The excessive heat of the following weeks did not help melt the frozen core that had solidified in me since Narsi's murder. This death, this first real death among the handful of people close to me, was a cold shower in many ways, even more so than what I had felt when Robin disappeared. Robin, I could afford the luxury of imagining him alive. I had seen the corpse of my teacher, I had seen the blood and the flies that laid in the cuts. I had only been with Rus'Narsi for eighteen moons, yet his rich phrasing and laughing eyes had meant so much to me. He had played many roles, perhaps only in my mind, but that's how I saw him: teacher, friend, and also father figure at times. The mark this man left on me was indelible. I owe Narsilap the Rajjan a certain taste for knowledge, and above all, an early insight into the complex mechanics of mundane things, such as the routine beating of a heart.

A few days after the tragedy, there was a small ceremony, during which I cried a lot, and the ashes of Narsilap Ail Shuri were handed over to the Brown, without anyone being able to say whether this was what the master surgeon would have wanted. This was done just before dawn, both to escape the curious eyes of the common people and the scorching summer sun. There were Sesh and Bard, and this intendant whose name I have forgotten, as well as a handful of naive courtesans who came to accompany Nami Rockin, who was the only one apart from me to shed a tear for the dead man. I had the privilege of throwing the first handful of ashes, a twisted wind left most of them in a pile of gorse. Then we got back to our lives. Bard left for Franlake and a round table that promised to be agitated, Sesh returned to his investigation, and I to the Lemis stables, once again full since the horses had returned from Brican.

The unexpected loss of my master triggered the beginning of a slow transformation in me. This was due to a combination of attitudes and reflections, which I believe began to slowly but surely shear the fine thread that still connected me to childhood. I was stiffening, or rather, the predictable suspicions that I was being subjected to were stiffening me. In return, the cold mutism with which I treated the other pages and the castle staff only added to the bedtime stories surrounding Rus'Narsi's death.

I didn't do myself any favors, I knew it, but somehow I think the treatment I was receiving was appropriate for my state of mind.

Among the echoes from the castle corridors were the rumors that I had murdered the sandy surgeon, that I knew how to conjure demons and speak the language of shadows and spectres, and many other painful nonsense, just as Sesh had guaranteed me. The kitchens emptied when I made a rare appearance there, and often there was no bread, soup, or leftovers for me. Most of the guards avoided me, the more daring spat as I passed by. Even poor Morton - who had been overwhelmed since the birth of the third son of the Shortoar family - did his best to make sure that we spent as little time together as possible, even though I was supposed to assist him.

In return, as an epidermal reaction to these looks, these venomous murmurs that tainted my pain with doubts and guilt, I began to distance myself more from things, to reflect and ruminate, to contemplate others for the first time.

The dry thunderstorms at the beginning of the Harvest moon found me sullen and withdrawn. As Morton insisted on taking on most of the tasks that should have been mine, I sometimes frequented the abandoned tower and the ghosts I had left there. Sesh would also occasionally go upstairs to immerse himself in the notes and scrolls of Narsi, his skin stretched out like a sail in the wind, with that air of a hungry bloodhound that never left him. I had seen him like this before, when the challenge of the investigation seized him, obsessed him day and night, to talk about it in his sleep and even forget to eat. Sesh essentially ignored me, so I too read, both to pass the time and to conjure up the memories evoked in me by the smell of old Rajjan treatises. I got bored, however, I stumbled over the more complex works, and the silence sometimes became too enclosing, a sneaky net in which something dangerous, such as the fear of being suffocated, was born.

There were only Dera and the clans who found favor in my sight, and it was only during my visits to the Basin that the shadows left my black eyes and that, sometimes, I still laughed like a child. When we were not swimming in the Brown, the coolness of the woods along the southern road sheltered us from the heat, hid our races and our huts of branches. Dera often spoke of her grandmother, and our respective losses had forged between us an understanding complicity, a severe agreement which, sometimes, against all odds, resurfaced unexpectedly... in the form of a serious look to intersect our games. However, seeing the effect that rumors and suspicion had on my relations with the people in the castle, I had decided not to tell her about my dreams again. I wasn't afraid that this revelation might harm our friendship or what Dera might think of me, it was more a matter of respectful modesty, the choice taken not to drag her into a story that was beyond both of us.

