Zandru's Forge (13 page)

“Once it’s been out, a shoulder likes to wander,” Raul had said as Kevan got to his feet. “Like some fillies I’ve known, and more than a few husbands. With a shoulder, the trick is to get it back in before the muscles bind up.” He gave a wink to indicate there was no known treatment for either of the other offenders.

“I know about shoulders,” Kevan had admitted with a sheepish grin. “‘Tis the third time for me, but the puttin’ back’s always worse than the puttin’ out. Never had it so easy as this.” He had thanked the stable man and went off toward the main house to have his shoulder bound.

The puttin’ back’s always worse than the puttin’ out.
The phrase stayed with Varzil, along with the memory.

“Let me try,” he said, gently pushing Carolin down.

“You?” Eduin demanded. “What can you do? Cerriana, this is a terrible idea—he has no monitor training—he could make the damage worse—”

“No,” Carolin said. “I trust Varzil. Let him try.”

Ignoring Eduin’s taunt, Varzil positioned his hands around Carolin’s forearm, exerting a steady, gentle traction on the shoulder. At first, he felt resistance, as if he were pulling on a tightly knotted rope. The muscles had already gone stiff with pain. Carolin’s face tensed.

Do not fight it,
bredu, he spoke mentally to Carolin.
I
know
it hurts, but can you place your arm into my hands?

Carolin, who had been holding his breath, let it out. Varzil felt the muscles soften and lengthen. Now was the moment.

Praying his memory was correct, Varzil drew Carolin’s elbow to his side, hand rotated backward. He felt something high in the arm begin to slide. With the next slow movement, Varzil moved Carolin’s hand toward the opposite shoulder, continuing to hold his elbow at his side.

“Ah!” Carolin cried.

Varzil sensed rather than heard the arm bone slide back into its socket. Warmth spread through the surrounding tissues. Varzil sat back on his heels, aware that he was sweating.

“Now, where is that sling?”he said.

Cerriana, eyes wide, went to get cloth from the picnic basket. Deftly, she knotted it around Carolin’s arm.

After Carolin declared he felt well enough to travel, Cerriana announced that she and Valentina would return with him to Arilinn.

“There’s no sense all of us leaving,” Eduin said. “Varzil and I can keep picking.”

With Carolin safely astride his fine black horse and Valentina on the mule, Cerriana bustled her little party back to the Tower. Varzil turned back to the tree where he’d been picking. He lifted the ladder from the ground.

“If you expect to be treated like some kind of hero, you’re going to be disappointed.” Eduin came up behind him.

Varzil suppressed his startlement. He didn’t like the glint in Eduin’s eyes, nor did the older boy’s words bode him any good will. His former unease returned.

“I just did what needed to be done,” he said quietly. “I don’t expect any reward.”

Eduin’s tone slipped toward an outright sneer. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay away from Carlo from now on.”

“What concern is it of yours?” The words burst from Varzil’s mouth before he could consider them. Anger pulsed through his belly.

Perhaps, he realized, he disliked Eduin because he sensed how much Eduin disliked
him.

Why? He was no threat to Eduin’s position in the Tower, nor was he aware of any feud between their families. Zandru’s scorpions, he didn’t even know who Eduin’s father was! What difference could that make?

Eduin took a step closer. He was a head taller than Varzil, so that now he glowered down at him. His lips drew back from his teeth. He poked one finger into Varzil’s chest. It would have been an offensive gesture under any circumstances, but for telepaths accustomed to respectful physical restraint, it was an outright insult.

Varzil might be new to the Tower, but not so new that he did not catch the implication. He was acutely aware that they were alone together, that Eduin was not only older and taller, but heavier. He’d never been a fighter; if Eduin decided to enforce his point with fists instead of words, his only option would be to run. That would only delay the inevitable.

“Mind your own business,” Eduin said, biting off each word. “Nobody wanted you here to begin with, but since we have to put up with you, you’d better stick to your own place. Which is away from me and Carolin Hastur.”

