Cyador’s Heirs

III

On fourday, after breakfast, but well before midmorning, Lerial stands outside the stables off the north courtyard of the palace, holding the reins of the brown gelding that has been his mount for the past five years, despite Lephi’s scarcely veiled suggestions that a stallion might be more appropriate. He wears the pale green summer trousers and tunic that are worn by either Lancer or healer trainees, not that there are many men who are healers. He has picked a spot where he and the gelding can stand in the narrow shadows that are shrinking moment by moment as he waits for Emerya.

For an instant, he does not recognize the rider who approaches, followed by two Lancer guards, because Emerya is wearing a filmy but largely opaque head scarf that hides her red-streaked, silver-white hair. He immediately mounts and urges the gelding to move up beside his aunt, who is riding a mare, if one nearly as large as Lerial’s gelding.

“I’m glad you’re ready,” Emerya says. “Your father had a few questions I had to answer before I left.”

“About me coming with you?”

“He didn’t know about that until I told him. When I said it was necessary for you to get better control of your abilities and that I’d talked to Magus Saltaryn, he just nodded. No … there were other matters we discussed. If you want to know what they are, you’ll have to ask him.”

Lerial manages not to frown, since Emerya has to know that he isn’t about to ask his father about anything unless Kiedron brings up the subject first. But then, that’s why she said it that way, rather than just saying she wouldn’t tell you.

The courtyard gates are open, and guarded but by a pair of Lancers, both to the eye not that much older than Lerial. Neither gives Emerya, Lerial, or the two Lancer guards more than a passing glance.

Once on the main square in front of the palace, Emerya turns her mare to the left toward the boulevard leading northeast. On the right is the Ministry-the building that holds the high minister, and the tariff inspectors and the well-guarded treasury on the lower level. As he rides past the two-story structure, Lerial looks ahead. While he knows that the Hall of Healing is on a low rise overlooking the river piers, and has even ridden past it more than a few times, he has never been inside the sandstone walls, let alone into the Hall itself.

“What are you going to do today?” he asks.

“What I always do every day. I try to heal people. What you will do is to observe closely and say nothing until I ask you a question or give you permission to speak. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ser.”

“Good. I don’t want to have to remind you when others are around.”

Lerial can understand that, and he wouldn’t want to be corrected in front of others, especially healers. He is always happy to be out of the palace, and he begins to study both sides of the boulevard.

Although his parents and Emerya have all assured him that, as cities go, Cigoerne is small, it does not seem that small to Lerial. The palace is located on a flattened ridge almost two kays west of the Swarth River, with the Square of the Magi’i directly before it on the east side. East of the square, beyond the walls around the Ministry, stretching somewhat to the north and south, are larger dwellings, all of two stories, and all with center courtyards and fountains. These house the families of the Magi’i and those of the more senior Lancer officers, those whose rank is overcaptain and higher. As a practical matter, only the majer and the submajers, past and present, have dwellings anywhere close to the square, not that there are even a handful of them.

Even farther east and extending north and south as well are the dwellings of the merchanters. Even closer to the river, and lower, if not low enough to worry about the infrequent floods of the Swarth River, are the houses and shops of the crafters. Just behind the river piers are the structures housing the warehouses and factorages of the merchanters, as well as the shops of various tradesmen.

Lerial remains silent for a time as they ride down the boulevard, which leads directly to the Hall of Healing, just as the boulevard that angles southeast from the square leads to the headquarters of the Lancers, also located on a low rise above the river, with piers for the Lancer river patrol craft below the rise. Finally, he asks, “You never really answered my question about why the Hall of Healing is so far from the palace.”

Emerya laughs softly. “You asked that years ago. You couldn’t have been more than ten. Do you recall every question you asked when you were told you needed to be older to understand?”

Lerial smiles at the good-humored tone in her voice. “Probably not … but I remember the ones I thought were important.”

“Sometimes those are the best to remember, but not always. Sometimes, the questions we forget to ask are the ones that are the most important.”

Lerial has to think about that for a moment, then realizes that Emerya has still not answered his question. “Why is the Hall of Healing-”

“Who needs healing the most?”

“Everyone needs healers at times.”

“What happens if you need a healer? Or your father? How many healers are there in the palace?”

“Oh … the poorer people don’t have that many healers, and the Hall is closer to them?” Lerial pauses. “Then why didn’t you tell me that then?”

“I did. You said that there had to be another reason.”

Lerial doesn’t remember that, but he can sense that there is no evasion in his aunt’s reply. “Then there must have been.”

“There is. There are several. Would you care to think what they might be?”

Lerial thinks and finally says, “Because putting it there shows that Father cares about the people. It’s more visible there.”

“Good.”

“Why couldn’t you tell me that?”

“You weren’t able to consider the political reasons then. What else?”

Lerial shrugs. “I can’t think of another reason. Not right now.”

“Who are the healers … most of them, anyway?”

“Daughters … women of the Magi’i … most of them, anyway.”

“Where do they live?”

“Father and Mother … and you … located the Hall there so that they’d all have to leave where they lived to go to the Hall?”

“Actually, it was your grandmother who made that point. She made it rather strongly. She said that the elthage and the altage classes of Cyador had become too separate from the people they ruled. She also made the point that the poorer folk wouldn’t travel to a healing hall in the middle of dwellings of those better off, and that defeated half the reason for even having a Hall of Healing in Cigoerne.”

Lerial could see that. What he couldn’t see was his grandmother thinking that way.

“She was very proud, Lerial, but she was anything but stupid or unobservant, something that your grandsire never understood. Had he listened to her, we all might still be in Cyad, enjoying the pleasures of the City of Light.”

