Spirit Mage

by Esther Mitchell

  With proper cleaning and stitching soon after such a wounding, the chances of a warrior recovering from the leg wound were only half. But Marakai's wound was only roughly bandaged, and neither stitched nor cleaned. The wound had festered, and Telyn was surprised he lived with the pain this long. It was a testament of his strength and stamina as a warrior, though most of his people were content to be soft and peace-loving. If she got the wound lanced, cleaned, and stitched soon, she might just save his leg. Whether or not he ever regained full use of it rested in the hands of his gods.

  His shoulder wound was another matter entirely, scoring his shoulder in a straight line as deep as the second knuckle of her forefinger. How he survived such a wound, she couldn’t fathom. He should have bled out long before he reached Hadvia. Telyn could only assume whatever wards Reaphia put on the monks, she cast on Marakai as well. Why would Reaphia waste such exhausting Majik on a common warrior?

  Fear jolted through Telyn. Reaphia did nothing without a calculated point – she was, after all, as much her father’s daughter as her mother’s, and Brahmad was a master strategist. Whatever Reaphia planned for Marakai, Telyn knew it couldn’t be good.

  To distract herself from the possibilities, Telyn examined Marakai’s shoulder wound more closely. She might not be a Mistress of the Healiart like her mother, but the bloodline was there, and she gleaned a wealth of knowledge in battlefield injuries and their treatment -- both at Netta's knee in the herb kitchen, and under Dariadus’ tutelage in becoming a warrior.

  The Rahian sword had sliced through muscle and tendon indiscriminately, leaving tissue and bone exposed. This wound, too, festered from lack of proper care, and Telyn feared Marakai might never use the arm again if she didn't get to work on it, and fast.

  Marakai groaned just then, and his eyelids fluttered open, his grey-green eyes like holes in his face, glassy and feverish. He gazed at her in silence for a moment, his expression so full of pain, fever, and raw emotion it was eerie to behold. Finally, in a hoarse voice, he queried, "Telyn?"

  Her answering smile froze on her face. She wanted to cry, having her suspicions validated. She just wasn't sure if the tears burning her eyes were joy because he lived, or anger because he let her believe him dead.

  "So, it is you."

  "Paduari..." Nacaris mumbled.

  "He'll be back soon. I sent him for firewood."

  "Telyn." He gripped her forearm hard with his good hand, even as his color climbed in an alarming way. He shrugged off her attempt to gauge his fever, his gaze burning into hers intently. "Telyn, I... I'm sorry..."

  Then, with a gasp, he stiffened, before his head lulled and his grasp went slack. Dread squeezed Telyn's gut, rendering her momentarily frozen in terror. Then, frantic, she sought for a pulse, frightened when she didn't immediately encounter one. Nacaris couldn't die -- not now. She already lost him once, and she wasn't about to give him up again.

  Besides, he was Paduari's friend. Telyn knew how important that detail was. Those newly awakened to Majikal abilities were unstable, needing only the slightest of pushes to send them toppling from absolute clarity to stark madness. For Nacaris -- or whatever he called himself here -- to die, after how much energy Paduari expended to save him, could be enough to tip Paduari straight over that precipice. So, when Telyn's fingers touched on a very thready pulse in Nacaris' neck, she breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

  Looking up from her patient, Telyn glared first at the ever watchful Nevorai, and then in the direction Paduari had gone. Where in all the realms of the Bathron underworld was he? He'd gone for firewood, not Avarii feathers! She needed to boil water and heat a blade to cauterize Nacaris' wounds when she was done cleaning them. While heating a blade was easy enough for her, even without the fire, boiling water was a completely different matter. She couldn't bloody well boil anything without a fire. Reaching into her pack, where she kept the simples bag Netta gave her so many cycles ago, she found the pouch of dried woundwort and clay jar of craggflower salve, both good for draining infection, and glanced impatiently in the direction Paduari had gone. She needed to lance Nacaris' wounds soon. Infection could already be spreading through his body, and if she couldn't draw out some of the poisons soon, it wasn't going to matter he'd survived the Rahians' torture twice.

