The Sickly Child
A Tale of the Third Lichaf
Of the Life of Eudo the Wanderer
Torches pierced the night, bobbing and shifting in the hands of their owners. The fires made a thin, shaky line in the distance. It was clearly a search party, though not a professional one. I descended from my perch in a tree and masked the various signs of my presence. I weighed the odds of discovery and decided to return to the tree branch. It was a leafy tree, as were all the others at this time of year, and if the searchers passed under me they would later confirm that I had never been here, that the rumors must have been false. I’ve always found it useful to disprove truthful rumors of my presence.
In time, three torches approached me; the rest of the line was spread thin across the forest. I could see for myself that the searchers were no soldiers. They were tired and uncoordinated, and wore simple clothing. They spent most of their effort looking at the ground, but I was confident they would not find my tracks. I watched in silence as they approached my tree without the slightest suspicion. That would have been the end of it, except for what I heard next.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Keep at it.”
“What about the western woods, I still say-”
“There’s no welek there.”
“There might be-”
“I told you before, there-”
“Feru, hey!”
“Its barleysnatch you oaf!
“No, no this one is different…”
They were moving south of the tree now.
“See how it’s sortof curled on the sides here?”
One torch approached another.
“It’s barleysnatch.”
“Are you sure? I thought for sure it was-”
“For the seventh time now, it’s barleysnatch! Welek is not barleysnatch. And if you’d ever seen welek before in your life, you’d know the difference!”
Clearly I had been mistaken; they weren’t looking for me but for a plant: welek, a rare shrub used in medicine. My face grew darker as I realized the implications.
“We should turn around.”
“We haven’t found it yet.”
“Who knows if we will find it? Let’s go back and get some sleep. We’ll search the western woods tomorrow.”
“It’s not in the western woods!”
“Fine, the southern woods, we’ll search them tomorrow.”
“There’s no time!”
I heard the urgency in his voice. I knew that someone was ill back at the village. I also knew that it was a poor village, because of the clothing of the men and because apparently they were forced to forage for welek rather than purchase it. The forest was massive and there weren’t enough searchers; their failure was almost certain.
I descended quietly from the tree. The three men were still arguing when I spoke.
“I can help.”
All three of them spun around in shock. One of them fell over and nearly dropped his torch. I quickly cut them off.
“Don’t shout. No one would hear you anyway.”
This wasn’t necessarily true; the other small search parties I had seen might have been within shouting distance. But the men were shocked enough to take my word, at least for the moment. The oldest was a man of forty with a thick black beard.
“Who are you?”
“I am a Wanderer.”
“You are a Derelict!”
“Nevertheless, I can help.”
“Stay away from me!” he said with a shaking voice, and they all began walking backward.
I spoke in a sharp, authoritative tone. “Feru, you must listen.”
He stopped. Of course I had heard his name via eavesdropping, but Feru was too shocked to think clearly. He surmised that I had used some dark magic to divine his name, and the fear of that magic kept him obedient to my command. At least, that’s what I intended. I spoke again.
“I can help you. You must tell me who is sick.”
Feru said nothing for a moment, but another man spoke up.
“The Derick’s child!”
“What are the symptoms?”
“Fever, and her eyes…”
He meant that the whites of her eyes had acquired a tint. “What color are the eyes, red or yellow?
Feru spoke again. “Yellow.”
“Are you sure?”
He paused. “Yes.”
That was all I needed to know. There were two types of porrius, and they required different varieties of welek to cure.
“When did it start?”
“Yesterday.”
“Then you have three days at the most. Keep the child warm and give her plenty of water. I will return with the welek.”
I stepped forward and issued a warning. “Do not betray my kindness.”
I left, fading quickly into the darkness. Over the next hour I changed directions frequently and masked my trail, before finally resting in another tree. I wondered what the men were thinking.
I rose early the next morning and moved quickly the rest of the day. I followed the river south until the rapids and stopped only a short while to rest and eat. By nightfall I had found the welek, as I knew I would. (I would have died years ago if I had not made a habit of memorizing the locations of medicinal plants, especially those which are deep in the wilderness and thus unknown to others.) I slept by the welek, and in the morning I cut a few sprigs of it. In my mind I pictured the path of the torches the night before, and reasoned out the location of the village. I began my journey back.
___________
That evening, the villagers waited nervously for me to appear. The sorcerer had only arrived an hour ago, hurrying as fast as he could from the post at Mara Bei. He kept his staff at the ready, and kept his profile in the shadows. He had ordered the villagers to stand all around, trying to act normal but surreptitiously watching the forest.
There was a brief rustle in the darkness, and the man who heard it froze with fear, trying not to raise suspicion and he slowly turned his heard towards the sound. It was Feru, the bearded man I had met before. For a time he scanned the darkness and found nothing, but then there was a small floating light…
“HE’S HERE! HERE! HERE!” He screamed and jumped out of the way. The sorcerer sprinted from around a hut and fired a great blast of fire from his staff towards the spot where Feru pointed. But of course, I wasn’t there. I hadn’t been in the forest for quite some time. I had waited silently on the roof of a hut, watching them all from above. And as the sorcerer fired his weapon into the wilderness, I was already descending upon his head.
We struck the ground and I was instantly bleeding, but he had it worse. My first target was the staff, of course. I sunk my teeth into his wrist and wrenched the weapon away with my hand, tossing it aside. He tried to kick me off but I punched him into the dirt and began choking him. He clawed and struggled, but after a few moments he began to go limp. I heard someone approach from behind. I reached into my pouch and spun to see Feru with a knife. But he stopped when he saw what I held in my hand. It was welek, just as I had promised.
“Can you prepare the medicine?” I asked. He stared in silence for a moment, until a woman cried out “I can!” and took the welek from me.
I returned my attention to the limp sorcerer, putting my hand by his mouth. He was still breathing. Good.
I stood up. “Take care of the sorcerer. When he wakes up, tell him I was wounded and ran off. Don’t mention the welek.”
Feru dropped his knife. “Sir…”
“My name is Eudo.”
I walked towards the edge of the forest, but turned and spoke one last remark before I departed.
“I don’t blame you for not trusting me. I didn’t trust you either.”