“You’ve never said anything like that before.”

“I have. Just not to you. I told Lephi the same thing when he was your age. He insisted that I was mistaken. Assuming I’m still around when Amaira is old enough to understand, I’ll tell her, and Ryalah, in turn. Why am I the one? Usually, some things are better left unsaid by parents, and it might be better if someone else told Amaira … perhaps … well … we’ll see when the time comes.”

Lerial can see that … mostly. Sometimes, more than sometimes, he does listen to his parents, even when he doesn’t agree. After several moments, he asks, “Will Amaira and Ryalah be healers?”

“They have the order-talent, but healing takes more than talent, just as it takes more than the ability to recognize, summon, and direct chaos to be a full magus or even a white wizard.”

From what Lerial has gathered, although no one had actually said it in as many words, “white wizard” was the term used by the Magi’i for those chaos wielders who were lesser in ability than a truly accomplished magus, those whose talents tended to be limited to throwing firebolts and other forms of lesser destruction.

The walls around the Hall of Healing are formed of comparatively small sandstone blocks mortared in place and about two yards high. There are two gates, both of iron grillwork, and both open, although they are generally closed every night after dark, when a few Lancers guard them, mainly to keep lawbreakers and other minor miscreants from sneaking in and robbing the ill of what little they have. Emerya and Lerial ride in through the north gate, the one reserved for healers and Magi’i, and Emerya leads the way to the modest stable set against the north wall.

“You can leave your mount for the Lancers to groom,” advises Emerya. “They don’t have much else to do.”

Lerial is glad of that suggestion, especially since he has only groomed his mount a handful of times, under supervision, more to let him know what is required than to make him proficient.

After dismounting, Emerya strides toward the doorway on the north end of the Hall, that entry barely standing out with the smallest of limestone arches set in the plain sandstone wall, marked with frequent, if narrow, windows. Lerial hurries to catch up to her. Once inside, in the main corridor that runs the length of the building, he almost stops in his tracks after two steps. That is how powerfully the sense of chaos strikes him.

Emerya lets the head scarf slip off her hair and away from her face, easing that end of the shimmersilk fabric back over her shoulder as she glances back at him. “Come on. You’ll get used to it. You’d better, if you want to ride patrols.”

Lerial swallows and follows her along the corridor to the first door, then inside. An older woman in pale green-a healer’s aide-glances up from where she sits behind a narrow table desk. “Will you need an aide today, Lady Emerya?”

“My nephew has some healer talent. We’ll see how he does.” Emerya smiles.

“There are several children in the receiving chamber. One has been there more than a glass,” offers the woman.

“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.”

“Make way! Make way…”

Emerya and Lerial look up as two men rush in carrying a burly older man with a blood-soaked arm, and blood dripping everywhere.

“Cleaver handle broke … cleaver cut through his arm!”

Lerial watches intently as Emerya wraps a large cloth bandage around the man’s arm, above the gaping wound, then tightens it with a smooth stick, just enough to stop the gushing of the blood, before cleaning the wound, then stitching it, and then binding it, immediately loosening the tourniquet.

“See what you can sense in the arm below the wound,” she murmurs to Lerial.

Lerial’s head aches, but he concentrates. “There’s order there. There’s chaos around the wound.”

“If you leave a tourniquet on very long, the arm won’t recover.”

Lerial can sense what she does not say-that it might not anyway. He has another thought. “You had me put order on the wound chaos. Why couldn’t we just … well … bleed way the chaos?”

“There are two reasons for that. First, it’s harder for a healer to do that. Second, you can bleed away the chaos force in the body to the point where order will become too strong … and the person will die.”

Order … too strong?

“Lerial … order and chaos in the body have to balance, or at least come close to balancing. Hasn’t Saltaryn taught you anything?”

“I … I just didn’t think of it that way.”

“As a healer you always have to keep that in mind.”

Although her words are quiet, Lerial feels like wincing, but he just nods.

By midafternoon, after following Emerya through the Hall of Healing as she tends to those whose injuries have left them bedridden Lerial comes to a realization. “It seems to me that a good half of the healing you’ve done today deals with small wounds or minor injuries. Sometimes, it’s things caused by the body itself, like boils.”

“You’re right. What would have happened to that little boy, though, if we hadn’t cleaned and gotten rid of the worst of the wound chaos?”

“It would have gotten worse. He might have died.”

“It’s better to heal, Lerial, when injuries are small. It takes less effort, and a healer can do more for more people.”

“You come here most days. Are there that many…?”

“Many come here from well outside of Cigoerne. The way that little boy spoke, he was originally from the part of Merowey just to the southwest of Cigoerne.”

“Why do you heal those not from Cigoerne?”

“They could not have traveled that far. They live near here. But … even if they did not, we should let them suffer and perhaps die?”

“No … I didn’t mean that.” Not exactly.

“Your father rules a land that is more than ten times the size it was when we came here. Every year another village, sometimes more than one, asks to become part of Cigoerne. We protect them and heal them as we can. That is what a good ruler does. The Dukes of Merowey and Afrit have been forced to recognize your father as ruler.”

“But not as their equal.”

“Not yet. That will come. After all, he is Cyador’s heir.”

The way Emerya says that contains a certainty that chills Lerial, even as he thinks he should be cheered by it. So he merely nods and follows her to the next ward.

By the fourth glass of the afternoon, when Lerial accompanies Emerya from the Hall, he is exhausted. His boots feel heavy, and his feet ache from being on them all day. Trying the small amount of healing that Emerya has let him do has left him without the ability to focus even the smallest bit of order.