Mercedes Lackey - Owlsight

“Right, here’s the Healers’ tent,” he said quickly, waving at the large tent pitched at the end of the path they were on. “You go right on up. The hertasi will have told them you’re coming. I’ll find Wintersky’s billet and get a nap myself, before something else happens.”

Still blushing, he left her and made a sharp turn to the right, as she watched him hurry away with bemusement.

Then she shook herself into sense, and made straight for the Healers’ tent and business. Granted, it was entirely a new and rather delightful feeling to have a young man tell her she was pretty, and blush over her, but this was neither the time nor the place to get moonstruck.

When she got within earshot of the tent, she heard the debate already going on inside; she pushed open the flap, and was greeted immediately.

“Keisha!” Nala called with relief. “Good, we need all the minds on this that we can get! What do you know about this wasting disease?”

The Healers had arranged themselves in a rough circle in the middle of the large infirmary tent - which at the moment had no patients in it. Nala and her apprentices squeezed over on the bench they were using, and Keisha took her place beside them. She detailed everything that Darian had told her, and then added, “Tyrsell the king-stag is the one who had direct contact with the chieftain’s mind; would you like him to come give us everything he got?”

“That would be extremely helpful,” Gentian said thoughtfully, not at all disturbed by the notion of having the dyheli dump a basketload of mental images directly into his mind.

Keisha turned in time to see a hertasi coming into the tent with what must be her bedroll. In Tayledras, she asked it if Tyrsell could be invited to the tent, and why.

“Easily done, Healer,” it answered, with a bow of profoundest respect, and left the bedroll on the tent floor to answer her request personally.

“I believe that we must assume that this illness is both contagious and a grave danger to us,” Nala said, as Keisha turned her attention back to the group. “Remember the description, that it first went through the barbarians like a wildfire? Now we can expect them to have built up some immunity, but we have no such protection at this point.”

Grenthan mopped his brow and the back of his neck with a kerchief. “You surely know what the villagers and even Lord Breon would insist on, if we let it be known that we consider it very dangerous,” Grenthan said reluctantly. “They’d want us to surround the camp and burn them and it down to the ground.”

“That’s unacceptable!” Gentian snapped, rounding on his fellow Healer as if Grenthan were an enemy. “We cannot condone anything of the kind!”

“I don’t advocate that,” Grenthan protested, his hands up as if to ward off a blow. “I’m just telling you what Lord Breon would say!”

“But we have no cure, no treatment,” Nala pointed out. “We don’t even know what we’re facing. Where does the Oath put us? Are we to serve everyone, or the greatest good? Are we to try to save outsiders at the possible expense of unleashing a plague on thousands of our own, innocent people?”

“I don’t think that there is any doubt that we are to serve everyone, friend and enemy alike; the Oath is crystal clear on that point,” Gentian replied stiffly. “I can’t imagine how you could interpret it otherwise.”

“You can’t serve anyone if you’re all dead,” Keisha said slowly, and shook her head. “We don’t even know how this thing spreads. You could all be infected by now; for all we know, Eldan and the rest brought it back with them from their parley, and it’s only a matter of time before we all get it.”

Instantly, their faces all went blank; she waited while they searched within themselves for signs of infection of any kind. It didn’t take very long, they were so used to doing so, and the looks of relief told her that at least that fear was groundless.

“So it isn’t instantly contagious. Still - ” She let the sentence hang in the air, not needing to add, “it could have been.” She let the thought sink in, then continued. “I can’t see how we have the right to expose our own folk just so we can treat these strangers.”

“We won’t get anywhere by not treating it,” Nala said, at last. “The question is, how? From what you told us, these barbarians would welcome us if we just marched straight into their village!”

“And they might equally slit our throats if we couldn’t provide instant cures,” Grenthan countered, fanning himself with his sleeve, as the air inside the tent became close and warm. “Yes, I agree, we must act, but I don’t relish the notion of putting myself so completely at their mercy, which might well be nonexistent. Look, I do agree with the Oath in principle, but I have serious reservations about applying it to a pack of folk who eat their meat raw!”

At that moment, the hertasi returned, with Tyrsell at its side. Keisha quickly explained what she wanted, and the king-stag readily agreed.

:Do brace yourselves, please,; the dyheli said calmly. :You are unused to this, and it will be something of a shock to your minds.:

The experience wasn’t anywhere near as traumatic as getting the Hawkbrother language, but the “lump” of memory-images hit each of them with a palpable impact, much as if they’d been struck by a stone, leaving them reeling for a moment. Keisha managed to stammer thanks; Tyrsell nodded gravely in return and left the tent without a word, giving them all the peace to sort out the jumble of sights and sounds, emotions and visceral sensations that came with the memory fragments.

The three experienced Healers actually sorted things through a lot faster than Keisha would have thought, possibly because they were all used to sorting through the chaos of a battlefield. Of the six Healer Trainees, three felt unwell and had to go lie down, and the other three sat blinking owlishly and a little stunned during the rest of the discussion. Keisha had been ready for the experience, and was the first to recover, waiting for the rest to make what they could of what they’d been given.

“This definitely isn’t anything we’ve seen before,” Grenthan acknowledged. “At a guess, it spreads through direct contact, the way a cold does.”

“I think it might be less contagious than a cold,” Nala added thoughtfully. “Otherwise, everyone would have been struck down when it first appeared. And I think that low temperatures, winter-chill, probably kills it, or at least makes it dormant - after all, these people spend their winters in tents in a chillier climate than we have - did any of you get that memory? Of the way they go from fall to spring without ever once getting out of their fur clothing, not even to couple? They must smell to high heaven, but that might be why they don’t catch the disease in winter. It can’t spread through the frigid air, and there’s nothing I’d call physical contact during the cold moons. It could spread through flea-bite, I suppose. Fleas hibernate, when the cold doesn’t outright kill them.”

“I did get those memories,” Gentian seconded, and shuddered. “The cleanliness of these people leaves a great deal to be desired, at least in winter.”

“Well, given how cold it gets, I can’t see that I blame them,” Grenthan said diplomatically. “It’s also beside the point, which is the question of what we are to do.”

“I’ll tell you what you won’t be doing,” said a wrathful voice from the open tent flap. “You won’t be marching into a barbarian village, giving aid and comfort to plague carriers, not while I’m in command here!”