Chapter 5 #2
By the time her draught had gone cool, with little left but curls of bark at the bottom, Galen clasped his hands together.
“As the court physician, I should tell you to rest your ankle,” he began.
“But you’re a marvel compared to the half-wits brought to my doorstep in hopes of an apprenticeship, and I have a pregnant noblewoman about to pop, not to mention two bratty children whose teeth I’ll need to yank out. ”
“And?” Nyneve asked with a breathy laugh, arching one eyebrow at the hawk-like man.
“And so, I find myself curious,” Galen began brightly, getting to his feet. “Is there any chance you can walk?”
Hours later, Nyneve collapsed onto the cot.
It smelled a bit musty—no surprise, as Galen had dragged it out of a spiderwebbed corner and set it up in the front room of the cottage.
“I’ll get someone to divide the living quarters and set you up with a proper bedroom,” he promised her, beating dust out of the quilt.
She almost opened her mouth to tell him that he should do chores like that outside, but she could barely form a sentence.
For nearly half-a-day, she’d followed the physician around Camelot, desperately trying to act like she wasn’t in that much pain.
She’d helped him pull rotten teeth, check the progress on a burn, examine a pregnant woman, rebind a broken wrist, pick up herbs from the kitchens, convince a knight he could not participate in the upcoming tournament with three shattered ribs, and try to treat a mysterious rash.
Galen reminded her repeatedly that if her ankle became too painful, she could return to the cottage.
Nyneve didn’t think it was a test. The physician seemed blunt and straightforward but genuine, lacking any interest in subterfuge despite his intellect.
In truth, she should’ve stopped to rest about an hour or so into Galen’s rounds, but she had pushed herself to keep going.
Now her entire right side was awash in pain, sharp bolts of agony in her ankle shooting all the way up to her hip.
And she deserved every last bit of it, didn’t she?
She was alive, which was more than could be said for—
“I forgot the bloody thyme!” Galen exclaimed from the other side of the room, where he was organizing jars on the shelves.
Letting out an impressive string of curses, he reached for his cloak.
Night had fallen in Camelot, and much like the forests and border towns of Nyneve’s childhood, the cold had galloped in, eager to sink deep into her bones.
“I need to go back to the kitchens. You should rest. I fear I pushed you too hard today.”
Without waiting for an answer, Galen slipped out the cottage door and disappeared.
Nyneve let out a long sigh of relief. She’d been waiting for him to notice; she had plucked the jar of thyme out of his basket back in the kitchens to ensure he’d need to return.
Straining her ears, Nyneve waited until she heard nothing but her own heartbeat before reaching down to examine her ankle.
As she expected, it was swollen and hot to the touch.
She wanted to heal the injury with magic and be done with it, but to do that, she needed to be alone.
The working was normally well within her ability to do quickly and discreetly.
But Nyneve had little idea how difficult it might be with the binding the Elders had placed upon her.
She hadn’t attempted to work very much magic at all since the accident.
And if she were honest, Nyneve was afraid that even half-bound by the Druids, she might still be a monster.
Then Galen would surely cast her out, just like everyone else had.
So, it was only once she was sure the physician was well on his way back to the kitchens that she reached deep inside herself for that Thread of humming power, wound around her bones, rushing through her blood like a river.
It answered her call with a strangled shriek, straining against the binding she’d allowed the Elders to place.
She could still work some benefic magic: healings and charms, minor illusions, the like.
But her baneful magic, the spells that drew blood and brought darkness to someone’s doorstep, was thoroughly bound.
Nyneve coaxed what remained of her magic toward her swollen ankle, whispering the ancient charm to transmute the wild, directionless currents into something intended to heal.
Druidic charms were powerful things—spoken in an ancient language, never recorded in ink, only taught sparingly to apprentices like herself as they proved themselves worthy.
She wanted to learn so many more charms in the misty towers of Tintagel under the tutelage of the great sorceress Morgana de Bois, but instead she’d been half-bound and tossed into this throng of masculinity and violence.
She gritted her teeth. She had no one to blame but herself, and yet she still found herself furious with the entire world.
She was not evil. She was only what the gods had made her.
Shoving the thoughts from her mind, Nyneve flexed her ankle.
Relief flooded through her when the joint moved normally with no pain.
Leaning forward onto her elbows, she stared into the crackling hearth, watching the flames.
Her mind felt much the same: tangled and chaotic, spitting embers.
She could tell herself the same thing over and over again—that she was not a monster, that she had allowed the Elders to bind her magic, that it was an accident.
And yet the person she hated the most in the quiet hours of the early morning or during the long nights when she couldn’t sleep was somehow still always herself.
Gritting her teeth, Nyneve stared straight ahead into the flame, her fingers curling into fists. There was very little she wasn’t willing to do to halt this venomous feeling.
When Galen suddenly barreled through the door, she nearly jumped out of her skin. “Nyneve,” he said, breathless as he shoved two large jars of thyme onto the shallow counter in the middle of the towering shelves, not bothering to store them properly. “Lady Morien is in labor.”
“Gods’ blood,” she grumbled, trying to drag herself to her feet, not exactly faking it when she reached for her crutches. “I thought she might be close when we saw her earlier.”
Galen nodded, reaching for a leather bag sitting off to the side.
“I’d like you to stay here,” he said, rummaging through the bag and then nodding when the contents were as he expected.
“Your ankle needs rest. A scouting party may be returning this evening, and if there are any injuries, they’ll come here first.”
“Are you sure you don’t need assistance?” Nyneve asked, though even she could hear how half-hearted her words sounded.
He smiled at her in the hearthlight. “Indeed,” Galen replied, turning toward the door. “I’ve brought many wee ones into this world. But if anything changes, I’ll send for you.”
“All right,” she agreed with a slow nod, sinking back down onto the cot. She wished him luck, and then he was gone, leaving her in the unfamiliar dimness of the cottage.