Chapter Nineteen Arctic Healing
Nineteen
Arctic Healing
“I want to look at your wound,” said Tilda Vasara.
They were in Malcolm’s chamber again, and the witch had just arrived from a long private discussion with Queen Shahrnavāz, which he was eager to hear about.
It was not exactly at the forefront of his mind, though: he had just put down the lodestone, and the last words that Lyra had written had vanished from the stone, but not from his thoughts.
Night had enveloped the mountain, and the wind was still wild.
The heavy curtains stirred in the drafts; the lamplight flared and flickered; the fire in the alcove burned steadily, but did little to warm the room; and Pan, who was normally indifferent to the temperature, sat on the table with a silk shawl around him.
“Why?” said Malcolm, rather stupidly, as he realized at once.
Tilda Vasara said, “Because I want to see if I can cure it, of course. Show me now.”
He stood up stiffly and unbuckled his belt.
The bullet fired by the nurse had hit him in the hip, chipping the bone and lodging painfully in the muscle.
When he stayed so briefly at the villa with the orange tree, the Embassy had sent a doctor to look at him, but all he’d done was bandage the wound and give him some painkillers.
It was hurting more and more, and was probably infected; Malcolm didn’t like to examine it, but he knew that someone should.
“Go on,” said Pan. “Don’t be silly.”
Standing by the table, he lowered his trousers and lifted the edge of his shirt. Tilda Vasara moved the oil lamp closer and unfastened the bandage, crouching to see the damage.
She touched the flesh around the wound, which was swollen and red. Malcolm caught his breath.
“Bad” was all she said. “Need to cut it out.”
“Can you do that?”
“Yes. Can you bear it?”
“I’ll have to.”
“Yes, you will. I need a bowl of water.”
“I’ll call Darius,” said Pan, and jumped down from the table. “Hot water?”
“Makes no difference to me, but it might to him,” said Tilda Vasara.
Pan leapt up and clung to the bellpull that was their way of summoning the servant. The bell jangled, and a few seconds later Darius came in from the corridor, a little rumpled from the pile of blankets where he slept.
“Darius, we need a bowl of hot water,” Malcolm said to him, and added to the witch, “Anything else?”
“I have everything I need.”
Darius bowed and left.
“What are you going to do?” Pan asked her.
“There is something in his flesh that should not be there, so I’m going to cut it out. Then I shall clean the wound with bloodmoss.”
She was unfastening a small pouch at her waist. Malcolm watched as she took out a small iron knife with a wooden handle, its blade as long as his forefinger, and a bundle of dried herbs tied with string.
“Bloodmoss?” he said. “What is that?”
“You would say antiseptic, analgesic. Other things too. Lie down, please.”
Malcolm lay on the pile of furs, on his left side so that the wound was uppermost. It felt hot, even in the cold air.
“They give you any medicine for this?” she said.
“Some pills to subdue the pain.”
“Any good?”
“Not much.”
“Bloodmoss will work.”
The door opened, and Darius came in with a ceramic bowl.
Tilda Vasara indicated that he should put it on the floor beside her, and he did so, looking wide-eyed at Malcolm’s wound as he left.
The witch moved the lamp to the edge of the table so that it shone on his leg, and sat cross-legged to unfasten the string around the herbs before separating out three or four stems and a dusty bundle of dried moss.
Then she said, “Take out your belt.”
Malcolm removed the leather belt from his trousers, thinking that she was going to use it as a tourniquet, but she took it and flexed it this way and that before folding it in half and then in half again. Then she handed it back.
“What’s this for?”
“You bite it. Stop you squawking.”
“I see.”
Pan, watching closely, said, “Is there anything I can do?”
“Just keep the lamp good. The wick needs to come up a little.”
Without fingers and hands, Pan had to duck under the glass shade and grasp the knob in his teeth.
It was extremely hot, and he knew that if he flinched or moved carelessly and knocked the lamp over, it could set fire to the whole room.
He managed to turn up the wick, and withdrew with what he thought was the smell of his own fur burning.
“That’s better,” said the witch.
She took the little knife. Malcolm watched with his lifelong curiosity about tools, and said, “Can I see that?”
She handed it to him, and he turned it around, feeling the weight of it, testing the edge against his thumbnail.
“Sharp,” he said.
“Not enough yet.”
She took it back and rose to her feet before moving to the windowsill, feeling along the stone for a patch that was smoother than the rest. She spat on the blade and sharpened it on the stone, moving it as if she was slicing a layer of atoms off the surface, testing the edge till she was satisfied.
