Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8 (43 page)

“You are safe now, Lózha,” he said simply, before turning away. He had not even glanced at her wound.

Mateko smiled comfortingly, kneeling, and held out her pack to her, then followed Preinon off into the camp.

Adria edged into the camp, dazed, but now seeing, even from the same vantage point as earlier, the scene unfold in its true horror, without the suspension of time she had felt before.

Cries of pain, blood, and fire filled the aftermath. She could not have been gone long, for many tribespersons still scrambled about — putting out fires, assessing the state of the wounded, and reassembling their defenses.

Very near where she had reentered the camp with Preinon, Adria found that Tabashi had spoken truthfully. Although her quiver and arrows were gone, the dark, bone-tipped shaft of her bow remained, beside the bloodstained remains of her leather tunic.

Adria opened her pack to retrieve her over cloak, which she draped absently around her bare shoulders. Then she took up the bow and strapped it back onto the side of the pack, from where it had been loosed.

Did my pack remain here?
 She could somehow not remember, the last long minutes of her life now seeming to cover with fog. 
Mateko must have brought it to me, but left the bow.

It made no sense, but there was no time to think upon it just then, as she waded further into the horror of the camp to the central fire, where most of those whose wounds were not severe were carrying or dragging the bodies of the dead or dying.

Now Adria could see that she was among the least of the wounded. Many were wounded by arrows or spears, but some bore the wider wounds of bladed weapons, or the broken bones of crude clubs.

Mechushegiya of the tribe attended to the first care of the worst among the victims, but Adria saw Shísha follow along behind them, examining each afresh, in turn. She seemed to be mostly sniffing about among the wounded, moving very slowly, very carefully, as if hunting a fish in water.

When she sensed Adria nearby, she approached quickly, and poked her fingers around the edges of Adria’s bandage, nodding with satisfaction. “It is well tended, and you are not too weak.”

“No, Lichushegi,” Adria said roughly, just realizing she had not spoken since the cave, and glancing at the torn flesh of those nearby. “I have been… fortunate.”

Promises made and broken, 
Adria remembered, the clouds clearing a little again. 
Promises of my father. What does this mean? Is this all because of me? Did I bring this attack, somehow?

But Shísha regained her attention, squeezing her hand once, simply, within her own. “You will be my eyes, and you will be my second hands, and we will save many from death today.”

Even days before, Adria would have objected, would have said that there were others more suitable, but she could see for herself that anyone who was conscious was already aiding those who weren’t.

She closed here eyes once, for only a moment, and pushed the pain and fog away. “What must I do?”

“Follow,” Shísha said simply. “Listen.”

Green Faces and Red Beads

S
hísha proved Tabashi’s assessment on Aesidhe healing well true, and Adria learned more in the next few hours than she had from years of Sisterhood tutelage and many of the most prominent medical texts.

The blind Lichushegi could determine, by scent alone, who among the wounded was most in need of care, and who could wait to be cared for — how much blood someone had lost, whether an infection was setting in, and if they already had a fever.

Shísha felt for broken bones and, with Adria’s help, worked to set them. At the healer’s direction, Adria fashioned simple splints out of wood and twine and, when this grew scarce, she used lengths of vine or gut that some of the Hunters were sent to gather.

Pots were set up about the fires for the brewing of Medicines and the comfort of food and drink. Kochushegiya chanted healing songs and made prayers over the healing. Those least wounded were soon made use of, and the number of bodies decreased — quickly at first, then more slowly, until only a score or so remained.

Many of these Shísha only looked over once, with her sightless eyes, and shook her head sadly, and quietly said a few words over them.

No one weeps,
Adria slowly realized. They mourned with prayers, but did not yet lose control of themselves. 
Again, for this there will be time later.

Adria could see that some among the wounded were bound, hands and feet, and these had their arms and faces painted deep evergreen, their hair braided in a strange pattern.

These are our attackers,
Adria realized.

Shísha cared for them no differently, though it was clear she knew the difference. “Shíme Hoshegi Bobeya,” she said to Adria after they cared for the second or third among them. “They are from the north and west. In the cradle of the mountains you call Greywards.”

It still did not seem time for Adria to ask her questions.

Shísha nodded and smiled her satisfaction, speaking quietly and for Adria’s benefit. “You will heal, zheniste. Pray you are led to find better prey.”

The worst among the still-living was a boy, perhaps maybe ten or twelve, whom Shísha tended last. He had been struck in his leg by an arrow probably not meant for him, and although this wound was not critical in itself, the impact had sent him falling into the fire.

