The Monk's Habit (The Disinherited Prince Series Book 2) Read online

  The monk put his head in his hands. “It’s the pain,” he said.

  “Then teach me to spell it away. There must be a pattern I can tweak that will put your shoulder right.”

  Searl blinked. “What?”

  “I’m a magician, Master Searl.”

  The monk looked away. “I’m no master,” he said in a small voice.

  “Teach me. I wear the red cord. Teach me patience and control. Turn me into an instrument of relief,” Pol said. His words became part of the pattern. Pol had never experienced what he was doing. It was like being a pattern-master with words. “We will find your daughter, and you can approach life anew.”

  “No!” Searl said. His hands clenched into fists, and he put them against his temples. “You can’t learn.”

  “Teach me,” Pol repeated.

  Searl’s gaze finally met his. He straightened up. “It took me years to acquire the expertise to look deep within.”

  “I don’t need to learn all your technique, just enough to take the physical pain away. You’ll have to face your minweed habit, if you want to meet your daughter again.”

  Searl bit his lower lip and tears welled in his eyes as he nodded his assent. “We can get started when I wake up this evening.”

  “No,” Pol said. “We start now. Before you take your dose of minweed, we will spend an hour preparing me to alleviate your pain.”

  The monk shook his head from side to side. “I need my dose.”

  “You’ll get your dose. We are doing this for you, for me, and for your daughter.”

  Searl nodded. “My daughter, yes.” He took a deep breath and began his first lecture on healing.

  Surprisingly, healing was much the same as any other tweaking. Find the pattern and use that knowledge to change the pattern through an expert tweak. The more intense the malady or injury, the more precision was required.

  They spent the next four days, with Searl giving Pol a summary of how bodies worked. Pol knew the basic parts, but Searl gave him reasons why blood was red and taught him about the mysterious force that communicated instructions from the brain through the nerves.

  Pol’s pile of notes began to grow until Searl didn’t wake at his normal time.

  “Wake up,” Pol said, as calmly as he could to Searl’s slumbering form. He turned the monk over to see a remnant of a minweed leaf stuck to Searl’s lower lip.

  Pol sighed. The man had taken an extra dose when Pol slept. Pol couldn’t wait for something to happen that wouldn’t on its own, so he threw out all the minweed in the house.

  Searl woke, and after their afternoon session, he asked Pol to fill the little cistern above the sink that gave them running water.

  “What have you done?” Searl said accusingly when Pol walked in with two buckets of water.

  Pol didn’t respond until he had filled the cistern. “I threw out your minweed. You took an extra dose last night. That’s against our agreement.”

  Searl’s face turned red. “We don’t have an agreement like that.”

  “Then we should,” Pol said. “I’ll give you a fresh dose at the end of every good session.”

  Searl gnashed his teeth. “Pour me some water, and let’s see if you’ve learned anything.”

  Other than Searl’s nasty attitude, Pol felt like smiling at the thought of doing something practical.

  “We’ve talked about shrinking blood vessels to remove inflammation, and expanding blood vessels to alleviate pain. I’ll let you use a tiny measure of magic on my shoulder. Remember the pattern we talked about. The arteries branch smaller and smaller, like the limbs and branches of a tree. Don’t think of closing them, or you will not get the result you want.”

  “I always felt a flush of heat when Malden healed me.”

  “Malden? You know Malden Gastoria?”

  “My father’s Court Magician.”

  Searl furrowed his brow as this brought up some memories. “He left after teaching a magic course just as I was expelled. He learned a bit of my technique, but Malden didn’t want to be a healer.” Searl looked at Pol with new eyes. “You didn’t tell me you were a prince.”

  “Disinherited. Presently I am less a prince than you are a monk.”

  “We’ll have to talk about that another time. Right now we focus on your giving me a bit of relief before I can get a proper dose of minweed.”

  “A slight constriction of the blood vessels,” Pol said.

  “Try it. You might want to lay your hands on my shoulder. It isn’t necessary, but it may help you to concentrate. No more than ten counts.”

