought my bedding from the companions’ loft and laid it out on the floor. All of this she watched. She’d slept for days. Now she refused to sleep.

Sleeping potions are so powerful that I was afraid to give her one until she grew stronger. Instead I bathed her with warm water and rubbed her back. I coaxed her body into sleep, and while she slept, I lay down on my own bed and got what rest I could.

After three days I could no longer bear her eyes. They watched me with a frankness I was unused to. Sometimes I thought I read in them an accusation. It must have been my own guilty conscience. She couldn’t have known what I had done, and even if she did, why would she have faulted me for doing it? After all, she was alive. But I needed to set things right with her.

“Do you wonder why the healer hasn’t come to you?” I asked her.

“I think you are my healer,” she replied.

“No,” I said. “I’m not a healer. I learned what my mother could teach me. That’s all.”

She waited.

“The healer believed you would die,” I said. “She wanted to give you a painless death. I disobeyed her. I wanted you to live.”

“Why?”

I wish I had heard her then, but I felt the color of shame rise into my face, and I wanted to say what I had resolved to say and get it over with.

“I was angry with you,” I told her. “I wanted to
make
you live, so that you would have to respect me and so that I would have a claim on you.”

I couldn’t meet her eyes. I had once envisioned her telling me that she was sorry for the way she’d treated me. Now she would have reason to believe I was unworthy of her.

She said nothing for a time, while my own words echoed in my head. What I had said was true, but I was beginning to believe there was a deeper truth that I was missing.

“You have what you wanted,” she said at last. “I owe you a debt, and I will be careful to repay it.”

Her words slid over my skin like ice. “I do not have what I wanted! I wanted an honorable place here, and I have disgraced myself in my own eyes. Now I’m disgraced in your eyes. You owe me nothing. I want nothing from you.”

Her dark eyes captured mine and held them. At first she seemed troubled, hurt perhaps, and angry. Then she cocked her head at me and pursed her lips and knit her brow into a puzzled frown.

“I’m not sure I understand you,” she said. “Are you telling me you saved my life because you were angry with me?”

The idea struck me funny.

“Yes,” I said, trying not to smile. “Furious.”

“Furious?”

“Enraged,” I said.

“Oh dear.” And then she smiled.

There was a lightness in my spirit that I hadn’t felt since I came to Merin’s house, and I had my warrior to thank for it. As I lay in my bed that night, I thought about her smile. I wanted to fix her image in my mind’s eye, so that the next time she gave me one of her scowls, I would have at least one smile to remember. Her smile told me, not that she forgave me, but that she found nothing to forgive. No matter the reason, she may have been alive that night because of me. It was the first time I had allowed myself to think it. She may have been alive that night because I had cared for her, and whether or not I had cared for her when I undertook to save her life, I cared for her now. If anything I’d done had made the difference whether she lived or died, it was a gift I had given, not only to my warrior, but to myself.

The next day I went to see the healer. It was a cool day, and I found her sitting with several of the older women at a table in the kitchen. They were enjoying the heat from the ovens, sipping hot tea, and gossiping among themselves. When I approached the healer, they all fell silent.

“I need to speak with you,” I told her.

“Speak, then,” she replied.

The others started to get up, but I asked them to stay and hear me. They must know what I had done, and I wanted them to hear me try to make amends for it.

“I disobeyed you,” I said to the healer. “I was wrong to do that. Even though my warrior didn’t die, what I did was no less wrong.”

The healer looked around at the others.

“What do you think?” she asked them.

They stared back at her with blank faces.

“I think,” the healer said, and drummed her fingers on the table, “I think she should be wrong more often.”

One of the women chuckled at that, then another, and soon they were all laughing. Although I didn’t find it funny, I was glad to know I hadn’t made an enemy.

That evening the healer came to my warrior’s room and examined her.

“She’s healing well,” she said. She turned and met my eyes. “Now I think you understand what it is to take a life into your care.”

As she recovered, my warrior was more difficult to care for than she had been when she lay dying. She was so restless that she did herself no good. To keep her quiet and to help her pass the time, I told her stories. They were the tales I’d heard told beside our hearth fire every night of my childhood. To my amazement, she had never heard them.

“No one told stories much where I grew up,” she said.

“Where did you grow up?” I asked her. I couldn’t imagine a place where no one told stories.

“Far away from here,” she said.

In her voice I heard, not only sadness, but a warning, and I was afraid to ask her anything more.

“In ancient days, when only women were warriors — ”

“When was that?” she said.

“I don’t know. A long time ago, I suppose.”

“How long ago?”

“I have no idea. It’s not important. It’s just the way you start a story.”

“Why?”

“All stories begin like that.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. They just do.”

“Oh,” she said.

“In ancient days, when only women were warriors — ”

“Were there once only women warriors?” she said.

“I don’t know. I suppose so.”

“Why was that, I wonder?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It’s just the way you start a story.”

“Oh,” she said.

I waited.

“Are you going to tell the story?” she said.

“Are you ready to listen to it?”

She nodded.

“In ancient days, when only women were warriors…”

I paused and looked at her. She shut her mouth tight and said not a word.

“In ancient days, when only women were warriors, lived a woman who had two daughters. One was tall, with hair like spun gold and skin the color of milk and eyes bluer than the sky. She sang so sweetly that when they heard her voice, songbirds fell silent. She spun wool into the finest thread and dyed it all the colors of the rainbow. She wove it into the most lovely cloth ever made by woman’s hand.

“Her sister was as unlike her as it was possible to be. She was dark-haired, dark-eyed, brown-skinned. Though she was smaller than her sister, she was stronger. She had broad shoulders, and the muscles of her arms and legs were hard under the skin. She was a master of the bow. Her arrows could find a bird in flight or a deer in the thicket.”

“I’ve heard this one before,” Maara said.

She turned over in the bed so that she had her back to me.

“You have?” I asked her. “Where?”

“You must have told it already.”

“I didn’t.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” she said.

“What story was it?” asked Sparrow.

“The one about the two sisters,” I said.

“The fair and the dark?”

“Yes.”

“You’re an idiot,” she said.

Sparrow shook her head at me. I had no idea what I’d done.

“Describe the dark sister,” she said.

“Dark-haired, dark-eyed, brown-skinned. Strong. Broad-shouldered.”

“Does that sound like anyone you know?”

It did. It sounded like my warrior.

“She thought you were making fun of her,” Sparrow said.

“Why would she think I would do that?”

“She’s from a clan of the old ones.”

Sparrow’s explanation made no sense to me. “We’re descended from the old ones too.”

“True,” she said, “but the blood of many tribes runs in us.”

“My mother’s mother had a shield friend among the old ones.”

“There are few of them left now. Your warrior’s people are almost gone. The last tribes live far to the north. We hardly ever see them anymore. She’s the only one I’ve ever known to speak to.”

“But why would she think I would make fun of her?” I said. “My people have always honored the old ones. We tell stories about them, and when a child is born with midnight eyes, we give her one of the ancient names, because she must be one of our first mothers come back to us.”

“Those traditions are dying here,” said Sparrow. “More and more they give the dark ones back.”

I had heard that expression only once before, and when I asked what it meant, I was told that some tribes take unwanted children and abandon them in the wilderness, to die of cold or hunger or to be taken by wolves. I couldn’t imagine such a thing.