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apples, gath cheese and mebal cheese, chicken, coffee, a bit of lamb haunch, a few fresh foxberries—not many—" he added apologetically, "and a few raisin-and-grain sweetballs. How about you?"
    Faia grinned in spite of herself. "All that? I have some jerky strips, powdered soup base, and tea."
    "That is all ?"
    "Mmm-hmm. I usually do a little foraging while I walk. Or stop in the upland stay-stations. I do not like to carry a lot."
    He brought his pack under the meager shelter of her erda . "I do not mind. I will share."
    Her grin twisted lopsidedly. "I will make a bargain with you. If you can get a fire started, I will make us a stew from some of my soup stock and some of the rest of this."
    He looked bewildered. "Start a fire?"
    "Of course. I can get everything else ready while you get the fire going. I have tinder and quicklights in my pack if you have none—"
    He still looked confused. "I have everything. But if you can do—uh, what you did—why do you need me to build a fire?"
    Ah, yes. To him, that must seem like the most reasonable question in the world. If I can destroy someone's whole world in a blaze of heavenfire by pointing at it, surely I can also get the cookfire going.
    "Because I am never going to do that again, Aldar. Not ever." She cut pine boughs with her camp knife and twisted them into kneeling pads to avoid looking at him while she talked. "Besides," she said, "faeriefire is the wrong kind of fire. No heat. You cannot use it for cooking."
    There was no need to mention that successful magic required concentrated emotion—and she did not have enough emotion left to conjure a single tiny faeriefire as a camp ward. He would not understand. She just said, "Please build a fire for us, Aldar." And she turned her back on him.
    Aldar struggled with the wet wood but eventually built the fire, and after a few feeble attempts at conversation, lapsed into silence. Faia prepared the meal without seeing what she was doing. Her eyes saw only her mother's grave, her sister and her children lying still and cold, and the tattered fur of Huss and Chirp. It was a grim, dismal meal.
    After the two of them cleaned up, Faia crawled into her bedroll. The rain had gone from deluge to steady downpour. Gusts of wind blew cold water across her face and rocked her hammock and soaked the bedroll through to her skin.
    In spite of that, the exhaustion of the day overcame her, and she immediately fell into dreamless sleep.
    She was awakened by a hand gently shaking her. At first, she could not remember where she was or what had happened. But the blackness of the night and the steady drizzle of rain, and Aldar's hopeless voice begging her to please wake up brought the reality back to her.
    "What do you want, Aldar?"
    "I cannot sleep. I just want to know what killed them, Faia. What killed my family?"
    Faia's eyes flew open. Oh, Lady, he is just a kid—and I did not tell him... . I just thought he would know. Or I did not think.... How could he possibly know Plague when he saw it? I would not have recognized it if Mama had not been teaching me the Healer's lays.
    She rolled over to face him. The few glowing embers of the campfire cast dim light that gleamed in the tears on his cheeks. Eyes round as an owl's—he was determined that he would not cry when he asked her.
    Lost everything—and trying to be brave.
    She sat up and wrapped her arms around him. "It was Racker's Plague, Aldar. I am almost certain a trader brought it with him when he came to town."
    "Plague? Are we going to die, too, Faia?"
    Reasonable question.
    Faia studied his dark, worried eyes. "Not likely. The dead do not give Racker's Plague to the living. Only the living do."
    He nestled his head against her shoulder. His wet hair brushed her skin, and she felt him shiver with chill. "Why did they all die?" he whispered.
    Why did they all die? What a question, Aldar. If I knew that, I would be the greatest Healer that ever lived, instead of just an unwilling student