Varzil’s thoughts skidded to a halt. Eduin was telling him that Carolin was his private preserve and that no outside friendships would be tolerated. They weren’t lovers; Varzil would have known if they-were, and Tower folk weren’t prudish. He’d realized that from his first night when Cerriana and Richardo had gone off together.

Varzil squared his shoulders and met the older boy’s gaze steadily. “I will associate with anyone I please. It is for Carlo to say who his friends are, not you.”

As for his own place, that was at Arilinn Tower. Something held him back from throwing the words in Eduin’s face. Perhaps it was the old habit of keeping his thoughts to himself, or he sensed that even a bully might have influence beyond his words.

Eduin was clearly a favorite, advancing rapidly through the ranks of Tower workers. If he fulfilled his promise, he would make a dangerous enemy.

What was really important here? Facing down a bully or following his own dreams, to be here at last at Arilinn Tower?

Or was this a grudge which would grow and fester until it escaped all bounds of reason? He had heard tales of such feuds, running for generations.

Instinctively, Varzil reached out to Eduin’s mind. If he could establish a primitive communication with a catman, who wasn’t even human, he might also be able to bridge whatever separated him from this young man.

Varzil met a wall, as smooth and blank as a polished shield. He drew back, astonished at the completeness of the barrier. Eduin’s thoughts seemed only to reflect, not to penetrate.

Polished ... as if from years of needing to draw apart, to keep secret. This was not just against him for this moment, Varzil realized, but simply the way Eduin habitually shielded his thoughts. Yet in the Tower, where men spoke mind to mind, what could be kept hidden? Why this desperate need for privacy?

Compassion washed through Varzil. He himself had felt compelled to keep secrets for most of his young life. A few early mistakes, like speaking of the Ya-men wailing beneath the moons, had convinced him of the danger of openness. Here in the Tower, he hoped he could finally be himself, among people who understood. How infinitely sad that Eduin, who had been here for four years, still could not trust anyone with the hidden recesses of his mind.

Ah well, that was truly none of his business. And if Eduin felt drawn to Carolin in fellowship and trust, it was better for him to have a single friend than to be so terribly alone.

Silently, Varzil went back to picking apples. His hands and feet moved of their own accord, climbing the wooden rungs, reaching for one green sphere after another. But as he worked, the lingering poison of Eduin’s attack continued to eat away at him. He no longer smelled the honey-tart aroma of the apples. The colors of the day dimmed, as if a mist had passed over the cloudless sky. He emptied the pockets of his apron over and over into the panniers until four of them were full. Leaving the last stag pony for Eduin, he took the lead lines of the other two and trudged back to Arilinn.

Snow covered the turrets and courtyards of Arilinn when Varzil took his place as a member of a working circle for the first time. Ordinarily, this would have required years of training, but Varzil had shown aptitude and there was such need that his progress had been accelerated. This night, he was to join Fidelis and Cerriana as part of a
laran
healing.

A handful of families, left homeless and desperate after the last skirmishes between Alton and Esperanza, had tried to farm the Drycreek area. These broken borderlands, adjacent to the Hastur kingdoms, had been contaminated with bonewater dust a generation ago and deserted ever since. The farmers thought enough time had passed for the land to be safe, but after some months, their children sickened. As Midwinter neared, they came to Arilinn, half-starved and suffering from frostbite as well as bonewater poisoning. The Tower’s monitors separated out the less afflicted, but it would take the combined efforts of the two strongest healers, along with a full circle, to save the worst. Fidelis recommended that Varzil be included, young though he was.

Varzil arrived early at the designated chamber to compose himself and to calm his rising excitement at this new responsibility. Auster had placed great faith in him and he wanted to prove himself worthy.

Most monitors were healers, skilled in using the body’s own energy system to repair and rebuild. Some of the best were women, although no one had offered Varzil an explanation why. Everyone at Arilinn had basic monitor training, and all novices studied the energy patterns of the human body.

