Outside the cabin, Ruyo said, "I bet this mess is somehow related to the mana leak at the shrine. It's our responsibility to try solving it. I don't know medicine beyond how to bandage a cut, so I'm hoping to just ask the woman for clues."

Nusina said, "This is one of those cases when a kind word and a show from you might save a life. Just don't promise too much."

"You think so? I'll try."

She asked at the tavern and talked her way into learning where the living victims were. A storage hut had been converted into a sick-house where one old man watched over four wounded folk. They included Naveen the rich farmer, two people she didn't recognize, and the woman who was most badly hurt, covered in five places with bloody bandages.

Ruyo tried to reach her, but Naveen groaned and sat up. "You! Get out. We don't need whatever garbage you're here to sell."

"I'm not selling anything," Ruyo said, and tried to ignore him.

"We take care of our own problems."

Ruyo glared at him. "And how well did that go, Naveen? You had a Brotherhood man with you and even so, two people died. Who was in charge of that ill-fated trip again?"

The man acting as doctor here said to Ruyo, "Get out."

"Let's come back later," Nusina said. "Come on."

Ruyo reluctantly backed off. "He had to start something."

"And you continued it. Enough; swim lesson."

Fuming, Ruyo walked away in the direction of the village's pond. It was upstream of town and partly fed by the same stream that ran past the shrine. That meant going into the mostly untamed woods.

One reason the forest road wasn't much inhabited yet was that it contained a terrible obstacle. Not the occasional wolves or boars or magical beasts; hunters like Baris could take those on or rally a group to do so. Instead the problem was tree stumps. Steadfast Church doctrine said that patient work to improve the land was good and holy, and the farmers around here did their part by removing the blasted things. But not even magic made it trivial to set up an open, easily plowed field.

Today, the farmers were busy planting or doing late plowing with a shared few oxen. The pond stood open for anyone.

Nusina coaxed Ruyo to strip off most of her clothes and wade into the water. The spirit floated past her and shouted, "I've never seen such a sloppy crop of recruits in all my life! Give me twenty laps!"

"Excuse me?"

Nusina bubbled and her eyes blinked. "I'm sorry. I vaguely remember there being a tradition of talking that way."

"Can we skip that?"

"Ah... yes, let's." More politely, she led Ruyo through the art of treading water, without magic. Then an awkward dog-paddle. "You at least won't drown now."

To be off her feet, floating and struggling to keep her head up, was still frightening. "Magic would help."

"Yes, but learn not to rely on it. Now I want you to dive, touch the bottom, and come back."

Ruyo came up coughing and kicked her way to the shallows. "Ugh. Enough."

"Again!"

Soon Ruyo was exhausted, sprawled on the grass, and only mumbled "No" when Nusina tried to make her keep going.

"All right. Get up, milady. You still have other work to do."

Ruyo struggled upright and used magic to push water away, drying herself somewhat. She dressed again and said, "The sick-house."

"Yes. I thought some exercise might wear you down enough to be more polite."

Ruyo couldn't argue with her. It was tough to make a good or useful impression on people if she let herself get sidetracked by some pompous fool. She took a deep breath, pushing aside the anger she still felt like clammy water clinging to her skin, and said, "Let's go."

She knocked on the shed's door. The doctor looked at her with narrowed eyes. Ruyo said, "I just want to see the injured woman. I have magic." She conjured an orb of water in one hand.

"Are you a healer, then?"

"It's more spiritual. We may be able to help her. Nusina?"

The spirit appeared at her side, saying, "Good sir, we can at least comfort the poor lady."

"All right. Luckily for you, the others are sleeping. Be quiet."

Ruyo nodded and went in. In the back of the room, the wounded woman lay shivering with fever, her eyes open and unseeing. Ruyo coaxed Nusina to float over the patient, glowing softly, while Ruyo made passes of her hands with trails of water. Ruyo murmured, "Be blessed and recover soon."

The treatment had no magical significance, nor any medical value. It was only a show, and it made Ruyo angry that she didn't know how to do more. "Ice," she said. "Would it help to cool her down?"

The doctor said, "I was about to do that. Her head, maybe, and that of Naveen. He's feverish too."

Ruyo nearly said something rude about him, but sighed. "Yes, all right. Nusina, could you go 'heal' him too?"

"I need to vanish in a few moments, but yes." She burbled something quietly to the woman. Then she flowed through the air over to the unconscious Naveen, to offer the faint light she shed in this form.

Ruyo conjured several chunks of ice and gave them to the doctor. "Here. I can make more if you need it, not that it will last long."

She watched the doctor wrap ice up in cloth and rest it against the forehead of the suffering woman, who looked relieved. He said, "I didn't know you were a mage at all."

"I do what I can."

She discovered that the village's water mage had already dumped ice into a spare barrel outside, so her effort wasn't really necessary. She added more anyway, making handfuls of glittering shards and dropping them into the supply. Once she was alone again with Nusina she said, "Best I can do. I want to learn some real healing magic."

"It's a more complicated art than flinging water around. People spend years learning it, with or without spells."

"Can we speed that up? I don't want to be helpless when people need me."

