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MIDWIVES IN THE TRIBES were respected, and a prestigious, high-status path to take that males and females sought to pursue it in equal measure. Along with the expected duties of delivering the young and caring for the mothers of the tribe, the role in the tribe had spread to cover all of the healing too, except where the spiritual requirements overlapped the Shaman’s work. The swirling smells of the garden made detecting people outside almost impossible, and varying levels of noise in the large series of huts that made up the infirmary meant listening wasn’t always an option, so there was a bell hung from the door of the nearest hut to the village. It was a large piece of metal, beaten by the village maker into an instrument that would “bong” satisfactorily when hit with the mushroom-wood beater that hung below it.
Padg stepped up and bonged. The two stood and waited for the last harmonics to die away before the hut door creaked open. They heard someone puffing behind it; an apprentice, presumably.
“Sari is very busy today, supervising making salves. What do you want?” the apprentice said in a too proud manner.
Padg had recognized Porf from the puffing before the door opened. Although worst in all their classes at fighting or hunting, Porf had shown a gift for the healer’s arts, and he knew it.
“What we want,” Padg started, deliberately, “is to be taken to your guild leader, Porf. We’ve got tribe business, and you’d do well to be quick about it.”
“Wait here then,” Porf said stiffly, “I’ll go and get her.”
“He asked for that,” Dun said, once Porf had puffed off out of earshot.
“He’s been asking for it for a long, long while.”
“Are you all right?” Dun asked.
“I’m fine; just have my head filled up with details, and I want to get going now.”
“Yes, I know how you feel. I want to be on our way already, but I don’t want to miss anything out...”
“That might potentially kill us,” Padg finished.
“I wasn’t going to be that blunt,” Dun said.
‘Ah, but that’s why you’ve got me along.”
“Dun and Padg, I presume?” The voice of Sari, head of the midwives-guild, cut through their merriment, along with a waft of something floral and astringent smelling, which clung to her robes. Whatever it was she was supervising the making of, it smelled like powerful stuff. “I heard from Ardg that you might be visiting. What can I do for you?”
“We need you to send us off with... err... with everything we should be taking on a journey,” Dun said.
His answer from Sari was a bell-peal of laughter.
“If I sent you out with everything possible, you’d hardly be able to walk.”
“It’s just- I’ve never really done this before,” Dun began in explanation.
“Don’t worry, Dun,” Sari said in a warm but gently mocking voice. “We’ll sort you out with an emergency kit. We make them quite often for travelers and traders. It should have most things in that you’ll need. I think we have one ready made up here somewhere.”
She clapped her hands twice, sharply. From somewhere nearby, the apprentice shuffled into the room.
“Good. Porf, go back to the workshop and under my bench, there should be an emergency kit already. If there is, bring it here. Hurry now.”
And off he scuttled, returning with a rustling bundle that Sari unrolled on the floor in front of Dun and Padg inviting them to sit and get acquainted with what was in the bundle.
“These are vials of wound-heal,” she began, passing the small stoppered bottles to Dun and Padg in turn. “Please, open them, smell, get familiar with the texture.”
They did and it answered the question about what it was that clung to her robes.
“I must ask you to try and return all the empty bottles to us. They are found-things, you know, and so hard to come by. This powder”—she passed them a bag as she talked—“is a fever-cure. It does not work on all diseases, but it does help your own body fight off many things.” She paused, searching out her next item. “These leaves, from river-thistle, help stave off sleep. These, from jad-in-the-wall, help promote it. And the paste in this bag is a blood cleanser. If you become poisoned or bitten by something unclean, this will slow the poison and allow you a chance to heal.”
She waited while their quickest of lessons sank in. “You understand what you have? There are bandages and pads in there too.”
“Er- yes,” Dun said. “Thank you.”
“You’re both welcome. I wish you a good journey and my best hope is that you need none of it.”
“Ours too,” Padg said.
“Oh, one more thing, if we may?” Dun asked.
“Yes?”
“You wouldn’t, by any chance, have someone that wants to come along with us? Would you?”
Again that laugh from Sari. “It would be an interesting outing for an apprentice, I think. Sadly we have no one to spare. You might try the Alchemists’ guild; you may have more luck there,” Sari said and went back inside.
“Right,” Padg said. “Alchemists then.”
The Alchemist’s guild was as far upstream of the village as it was possible to go. Dun and Padg could tell their proximity to it by two signs: Firstly the sulfur and carbon smell was unmistakable, and secondly, there was a high earth bank all the way around. The only entrance through this protective levee was riverside, down a small path.
They could hear a classroom style recitation, the echoes of call and response drifting out to them through the door of the large building.
“... metal, earth, air, and blood...”
As was traditional, on the right-hand side of the front door was an announcing post. The alchemists’ front door was no different. It usually featured a symbol of the house, hung, carved or in relief, and some kind of noise-making device. Dun felt for a string and found a complicated six-pointed star, tied to a long piece of river string. Dun tweaked the string. A loud glassy tinkling noise came from farther up the post; the string, it seemed, was tied to some of those glass tubes the alchemists seemed so fond of using.
“...metal, earth, air, and blood...”
The door creaked open with a whiff of sulfur and a sniffling noise.
“Hello, can I help you?” the small voice attached to the sniffle enquired.
Dun formulated a reply carefully in his head; he knew Tali and quite liked her.
“Only, if you could hurry?” Tali said. “I’ve kind of left a beaker on the heater and... it’s a bit finely balanced...and...y’know...”
There was a faint tinkle from inside.
“Oh...”
Then a “crump”, felt more than heard.
“Oh shreds...”
The whoomph that followed ripped the door off its post and threw it. Dun caught the door full in the face and Padg caught Tali.
They lay on the floor in that hiatus that follows an explosion. Dust, debris, and the alchemist’s door chimes fell all around them.