Varzil paused to catch his breath just inside the door. A row of cots had been set up around the charcoal brazier, bathed in its gentle warmth. One of the patients, a child wrapped in a thick white blanket, coughed fitfully. He blinked, not sure if he had seen a fine green haze in the air, or only felt the sickness of the children. Something—a smell, a taste like rotted meat—slithered up the back of his throat. The fine hairs along the back of his neck rose.

Fidelis came into the room, touching his fingertips to the back of Varzil’s hand in passing and then proceeding to the first cot. As usual, he wore the loosely belted white robe of a monitor. Deep lines bracketed his mouth and eyes.

The monitor bent over the little girl who lay there, her hair spilling over the pillow. “Come here, Varzil. Look at this.”

Swallowing, Varzil bent over the child, taking in the milk-pale cheeks, the tracery of blue veins beneath the skin, the hollows around the eyes, the frost-chapped lips. The girl stirred and opened her eyes. She looked to be about four years old. Something in the shape of her eyes reminded him of Dyannis, his youngest sister.

On impulse, he knelt beside the cot and took her hand. Fingers, as slender as a fairy‘s, tightened around his. With his mind, he followed the energon channels of her body, by layers going deeper into the tissues, the congested red passages, the ruptured cells. He had not the training to completely understand what he saw, the pattern of damage and reaction as her body struggled to defend itself.

This way
... As gentle and firm as a guiding hand, Fidelis directed his awareness to the core of the girl’s bones, where germ cells lined the cavities, dying. Here and there, however, a tiny mote pulsed with unnatural energy. Varzil felt each pinpoint as a dot of lurid phosphorescence, green like the miasma in the room. The girl might survive for a time, but the deep changes in her marrow would eventually kill her. Even now, he could taste her death. Looking up at Fidelis, he sought to put what he saw into words.

Fidelis nodded in agreement.
It is ever so with bonewater dust. Some die within days of exposure, their nerves burned out. Others survive, only to perish a tenday later from vomiting and purging. But these, especially the very young... they seem to heal, they lighten our hearts with hope, but theirs is the longer, more tragic death.

“What must we do? How can we save her?” Varzil forced the words through a throat gone suddenly dry.

Fidelis tilted his head to one side, as if considering.
If we are not too late, I believe it is possible, even though no one today has much experience with such early treatment. The techniques from the Ages of Chaos are lost. Those affected are usually considered beyond help, even if they can still walk. I have heard that some men who survived the seeding of Drycreek seemed unharmed, but they all died a decade later from wasting illnesses or tumors. By the time any of them sought healing at a Tower, there was nothing we could do. Perhaps if we had known earlier...

If we had considered it our responsibility to find out,
said Auster.

“Who knew?” Auster spoke aloud as he entered the room. His eyes reflected the light of the globes set about the walls as if it were flame. His physical appearance commanded attention, with his heavy shoulders, rust-streaked beard, and intense eyes, but it was his mantle of energy which filled the room.

Auster went to the girl’s cot. “Bonewater dust is a weapon of war. If people have not the wit to avoid the proscribed lands, we must nevertheless try to save them from their own folly.”

Varzil read no expression in the Keeper’s voice. Was Auster saying the use of bonewater was justified and acceptable, that it was the fault of the victims who had deliberately if unknowingly exposed their own families? Varzil had seen the faces of the parents, the tearing guilt behind their eyes. They loved their children no less than his own father loved him. And they were desperate, homeless ...

Together, Fidelis and Auster examined each patient. Most of this was done mentally, but occasionally Auster would ask a question about some medical detail. Cerriana joined them, listening quietly. Meanwhile, Lerrys and two others entered and took seats on the benches.

Last of all came Eduin, who went directly to his place without meeting Varzil’s glance. They had spoken only a few words since the incident in the apple orchard, for they usually worked and studied separately. Now Varzil caught no hint of animosity from the other youth, only an attitude of serious concentration. Perhaps Eduin had thought better of his outburst, and now realized that Varzil posed no threat to his status in the Tower or his friendship with Carolin. Varzil resolved to approach the night’s task with the same impartiality.