  Pol took a deep breath and put his hands on Searl’s left shoulder. He thought of the veins he could see in his palm and then the branches of a leafless tree. The pattern grew in his mind. Pol could tell his eyes looked inward, so he tweaked the vessels in Searl’s shoulder to constrict just a bit while he counted.

  He opened his eyes as Searl opened his. “Tolerable for a first try,” he said.

  Pol put on of his hands on the table, to steady himself. “That was exhausting.” He downed the water left in the cup that he had given Searl.

  “A pity.” Searl raised his arm and then winced.

  Pol started. “Are you all right?”

  Searl shook his head. “Of course not, but I can feel a tiny bit of relief. So that took a lot out of you?”

  “It did. Perhaps I can do more with practice. It has worked in the past.”

  Searl grunted. “A fine pair we are. I can’t stay awake long enough to heal you, and you can’t manage to tweak long enough to make me better. Perhaps you are right. We will have to work harder.”

  ~

  Pol woke, still sleeping in the loft, when the cabin door flew open.

  “Searl!” a voice called from down below.

  “Wha?” Searl’s voice was groggy, as it always was after a large dose. Pol had let Searl consume more minweed in the evenings for the past week.

  “Are those soldiers still with you?” Pol recognized Morfess, the weeder leader. Pol had never seen the man awake and was struck by the man’s dominating presence.

  Pol threw on his clothes and looked over the railing, his throwing knives now tucked in his boots.

  “Only me,” Pol said.

  “You are the one with the big horse?”

  “I am.”

  Searl sat up, scratching his beard. “He has become an assistant. He’s learning a bit of healing from me.”

  “Good. Get dressed. I have an injured man outside. Heal him, and I can set aside our recent differences.”

  Pol could see the constant give and take that Searl had talked about. Morfess’s anger seemed to be an act, or perhaps part of a game the two men played.

  He clambered down the ladder and helped Searl get some bread in him. He had found that food would revive Searl, if he hadn’t yet thrown a handful of minweed down his throat.

  The three of them walked out into the yard. A man lay on a travois. A wagon wouldn’t make it along any of the paths to Searl’s cabin from the weeders’ compound.

  “What do you make of him, student?” Searl asked. He narrowed his eyes as he made eye contact with the monk. This was a serious event. There were four men in front of him, and he could detect another ten hidden in the woods, close enough to view what Pol did. Maybe this wasn’t quite a game to the weeders.

  Searl had taught him to detect heat within a person, likely caused by infection or inflammation. That part of healing didn’t take too much out of him, since it was similar in concept to the location spell that Pol used.

  Pol felt heat close to the man’s back. “Turn him over,” Pol said.

  Morfess’s face looked grim. He nodded to one of his men.

  Blood covered the man’s back.

  Searl nodded at his student to proceed.

  Pol took a knife from his boot, which surprised the weeders, and proceeded to cut the rays of a star in the fabric above the wound. He peeled back the cloth, revealing an inch slit in the man’s uppe
r back.

  “Knife wound?” Pol looked up at Morfess.

  “He made the mistake of going to Hill Creek for some fun,” the weeder said. “They don’t like us much.”

  Pol was convinced there was more to the story, but he just concentrated on the injured weeder. “I need a few supplies,” Pol said.

  “I’ll go.” Searl made a move towards the cabin.

  Pol grabbed his hand. “I think you should check my diagnosis. I’ll be right back.” Pol didn’t trust Searl not to touch minweed in a crisis, and they just might be facing one.

  He ran into the cabin and grabbed his bandages and filled a washpan with water.

  “It has the beginnings of infection,” Searl said.

  Pol knelt by the wounded weeder and cleaned the wound. The edges appeared angry and hot. He looked with magical sight and could see the redness was indeed hot, and it extended into the wound.

  “This is beyond me,” Pol said. “I haven’t learned how to handle infection, and this wound is in the process of going bad.”

