Sworn To Conflict: Courtlight #3 (11 page)

“Different people have different auras,” Ciardis pointed out reasonably.

“Not healers. Not since the Initiate Wars.”

As they raced out of the tent and once more across the battlefield, this time uphill to the healing center, she had time to ponder that. She kept her mouth shut because there was nothing to say anyway. What she knew about healers was limited to legends. Vaneis was too poor to have its own healer and had shared the only healer it had for five years with six other villages. When that same healer had died there had been no one to tend the sick. Only those wealthy enough to travel to the next largest town, with two healers in residence, could be assured a cure for their ailments.

Ciardis had made the trip once. Not for her own illness, but for the village chief’s daughter. The girl had come down with the pox and the only salve was a half a day’s walk away. The village chief had paid her to walk to the next village over and buy some of their treatment stock. She’d done it because she was poor, hungry, and needed winter clothes. Her feet had ached for days and blisters had developed after, but she’d made it.

She hadn’t actually met the healer, so she didn’t know if he’d been gifted in the magical arts or was an apothecary. She barely remembered meeting her first healer during the Blood Hunt when Barnaren’s healer had come to his aid. She had no recollection of the healers who’d attended to Terris’s grievous wound in the Ameles Forest—she’d been too focused on her dying friend to take stock of their auras.

She just hoped that there were enough healers here to treat the wounded and the dying.

As they crested the hill she saw a swarm of activity outside of two tents. In front of the two closest to her were rows and rows of cots laid out for triage. She assumed other patients were inside the tents. A third tent stood slightly off in the distance with the mark of death on it. The embalmer’s tent, she assumed. Walking forward, she followed closely behind Simon, who seemed to know where he was going. She dumped her bandages on top of a rapidly diminishing pile of the same and knew they would need more soon.

But she also knew they needed her more. Her gifts would help in this situation. She had no doubts. Ciardis walked off from the bandage station, ignoring Simon’s protests, and went outside to the emergency response area. She latched on to the first blue-robed healer she saw. Ciardis steeled her gut and spoke to the healer as she watched him place his hand deep in a man’s entrails that spilled out into the sunlight.

“Let me help,” she commanded.

The healer spared her a glance from his concentration on the wounded man before him and said, “Stay out of my way, woman. Don’t you see—”

“You don’t understand, I’m—”

“Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“I’m not a healer, but—”

“Yes, I can see that.” The tone of his voice left no room for anything less than derision.

“Damn you, man, I’m the—”

“Weathervane,” said the same voice of the man from before. She turned away from the stubborn healer to face him, this time surprised to see a glowing orb in his hands.

“Yes,” Ciardis said.

“You see, Miss Weathervane, we know what you are, but we don’t need your gifts.”

Ciardis was flustered. “I can assure you, I can help by enhancing your powers. Ask General Barnaren.”

The man in front of her narrowed his eyes at her in affront. “Not all of us have direct access to the commanding general of this army.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I’m sure.”

Ciardis was hurt. Why couldn’t they just see that she was trying to help?

Suddenly a woman appeared and addressed the old man, “Madden, we need the orb moved to the central point of patient activity. We’re about to get more wounded...much more. Can you go?”

He nodded stiffly and left without a glance at the perplexed Weathervane behind him.

The woman lifted her chin pointedly and stepped aside as six soldiers struggled to bear a frost giant warrior to the closest cot of her size. The woman warrior’s teeth were clenched in pain as she clutched her left side, but she didn’t complain.

“My name is Beth and no offense was intended, Weathervane,” the healer said. “But we of the Fifth Healing Division have been working together for a long time, and introducing an unknown into our healing meld, particularly one that is untrained, could be catastrophic even with the best intentions.”

Ciardis nodded. “But surely extra power could do no harm?”

Beth had already turned away to give a group of healers instructions. She turned back upon hearing Ciardis speak, and said, “Walk with me.”

Ciardis obediently joined her side. “You saw the wound on that soldier.” It wasn’t a question.

“The entirety of his stomach cavity had been exposed to the elements,” Beth continued as they walked and dodged around urgently moving healers. “He was in danger of bleeding to death before we came. He is still in danger of contracting sepsis. But he is stable.”

