The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

then, as well as a mind-dweller. Like my mother.” Hartstongue stops abruptly, already regretting the last few words. Those words give Isabella a point of contact with him, which may prove useful to Gelahn in the future.
    “Your mother was a wisewoman?” Isabella looks up at the scribe, pausing for a moment in her task. Of course, she already knows the man’s history, but speaking it aloud will give him pain.
    “Yes. I think so,” Hartstongue replies, “although it was never talked about. She… she died when I was very young.”
    “But you remember her?”
    “Yes. I remember the summer afternoons when she would gather herbs and leaves for oil. I used to watch her too, as she worked. While my father was in the fields, she would sit in the garden, humming, as she made her potions. I can never quite remember the tune she used to sing, but occasionally, every now and again, I think I can hear snatches of it.”
    “And what did she make?”
    The scribe closes his eyes as Isabella mutters a blessing—of sorts—over her efforts and begins layering the leaves across each other to make a poultice. As, still chanting, she soothes the mixture over his legs, she can tell he is remembering. So much so, that he does not realise that the words she sings are ones to make the bad memories remain.
    “My mother made salves for people who were sick,” Hartstongue says, his voice drifting like smoke away from them. “Neighbours or travellers, mostly. They would come at night or early in the morning and ask her for help. My father didn’t like it. I think he was afraid. But he never tried to stop her. She would make whatever was needed, and then take it in a basket of fruit or honey cakes to them. In return, they would give her small gifts—a crab-apple tree for our garden, a chicken or two, mead for my father. It all seemed very safe, very familiar, looking back. Until, of course, the time when she… she...”
    Opening his eyes again, the scribe shakes his head and says no more. Isabella doesn’t pursue the matter. The magic is nearly done. Instead, she asks him something else, which may bring him further pain.
    “Was it your mother who taught you your letters?”

    Simon
    “Yes.” As Simon spoke, he remembered for the first time that in the rescue of the boy he had abandoned his precious writing tools in his dwelling. Other things had driven the need for them from him. They had been a gift from his mother, all he had left of her now. The bile rose into his mouth like an accusation, but he swallowed it down. He would have to carve his own tools if he wanted to write again, or teach the boy, should he be given the opportunity to do so.
    Isabella’s hands on Simon were firm, efficient, but she said no more. Instead, she finished salving the cuts on his legs and began to murmur another incantation over them. He could hear her words not only out loud but also in a faint echo in his mind.
    At first Simon felt nothing. Then a sensation of warmth began to move over his feet and across his ankles, as if rising from the earth itself. In fact, he glanced down, expecting to see fire, but nothing was there apart from grass, tree roots and Isabella’s fair hair. The heat rose through his legs, making his skin tinkle and itch so he gasped, causing Isabella to glance up. He might have been wrong, but he thought she sneered.
    “It’s all right,” she said, her expression showing nothing resembling the sneer he must have imagined. “This magic can do no harm.”
    A few moments later and she sat back, as if satisfied. “There. It is done. As my brother wishes.”
    Hardly believing what she was telling him, Simon ran his hand over where he expected scars to be and, instead of the tenderness of newly healed wounds, found only almost smooth skin. In the approaching light of the day, he saw that the scars, such as they were, were thin and faint. For a moment however, one glowed an angry red before fading again.
    “What?” he blurted out. “How did you…?”
    She shook her head and made no reply. Instead, she knelt before Simon and took hold of his face. Her closeness blocked out Simon’s view of anything else, and he was aware only of the freshness of her skin, the faint scent of lemons from the salve she’d made and the breadth of her forehead.
    While she studied him, Simon waited, not daring to breathe, until finally she let go and moved back. His breath came then as the coolness of water to a thirsty man. It struck him