The left side of his body had been terribly burned, but he still lived, writhing about on an oiled skin and moaning. Ash clung to his flesh, and in places he oozed blood and other fluids. He could not cry out loudly, but his voice droned, constantly, horribly, while others’ cries subsided into sleep, into better comfort, or into death.

The sickening smell of his scorched flesh filled the air, so that Adria covered her mouth and nose with her hand, steadied herself so as not to empty her stomach.

Shísha stood over him a long moment, considering.

“Will he live?” Adria asked weakly, her throat half shut. 
Have I made this happen?

“That is not what we would ask,” Shísha said. “A burn is the worst kind of wound. Suffering an arrow or a blade, the body can lose much of its water through the blood, but can eventually regain it. For a burn...” she shook her head. “Where the body is burned, it can no longer hold water.”

Adria wasn’t certain what Shísha meant by water. 
Maybe like a humour, or like the spirit, but not actual water.
 But then she remembered Tabashi’s remarks about the humours, and decided simply to take Shísha at her word. 
Besides, for Aeman not being her original tongue, she nonetheless speaks it well. She knows that water is water.

Shísha leaned down over him, and passed her hands slowly, carefully, over his body, somehow without touching the skin. She seemed to feel the heat of the burns, and could tell the boundaries of his wounds without contact. “The arrow was removed quickly, and he has not lost much blood. This is good.”

“What must we do?” Adria asked, her stomach coiling, serpents and wings. “Would… would bathing him help?”

“First he must be cleaned, yes, and he must be moved from here,” she whispered. “But the pain will be more than he can easily bear.”

Adria could see that the cloth bandage wrapped around his unburned thigh was already stained through with blood, but not terribly. It resembled hers in this. “Is there something to make him sleep, so we can move him?”

“That is what he was given already, but he does not quite sleep. It is dangerous to give him more. He is small. It could make him sleep...” she struggled for this word. ”Forever.”

Adria nodded, eyes full of tears, and Shísha beckoned her to lean closer. “Can you hear what he is saying?”

Adria listened, but the moans he made did not seem to be words at all. He was not even moving his tongue, or his lips. “No.”

Shísha nodded, and began to stroke the boy’s throat on one side, and then the other, upwards. It did not seem to change the sound.

“What did you see in the sweat lodge?” she asked Adria.

The question seemed so unrelated that it took Adria a moment to even understand it. “I... I saw lights, like... fireflies, but brighter, and white, no... almost blue.”

Shísha nodded, and seemed to be pleased. “Do you know what these were?”

Adria thought she knew the correct answer, though she wasn’t certain how much she believed it. “Messengers...? Spirit Helpers.”

“That is what we would say,” Shísha agreed. “Aesidhe believe these are creatures of spirit, like insects without body, or animals, or anything which lives.”

Adria nodded. “I think I understand.”

“Do you?” Shísha sighed, and felt the boy’s forehead with the back of her hand, still stroking his neck with the other. “Close your eyes, almost, and look at this boy, beyond his burned skin. Let the other sounds and sights around you go away, and see only him.”

Adria did as Shísha asked.

“Breathe very slowly, and think of nothing but the boy, and listen to his voice.”

As she did as she was asked, Adria’s vision widened, just as it had during the attack, and everything seemed to slow. She wasn’t really looking at anything at all, soon, and all she could hear was the boy’s voice, but it seemed lower, now, hollow, and almost strangely musical.

And slowly, through much of his body she could see — maybe not even see, but just... feel — a fine, blue-white web. It looked very fragile, and somewhat torn, caught among arcs and points of fire. It all seemed fluid, seemed to be moving, irregularly, and the web itself focused upwards, as if stars rippled upon disturbed waters.

Adria blinked, then, and the vision blurred, then faded. “I saw it...” she breathed.

“What did you see?” Shísha urged.

“His... spirit,” Adria said. “It is... trying to leave his body.”

Shísha nodded. “When the body is in great pain, the spirit may leave — either for awhile, while the body heals, or forever, if the damage is too terrible.”

“Is he…” …
dying,
Adria would have asked, before she remembered she already had. “Is his spirit leaving forever?”

“No,” Shísha said, after a long moment of consideration. “Not yet. The boy is crying his spirit out, for it wants to leave, but is not able. It is caught by the fire. I am helping it along, and soon he will sleep, and the healing can begin. And then, perhaps, we will ask for his return.”