Ciardis opened her mouth to protest.

Beth had stopped and knelt next to a softly moaning man. He was unconscious but clearly in pain. She placed her hand on his hand and gave him enough of her own healing ability to still the pain.

Beth stood and turned to Ciardis, giving her a wry smile. “Yes, he didn’t look very stable, did he with his wound open like that?”

That was precisely what she had been thinking. Ciardis nodded in agreement.

“There was a healing net over his wound. Invisible to the naked eye and most mage sight.”

Surprise shown Ciardis’s eyes.

They arrived at the epicenter of the patients, where the craggy old man was waiting with his orb.

“This,” said Beth, holding out her hands to indicate the whole area, “is how we were able to stabilize that man. The orb you see in Madden’s hand is an impression orb—it emits and sustains a network of healing power, stored by us over the months. It allows us to contain a crisis and handle the most grievous of wounds while not draining every individual healer’s core.”

Ciardis’s mouth had fallen open by the end of the speech, and she closed it with a snap.

“The orb is me. My gifts. My powers.”

“With limitations,” said the healer.

Ciardis wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She would almost say she felt unwelcome, discarded, impotent. Any of those would do.

Reading her expression correctly, Healer Beth said, “Sometimes one solution works better than others. We’ve perfected the orb over the years in what you have learned to do in months, according to the rumors.”

Ciardis looked over at her, and the woman said, “Yes, Ciardis, I’ve heard of you. In fact, one of our own has worked with you.”

Ciardis looked in the direction the woman nodded her head, expecting to find Maris, but instead she saw the healer with whom she’d helped to heal Barnaren so many months ago. He was standing there conferring with a colleague.

"Barthis," Ciardis said as she remembered his name, "His name is Barthis."

“Yes. He has much praise to say for your quick efforts during the Blood Hunt. But Ciardis there’s so much more to our work than power – there’s unity in our meld,” said the healer beside her, “Let me show you what our orb does.” She held out a hand, palm upturned. With hesitation Ciardis took it, expecting the woman to lead them over to Madden. Instead Ciardis’s vision exploded with colors and lines. She gasped aloud and looked around in awe. A network of glowing golden lines that intersected and crisscrossed on a square grid system had appeared before her. Each patient lay underneath a grid point. The man close to her had a glowing golden line extending from the core of his body to a knot that lay in the center of the crossed grid lines just above him. She leaned forward to look more closely, careful not to get in his attendant’s way. The man was unconscious and fully bandaged. The line to his body situated on a focal point in his chest. Once it reached his chest, it flattened out and spread like a golden shield to surround his whole form.

The healer beside her squeezed her hand and said, “Do you see how his glow is steady? The shield around him does not waver.”

Ciardis nodded unable to take her eyes off the wonder before her.

“Then look over there.”

She reluctantly pried her eyes from the sleeping man to look where instructed. She saw another soldier down the line. He was the opposite of everything about the soldier next to her. To start with, three attendants were frantically buzzing around him, trying to calm him and heal his wounds. Blood poured from the lacerated stumps of his arms and his screams rent the air. Staring, Ciardis saw that there was a ball of power just above his thrashing body and the golden shield extended across his form, but it looked different. As he thrashed the shield warped with a strange greenish tinge.

“That is a sign of imminent death,” the healer said. “It shows the attendant that this patient needs to be triaged, and fast, or he will die. So the person in charge of the orb, in this case Madden, knows to extend more power to that particular node.”

“What happens if the orb runs out?”

“Then we’re in trouble,” said the healer grimly.

Ciardis nodded and released the healer’s hand.

The healer turned to her. “Now do you understand?”

“You have a system. My powers would only interfere.”

“Yes,” the healer replied. “Now I must go help my compatriots.”

Ciardis called out just before the healer left, “Bandages? Would you need more?”

The healer looked back over her shoulder with a surprised smile. “Always.”

Ciardis nodded. “Then that’s what I’ll do.”

She set off toward the supply tent.