“Now we make it hot,” she said. “That fire—where does it come from?”
The fire in the alcove was burning steadily, as it always did.
“From inside the mountain,” he said.
“Earth fire. Good. All the conveniences.”
She held the knife blade in the flame, turning it and twisting it until it began to glow. Malcolm could smell the heated iron, and Pan crouched tightly at his side, terrified for him, dreading the prospect of the next minute, but not turning away, because he knew that Lyra wouldn’t.
“Belt,” said the witch.
Malcolm lay back and put the folded end of the belt between his teeth, and bit hard.
“Sisu,” she said as she sat, and leaned forward to make the first cut.
Malcolm’s entire spine flexed upwards as his skull slammed back against the fur-covered floor. He felt a keening in his own throat, and smelled his skin and muscle burning, and heard the sizzle as the hairs on his leg crisped and charred.
“Good. Another cut coming.”
The second time was worse. She seemed to be digging deeper, or cutting further, and twisting and wrenching, or something, and he heard as well as felt it when the knife scraped bone.
“Worst coming now,” she said.
He could barely hear her. There was a drumming of blood in his ears, and his teeth were gripping the belt so hard that his jaw was nearly cracking.
“Sisu,” she said again, and the knife twisted deeper, and then something happened in his hip, and a fierce guttural bear grunt forced its way out of his throat as a sharp, bright clink somewhere outside him told of the bullet falling against the bowl.
Malcolm didn’t know where his hands were, except that the nails were gouging at the palms, but he felt Pan licking one hand, and didn’t know which. His senses were scrambled in a kaleidoscopic synesthesia, all shot through with blazing blood-red pain.
The witch’s hand gently removed the belt from his mouth, and he felt that his teeth had embedded themselves in the tough hide, reluctant to let it go.
He breathed deeply and quickly. Tilda Vasara was doing something else now; he heard her hands moving in the bowl of water, squeezing water out of a cloth, stirring the liquid, raising water in a cupped hand and letting it fall back.
“Daemon,” she said. “Bring me that silk from the table.”
Malcolm dimly saw Pan spring up off the floor, snatch the shawl in his teeth, and dive down again, the silk flowing through the air behind him.
“Lay it flat beside him.”
Pan moved again. Malcolm felt something touch his wound and nearly flinched, but held himself still. Every nerve seemed open to the air, which played on the flesh like a blowlamp.
“What are you doing?” he managed to say.
“Making a poultice of bloodmoss. It will penetrate to every part of the wound and kill the infection and soothe the pain. You can’t believe it now, but it will. Just keep still.”
Liquid fell onto the wound, scalding, acid, lacerating. He forced himself to hold still and focused on the calm voice in which she spoke.
“More coming,” she said.
This time he was used to it, or he was expecting it, or it was cooler.
“What is bloodmoss?” he said.
“It grows in the tundra. I don’t know what other people call it, but that’s our name for it: krovlishaynik. Bloodmoss. Maybe not moss exactly, but close enough. We know it when we see it. Daemon, is there another piece of silk in that chest?”
Malcolm realized that his eyes were closed. He opened them and blinked hard, to see Pan springing up and into the cedar chest, and then out again with a silken cloth in his teeth. He propped himself up on an elbow and watched as Tilda Vasara took the cloth and wadded it into a small bundle.
“What are you doing now?” he said.
“Cleaning the wound. Who shot you?”
“A liar.”
“You kill him?”
“Her. She shot herself before I could stop her.”
“Lover, huh?”
“In this case, no.”
“Just crazy, then.”
She was dipping the silk into the water and dabbing gently at the wound, which was bleeding freely.
“What do you do with the bloodmoss?”
“Two things. I put some directly into the wound. It dissolves in three days and purifies the blood. The other thing, I make an infusion that you drink. Bad taste but makes you strong boy. Look, see how it works.”
She took a small piece of the sodden moss, about the size of the top joint of her thumb, and laid it on the edge of the wound. In less than a minute the bleeding stopped, and the pain subsided to a warm numbness.
“That hurt still?”
“Much less.”
“All right, now I put some inside. Hold tight.”
She squeezed a little water out of the dark green handful, and then packed it, a pinch at a time, into the wound itself. The numbing helped; he had no doubt about how much it would hurt otherwise, and compared to the knifepoint of a few minutes before it was almost blessedly gentle.
“You got a cup? Something to drink from?”
Pan said, “I’ll get it. Do you need some more hot water?”
“Plenty here.”
Malcolm looked at the murky, blood-tinged water. “You want me to drink that?”