In the silence which followed, Adria unfocused again, and for another moment was able to see what was happening. At the corner of her eyes, she could now also see Shísha’s web, strong and bright, with strands of stars rippling through her center and out through her limbs like a coursing river of light. The image disappeared quickly, again, but in the pit of her stomach, Adria trembled again, but now with excitement as well as sadness.

There is a whole world within the one I’ve known.

“We all are filled with light,” she whispered in wonder, even as the boy’s voice faded away and the rhythm of his breath evened into something like sleep. She widened her vision again, and saw much of his spirit, urged on by Shísha’s own, rise out of his body through his mouth, and dissipate, even as she lost the image.

Adria blinked her eyes fully open again. The boy’s body had stilled, and a look of peace came upon his face. Shísha nodded absently as she felt him relax, and Adria remembered what Tabashi had said about the breath and the heart.

Sh
í
sha can measure the breath of another,
 she realized. 
Bring them sleep, slow their bleeding...

The boy’s closest relatives had gathered around, and Shísha now began giving them direction. Some gathered what was needed from the pots and Shísha’s healing satchels, while others gathered around the boy, carefully lifting the edges of the skins upon which he lay.

One step at a time, they carried him down to the river, and Shísha, Adria, and the boy’s mother and sisters washed his body as he slept, mercifully oblivious to the pain. They removed pebbles, and scraps of clothing, and so much dirt and ashes. And Adria thought, several times, that she would grow sick from the smell and from the sound and from the horror of the sight. She blinked tears from her eyes more than once, and could see that she was not alone.

Because of me?

Finally, when they had done all they could to clean his body, they carried him to the Healing Lodge, which had been cleaned and prepared for him. Kochushegiya and many young boys were standing in a circle around the lodge, already singing for their fallen brother, cousin, friend.

Inside, Adria and the others placed him on a freshly oiled skin, and then the men departed, leaving only grown women to care for him. While some sang and chanted prayers, a few of them used an ointment to spread over the boy’s body. There did not seem to be enough, but Adria, realizing this was the same salve Shísha had instructed her to make only days before, took her own from her pack, all too thankful she had not yet used it.

Soon, as the chanting of the women rose higher in its pitch and volume, through her half-closed eyes, Adria saw an orange light blossom in the center of the boy’s half-charred body. He stirred, then, and writhed in pain as it grew, but Adria could not hear if he made any noise, for his relations’ voices filled the lodge so completely.

As the chanting rose higher and louder — and Adria could now hear the voices of the men and boys without as well — the orange light swelled and began to unfold, and its hues grew to red and yellow, writhing outward into his limbs like a serpent of flame.

Shísha had stopped applying the salve to his burned flesh. She now stood, and raised her arms, and Adria knew that the healer saw what she herself could see, and now hear the roar of, and now feel the heat of.

A dragon of fire tore itself out of the body of the boy, its wings unfolding upward and outward, above the chanting circle of women and beyond the hide walls of the lodge. Slowly, too slowly, it ascended, and beneath its face another appeared and then faded — something more human, but no less a creature of destruction.

Adria trembled as she watched, transfixed. And then, with a rush of air which stilled her breath, it was gone.

The chanting subsided, until the unending moaning of the boy could again be heard. Adria caught her breath again, and she blinked away tears, and her trembling limbs found their strength again.

She could not see in the darkness, and yet somehow she could still see Shísha, and knew she also trembled with the passing of the fire. But she stood in victory, her hands reaching up and about her, gathering the web of the boy’s life to return to his body again.

He will live,
 Adria knew. 
It has been decided.

As the boy stilled again, Shísha fell to her knees, and spoke, and the women carefully pressed large leaves around his salved body, and wrapped him up in the skins upon which he lay.

Like a baby,
 Adria thought, and then it turned to a prayer. 
May you awaken with another New Skin.

The family remained to attend him, with a few more instructions from Shísha, but Shísha and Adria soon left, to see where else they could be of help.

“You have learned much today, Lózha,” Shísha said as they returned to the central fire.

Adria only nodded. Now she felt either too empty or too full to speak. She could not feel the difference. Still, she had to say what she felt.

“When I was a child, long ago…” she whispered. “Watelomoksho once told me that a dragon stole away the children of Heiland.”

“Hm,” Shísha said simply.

“I see now that the dragon lies within us. We need no other.” She hesitated. “And… and today it is I who have brought the dragon to the People. Suffer the children because of me.”

The routines of the camp slowly began to return. The central area was cleared, and a wild pig and strips of elk were being turned over the fire. Preinon and several of the Runners took counsel nearby, their faces taught with emotion, their motions spare and controlled, their voices hushed.