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dropped the meat to the grass before her; her other arm was hidden completely by her rags, as if
guarding the place from which the sticks had been drawn.
'Then the villagers were right,' said Mizella, recoiling a bit. 'You are a witch.'
A look of fear crossed the woman's face. 'I have a skill, taught me by my mother, taught her by her
mother before her. We are respected women in my homeland.'
'You tell fortunes,' said Alaric, and he reached out to reassure Mizella with a touch.
'Yes.'
'Harbet said you were a midwife, that you killed his youngest child at birth.'
She pulled the sticks back, close to her breast. 'We are midwives in my family, and we read the
life-line of every newborn babe. It was a sickly child - I needed no sticks to tell me it would
die. I did not cause its death, but they put me in the well anyway. They blamed the bandits on me, and
the recent drought, as if such things were under a poor old woman's control.'
'I know they are not,' said Alaric.
'I'm sure of that, lord, for you are a man of power. Shall I read your future?'
'No. I have no wish to know it, and I must find our supper now. Make ready to roast a chicken,
Mizella.'
'Don't forget to find a knife somewhere,' she said. 'I don't relish the notion of tearing its entrails out
with my fingers.'
He disappeared, and returned soon with a live chicken. 'Courtesy of an old friend who mounts no
guard on a well-locked coop.' He produced a knife. 'From a certain smithy.'
The old woman stared at him with wide eyes and open mouth. 'I thought we had flown,' she
whispered. 'Lord, you are mighty indeed! Only once before have I seen magic such as this. The bane of
my life! To think that it has saved me now . . .'
'What do you mean?' said Alaric, his voice tense. This was the first person he had ever met who
claimed to have seen his talent used before. He gripped her shoulder a bit too tightly. 'You've seen
someone go as I have done? Where? When?'
She gasped at the pain of his fingers. 'Lord, my bones break easily!'
By a supreme act of will, he forced his fingers to relax. Tell me,' he said. 'Oh, good lady, tell me!'
'It was years ago . . . a child . . . I delivered his mother of him, and as I slapped his rump to
make him suck air and live, he screamed and . . . vanished.'
'When? When?'
'His father was the Baron. He banished me forever from the land of my birth, and I have wandered
ever since. Woe to the day I ever set foot in this land, where they fear my skill instead of respecting it!'
'When?' Alaric demanded. 'When were you banished?'
She dropped the sticks into the grass before her knees and coun-ted on them silently. 'So long, she
wailed. 'Sixteen years have I wandered!'
'Sixteen years!' He glanced at Mizella, who had wrung the chicken's neck and now singed the
feathers at the edge of the fire. She stopped for a moment.
'Why, Alaric,' she murmured, 'you are . . . '
'Where is this country?' Alaric cried. 'Do you know if the parents are still alive, if they have any other
children? Tell me!' He reached for her arms, to shake the information from her, and the sleeves
of her garment fell back, revealing both arms completely for the first time. One was shorter than
the other - it bore no hand.
The old woman jerked her arms away from him and hugged them to her bosom. 'He took
my hand when he disappeared! He crippled me! He took my hand and caused the Baron to banish me!
Oh, the blood, the blood! I thought I was going to die,- the Baron made me thrust it into the fire to
cauterize it, and then I wanted to die from the pain . . . ' She bent over and rocked back and forth,
weeping at the memory. 'I did nothing. Why did he banish me? He was not a superstitious man; he
knew I was innocent. He must have known! He saw me cast no spell, make no magical motions. I
was the victim and the child was the sorcerer!'
Hesitantly, Alaric moved closer to her, put his arms around her trembling shoulders. 'I. . . I'm sorry.'
His throat swelled shut, and he could barely choke out the words. 'It was I who did this to you. I was
that child. I'm so sorry . . .'
She lifted her head to stare uncomprehendingly.
The slap - you say you slapped me - it must have startled and frightened me. I went without
knowing how to use this power of mine. I was found naked on a hill far, far to the east of here, your
hand still clutching my ankle. Your hand . . .' He held her tighter. 'Forgive me, forgive me, good lady. I
didn't know. . . I couldn't know . ..'
'You . . . ' she whispered. 'You . . . the child?'
'Yes. I'm sure of that.'
She gazed down at the stump of her arm. She touched it with her right hand, tucked the
rags more closely about it. 'I owe you my life, she said. 'You. . . the child?' She peered into his face.
'Lord, you do resemble the Baron. What strange fortune it is& . that you took my life away
once, and now you give it back.'
Alaric nodded, unable to answer.
Mizella stood behind him, laid her hands on his head. 'Your mother, Alaric. You can find her now.'
'I can find her now, he echoed. 'Is she alive?'
'I don't know, said the old woman. 'I have been gone for sixteen years.'
'You'll take me home.'
'Oh, I can't! I was banished!'
'Think of it as a quest, a sixteen-year-long quest. And now you've found what you were searching
for. Surely your exile will end when you bring it back.'
'I don't know.' She raised her hand to her mouth, plucked at her lower lip.
He gripped that hand. 'Guide me home.'
'Home.' She smiled suddenly. 'Yes, we'll go home. I'll see my sister, my brothers . . . '
'Home,' said Mizella, her fingers brushing Alaric's cheek. 'Home that you've never seen since
the first moment of life. A baron's son . . . '
'A baron's son, said Alaric. 'I wonder what kind of man the Baron is. And whether he'll
want a witch for a child . . . '
'He'll want a witch like you, Mizella said.
'I wonder.' He leaned back against her and looked up into her face above his. 'I'm frightened,
he said. 'But I'm going home anyway. Your intuition has been so accurate of late; what does it say
about that?'
'It tells me you have great courage.'
'Or great stupidity.' He smiled faintly. 'I hope I won't have to steal many more chickens along the
way.'
But his mind, far from being concerned with chickens, was turn-ing over the possibility that a baron's
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