by Alma Boykin
“I swear he eats his weight every day!” Tarkeela beamed with pleasure at her exasperation, earning a light spat from her tail. He caught the tail and caressed it before releasing her to take Tartai back to the manor house’s den.
Well to the east and south of snow-shrouded Mountains’ Edge, Neela carried out yet another load of soiled bandages to be washed, while Khae carefully re-stocked the cabinet with clean, sterile ones. “I miss Teek,” Khae whispered under her breath as Neela passed.
“Me too,” the smaller female whispered back, looking around to make certain Sheek could not hear them. He hated any comparison with the other physician. As soon as Teek retired, Sheek had charged in and changed everything. “His way of marking his territory,” Khae had overheard one of the other servants snapping. Neela had struggled to remember all the new procedures and storage rules, earning the older male’s ire.
The two females heard the outer door open and they hurried to finish their tasks and start the next ones. Yellowy-brown Sheek stomped in, irritated about something. “Anything new?”
“No sir,” Khae reported.
Sheek called up the medical files on the two Azdhagi currently in the infirmary. The female simply needed a little more time to recover from a hard delivery of a healthy, large, male junior. However, the male seemed determined to cause problems. He’d been injured when part of a harvester fell and slid into him, breaking and almost severing his leg. The dirty part had caused an infection and such pain that Sheek kept the male sedated, meaning that someone needed to observe him constantly. Neela took the night rotation and had changed the male’s bandages twice as the wound drained. Sheek led the two females, now medics-in-training, into the patient’s chamber.
“He seems to be improving,” Sheek observed, feeling the male’s leg. “The swelling has gone down and there’s less infection smell.” He studied the wound and break carefully, then turned to Neela and Khae. “Did you give him any antibiotics?”
The two females made identical gestures of negation. “No, sir. You told us not to,” Khae reminded the medic.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, sir. We changed the bandage and gave him sleep-leaf tea and that’s all,” Khae said. Neela shrank back from the old male’s apparent anger as he stepped closer to them, his neck spines starting to rise.
“Is there anything else, anything at all that you did to him?”
Neela gulped, “I touched him.”
Yellowy-brown Sheek turned to her. “Touched him?” She swung her foreleg in affirmation and Sheek stepped back, pointing at the patient with his tail. “Do it again as I watch.”
Neela couldn’t refuse his order and she crept forward. She gathered herself as she had before, rose onto her haunches, rested her forefeet on the wounded leg and pulled, drawing the heat and black stuff out of the wound. Then she pushed more blood into the leg to help flush the black away. Light-headed, the female stepped back from the sleeping platform and fell over. Sheek almost trampled her as he inspected the wound again. “That’s not… she can’t have…” he muttered, then swung around. “Come with me.”
Neela tried to get up but her wobbly legs wouldn’t hold her. Sheek dug his talons into her carry-harness and dragged her out of the ward, down the corridor, and up a short ramp. She tried to protest, but the twisted leather choked her and she had to concentrate on breathing, trying to work her forefeet under the strap to get some space. Then he dropped her. “My lord, my lord,” he called as he scratched on a closed door.
“What is it?” The wooden panel opened and Old Kirlin lurched out, glaring at the medic.
“This female is a Healer,” Sheek informed the noble as Neela lay still and panted, dizzy and scared. “That male with the infected leg break? She cured him. I saw it myself.”
“Azdhagi don’t Heal,” the old reptile stated flatly.
Sheek gestured vigorously, slapping Neela with his tail in the process. “This one does. We need to keep her.”
Old Kirlin limped closer to the female and sniffed, then poked her with a talon. “If you are going to keep her, she’ll have to be sterilized. She must be one of the Cursed Ones and they can’t be allowed to breed.”
“Hmmm,” and Sheek pivoted so he could see the female. “Perhaps we should let her have one offspring in order to see if Healer breeds true? More of them would be better for everyone.”
“And if it is a Cursed One or the not-born kills her, then what? If she really can Heal, sterilize her and keep her where she can be useful,” the brown-blotched elder ordered.
“Sterilize who?” a new voice asked from the base of the ramp. Heavy steps followed and Lord Kirlin sauntered up, looking at the trio with curiosity. “If it is Shu you have my blessing. He’s going to cause a third disaster if someone does not take him down before more of his stupidity passes to another generation. There’s not enough genetic material left to dilute it anymore.”
Old Kirlin, the lord’s sire’s sire’s brother, poked Neela again. “No, this one, not Shu.”
