Steven Brust - Athyra

He should cut the strips first, before doing anything else, so he could have them ready. And he’d have to cut the bottom of the sheath.... What about the second tube? Oh, yes, there was the sheath for Vlad’s dagger. That was also leather. Would they both fit in the jug?

He felt an instant’s panic at the thought that he’d dropped the food sack somewhere, but it was sitting next to him, where he’d set it down while he looked at Vlad. He took out the water jug he’d gotten from Tern. Yes, the mouth was good and wide. It would be hard to jam the leather sheaths through the wax plug though, and he’d have to be careful not to push the plug out, or rather in. Well, he had the dagger, he could cut holes in it.

How much water should be in it? He wished someone would make a jug one could see through. Well, about half-full would be easiest, because then he could be certain that the long sheath was in the water and the short sheath was out of it—or was it supposed to be the other way around? No, that was right: “wound to water, air to air,” Master Wag had said. “Why?” Savn had asked. “Because it works,” the Master had replied.

Savn went through the entire procedure in his mind, and when he was sure he had it right, he cleared a three-foot circle of ground, gathered a few twigs and leaves and struck a small fire with his own flint an arm’s length from Vlad. He got it going, added a couple of branches, and found a few rocks to set next to it. While they were getting warm, he cut several strips from the bedsheet he’d taken from Tern’s house and set them on the stones.

The jhereg hovered around, looking interested; Savn tried not to think about them. Vlad seemed greyer. His arms and legs were still moving about without purpose, and he’d shifted his position slightly. The odd angle of his throat seemed to be worse, too. His speech was still unrecognizable. Savn remembered that Master Wag had said something about the heart being crushed if the Cave of the Heart became too small. Savn started working faster.

The dagger was sharp enough to cut through the leather of the sheaths with little difficulty. Savn made the cuts at an angle, so there was almost a point on them.

He took another look at Vlad. The process—whatever it was—was accelerating; he could almost see Vlad’s skin getting greyer. “Don’t die,” he said aloud. “Don’t you dare die. You hear me?”

He took the water jug and made two holes in the plug with the dagger, then widened them as much as he dared. “You just hold on there and breathe, and I’ll fix you up, but if you die I’ll kick you in the head.” He measured the two sheaths against the bottle, and made marks on them with the dagger at the appropriate levels. “Breathe now, you Eastern son of a kethna. Just keep breathing.”

The smaller of the jhereg watched him raptly. “Okay,” he told it, “here’s the first hard part.” The sword sheath slid into the hole with surprising ease, and the sheath for the dagger just as easily. He held a piece of hot wood near it to melt the wax, then blew on the plug; there was now a water jug with two leather sheaths sticking out of it, looking like the remains of a flower arrangement that hadn’t been very pretty in the first place.

“Hmmm,” he told the jhereg. “That wasn’t bad. Now for the first test.” He blew into the open end of the sword sheath, and was rewarded by a bubbling sound from the bottle, and the feel of air against his left hand held over the other sheath.

“Airtight,” he announced to the jhereg. “This might really work. I’m glad he has such well-made stuff.”

He sat next to the Easterner and put a hand on his chest. Vlad didn’t react to the touch, so maybe he was too far gone to notice what was about to happen. This part was scary, and Savn was afraid that if he hesitated at all, his courage would fail. “Here we go,” he said to the jhereg, and opened up the wound with his fingers.

The puncture was small but ugly, between the fifth and the sixth ribs, still not bleeding much, but still bubbling and frothing, and making a burbling sound that ought never to come from a body. The end of the sheath would fit over the puncture easily, but he’d have to get past the outer edge of the wound, which might be too big.

Savn started to bend the sword sheath, but the bottle almost tipped over. He cursed, let go of the wound, and bent the sword sheath with both hands, putting a kink into it. That would never do.

He felt himself trembling, and almost gave up the whole idea, but instead he gritted his teeth and played with the position and angle of the bottle until he could draw the long sheath smoothly all the way to the wound with no sharp bends in it.

Once again he opened the wound with the fingers of his left hand and tried to put the point of the sheath into it. It was a tight fit, and the skin actually tore slightly, but he was able to cover the puncture while wrapping the outer edge of the wound over the sheath. He held it in place as tightly as he could, wishing he had thought of a way to secure it without using his hand. Well, with any luck, Vlad’s skin would provide the seal, and it wouldn’t have to be there long.

It took a long couple of seconds to bend over to the bottle without changing the position of the sword sheath, but he managed, and, while he had the chance, exhaled.

Then he put his mouth over the dagger sheath, made sure of the grip of his left hand, and inhaled through the sheath.

The results were astonishing.

There was a bubbling sound in the bottle and Vlad gave a twitch; Savn was only barely able to keep the sword sheath in place over the wound. But he held tight, and when he dared to look at the Easterner, he could hardly believe the change. Both sides of his body were now expanding evenly, and his throat was no longer angled so oddly—Savn had thought that even if it worked, it wouldn’t happen so quickly. Since it had, he was suddenly fearful that he’d overdone it somehow, though he didn’t know if that was possible, or what the results would be.

He wished he’d paid more attention to Vlad’s normal color, but his skin was certainly losing its ashen appear—

ance, and his lips no longer looked blue. He had stopped waving his arms about, and his breathing was deeper and slower.

“That was quick,” remarked Savn to the jhereg. The smaller one hissed, spread its wings, and was still, which Savn hoped meant that it was pleased.

The next step, however, was the hard one: sealing the wound without letting Vlad’s lung collapse again.

His left hand still held the sheath against the wound in Vlad’s side; he increased the pressure as much as he could, and took the dagger into his right hand. One of the jhereg hissed. “Shut up,” he said distractedly. “I’m trying to help him.”

Manipulating the knife to shave off bits of the wax plug while keeping a firm grip on the wound was perhaps the hardest thing Savn had ever done—he would have been unable to do it at all if he’d had to hurry. As it was, he was concentrating so totally that he hardly noticed when Vlad began speaking again, this time in words, but with no apparent thought behind them. Savn heard him speak but paid no attention.

When he had a shaving of wax on the flat of the knife, he set it on one of the cloth strips that was resting on the rock near the fire, then went back for another shaving before he could take the time to consider how difficult this really was. He dropped the next one, left it on the ground, and went back for another, which he managed to bring over to the cloth. Then a third.

That should do it.

The wax had melted, and what had been a cloth now ought to be an airtight patch. He picked it up by an end and waved it around enough to cool it off.