C
iardis spent at least four hours first fetching bandages and thread from the medical supply tent, then running messages from the healers to the commanding guard. By the time Kane caught up with her, she was exhausted. But not tired enough to resist putting up a fight.

“I need to be here,” she protested as she walked in circles around him to give basket after basket of soaked bandages to the attendants who rushed in and out. Kane was firm. He wanted her to leave. She wanted to stay. Her logic was that without her, the supplies would run out. His logic was that she needed to rest before she dropped dead.

Ciardis ignored him. There was nothing he could say to sway her mind.

And then Maris came in out of nowhere. Her fur was ruffled and splotched with blood. She had a satchel hanging across her chest filled with bottled tinctures and wilted plants. Ciardis had seen her running past at a furious pace once earlier in the day. Seeing a healer on all fours and running past in blur like a cat on the hunt was certainly odd. Ciardis had stopped and gaped. She saw soldiers throw themselves out of Maris’s path in the same moment. When she’d inquired about the incident she’d only been told that Maris’s primary position post-offensive attacks was to take care of the wounded among the commanders, and apparently there was a mortally wounded officer among Barnaren’s subordinates.

That same healer stood before her now with a stubborn and irritated expression on her feline face. Which mean a lot of teeth were involved.

“Go, sleep, Ciardis. You’ll need it.”

Ciardis glared and put her hands on her hips. But she couldn’t out-glare a chimera. She shouldn’t have tried. Minutes later she sighed as she was walking out of the tent behind Kane. She was hobbling a little with the twisted ankle she’d gotten sometime during the day and the throbbing muscles that protested the strenuous workout she’d given them.

She still wondered at the turn of events when she’d first arrived in the healer’s quarters this afternoon. She’d been given a lesson in humility. Subtle, but a definite dose of humility. Finally Kane got tired of her lagging five feet behind him and having to wait for her to catch up. He swung her up in his arms with ease and carried her the rest of the way. As they approached her tent she felt him stop. Her head was nestled in the crooked of his neck and she was too tired to turn and look at whomever he was about to speak to. When he said nothing and just stood there, she was forced to. With irritation she peered out, squinting her eyes in the gloom to see who stood there.

A figure cloaked in darkness waited in front of her tent. His head was shrouded with a hood and his body was covered in a thick cloak. She could only see that he carried a sword at his waist and a hound sat at his feet. She felt Kane shift her silently so that he could put her down. With caution he reached for a knife at his waist. His battleax had disappeared somewhere in the day’s melee. As she stood unsteadily near Kane’s side, Ciardis began to regret her own lack of a weapon. It had only been a day, but she’d been tortured once and attacked twice. She really needed to commission a sword, although a glaive would be her preference if they were going to stay put for another twenty-four hours.

Kane spoke. “What do you want?” His voice was flat and mean. There was a hint of sorrow in the echo.

Ciardis hadn’t forgotten that Titus had died, but it wasn’t the foremost thought in her mind right now. Apparently the pain of losing a comrade and a friend in battle was foremost in Kane’s.

The man didn’t speak. He slowly lifted his hand from the sword pommel at his waist and pushed back the dark, soaked hood. Surprise robbed her of words. Kane had no such problem.

“Weathervane,” Kane said as they recognized the cloaked figure in front of them.

Her brother was standing in front of her.

The same brother who had worked for the Shadowwalker. The brother who wasn’t supposed to exist. Her twin.

She sucked in a breath as her voice echoed Kane’s. “What are you doing here?”

His golden eyes were steady. It had started to rain. It didn’t change their intensity. In fact, they took on an eerie vibrancy in the night. Like twin golden beacons in darkness. Unease rolled through her. He still hadn’t spoken.

“To see you, dear sister,” said the only other Weathervane in the world. The words were dark. They held meaning.

Ciardis didn’t like his tone. Apparently neither did Kane. He gave a sharp whistle with two low tones and a high note. Two answering whistles echoed in the night. Ciardis heard heavy feet running toward them. She wasn’t sure if they could come quickly enough. Enough for what, she couldn’t say. To capture her brother? To stop him from killing her guard?