People like her? What was that supposed to mean? She would have asked, but the old woman had already wobbled off into the other room.
Brie turned her attention to the task at hand. She cleaned the black oozing secretion from Hall’s shoulder to reveal a deep, jagged opening underneath. The wound had swollen, puckering and tearing the opening, which had once been only a tiny slice of a cut.
“The wound looks to be badly infected,” she called out.
From the other room, the old woman’s mirthless cackle reached Brie’s ears.
“That’s no infection yer seeing there, lass, but pure evil Magic. The only Magic that can bring about the demise of one such as he.”
One such as he.
Another comment she’d have to ask Orabilis about when all of this was over. Their number was growing by the minute, as was Brie’s suspicion that Orabilis knew as much about Hall as she did about her.
The old woman returned, carrying a large mortar and pestle and a wicked-looking iron rasp. She tossed a couple of the peat staves into the little fire and sat down on the hearth to unwrap the jewels.
“No! You must keep them covered. Editha told us if we bared them, Fenrir would be able to see through them!”
“You’ve no cause to worry over Fenrir. Not even one such as he has power within the protection of the Rowans. We’re safe here.”
Brie tried to console herself with the old woman’s words and use them to put Torquil out of her mind. The only thing that mattered to her right now lay in the bed at her side, his face as pale as death.
Orabilis ground each of the jewels against the metal rasp, catching small bits of the stones in the mortar. Then she went back to the main room and returned with a cup of the herbs she’d been boiling. She added them to the mortar and mixed it all together into a thick paste.
Brie stroked her fingers over Hall’s stubbled cheek and sent up a quick prayer to the Seven that they might watch over him as he traveled through the middle world. Though he could never be hers, the thought of his death was more than she could stand.
“Can you save him?”
It was the one question she most feared asking. But now the words were out there, lying bare and naked in the air between them.
“I will do my best.”
It was not at all the reassurance she had hoped to hear.
“A shame it is you dinna recover the Elven Scrolls of Niflheim when you liberated the jewels. A peek into their wisdom would tell us exactly how to heal our good warrior.”
With a grunt, Orabilis pushed up from the floor and crossed to the bed, carrying a bowl filled with what looked like a mash of dark purple-green goo.
One arch of Orabilis’s bushy eyebrow, and Brie vacated the little stool next to the bed so that the crone could sit down. Orabilis slathered the paste in a thick layer over Hall’s wound and then bound his shoulder with a clean linen bandage.
“There,” she pronounced as she stood up.
“Now what do we do?” Brie asked, willing and ready for any action Orabilis demanded.
“Now we wait. Without the guidance of the scrolls, there’s nothing else we can do.”
Eighteen
OF ALL THEunpleasant activities Brie could imagine, none was more torturous than waiting.
Patience is a virtue,her father had often said. But both of them knew it wasn’t one ofhervirtues. Sitting, doing nothing, grated on her every nerve and brought out the worst in her attitude.
After a night of sitting helplessly at Hall’s side, waiting for any little sign of recovery, Brie was ready to snap.
There had to be some constructive way she could help. Something she could do that would be more helpful to Hall than simply sitting here worrying over him.
She needed a task to occupy her hands. Her mind worked better when her hands were busy. And now that she thought about it, she knew exactly what that task should be.
Hall’s pack lay in the corner where she’d put it. It took only a few minutes of snooping through his things to find what she sought.