Meanwhile, at the Lemis stables, the blows that Holen had spared me during the summer made their return with reinforcements. Since most people had shown this superstitious mistrust of me, the master of the stables took pleasure in showing that he did not fear me. In spite of the bruises, I came to regret that others did not start to reason in the same way: if I knew how to conjure demons, I would certainly make them carry the manure. Weeks went by like that, long dark weeks at the end of which a single bright day awaited me, far from the city.

The summer heat wave gradually subsided, but the first rains came too late to save the primacy of a particularly poor harvest. The drought of that year was far from being regional, and the price of cereals from Wadd and Amuber augured a difficult winter for the poorest. Of course, I took no pleasure in this, but at least, as autumn approached, I was no longer the only one to frown. As the Brown returned to her riverbed after the flood, my life resumed its course, amidst the damage and drowned things. Then, on a rainy and windy evening, two horsemen came through the gate of Castle-Horn, and the first-blade Natime came to find me while I was eating alone, in a corner of the kitchen.

"Follow me," he simply said. Obedient, I followed his lead, intrigued, but terribly grateful that someone finally decided to talk to me directly. I read easily in Natime and perhaps it was because he saw no point in hiding what I was inspiring him. He was obviously suspicious of me, but he had also chosen to give me the benefit of the doubt. As we walked across the courtyard and the trickling drops fell on my face, I thought at first that he was leading me to the tower and the anguish caught me by the throat, because I didn't want to go back there at night. Then we turned to the right and walked under the black wall to the barracks' infirmary.

"It's unusual," Natime said as he opened the door for me, "but you'll do what you have to do. Bard Govon wants to stay on good terms with the Vals, and those have made the trip from the forest of Vaw." I trotted behind the soldier, through the small dormitory, then along the dark corridor that led to the handful of quarantine cells. I was trying to imagine what could be expected of me, overwhelmed by the excitement and fear of meeting real val-warriors. Natime paused at the last door in the corridor and leaned over to whisper to me, which turned his already high-pitched voice into a bird chirping that I would have found funny if his words had been different. "They came to see the sandy one. Since he's dead, it's you they want. So by the Frail-Whore, you'd better do your best." He pushed open the door.

Two verdigris glances converged on me. In the cramped room, there was only one narrow bed and a small stool at its side, a pair of tiny pieces of furniture from which two massive men literally overflowed. Their mid-length hair was braided back and they wore beards, venetian blond for the man who perched with difficulty on the stool, pepper and salt for the bedridden man. The youngest had not left his armor, an imposing lamellar coat that considerably thickened his silhouette, but his companion, in spite of his posture, seemed the more voluminous of the two. The latter grunted when he saw me and closed his feverish eyes. The other rose quickly and walked towards me, his immense shadow obstructing the light from the lantern nailed to the wall behind him. I had to make an effort not to take a step back. There was something in the assurance of his body, something dangerous, carnivorous, in spite of his calm air. The Val studied me calmly for a few moments, then, without taking his eyes off me, he called on Natime in a deep voice with dry and marked intonations:

"He's the disciple?"

The first-blade nodded. "That's him." The man sniffed, without bothering to hide his disappointment. "He's young," he said awkwardly.

Natime sighed, spreading his hands apart in a gesture of impotence. "You asked for him, I brought him to you." The val-warrior inhaled violently, as if he was going to invective his interlocutor, then appeared to change his mind and with a gesture made Natime understand that his presence was no longer useful. The soldier turned back without ado, probably as happy to leave my company as the Vals. When the door closed behind him, the young warrior turned his attention to me and offered me a gloved hand of steel. "I am Ereck, disciple. You learned medicine from Rajja, is that right?" I swallowed and replied in the affirmative, while touching the cold gauntlet that was handed to me.

