Ambergate by Patricia Elliott Page B

that had passed, had laid healing hands on my head, covered me with sheepskins. Sometimes I had watched him move about
     this dark, smoky place as he tended me. There had been someone else too—a young man—but he was not here now.
    The older man had been gazing into the fire, but when I spoke, he looked around, startled. Then he rose stiffly to his feet.
     He was a giant, broad and strong. As I shrank back, pressing myself down into the bedding, he went across to an opening in
     the wall, and in a voice to match his size shouted out into the beam of white daylight, “Erland!”
    Then he came over and spoke softly to me, pulling up a stool and sitting on it with a grunt a little way away, as if he sensed
     I might be frightened if he came too close—though I knew he had looked after me most gently.
    “My name is Gadd, Miss,” he said. “You’ve been very poorly. I think you hit your head.” He spoke with the round vowels of
     the Eastern Edge. “I gave you feverfew to cool you.”
    “Thank you,” I whispered. I bit my lip at the thought of the intimate tasks he must have done for me, but his face showed
     only respect and concern.
    “My son will be here shortly,” he said. “He’ll be pleased you’ve woken proper.”
    I nodded, and raised my hand weakly to feel my head. I couldn’t feel any bump, but my hair was filthy, matted with dirt.
    “Your hands were in a state,” said Gadd. “I couldn’t get the blood from beneath your fingernails without distressing you.”
    My hands—my wrists and forearms! Surely he must have seen the number branded on my skin? His face showed nothing.
    “I can wash myself now,” I said, anxious.
    “Slowly does it. You must rest as much as possible. My son found you, Erland. He carried you here.” He spoke of him with shy
     pride.
    “Where am I?”
    “Why, in the Wasteland.”
    I started. “The Wasteland?” I was sure I must still be on the Murkmere estate.
    I looked wildly about me, at the odd, circular walls of plaited reeds. I was lying in a dwelling made entirely from grass:
     even the floor covering was woven from rushes. There was no roof; the walls curved up to a central hole that let out smoke
     from the fire.
    “I didn’t know anyone lived in the Wasteland,” I said.
    “There was a village here on the river road once,” said Gadd. “I still make use of its well and grazing ground. No man could
     live here otherways.”
    “So the river road is close by?” I whispered.
    “You’re lying right on it, Miss, though you’d scarce call it a road these days. But if you’ve the eyes to see it, it be there.”
    Gadd’s eyes were narrow slits of light, permanently half-closed, as if against the sun, and surrounded by waves of brown wrinkles.
     They were so disconcertingly direct I thought he must know my destination. “Erland found your wings.”
    “I was escaping…” A wave of terror caught me. “Soldiers…”
    He clucked his teeth. “Easy, lass. There be no soldiers here.”
    I relaxed back into the sheepskin coverings and fell silent, breathing in the fragrant green scent of the place, a mingling
     of the burning rush lights above me, the sheaves of cut grasses, and the young sappy wood on the fire. In the shadows I saw
     the glint of scythes propped against a wall, the dull sheen of cooking utensils hanging from hooks in the roof. There was
     little furniture, save for a roughhewn table, a stool and a ribbed wooden chair.
    As I listened to the fire sparking, I must have closed my eyes, for when I opened them Gadd had gone and there was a youth
     crouched on the matting not far from me. He was staring at me, but as soon as he saw me look over he bent his head. His straight
     fair hair fell forward into his eyes.
    I said painfully, “Thank you—for bringing me here.”
    He looked at me again. Under the fall of fair hair his eyes were deep-set and grave above a jutting nose, but now a smile
     lit his face. He was lanky and long-limbed in his rough