  Morfess swore, and then said, “Any fool can see that.”

  The weeder made Pol angry. “I detected it when he was on his back, didn’t I?”

  “You did,” Searl said. “I’ll take it from here.” Searl’s eyes glazed and Pol could now feel his healing power work on a pattern or patterns that Pol hadn’t yet learned.

  “How have I done?” Searl looked at Pol. “Look deeply.”

  Pol sought out a pattern of purity and could see where the wound had disrupted that. He saw the integrity of the man’s wound and the vestiges of something Pol didn’t know how to interpret.

  “The infection has retreated?” Pol looked a bit more. “You’ve tweaked the good flesh to encroach on the bad?”

  “That’s good enough,” Searl said. “Bandage him as best you can.”

  Pol made a pad of cloth and then wound another length around the man’s torso, sideways and then across. He’d seen similar bandages at both the Deftnis infirmary and at Borstall.

  Searl looked up at the weeder leader. “Change the bandage every day. Give the man lots of water to drink, but boil it, and let it cool first. He can survive, but only if you follow my instructions. You’ve done it often enough in the past.”

  “We have,” Morfess said. The weeder eyed Pol. “I guess you can stay.”

  Pol didn’t know whether to thank the man or not, so he merely gave Morfess a quick bow of his head.

  The weeders left the yard with Searl and Pol standing in the middle. Pol followed the monk back into the cabin.

  “It could have been worse,” Searl said. “At least I didn’t have to resort to using magic as a defense. Morfess hates that.”

  “There were ten more men hidden in the woods.”

  Searl smiled. “They only think they were hidden. We can both locate. You did well under pressure.”

  He could see the sheen of sweat on Searl’s brow. The man must have been very scared, as scared as Pol.

  “Remember, a magician can only do so much. We were surrounded and could have been easily executed,” Searl said.

  Pol realized that the monk had accurately read the situation, and Pol hadn’t. He had always assumed they had the upper hand, even with ten men hidden away. He gulped when he realized how close he had been to losing his temper in front of the weeders. He had to change the subject.

  “Is part of the pattern purification?” Pol asked.

  Searl put both his hands on his knees and took a deep breath. “You see it as purification, but that’s not quite right. I was peeling back putrefaction. Just the opposite.”

  “Oh, right, the tweak wasn’t making the bad flesh good, but extending the good flesh into the bad.”

  “You noticed? Good. I also worked on strengthening the healing that had already begun.”

  “Healing? I thought he was infected.”

  “Just because there is infection doesn’t mean there isn’t healing going on at the same time. The body fights infection, but it’s not a one-dimensional battle. Healing goes on, but think of the infection as an invasion. If left on its own, the infection soldiers, to put it in a military context, begin overwhelming the body’s defenses with sheer numbers. It’s the body that does the heating to kill the soldiers, the infection.”

  Pol tried to find a pattern that fit the situation. “Fighting the enemy soldiers with fire?”

  “Right. Now, please, please permit me some minweed. It has been a taxing morning.”

