Chains of Gold by Nancy Springer

spell.” He shrugged and got up to settle himself on the hearth by Arlen’s side. “Cerilla, you are spent, and I have had nothing to occupy me for some days now. Sleep well. I will watch Arlen this night.”
    I laid out the saddle pad for myself and covered myself with our well-used blankets, but I could not go to sleep at once, not without Arlen by my side. My body ached, every fiber of me, with a grief and a dread I could not reason away. I trusted Briony to look after Arl by then, I wanted to go to sleep, I knew I needed sleep, but something within me lay crying, and as exhaustion took me I knew what it was: the child who had cried when my mother had been put into the ground. Mind tried to calm me, but heart knew: Arlen was in deadly danger.
    I slept raggedly and awoke in the morning not much the better for it. At once I knew that Arlen was worse. His face was flushed, clammy and feverish to the touch, and all his wounds were swollen and sore and oozing through their bandages. Briony was sitting by his side with a wooden bucket of cold water and a square of cotton cloth.
    â€œIs he in pain?” I asked, going over.
    â€œHe does not seem to be. I would take more comfort if he were; it would show that he was fighting the shadows. He has been shaking with chills half the night, though his face is hot. And he does not seem to dream or struggle. Here.” He handed me the wet cloth and took up the bolt to tear more bandaging.
    â€œFolk come here for charms from time to time,” he added, though I had not asked him why he tore up good cloth for Arlen, “and they pay me in whatever they have to offer. I have no need of this cotton right now.” He took the old bandage from Arlen’s thigh and threw it into the fire. The wound looked and smelled worse than I had expected, and I gagged.
    â€œContagion,” Briony muttered. The word sent a shudder through me.
    The next few days passed in a haze of misery. I sat by Arlen’s side for the most part, talking to him from time to time, pleading with him or exhorting him or sometimes even scolding him; none of it had any effect that I could see. Laving his hot forehead, putting peat on the fire, guarding him from chills, helping Briony change the bandages. Briony cooked, mixed potions; I am sure he tried every remedy he knew of. He made spicy, aromatic plasters, which he placed on the wounds to draw off the heat, and he burned incense to purify the room. He brewed possets and ground yael horn to put in the wine for strength, but within days Arlen had slipped away to the point where he would take neither broth nor possets nor wine.
    â€œLet me sit with him tonight,” I said to Briony one evening by lamplight. I felt sure he was tired, for all his day had been spent in nothing but nursing Arlen, and that to no avail. I noticed a crease between his bright black eyes.
    â€œPerhaps some better thought will come to me,” he admitted, “if I refresh myself. Call me if you start nodding.” And he went off into the shadows at the back of the soddy, where the earth formed such odd hillocks and piles, where the roots reached down from the copse above, forming an entanglement. I soon lost sight of him back there, and I did not know what he was doing. Nor did I care to know. I chose to assume that he lay down and slept. Sometime during the night he came out again, and I went to my bed and dozed for a while. But no new thought had come to him, and Arlen was no better with the next day’s dawn.
    I took the burden of nursing on myself, insofar as I could, once I had learned the ways of the house, the wheres of water and wine and pans and the like. Busying myself with such things helped me contain my distress somewhat. Briony mixed more poultices, and then out of a chest he brought forth books, a weighty herbal and a smaller book with a black cover, a spell book. Most of the day and into lamplight again he searched through them, and