Free Conan the Savage by Leonard Carpenter Page A

only, and so preserved the habit of speech, or whether they employed some more mystical means of communication, none could say. But it was clear that the girl learned much from the old witch-man, and that he was more a friend to her than any of her adopted family or age-mates.
    Thus it was seen as one more stroke of tragedy in the child’s life, another baffling whim of the gods, when Urm’s hut caught fire and the old physician perished in the blaze. Tamsin may have been with him when it started, or she may, through some premonition of doom, have come running to the scene. The nearest neighbour saw the cottage explode in flame; on approaching, he found the girl standing helpless in the blaze of firelight. Dry-eyed from the scorching heat, she stood watching expressionlessly, shielding the face of her beloved doll against her shoulder.
    “It was the wicked lass that done it, don’t ye know?” one village crone was heard to gloat. “She sucked out all his wisdom like a leech, then roasted him in his own thatch, the old fool!” But that same winter the old woman was done to death by a pox and a quaking ague, and so once again gossip was stilled.
    After the fire, little remained of the witch-man’s science and arcana. Touchingly—since the rest of the villagers hesitated to enter the blackened ring of his once-feared abode—it was Tamsin, with her doll tucked into the blouse of her robe, who was honoured to gather up Urm’s charred bones. These she laid most respectfully in a fragrant cedar chest to preserve his memory. The shrine was on display long afterward in the small magical dispensary that she established in the shed of Amulf’s cottage. One other relic of her predecessor—the tarnished and blackened copper reliquary locket Urm had worn around his neck—was henceforth seen dangling from the doll she always carried with her, another perpetual tribute to her mentor.
    As it happened, the thaumaturgic skills conferred to her by the old man were sufficient for her to take up his duties in ministering to the town. When a farm wife needed a lung cure, Tamsin could mix up the stinging plaster, ably wielding the pestle in the blackened stone mortar salvaged from Urm’s ruined house. She would even apply the medicine to the sufferer’s back, working deftly one-handed, with the jingle and hiss of her gourd-doll substituting for the soothing incantations the old warlock would have intoned. Or, if a cottager required a weasel remedy for his poultry roost, she possessed all the necessary herbs and powders; she would hand over the poison bait with grave, silent assurance of its potency.
    Her methods differed from Urm’s in one respect: in all such cases, to the villagers’ mumbled surprise, she would give the cure time to work before making a visit to collect payment. More particularly, in regard to her stepmother’s continuing malaise, her services were rendered without charge. Using only ingredients gathered from the local swamps, without the costly powders purchased from travelling vendors that her predecessor claimed to rely on, she simmered and fermented a new healing elixir. To everyone’s surprise, it quieted the poor woman’s plaints and maintained the peace of the household, at a saving that Amulf the Good found gratifying indeed.
    Throughout the countless hamlets of the Brythunian hinterlands, the relation between such small rural practitioners and the Temple of Amalias and his pantheon of gods was an uncertain one. The great church laid claim, of course, to all the healing and divining powers that touched common mortals in daily life; whatever their talents, Amalias demanded his servants’ entire worship and fealty. But since the priests’ most vital and profitable concerns unfolded on the largest scale—that of wars and droughts, plagues and aristocratic marriages, and interpretation of the visions and deliriums of King Typhas when steeped in his cups—their priestly interests centred on the capital