  The moments plodded by without Paduari appearing, and Telyn grew more and more impatient with each one. Finally, fed up with waiting, she hopped to her feet, determined to go gather the wood herself. She couldn't afford to wait any longer. Nacaris couldn't afford for her to wait.

  Just as she started toward the door leading back into the caverns, Paduari staggered through it under a load of wood no sane man would carry alone. With a sigh, she hurried to help him with his load.

  "Here." Telyn took part of the wood from his arms, shaking her head in wry exasperation. “You’re not a pack horse, you know.”

  Carrying her armload of wood back to where Nacaris lay mumbling in fevered dreams, she began building a fire several feet away while Paduari dropped his own load next to hers and went to kneel at his friend's side. She watched surreptitiously as Paduari laid his hand on his friend's chest, a frown of concentration on his face and his eyes closed. After a moment, Nacaris' body relaxed, and Paduari sat back, exhaustion etched on his features. Paduari's face aged decades during his trials to connect to his Majik, but now he had the look of the ancients to his weary features.

  With a quick spark of energy, Telyn set the fire to blazing, and placed her water bag near enough for the water in it to heat quickly. She drew a stiletto from her left boot and heated its blade in the flames. She'd learned the hard way how foolish using Majik to do what a fire was perfectly suited for was. Moving to Nacaris' side, she looked at Paduari.

  "Hold him down."

  "What are you going to do?" Paduari's voice was rife with both alarm and weariness.

  "His wounds are infected. I've got to lance them and let the poisons drain."

  Nodding, Paduari placed his hands on Nacaris' chest and held him down as Telyn used the red-hot stiletto to score the newly-growing skin over the wound on Nacaris's leg. Nacaris groaned and tossed his head, but gave no other sign of having felt the cut. Telyn frowned. He should have felt more. Was the leg already dead?

  "Get me that water bag, now," Telyn instructed Nevorai tersely, gesturing toward the fire, then pulled her pack to her and removed long strips of bandaging cloth. She would soak them in medicine and use them to bind the wound and draw out infection. Unwinding her sword belt, she laid it aside and stripped off her outer shirt, leaving herself clad in only her pants and a thin, sleeveless, body-hugging under tunic, which would stay out of her way while she worked. Tending Nacaris' wounds would be messy, delicate work, and the loose-fitting outer shirt would only complicate the issue.

  The young monk returned from the fire, the water bag in his hands, and stared at Telyn for a moment before thrusting the water bag out to Paduari with rapid-fire, nervous speech. Telyn reached for the water, but stopped short at the amused expression on Paduari's face. Glancing up, she realized Nevorai hadn't moved, and followed his gaze to her own nearly-naked torso. Shaking her head in amusement, Telyn turned back to her patient.

  "I'm guessing he hasn't ever seen a woman before." Laughter tinged her voice as she prepared a paste of milkroot and woundwort, and began immersing bandages in warm water.

  Paduari grinned. "Not like you, at any rate."

  She motioned for him to hold Nacaris down. "Like me?"

  He followed her silent instruction without question, his expression a study of curiosity and concentration. A glance his way left Telyn no doubt, should they ever need to perform such a life-saving measure again, Paduari would be capable of doing it.

  "He says he's never seen anyone so beautiful before. He had no idea someone could be both so beautiful and so skilled." He shrugged, and she got the distinct impression Paduari was personally more impressed with her skill than her beauty. He reminded her a lot of Dariadus.


  She cast a wry grin the young monk's way, and then turned back to her patient, reaching to pull the stopper from the water bag, again. "Nice try, lad. I'm already spoken for."

  "I don't think he meant--"

  She had to laugh. "Relax. I'm only jinking him. I deliberately wear loose clothes, Paduari. A very long time ago, a man I respect a great deal taught me to disguise my body, so I could learn to be a warrior. In his culture, women are often seen as too frail or fragile to be good fighters, and he didn't want my training to suffer for prejudice. I learned to hide anything that came between me and the battlefield."

  As she talked, Telyn used hot water from the water bag to rinse the wound on Nacaris' leg. Then, using a measure of woundwort on one of the prepared cloths, she folded it and drenched it in water, before laying the steaming, makeshift compress against the freshly-bleeding wound.

