David Weber - The Road to Hell

Darcel Kinlafia jerked around, yanked out of his efforts to help the dozens of injured, sort out the panic, by the sound of his name. The scream cut through the chaos and the confusion with an impossible clarity. He knew he couldn’t possibly have heard it through the chaos and the bedlam, but he didn’t need to hear it with his ears, for he Heard it with every fiber of his Talent and he wheeled, eyes searching for its source.

“Down here, Master Kinlafia!” Relatha Kindare shrieked. “ Help me! ”

His gaze dropped to the flowerbed. It focused on her-then on the shape she crouched over, in that flowerbed-and his face turned paper-white in the ghastly light of the burning palace. He charged forward, tossing aside tables, chairs, and people with equal abandon, and Alazon was right behind him.

“Find a healer!” Relatha gasped, as he slid to his knees beside her. “Please! I can barely keep him stable, I’m just a student, oh, Goddess, I’m so scared…”

Both Voices went glassy-eyed. It took her gibbering mind a long, horrified moment to realize they were sending out a broadband distress call. She tried to feel grateful, tried to hope someone would Hear in time, but the battle to force the emperor to live consumed her and despair tore at her as she felt him slipping away once more.

The Privy Voice came out of “send mode” first and her eyes focused on Relatha once more, huge and dark in her ashen face, glittering reflections of savage firelight.

“What can I do?!”

“Don’t let him move, don’t let him thrash around. He’s got broken bones. If he moves, he’ll tear things open, inside. And he’s asking for Anbessa.”

“Alazon,” Kinlafia said.

“Got it,” she replied immediately, and set a light hand on Relatha’s shoulder. “I’ll find out how the Grand Princess is. Darcel will stay with you.”

She disappeared into the wild confusion, but her husband stayed close by Relatha’s side, searching, for injuries. The emperor’s arm had a ghastly break, a compound fracture pumping blood, and Kinlafia’s face blanched even whiter. He ripped off the capelets of his formal court dress and used a strip torn from them to tie a tourniquet around the Emperor’s right arm. A jagged splinter of bone had torn through flesh and skin and sleeve. There was blood everywhere, so much blood…

“More cloth strips,” Relatha said, her hands still clamped like death on the soles of the emperor’s feet. “And something for splints.”

Kinlafia tore more strips from his capelets. His explorer’s good sense kept his nerves steady and the emergency medical training which went with it told his hands what to do, and Relatha held tight to Zindel’s life force, trusting him to staunch the wounds while she refused to let her emperor slip away.

Kinlafia bound Zindel’s right arm to his chest so he couldn’t move it, then smashed a tumbled chair to bits for splints to secure the shattered arm more securely. Then another chair went to pieces as he splinted the emperor’s right thigh and left calf.

He’d just finished that when several uniformed armsmen came running from another part of the terrace, and Relatha heard fire alarm bells clanging as fire wagons fought their way through the victory celebration crowds, trying to reach the burning Grand Palace. A ponderous crash marked the collapse of the Grand Imperial Salon, and she flinched as a fresh shockwave of heat, flame, and smoke belched across them. Cinders rained down like hailstones.

Every one of the armsmen had a gun in his hand.

“Get away from His Majesty!” one of them barked, and another reached down to snatch the emperor’s shoulders, but-

“ NO! ” Relatha screamed.

“ Don’t move him! ” Kinlafia snarled. “You’ll kill him if you move him!”

“The fire-”

“He’s got broken bones!” Relatha shouted over the roar of the fire. “They’ll slice open arteries if you snatch him up like that. I’m training as a Healer; I can sense the damage in there. He’s barely holding onto life, just from the physical shock. If I move my focus off the wellspring points, he’ll die! He needs pain medication, emergency surgery. God’s mercy, where’s the Imperial Surgeon? Any surgeon, any healer?”

Alazon Yanamar-Kinlafia shoved her way through the guards with kicks and curses.

“Let me through!” When she finally broke through the cordon they’d thrown around His Majesty, she dropped to her knees beside Relatha. “Dr. Sathron’s on his way from the palace clinic. He’s nearly here. I’ve called for a whole trauma team and an ambulance. Is he conscious?”

“Barely.”

The Privy Voice leaned across to speak directly into her ear. “Will it help him or hurt him to let him know Anbessa is alive?”

Relatha bit her lip and blinked helpless tears. He might be holding onto life just long enough to know his child was safe and would let go of the struggle and die if they told him. Or he might be reassured enough to ease the strain of terror and guilt, easing the stress on his laboring body, now that he no longer needed to fear for her life. She didn’t know, wasn’t trained, didn’t have enough experience.

“I don’t know!”

When she tried to explain, someone-Security Minister chan Garatz himself, she realized suddenly-spoke decisively.

“Tell him!”

“Yes,” Kinlafia agreed. “It’s sheer hell, never to know .”

He wasn’t talking about the emperor and Anbessa. He was talking about Shaylar, Relatha realized with a sudden surge of pity and compassion, even through the chaos and the fight to save the emperor’s life. When she saw the pain etched into his face, burning in his eyes, she nodded.

“Yes. Tell him.”

She braced herself for the worst.

“Zindel!” Alazon crouched low over him, speaking directly into his ear. “Zindel, it’s Alazon. Anbessa is safe. I’ve seen her, talked to her. She’s alive. She’ll be all right. Can you hear me? You saved her, Zindel, she’s going to be fine. Please, Your Majesty, don’t give up, ’Bessa needs her father, she needs you. We all need you. Dr. Sathron’s on the way. He’s nearly here. He’ll give you something to take away the pain. Just hold on a little longer, please .”

Tears ran down her lovely face, and a moan escaped the emperor. Then the heavy head moved, in the tiniest of nods, and Relatha felt the surge in his life force as he gathered reserves of strength from his massive, powerful body. He dug in, hung grimly onto life, defying the pain of torn tissue, shattered bone, and burns.

Relatha sobbed aloud in relief, and then someone else was shouting and shoving the guards aside. Dr. Sathron had arrived and other healers rushed across the flagstones behind him. The ambulance had arrived. Stretcher-bearers came running behind the Emergency Medicine Talents rushing toward the emperor.

“Move back, please,” Dr. Sathron said crisply, “give us room to work.” He glanced at Relatha, saw where her hands were, and blanched. “Shalana’s mercy, child,” he whispered.

Then the others were there and a trained medic slipped her hands under Relatha’s, taking over for her. Relatha gabbled out, “There’s a break in his right femur, a bad one, right beside the big artery. I can Feel it. We didn’t dare move him. Master Kinlafia splinted it and his arm…”

The medic met and held her gaze.

“It’s all right, girl,” the EMT said. “It’s all right. Back out now, child, and let me take it. Your quick thinking saved his life-not many students remember the wellspring points-but move back now. Let us work, love. You can rest. We’ve got him.”

Relatha sighed, relaxing her concentration, felt the other woman’s fully trained Talent take up the load she’d supported for an eternity. She sagged back, sitting on her heels, head reeling, and then tried to stand and move out of the medical team’s way.