As if in response to his thought, Arya tore back the flap to the tent and ran toward him, bounding across the lane with impossibly long strides.
“What’s happened?” Baldor asked as she slowed to a halt.
Arya ignored him and said, “Eragon, come.”
“What’s happened?” Baldor exclaimed angrily, and reached for Arya’s shoulder. In a flash of seemingly instantaneous movement, she caught his wrist and twisted his arm behind his back, forcing him to stand hunched over, like a cripple. His face contorted with pain.
“If you want your baby sister to live, then stand aside and do not interfere!” She released him with a push, sending him sprawling into Albriech’s arms, then whirled about and strode back toward Horst’s tent.
“What has happened?” Eragon asked as he joined her.
Arya turned to face him, eyes burning. “The child is healthy, but she was born with a cat lip.”
Then Eragon understood the reason for the women’s outpouring of grief. Children cursed with a cat lip were rarely allowed to live; they were difficult to feed, and even if the parents could feed them, such children would suffer a miserable lot: shunned, ridiculed, and unable to make a suitable match for marriage. In most cases, it would have been better for all if the child had been stillborn.
“You have to heal her, Eragon,” said Arya.
“Me? But I’ve never … Why not you? You know more about healing than I do.”
“If I rework the child’s appearance, people will say I have stolen her and replaced her with a changeling. Well I know the stories your kind tells about my race, Eragon—too well. I will do it if I must, but the child will suffer for it ever after. You are the only one who can save her from such a fate.”
Panic clutched at him. He did not want to be responsible for the life of another person; he was already responsible for far too many.
“You have to heal her,” Arya said, her tone forceful. Eragon reminded himself how dearly elves treasured their children, as well as children of all races.
“Will you assist me if I need it?”
“Of course.”
As will I, said Saphira. Must you even ask?
“Right,” said Eragon, and gripped Brisingr’s pommel, his mind made up. “I’ll do it.”
With Arya trailing slightly behind, he marched over to the tent and pushed his way past the heavy woolen flaps. Candle smoke stung his eyes. Five women from Carvahall stood bunched together close to the wall. Their keening struck him like a physical blow. They swayed, trance-like, and tore at their clothes and hair as they wailed. Horst was by the end of the cot, arguing with Gertrude, his face red, puffy, and lined with exhaustion. For her part, the plump healer held a bundle of cloth against her bosom, a bundle that Eragon assumed contained the infant—although he could not see its face—for it wriggled and squalled, adding to the din. Gertrude’s round cheeks shone with perspiration, and her hair clung to her skin. Her bare forearms were streaked with various fluids. At the head of the cot, Katrina knelt on a round cushion, wiping Elain’s brow with a damp cloth.
Eragon hardly recognized Elain; her face was gaunt, and she had dark rings under her wandering eyes, which seemed incapable of focusing. A line of tears streamed from the outer corner of each eye, over her temples, and then vanished underneath the tangled locks of her hair. Her mouth opened and closed, and she moaned unintelligible words. A bloodstained sheet covered the rest of her.
Neither Horst nor Gertrude noticed Eragon until he approached them. Eragon had grown since he had left Carvahall, but Horst still stood a head taller. As they both looked at him, a flicker of hope brightened the smith’s bleak expression.
“Eragon!” He clapped a heavy hand on Eragon’s shoulder and leaned against him, as if events had left him barely able to stand. “You heard?” It was not really a question, but Eragon nodded anyway. Horst glanced at Gertrude—a quick, darting glance—then his large, shovel-like beard moved from side to side as his jaw worked, and his tongue appeared between his lips as he wet them. “Can you … can you do anything for her, do you think?”
“Maybe,” said Eragon. “I’ll try.”
He held out his arms. After a moment’s hesitation, Gertrude deposited the warm bundle in his hold, then backed away, her demeanor troubled.
Buried within the folds of fabric was the girl’s tiny, wrinkled face. Her skin was dark red, her eyes were swollen shut, and she appeared to be grimacing, as if she was angry at her recent mistreatment—a response that Eragon thought was perfectly reasonable. Her most striking feature, however, was the wide gap that extended from her left nostril to the middle of her upper lip. Through it, her small pink tongue was visible; it lay like a soft, moist slug, occasionally twitching.
“Please,” said Horst. “Is there any way you can …”
Eragon winced as the women’s keening struck a particularly shrill note. “I can’t work here,” he said.
As he turned to leave, Gertrude spoke up behind him, saying, “I’ll come with you. One of us who knows how to care for a child needs to stay with her.”
Eragon did not want Gertrude hovering about him while he tried to mend the girl’s face, and he was about to tell her just that when he remembered what Arya had said about changelings. Someone from Carvahall, someone the rest of the villagers trusted, ought to bear witness to the girl’s transformation, so that they could later assure people that the child was still the same person as she had been before.
“As you wish,” he said, stifling his objections.
The baby squirmed in his arms and uttered a plaintive cry as he exited the tent. Across the lane, the villagers stood and pointed, and Albriech and Baldor started toward him. Eragon shook his head, and they stopped where they were and gazed after him with helpless expressions.