  "You mean you never..."

  Telyn glanced up in time to see color crawl through Paduari's face. Clearly, he was uncomfortable with the conversation, but too curious to avoid it. Telyn laughed again.

  "I never said I haven't had lovers," she reminded him as she dug into her pack again, scrounging around until she came up with the leather pouch containing her darning supplies. Emptying its contents onto the ground, she picked up a long needle, scorched from use, and a small clay bowl, and handed both to Paduari. "Gather me some of the hot ash from the fire, and lay this needle right next to the fire so it can get hot."

  Paduari complied without question -- a fact of which she was glad. Though she carried her simples to placate her mother and Netta, she was far from an expert in their use. She only had practical, battlefield experience with them -- most of which was trial and error.

  "You've done this a lot, I guess," Paduari said with forced casualness, unwittingly mirroring her own thoughts with his words. No way he'd missed the scar on her shoulder, acquired after her battle with the Katarie Assassin at Raiador. Though it was far from her only scar, it was the most visible of them. She imagined he thought she treated the wound herself, which would have amounted to an impossible feat, and told her he was clueless about treating injuries.

  Telyn sighed as she picked up a roll of thin sinew and two small vials from among the items scattered before her, then put the rest back into the pouch and returned the pouch to her pack. "As a battlefield surgeon, I'm afraid I'm a poor second choice. But, since we don't appear to have a better Healer available..."

  Paduari brought her the bowlful of ash, his expression worried. "How bad are his wounds?"

  Telyn sighed inwardly. She knew it would only be a matter of time until he asked. Fortunately, while she made only a third-rate Healer, she knew plenty about wounds. Bless you, Netta.

  Pointing to Nacaris' shoulder, she said, "You see the grayish color to the skin? That's a sign of mass infection and first-stage wound rot. His wounds have closed remarkably fast, probably due to whatever curse has kept him alive, but they were left either barely tended or not tended at all for too long. Knowing the Rahians, I doubt they were even cleaned. By now, the infection in his bloodstream has been poisoning him for days. Farii's monks appear to have done what they could to heal him with their limited skills and supplies, but it wasn't enough. If we can't flush the poisons from his body, he's going to die, Paduari."

  Paduari stood staring at his friend, his expression curiously blank for the dire news she just delivered. Kishfa knew, her own heart raced like a warhorse into battle, and only knowing the man she loved needed her calm and strong kept her from breaking down. For him, she would be both. But she had no idea what went through Paduari's mind when he looked at his friend.

  She took the bowl of hot ash from Paduari. She couldn't show her fear, couldn't voice her own pain at seeing Nacaris so very close to death. Paduari's gaze turned then, and he watched her silently as she mixed hot water with the ash, then several slivers of iron shavings from one vial and viscous yellow bearbark sap from the other. She touched a spark to the iron, then set the bowl aside as the iron started to glow red and dissolve in the water, and turned back to her patient. The compress on his leg was a dark, rusty-grey color, and she removed it from the wound, studying the scored flesh beneath. It was bright pink and seeping, and the grey color was fading to a pale, ashen shade. Nodding in satisfaction, Telyn fixed another compress and secured it tightly over the wound.

  Telyn closed her eyes and took a moment to steady her nerves. She'd be working on his shoulder next, and the chances of secondary shock movement were greater. Drawing a deep breath and using another small spark of energy, she brought the stiletto back to glowing, then moved to better see the wound on his right shoulder. In order to clean it, she would have to reopen the wound, wash it, and pack it with a cloth-wrapped woundwort poultice. The danger of him bleeding to death, however, was a very real threat if she reopened such a deep wound.

  She sighed, aware she had no choice. He would never survive if she didn't clean out the wound. So, steeling herself, she used the glowing stiletto to slice through the newly-formed skin. Infection-grown puss sizzled and smoked around the blade, filling the air with a sickening stench. Holding her breath against gagging, Telyn continued to cut until the puss bubbling out of the wound was tinged red with blood. Pulling the knife free, she poured hot water from the water bag over the wound, watching thick, grayish colored liquid pour from the wound and soak into the blankets beneath him. They'd have to move him once she was done packing the wound, or the infection would simply return. She spared a glance for Paduari.