“Nice,” Padg said, coughing.
“Yeah,” Tali said. “Can you... er...? You’re leaning on my...”
“Oh, sorry,” Padg said. Tali stood, brushing off debris.
Dun rolled himself out from under the door. “I... er... don’t suppose your Master is in, is he?”
“Oh gods,” Tali said. “You know I kind of thought I might avoid him for a span or two.”
“Avoid whom?” came a deep voice. From Dun’s air-sense he could tell that the person speaking virtually filled the doorway, in each direction. The smell of rust and sulfur hung with the question.
“We need to talk to him now,” Padg hissed to Tali. “Dun here has something important to ask him.”
“Okay,” Tali said.
“There’d better be a good excuse for this. A very good excuse,” Gatryn said in a voice not used to contradiction.
“Can we borrow an alchemist?” Padg said cheerfully.
“Borrow?” Gatryn said sternly. “An alchemist is not a piece of laboratory equipment, an alembic to be returned once washed!”
“Rather,” Dun backtracked, “can we ask your permission to let someone come with us on-” He stopped, not sure how to carry on without saying too much.
“That is, we’ve been asked by the Alpha to go...”
“... exploring,” Padg butted in. “We’ve got the village map to update.”
“How interesting,” Gatryn said suspiciously. “And you need an Alchemist why?”
“Well... for... making...” Dun struggled.
“Paper!” Padg said. “Spare... y’know. Paper...”
The sound of dragging furniture and sweeping of glass came from within.
“Can you take this one?” Gatryn said.
“This?”
“Alchemist. Despite Tali falling behind in her studies by trotting off on some ‘scribe’s errand’ that could equally well be done by traders, she might learn something at that. And we might all appreciate the calm around here for a while. You’d like to go?”
“Great!” she said, a little too brightly, then a little more levelly, “with your permission, Master Gatryn, I’d like to go.”
“Well, if that’s all the disturbance, for now, I’ve got a class to finish. I’m sure you three have much to discuss.”
“Thank you, Master Gatryn,” Tali said.
Then as he left, over his shoulder, he added, “Oh and do try and bring Tali back in one piece. She is a handful, but we’ve all gotten used to her around here.” He sighed. “Although I don’t suppose it’s any more dangerous out there than it is in here, is it?”
As if to punctuate his sentence there was another low frequency “oumph”, then a faint whiff of rotted fish.
“Nice,” Padg said.
“Ahh,” Gatryn sighed, “duty calls. Good luck on your journey.”
When Gatryn was out of earshot, Tali said, “I think you’ve just saved me from having to clean the drains and the sludge-pit for the rest of my natural life.”
“You’re... welcome?” Dun said.
“I’ve got stuff to get from here,” Tali said. “Meet you by the bridge in a thousand clicks or so?”
“Great, we’ll pick up food and a pack for you,” Padg said. “What about weapons?”
“Don’t really need any; I’m an alchemist!” Tali laughed. “Find me a good knife, if you like. Smell you later.”
She headed inside, leaving the friends standing there. Dun stood the door up next to the frame and they turned back toward the village, giggling.
***
“DO YOU THINK SHE MEANS it?” Dun said as they headed back to the market.
“Means what?”
“All that stuff about not needing weapons to fight.”
“I don’t know,” Padg said. “Gatryn seems impressed with her, and he’s a cantankerous old stick and, I gather, quite hard to impress.”
Dun and Padg knew of Tali’s reputation, although the duties of an apprentice, especially one to the alchemists’ guild, meant that she didn’t get out a lot from her studies. She was the youngest apprentice to have been selected by the guild for many an age, chosen for her brains and ability to pick things up quickly. However, those things were often ones she’d dropped herself. That they wanted her to come with them was a simple acknowledgment between Dun and Padg. They knew it was right. But they had a couple of formalities to sort out.
They stuffed the rations of fish-mush in the extra pack that Padg had bartered from the Makers. Dun noticed the fine texture on the outside of the newly-made sack. Its straps felt sturdy and well attached to the main body of the pack. It was a physical reminder of why Dun preferred folk-made goods to the more popular modified found materials. He knew what he was getting with a folk-made thing: exactly what it would do, how it would perform, and how long it would last. It was a view influenced by his father but shared by few of Dun’s contemporaries. But for this expedition, Dun was in charge, and for all his friendship for Padg, he knew his position; all their carrying kit was folk-made, all their weapons crafted by Padg—all ultimately reliable. Dun knew that the trip on which they were about to embark was going to have many unpredictable aspects. He didn’t want their kit to be one of those aspects. In a way, that all informed his question about Tali. The whole idea of alchemy, experimentation; that unpredictability made him uneasy. He knew in a way that it was a failing in himself. He always took longer to adapt than Padg, who of course mocked him mercilessly for it, but that didn’t change Dun’s feelings. On their way to the bridge, Dun realized that at the same time, his unease was sitting alongside a feeling they had the right team. The chaos that Tali brought was right. He thought about it, hearing her singing en route to the rendezvous point at the bridge. Whatever she was carrying in her bags clinked in time.
“As sure as the river flows in the tunnel. As sure as the fish swim free. As sure as the water runs in the runnel... oh. Hi.”
“Hey,” Padg said.
“So,” Dun said, “we’re going on a journey, far from here, far upriver, maybe where no folk have ever been.”
There was a long silence.
“It may be dangerous,” Padg chipped in.
“Great! When do we start?” Tali asked cheerfully.
They sat on the low curved earth wall at the village side of the bridge. They heard a hoarse male pant as a someone sped to the bridge. He stopped. The accompanying cloud of dust smelled of dust and the village runner, Macky.
“Alpha... wants you... back in the Moot-hall. Now, he says.”
