Read Online The Shape-Changer's Wife by Sharon Shinn - Free Book Online Page A

anybody.
    â€œThat’s all?”
    â€œAnd hit me. With a stick.”
    Indeed, there was a long thin ash branch lying half a foot from the injured boy’s head. Aubrey raised his voice again.
    â€œDid anyone see what happened? Orion claims that the boy was teasing him—throwing rocks and such.”
    â€œWell, and no wonder if he was!” a male voice shouted back. “That big old half-wit doesn’t belong here! Scares everybody, he does! He’s mean—and he’s strange—”
    â€œThat doesn’t justify abusing him,” Aubrey said, but no one heard him; others had taken up young Kendal’s case.
    â€œThat wizard’s got no reason bringing such odd creatures here, this crazy man and that woman—”
    â€œBoy’s got a right to come to town, see the market—”
    â€œKendal was just standing there—”
    â€œKendal never did a thing to this animal—”
    Suddenly a new voice made itself heard over the general muttering of mob anger. “Kendal did so throw rocks at this man—I saw him and so did you,” said the speaker briskly. Aubrey, quickly locating her with his eyes, recognized her as the tavernkeeper’s daughter. “Poked him with a stick, too—here, this one. I saw him do it. No wonder the poor simple man struck him. I’d like to hit Kendal myself most days of the week.”
    A few of the raised voices denounced her now, but with a little less conviction. She had been kneeling beside Kendal, but now she was on her feet, hands on her hips and a fierce expression on her face. “You all just go on now, do your marketing,” she said. “The half-wit isn’t going to hurt anybody else.”
    â€œYeah, well, what about Kendal?” someone called out, and the cry was taken up by others. “What about Kendal? How bad is Kendal?”
    â€œKendal will be just fine as soon as he gets a little peace and quiet,” the girl said with asperity. “Go along, now! Get out of my way!”
    â€œStay here,” Aubrey said briefly to Orion, and jumped off the bench. Down among the disgruntled spectators, he began to herd them back toward the market stalls, smiling benignly to show that everything was all right, laying his hand on an arm or a back in a show of fellowship. He was not above using a bit of magic in this situation, a spell of well-being, encouraging the townspeople to cheer up and forget their anger. Within a few minutes, virtually the whole crowd was dispersed.
    Aubrey then quickly turned his attention to Kendal, still lying with alarming rigidity on the ground. The woman kneeling beside the boy was probably his mother, Aubrey guessed, and he dropped down beside her.
    â€œHow is he doing?” Aubrey asked.
    She shook her head. “He’s breathing, he is, but I can’t tell much else.”
    Aubrey nodded and touched his hands to the boy’s skull, throat and chest. He was not one of those magicians with an inborn talent for medicine, but he knew the basic healing skills; they were among the first that Cyril had taught him. Healing is merely a matter of making whole, Cyril had said; both illness and injury disrupt the perfect and complementary circuits of the body. Find the failed synapse, the broken vessel, the obscured and cloudy patch of fever; remove or repair. Aubrey’s fingers, skating over the permeable surface of the skin, detected the surge of blood through the resilient tissues and over the recalcitrant bones. He cleared some slight debris from the sleeping brain, reknit an artery that had split its seams, and made sure there was room enough for air in the lungs. Kendal sighed and stirred, curling up instinctively toward his mother.
    â€œLooks like there’s nothing much wrong with him,” Aubrey said, coming to his feet. “I’m sure he’ll be better by this afternoon.”
    â€œThankee, sir,” the woman said. She leaned