The voice of the bedridden man startled me. His timbre was rough as old wood, but his brownian was almost flawless. He had raised his head, his forehead sweaty, and looked at me with a look as crazy as it was furious. "Tell me, disciple," he said sarcastically, "did the Rajjan teach you anything other than prayers and kowtowing before you joined his nine gods?" I blushed while sputtering and the warrior cracked a fierce grin before resting his head on the pillow. His companion admonished him a few sentences in the tone of the reproach in a harsh language that I did not understand, and the man laughed. "Ulrick is sick, disciple," he said, as if to apologize. "We are traveling for a long time. We hope to find Narsilap, the surgeon, here. My friend Ulrick is wounded, a bad wound. He has, how do you say..."

"I've got an arrowhead stuck behind my knee, brat," cut off Ulrick. "And nobody knows what to do with it. The lord's healer from Spinel wanted to cut my leg off, so I asked to see a bonesetter. The bonesetter said that it was stuck in the kneecap, that it had to be cauterized, immobilized, and left in. I preferred to try my luck with the damn Rajjan. I've been riding for two weeks, it's purulent and the Rajjan is dead. So it' s over. I don't want my leg to be cut off, but I want to die even less." I nodded my head trembling.

After a brief silence, the old Val closed his eyes, exhausted by his tirade. "I'm going to take a look, my lord," I said in a rather unsure tone. As the warrior turned heavily on the bed, grunts escaping between his clenched teeth, I tried to conjure up the images and sketches I had studied with Narsi. Then someone knocked on the door and Ereck went to open it. It was Morton.

The Shortoar page looked up at the Vals, lowered them on me, and then ended up addressing his feet while whispering words that were visibly intended for me. "The intendant told me to come. To help."

I hesitated, then, as everyone was waiting after me, that there was only that to do and that somewhere I hoped to be able to return to a normal life, I decided that I would perform an operation on the injured Val. And thereby prove that I was neither a sorcerer nor a demon summoner. I made a silent request to Rus'Narsi to assist me from the grave, then to Rek and Lu and Am too, and to all the spirits and gods that came into my mind. Finally, I took my courage in both hands. "I need water, Morton," I said in a much more confident voice than I actually was. "Boiled, like you find in the kitchen. Narsilap's instruments are in the tower, in a leather purse. The mad-care oil is also there, a green vial on the shelf near the window. Strong hooch and clean rags." Morton nodded and disappeared.

I turned my attention to my patient, who was grumbling in brownian in the pillow, because he obviously wanted me to witness his discontent. "Children," he grumbled. "And to light my funeral pyre, what will your primate send? An infant? A kettledrum of his own jizz?" I approached my face to the wound, which Ereck had taken care to bare, while ignoring the vindictive words that were coming out of the pillow. It was red and swollen, but not as sanious as I had expected. The two men must have washed the wound regularly, probably with alcohol. From the swollen cleft emerged a thick, phalanx-long shaft, and I shivered as I imagined the journey, two whole weeks with the movement of the horse and that thing stuck in the joint of the leg. I approached a hand that was less stable than it should have been and moved the edges of the wound as gently as possible. Ulrick growled and stuck his face into the bedding. The head of the arrow was invisible, deeply buried beneath the stringy folds of flesh. I straightened up.

"Can you bend the knee?" I asked without preamble. A drop of sweat beaded on the warrior's temple. "Barely. And it hurts like hell." I ran my tongue on my lips. "Does it scrape?" I continued.

"Yes, yes. It scrapes."

"In front or behind?"

"More like the middle."

I sat on the stool to rack my brains, while Ereck and Ulrick whispered tense words. I was clearly reviewing the illustrations on one of the last treatises we had studied with Narsi, the one that exposed the articulatory anatomy of the elbow and knee. I grimaced. The arrowhead must have slipped between the two. The "pallets" of the joint, right in the center, without having crossed. I continued my meditation. The Vals ceased their conciliation. When I raised my head, Ereck observed me with a circumspect air. The silence was total, interrupted only by the whistling sparks of the candle inside the lantern.