  "Have Nevorai spread out my bedroll over near the fire. We'll have to move Nac... Marakai, as soon as I'm done, here."

  He nodded, and spoke to the young monk in his own tongue. Nevorai hopped up and immediately did as instructed. Telyn smiled her gratitude. She had to hand it to the Lurudani -- they were obedient to a fault. Of course, the same trait also made them such easy picking for Reaphia.

  Telyn lifted one of the infusion-soaked bandages, wrapped a handful of woundwort in the cloth, and laid it directly into the open wound. Quickly, she fixed a second poultice, knowing it would be only a matter of minutes before the first was spent. She had never seen so much infection in one wound before. After a few moments, she checked the poultice, discarded it, packed the second poultice, and secured it in place with a dry bandage.

  "All right, Paduari. We need to move him. Carefully," she admonished when Paduari moved to lift Nacaris' legs. "If we set the wounds to bleeding again, he's done for."

  Paduari blanched, and followed her instructions meticulously, his gaze riveted on his friend's face. In painstaking inches, they lifted Nacaris and moved him to the clean, dry bedroll. Once her patient was finally settled, and appeared to be completely unaware of the move, Telyn sat back on her heels and breathed a sigh of relief.

  "Is he going to be all right?" Paduari asked, his gaze fixed on his friend's face.

  Telyn sighed again and shrugged. "That's in Kishfa's hands now."

  Inwardly, Telyn flinched away from her own words, and the deceit in them. She knew, deep in her soul, even if Nacaris lived, he would never be "all right." He was a warrior, and unless Kishfa granted him some supreme miracle, he'd likely never wield a sword again. With as deep of a wound as he sustained to his shoulder, and as long as it had gone so poorly tended, he would be lucky to have any real range of motion. If she'd gotten to the infection soon enough, he might at least keep limited use, but his fighting days were done.

  To Nacaris, the news would be a death-blow. A mercenary without a sword-arm was useless, in his or her own mind at least. Telyn had seen it happen to warriors countless times. The loss of a shield arm was looked upon as a minor inconvenience, overlooked and easily overcome, but the loss of a sword-arm sent more than one good warrior careening over the edge of sanity.

  Nacaris stirred restlessly, drawing Telyn's attention.

  "Hold him!" she snapped at Paduari as she reached into her pouch for a vial of Caluva berry juice. Snatching up the water bag, she tippe
d two drops of Caluva juice into Nacaris' mouth, then tilted his head up to tip a mouthful of warm water in. Reflexively, he swallowed, then calmed, sinking under the effects of the Caluva. Slowly releasing the pressure on his friend's chest, Paduari looked at Telyn.

  "What did you give him?"

  "Caluva. It'll help him sleep. The longer he's unconscious right now, the less of a chance there is we'll lose him." Telyn checked the poultices, changed the one on his shoulder, then sat back on her heels. "He should sleep for the next day or so."

  Paduari frowned. "Why didn't he bleed when you reopened the wounds?"

  She nodded at the stiletto, laying next to her pack. "I used a heated blade, and half-cauterized the flesh so the herbs can draw out the infection without him bleeding too much. Then, the infection itself kept him from bleeding a lot, too."

  Paduari looked at the bowl of ash-water. "What's that for?"

  "I'll give him that once the fever's gone. As soon as the infection is arrested and the wounds are stitched, he'll need to rebuild blood. The bearbark sap is an antidote to the poisons in his bloodstream. The ash will restore valuable salts and keep him from getting ill from the loss of blood. The iron is to rebuild his blood, and the water is to re-hydrate him. He'll be drinking a lot of water once he's well enough."

  Paduari looked at her in amazement. "How did you learn all this?"

  "From an old and dear friend who wanted to make sure I survived whatever life threw at me," Telyn said wryly. "Particularly when it came to getting hurt."

  "They use ash to heal?"

  Telyn grinned. "Just about everyone uses ash at some point in the healing process. Didn't your grandmam ever teach you any Borderlander medicine?"