As she seemed to fall deeper and deeper into a trance,
Thrand had an opportunity to examine her more closely. For one so famous and
revered, she dressed very plainly. A single-piece linen shift cinched twice
around the waist with a smooth cord, from which hung a thin pointed poignard
with a strange sharp hooked flange halfway up the blade. Her golden moon seemed
to be her only sign of wealth and status, and it was not much larger than an
ordinary coin.
He had never had a chance to peruse a Wose so closely
before, as far as he knew. They tended to avoid cities when they could,
preferring the forests and the grassland. There was something about the smells.
It was said they had a sense of smell keener even than wolves or the big cats. Thrand
supposed that accounted for the sniffing. “Smelling if I’m going rotten,” he
thought.
There was another well-known mark that set Woses apart. He
looked down and was not surprised to see that she wasn’t wearing any shoes. A
Wose seldom did, except in utmost necessity; something about drawing power from
the earth, or some such nonsense. What was unusual to see were her long, rather
prehensile toes, immaculately kept, but easily twice as long as a Human’s.
Thrand vaguely recalled there was some sort of talk about
this lady – Lady Melniar, his idle brain, usually engaged with legal
maunderings, finally supplied her name; pretty presumptous to call her after the Yorn of the moon, he thought - and her relationship with Koppa the wizard.
Rather unorthodox; he was Human and she was Wose. They had been companions on
the Goldfire quest, along with Taryn. What they did was their own business, of
course, but as a wizard Koppa would be aging very slowly, and the lady before
him was, while well-preserved, obviously headed for the back door of life. He
wondered how that was working out for them.
His attention wandered up from her toes, and with a jump he
saw her looking at him with clear grey eyes. She had manifestly come out of her
trance and seemed done with her examination. He did feel much better; the
numbness and the pain had receded from his side. Had he just been panicking?
He would have blushed, if Morgs could. Under her knowing gaze he wondered if, somehow, she knew what he had been thinking.
“Well?” he barked gruffly, to cover his embarrassment.
The healer withdrew her hands and folded them primly,
face serious, almost frowning.
“Prepare yourself, Chief Justice, to hear what I have to say.” There was a long pause. Thrand squirmed in anticipation.
“You are fat.”
She smiled faintly as if to soften the blow.
His eyes narrowed. He was not smiling.
“I know I’m fat,” he snapped. “I don’t need any mystical flummery
to tell me that.”
“You may know it, but you do not realize it.” Her voice
was serene. “If you want to reach your two hundred and fiftieth year, you are
going to have to make some changes in your life. You have survived a heart
attack in the past, yes, but you have not had a heart attack this time. A
narrowed artery was not carrying blood to the heart. I have eased that with my
‘flummery’,” her eyes crinkled slightly, “but if you go on as you have, you will
have another heart attack, and it may be fatal. You should feel better now for
a while after my ministrations, but do not let that lull you into indifference.”
Thrand groaned.
“You’re not going to advise me to some diet of bark and
twigs, like my other doctors, are you?”
“Nothing so drastic. But you are eating far too much meat
and too little green stuff. Keep your meat but reduce the serving to a third of
its size; make the other two thirds greens. No root vegetables except onions
and garlic, and nothing made from grains. Use cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, and
cayenne pepper as seasonings, but little salt or sugar.
“You are too sedentary,” she continued. “You should walk
around the Inner Circle of the City twice a day, morning and evening. When that
grows easy, move to the Outer Circle. When you are back to making once a day,
you will know you are in a balanced state.”
“I have a sedentary but important job,” Thrand grumbled, “and little
time to spare for wandering around …”
“Then make time,” she broke in firmly. “Even at your
level of state, you should do your job to help you live, not live to do your
job. And if you go on thus, you will be doing neither, and that sooner rather
than later.”
The Morg sat quietly on the edge of the creaking bed,
considering.
“And those are your orders, eh?”
“No, that is my advice.” She smoothed her dress briskly. “You
owe me nothing for that. I shall be leaving soon to return to my own country. I
will not be here to hover over you like a displeased schoolteacher. Your life
is in your keeping, not mine. Now I must go and prepare for my departure.” She
started to turn.
“Not staying for the funeral, Mistress Melniar?” Thrand asked
quickly, as he pulled his robe together against the morning chill. The windows
were starting to brighten with the rising sun. The Wose healer paused a moment
but did not turn back.
“I have said my goodbyes to Taryn,” she said quietly. “He
is on his journey now, and I must go on mine.” Then she was gone.
Notes
I spent some time early last Saturday morning writing rather fulsome notes on this section. Some of what I wrote does not appear here, but as it turned out it needed very little adaptation to get it to the state it is in now. I did nothing on Sunday, both because I have a loose rule about doing work then, as well as being exhausted from my trip to church and back. I should have taken Melniar's advice a lot sooner, myself. I was up at 5 AM this morning, and started getting it into shape.
I've probably done more 'world-building' about Woses here than I ever have before. I have a drawing of 'Wosehome' that I made years ago; it might have made a good illustration for this bit, but I never copied it into my computer files. I'm not sure about a lot of details from the original Goldfire, even though I transcribed it only about five years ago, but I'm going on the assumption that Melniar is a full Wose, while her adopted brother Jorrin was human. I was never completely happy with the name Jorrin; too close to Taryn. I do remember a story (by John? Or me?) of an ancient Koppa being placed in a modern day hospital, awakening to see the moon, and calling out "Melniar! Oh, my Melniar!" Which assumed that Ortha was Earth in some distant age of the past, I guess. Well, maybe in a parallel universe perhaps.
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