I ended up coughing and then saying in a tone that was meant to be positive: "I don't think it's stuck in the patella. I don't think you could move at all if it was like that." Ulrick spat furiously. "Ah, that's your opinion? Why can't we pull it out then?" While I was looking down and Ulrick was staring at me, I heard the door of the infirmary slam. Morton was back in time, thanks to his usual chic for carrying a thousand things at the same time. He stood silently in a corner while I took an inventory of what he had brought me. Nothing was missing and the water was still smoking in the kettle.

I gave him a mute thank you and I think I saw the shadow of a thin smile on his face. With a hesitant hand, I soaked one of the rags with mad-care.

I took a deep breath, in a vain effort to kill the infernal butterflies that danced in my belly and made my limbs tremble. "I will do my best, my lord," I said, as I approached the fabric from Ulrick's bearded face. "At least you have little fingers," he said before the oil made him unconscious. I turned to his companion.

"I'm going to try to remove the arrow, but if I can't, I'm going to have to... " I swallowed. "We're going to have to cut. I'm not strong enough. You'll have to do it."

Ereck had a perplexed look on his face before giving me his consent. I unpacked Narsi's tools on the bed, chose his sharpest blade and, without waiting for courage to fail me, I meticulously incised behind the knee.

The wound bled and I had to mop it up several times before I could see anything. The shaft appeared clearly, I grabbed it with the pliers, and tried some careful twisting. As I had thought, the tip seemed to be somewhere in the center of the joint and yet, pulling towards me, it did not come, there was a resistance that was both hard and elastic. I did it again, jerking left and right. Nothing helped, the tip did not appear.

I shook my head and put the pliers down. No matter how hard I dug, there was nothing I could do. I started all over again, without conviction, and without more success. I watched the wound what seemed like an eternity, before I decided to turn to Ereck, the saw towards him, with tears in my eyes. He hesitated, then took the tool from my hands, more gently than I would have thought. Morton hiccupped and left the room in a hurry. I grabbed the tourniquet and wrapped it around the knotted muscles of the naked leg. Ereck approached. I fluttered my eyelids to chase away the tears and gave the tourniquet a final twist. The two extremities fell on top of each other, drawing a small cross. I stopped abruptly in front of the form that was taking shape and what was familiar about it. "Wait," I sniffed. "Wait." Ereck put the saw on the stool and ran his fingers through his hair.

I returned to my position at the bottom of the bed, and incised once again, very delicately so as not to go too far and cripple Ulrick, but deeper. It was nerves. It had to be nerves. I went in hard with the retractor, and the wound opened up more. I sponged. I saw the head. The thin head had passed exactly between the crossed nerves, had not cut them as I had thought. Like a small flesh trap, the ligaments had closed around the triangular tip. I had a small dry laugh, between the satisfaction of having been right and the nervousness of what remained to be done. I rummaged through Narsi's case and found the smallest retractor, the one made of lagatean copper that he used to examine the eyes. I forced on the ligaments with one hand while pulling the shaft with the other, praying that I would not tear anything. I slipped, clenched my teeth, and started again. The bleeding resumed. I sponged. The head got stuck again, I twisted it, then suddenly there was enough room and in a final jerk it was freed. Behind me, Ereck uttered a scream of exultation. I breathed, a tense smile on my lips.

Then it was only a matter of stitching and cleaning, which I had already done under the watchful eye of Narsilap a good ten times. When it was all over, I was tired, even exhausted, my eyes were sore from having wrinkled so much in the dark of the infirmary. But I had succeeded, I had saved his leg. The val-warrior would surely limp for life, yet he would walk and might even run. There was still the infection, which could wipe out all my efforts, but still I was amazed at what I had accomplished. Without yet daring to believe in my success, I plunged the tools into the basin of lukewarm water, before meticulously rinsing them with alcohol. As the swirls of hemoglobin diluted and the water turned pink, my relief was also coloured with a drop of sadness. I missed Narsi.

I would have given anything for him to have been there, at that moment, and for him to tell me how proud he was of his mespa.