"You aren't. At least, in the right situation. If you want to be a healer you should study the basics so that you aren't just flinging arcane energy at the problem. A well fills from the bottom up."

Ruyo supposed she was right. "Then I should find a proper healer-mage to teach me. I don't want this to be another skill I keep putting off. I thought you were a magic enthusiast, though."

"I am! But consider Quintus: he's a mason with mathematics skill who also knows stone-working magic. Not the other way around. I'm told that even your magically created food is unimpressive because you aren't much of a cook, either."

"Then how did the goddess do all of these things, if her power didn't come with skill?"

"Long practice, and delegating the day-to-day work."

Ruyo was badly short on practical skill, but really on everything needed to do her new job well. She sighed. "As for delegation, I owe my friends lessons anyway. How about we make training people the next major project?"

"After dealing with this you mean?"

"Of course. Now, do you have any idea what this monster-man was?"

"No. In fact it doesn't seem possible."

Ruyo found she was walking back toward the pond. "There are legends of people who turn into wolves or something. Could it be that those are real?"

"Oh, were-creatures? Yes. But this isn't consistent with how they work."

Ruyo blinked at how matter-of-fact Nusina was about confirming a myth. "I'd like to ask about them later. But if it's a dead end for now, what do we have? We could tell more people about the second attack."

"You could start with me," said a man in a dark grey robe. "And who are you talking to?"

#

Ruyo startled. The stranger was dressed like a man from Brotherhood, his robe cinched tight around the waist. A broad-brimmed hat shaded his face.

Ruyo said, "Are you the one who was with the hunters?"

"Yes, and I stayed to find out more. It seems I've found the right person to ask. What do you know?"

Ruyo had been hoping to avoid Brotherhood completely for now. The best thing they'd be likely to do was shun her for being a magic user. And at worst, they might decide to destroy the cave.

She said, "There's been another attack, apparently on a family member of the transformed person. Whatever is going on, it's not over."

He studied her calmly. "Do you mean any harm to the people of Sor's Hill?"

"What? Absolutely not. They're my trading customers. You may've seen me in your town, too. I was there weeks ago."

"I was elsewhere. If there's an abomination around, we should find it."

"Agreed." The most likely place to search for its lair was uncomfortably close to the cave. "Do you have any idea what changed that man, and why there would be more than one?"

"We do. But it's not knowledge for everyone's ears, especially those of people who might abuse it."

Ruyo tried not to snap at him. "Let's get it out in the open, sir. Yes, as you're implying, I have magic. I haven't hurt anyone who didn't richly deserve it. Now people are getting murdered by something magical. I'm happy to help deal with that, so long as my work doesn't bring you down on my head."

The Brotherhood man said, "Very well." He looked around for anyone else who might be eavesdropping by the pond. "We've seen a similar case before, of a human who was possessed by a malign spirit. Something about the unholy relationship physically changed her and wrecked her spirit, causing a violent rampage. We think it was some ghost of the Lost World."

"My contacts say the killer probably eats and bleeds."

"Yes: that would match a spirit wearing the body of a human victim. If that's what we're dealing with, be very careful, miss. Its motives could be mindless fury, or something more cunning. Why would you want to hunt it?"

"Because I want to be known as helpful, and to keep this road and its people safe. Or would you prefer my power go to waste?"

He bowed. "You misunderstand. We don't attack people for knowing spells, for conjuring up stone bricks or for flinging puffs of fire around. We use magic ourselves, sometimes. We protect the land, the same as you seem to want. If my help would be valuable to you, you can find me at the inn tonight or tomorrow morning." He backed off and left.

Ruyo sighed and murmured, "I was hoping not to advertise to them. What do you think?"

Nusina said, "Very... calm person. Glad he's not immediately after you. Anyway, I may not have made this clear, but I'm no expert in arcane theory. I know things from my specialty and some of what the goddess did. Otherwise I'm a layman. Just recalling some of what mortals from my era knew."

"Your layman knowledge probably beats most modern scholars'. So, does the spirit possession theory not make sense to you?"

Nusina huffed. "First of all, it's offensive. A spirit isn't going to take over a flesh body. But if it were possible, I think it'd have to be done willingly."

"I don't mean to offend you, but that would be something very different than our situation, right?"

"Yes. Yes it would." She rattled off facts about the nature of their bond in magical and theological terms.

Ruyo petted her. "Okay. Say this alchemist met a spirit and willingly signed up. He got killed. Is the spirit dead, or could it get away and attract someone else?"

"I think the spirit would be alive unless it was captured or destroyed by someone with the right powers. Just stabbing the human until he's dead wouldn't do it."

"Then the Brotherhood monk should have done the deed. Maybe it's worth asking why he failed at it. In more polite terms."

Nusina asked, "Should we track the thing down, at the risk of revealing the cave?"

"We have to take that chance, to get a hunting party. They'll find out before too long anyway. I doubt we can take on a monster by ourselves that took a crowd to beat the first time. What's more, it'd be wrong and suspicious to hide what we know about the attack on their other kinsman."

Nusina considered. "There's an upside to this problem. There's a chance you'll be able to pull some of that magic away, for yourself."