L. Modesitt - Cyador’s Heirs

“We’ll start there, then.” Emerya takes a basket from a small and doorless cube-shaped cupboard, one of several, set in the wall.

Lerial watches as she extends an order mist over whatever is in the basket, then reaches down and picks up an empty basket, which she hands to Lerial. She slips her arm through the arched high handle of her basket, and nods to him. In turn, he leaves the chamber, but nods at the older woman before he leaves, empty basket in hand.

As they walk down the corridor, Emerya says, “That’s Demeyla. She’s in charge of the healer aides.”

“What do the aides do?”

“What you’re going to do. You’ll see. The basket is for wastes and soiled dressings. Other than that, I’ll tell you as we go along. Each one will be different; so there’s no point in my trying to explain before. The receiving chamber is the last door on the west side … or the first door the way people needing healing come in.”

There are a half score raised pallets spaced along the wall of the narrow receiving chamber, each one set between a pair of windows. From what Lerial can see in a quick glance, all but two are taken, most with a person sitting or lying on a pallet, accompanied by someone else.

Beside the first pallet is a woman, standing over a boy who sits on the pallet, his legs over one side. He looks to be younger than Ryalah. He is barefoot and wears shorts and a ragged shirt. Even from several yards away, Lerial can sense the chaos mist surrounding him.

The woman, a good head shorter than Lerial, smiles tentatively as she sees Emerya-or more likely the healer’s green tunic and trousers-but the smile immediately fades as her eyes return to the boy.

The boy’s hair is black and raggedly cut. His skin is darker than that of Amaira, but still only a light olive-tan, although it is clear to Lerial that his parents must both be Hamorian.

“Ask her what the problem is … in Hamorian,” murmurs Emerya.

“What might be the problem?” asks Lerial politely, stopping less than a yard from the pallet and the mother.

“Show him, Therylan,” replies the woman in an accented Hamorian he does not recognize, certainly not the way in which people from either Cigoerne or Afrit speak. Is she from Heldya … or Merowey?

Lerial looks to the boy.

“It hurts here.” The boy lifts his tattered shirt to reveal a huge ugly pustule half the size of Lerial’s hand on the right side of his abdomen, roughly at waist level. Pus oozes from the center of the circular wound, although it is not properly a wound, Lerial realizes, or not one caused by a weapon.

“That looks like a pincer-bug bite that wasn’t tended properly,” says Emerya in Cyadoran. “Ask her how it happened.”

“Do you know how he came by the injury?”

“I do not know. There was a small sore there the day before yesterday. It was bigger yesterday. Today, it is much worse.”

Lerial nods, then looks to Emerya.

“What do you sense?”

“There’s orangish-reddish chaos in the center, and a white chaos mist around it, with a faint grayish outside that,” Lerial replies in Cyadoran, “and chaos mist all around him.”

“The gray is what’s left of the body’s attempt to fight off the wound chaos,” explains Emerya. “He’s more ill than he looks.”

“Could he…?”

“If we don’t do something, yes. First, we need to clean away the pus and clean the skin around the wound. I think part of the bug’s pincer is still in the wound. That might be what caused this to be so bad. We’ll have to get that out. Put your basket at the upper end of the pallet, away from him. When I tell you, have him lie back on the pallet. Take his hands and hold them, gently but firmly. Tell him there’s something in the sore that is causing the hurt.” Emerya turns slightly and eases a small folded cloth from the basket, which she has set on the end of the pallet away from the boy. The cloth is one of many stacked at one end, Lerial sees. He also can make out a corked bottle.

Belatedly, he places his basket where Emerya has indicated, then turns back to mother and son. “First, the healer will clean away the pus. Then I will have the boy lie back on the pallet. I will hold his hands while she removes one of the things that is causing the hurt. She will clean away more pus after that.” Lerial is guessing slightly, but that seems to be what will have to happen.

The mother nods, if tentatively.

“Lie back, please,” Lerial says gently, easing the child back, then pulling the tattered shirt up and away from the wound with one hand before taking the boy’s hands in his. He has the feeling that everyone in the receiving room is watching him.

Emerya takes the dry clean cloth and gently begins to wipe away the pus, working from the outside toward the suppurating center. Then she drops the first cloth square in Lerial’s basket and uncorks the bottle, pouring the clear liquid on another cloth that she uses to further clean the skin. That cloth also ends up in Lerial’s basket. Next she takes out a pair of long-necked cupridium tweezers.

Lerial firmly but gently holds the boy’s hands as Emerya gently probes the wound. He can sense that she is using order ability somehow to direct the tweezers or move what she seeks to the tweezers-he is not certain which … or whether both, but he can definitely sense the ugly reddish-white of what she removes … as well as some orangish-red left in the wound.

The boy does not squirm, and only whimpers once. Lerial is not certain whether that is because he is brave or Emerya gentle, or both.

“Try to ease some order into that wound chaos,” Emerya murmurs. “Not too much. Just a drop or so at first.”

Lerial manages to concentrate a drop of blackness right on the orangish point … and that fades so that only the white wound chaos remains, if with the faintest shade of orange.

“About half that … again.”

About half is all he can manage, and even so, the sweat is beading on his forehead.

“Good. Straighten up. You don’t want to drip sweat on him.”

Lerial straightens up. Then he watches as Emerya coaxes more pus from the wound and cleans it again … and again, then dresses it with a soft cloth secured at the edges with gum-tape strips.

When Emerya finishes, she speaks to the woman in Hamorian. “He is to be quiet for an eightday. If his skin around the wound gets red or has red streaks bring him here quickly. If it does not, he should be healed by the end of an eightday, but he should be careful not to poke or push where the wound is for much longer.”

“Thank you, honored healer. Thank you.” The woman bows several times before she picks up her son and carries him out of the receiving room.

Before Emerya can move to the next injured person, Lerial asks in a low voice, “Why did you have me talk to them?”

“Because you speak Hamorian without an accent, and that seems to put people at ease. That’s even truer for those who aren’t from Cigoerne.”

After dealing with the boy, Lerial is glad just to watch and hand things to Emerya as she sets set the broken arm of a girl not much older than Amaira. Her mother insists that the girl had fallen, but once the arm has been splinted and the two have left the receiving chamber, Emerya turns to Lerial and asks in low-voiced Cyadoran, “How do you think she broke that arm?”

From the question alone, Lerial would have known that the mother had lied, but he has also sensed that in the way she had answered. “Someone else broke it.”

“Most likely her father. Did you see the bruises on her arms?”

“I didn’t see bruises, but there were places of white fuzziness.”

“That kind of fuzziness usually means bruises or some sort of injury. Sometimes, though, it just means that a more severe injury is healing. You have to look closely because the presence of free chaos isn’t always bad. It may just be fading away, and in healing that’s good.”