  Pol reluctantly relented and let Searl sleep until the afternoon.

  ~~~

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  ~

  SEARL BEGAN TO START HIDING MINWEED around the cabin. Pol found the stashes and destroyed them. For a while, everything proceeded as Pol hoped. He learned more about healing and began giving Searl treatments for his shoulder, which the monk admitted were working.

  “Why didn’t you let the other monks treat you like this?” Pol said when Searl woke up as evening approached.

  Searl stayed silent for a bit. “I traveled to Orkal, the duchy on the western border with Sand, to heal a wealthy merchant who had once studied at Deftnis. My horse shied for some reason I’ll never know and threw me to the ground. A woodcutter brought me to his house, not knowing who I was. I was unconscious, you see. A concussion to match my damaged shoulder. His wife knew some folk remedies, and she gave me minweed to alleviate the pain.”

  “But you could have just stopped taking it,” Pol said.

  Searl looked away. “You haven’t learned a lot about healing, but people react differently to medicine. Overall, a potion works the same, but for some, there are more violent reactions. My body instantly developed a craving for minweed. I’ve not stopped wanting it since that horrid day.”

  “So you use your shoulder as an excuse?”

  The monk shrugged. “I told the monks about my shoulder, but my body craved the minweed, so I didn’t let them heal me. My injury was always my excuse. I couldn’t eliminate the excuse, could I? After all this time, you have learned to tame it,” Searl said.

  “But your addiction remains?”

  Searl gave Pol a sorrowful look. “I am afraid so, but my excuse is going away.”

  This would never do, Pol thought. “You made a deal with me.”

  “I did, and I am fulfilling it. I think I have done well enough teaching you to heal that I can move on to repairing your body.”

  Pol had to admit he had taken to healing better than he had expected. Unfortunately, one could do little to heal oneself other than closing a wound and now Pol knew how to do that.

  “I don’t want to wait,” Pol said.

  Searl scowled. “Don’t be petulant, boy.”

  “Don’t be an addict, old man,” Pol said. He lost a bit of control and bit his lip to regain it. “I don’t want to spend the rest of a truncated life having you play around with my insides for a few minutes a day. Do you want my help in finding your daughter, or doesn’t she really mean anything to you?” Pol thought about his words. “I’m sorry I had to say that.”

  After raising his hand in mock surrender, Searl said, “It’s how you feel, isn’t it? I know you’re only fifteen, but you are correct. I’m an addict. What shall we do? Do you want me to dismiss you?”

  “I don’t want to leave. To leave is to die,” Pol said.

  “Fine, then what do we do?”

  “Let’s say I want to be cured in two weeks. How much time would you have to spend working on me?”

  Searl twisted his mouth in thought. “Two hours a day, most likely.

  “Then why don’t you commit to two hours of your lucid time? We started at an hour a day, and it has dwindled to half or less than that,” Pol said.

  “I know. My life is—”

  “…what it is because you made it that way. The problem only rests within you, right?”

  “Who taught you to think that way?”

  Pol shook his head. “I had to fight for my life continual
ly last year. My tutor and Malden tried to help me cope with the pressure. They did it skillfully, but it all revolved around my doing all I could to solve my problems, not looking for others to do it for me.”

  “That is an admirable life lesson. One that I can’t follow.”

  Pol thought for a bit. “I had a case of melancholia after I killed a man. The tension must have gotten to me. I was nearly to the point where I wouldn’t mind if I killed myself. I could have given up and just faded away. I wanted to, but I just didn’t have the energy to do it. Kell noticed my change, and the healers intervened. I pulled myself out of a deep, deep hole. You can, too.”

  “As I said, it’s a path that I can’t follow,” Searl said.

  “Can’t follow, or won’t follow? You have a physical addiction, but not everyone is a minweed addict.”

  “They would be,” Searl said, “if given a large enough dose.”

  “What if I took a large dose of minweed? Would I end up as an addict?”

  “You wouldn’t know unless you tried.”

  “If I take a large dose of minweed, will you go without, or with small amounts until I’m cured?” Pol had no idea if he could withstand the temptation of minweed, but he had to try something.

  “That is quite a risk.”

  “My life is somewhat of a risk,” Pol said.

  “All right, I’ll agree.”

  “In writing. I know you can violate the agreement at any time, but let’s at least formalize our bet.”

  Searl pulled out a piece of paper.

  “I’ll do the writing,” Pol said.

  Once he had finished the agreement, both of them signed it. Searl left with an empty bowl and returned with it filled with minweed, fresh-picked from the garden. “Fresher is better,” he said as he put the bowl in front of Pol.

  “What does it taste like?” Pol said, not really wanting to hear the answer.

  “Food from the gods,” Searl said. “You will be transported to a better place.”

  Pol looked at the bowl and at the agreement set out to the side. He had to do something, but what if he became addicted? At least the two of them could live in mutual oblivion. It was highly likely that Searl would even outlive Pol.