Kirlin sniffed the cowering female, who appeared to be about to soil herself from fear. “What is wrong with you, little one?”
Too terrified to answer, Neela covered her eyes with her forefeet and crouched as low as she could possible go. Sheek answered for her, “She’s a Healer. I watched her cure an infection with touch. She should be allowed to breed at least once so we can see if Healing will breed true.”
“If she can Heal then she’s Cursed and can’t be allowed to breed.” Old Kirlin stepped back a little and rippled his tail in a shrug. “She’s so small she’d probably die if she bred anyway, so sterilize her and keep her alive as long as we can is my advice.”
“Little one, how many year turns have you?” Kirlin asked the subject of the conversation.
“T-t-t-twelve, I think, great my lord. Two growth phases maybe, s-s-s-sir,” Neela managed, still not looking at any of the males.
Kirlin’s eyes narrowed and he turned to Sheek. “How much is she eating?”
“A ration appropriate for her size and job. Heavy on grain since she needs energy more than endurance.”
Kirlin patted his tail, considering the cowering female. “What is your name, little one?”
“N-n-n-neela, great my lord.” She froze, completely rigid as Kirlin draped his tail over her.
“Neela has my protection as Clan Lord. Sheek, quit starving her and any other juniors assigned to you. And come to me or to Sharlin the next time you have a question about a potential Healer. You,” he turned to his uncle, “quit acting as if you were Clan Lord!” Kirlin lifted his tail off the terrified junior. “Come with me, Neela.”
She trundled along behind him as he led her to an unfamiliar section of the estate headquarters. “Kalee, bring high-protein food for one to my office,” he ordered someone. “In here,” and he opened an elaborately carved wood and metal door, leading the female into his comfortable and lavish workroom.
Still scared, she crouched down, almost blending into the wood and tile floor. Kirlin studied her as he waited for the meal to arrive, wondering about her lineage and if she had any siblings or close relatives. “Neela, what is your lineage?”
He barely heard her whisper, “Keerpak, great my lord. My dam died, my older brother Keerpak farms somewhere on Kirlin lands, my sire’s sister lives on Pokara, and my sire remains in the south, great my lord.”
A scratching sound at the door heralded the arrival of food. “Enter,” Kirlin called, and Nortee, the second kitchen cook, pulled a carry-cart into the room. “It is all for the little one,” Kirlin directed and the brown male undid his pull-harness, locked the cart’s wheels, removed the spill-guards covering the food bowls, bowed, and departed. “Eat, Neela. You can’t keep working if you don’t eat.” She all but threw herself headlong onto the stew, kurstem flatbread with a thick paste of greens, and blood crumble.
As she ate, her lord called up the records for Keerpak lineage. Well, he thought with a touch of disappointmen
t, her sire would produce no more offspring. Scavengers, or “materials hunters” as Kirlin preferred to think of them, had reported finding Keerpak’s body in the house at Silverstream settlement one double-moon after the evacuation. The brother lived and his mate had produced a male junior, healthy, two year-turns ago. Kirlin made a note to look into encouraging the pair to have more offspring. Of the dam’s line, one brother lived, along with two male and two female juniors. Again Kirlin made a note to follow up the line’s trail and see if the females carried the Healing ability.
Which posed a new problem: who could train Neela? He rubbed under his muzzle with his talons, watching the female as she licked the inside of the stew bowl clean, then did the same with the little platter of blood crumble. “When was the last time you ate?”
It was hard to think with a full belly, and it took Neela several moments to remember. “Ah, yesterday at mid-day, great my lord. Khae and I ate then, and she had the evening meal. I missed it because of being on night watch, great my lord.” Unable to keep her eyes open, she sank to her haunches and then flopped onto her side, asleep as soon as her outer eyelids closed.
Kirlin summoned both Keeshti and Shartee, as much for their ideas as simply to have an audience as he thought aloud. While he waited for their arrival, he dragged Neela over to a corner where she would not get stepped on. He almost could not get his talons into the grip of her too-tight harness and Kirlin growled silently. Sheek must not abuse useful Clan members, even if they were underage females: it made Kirlin himself look bad. He returned to his bench as the two females entered, Keeshti trailing a respectful distance behind Shartee. “We have a potential problem,” he informed them, pointing to Neela as the two females bowed.
Shartee walked over and inspected the sleeping junior, giving her a very careful sniff. “Is she ill, my lord and mate? She does not seem so.”
“She is a medic and apparently a Healer, according to Sheek. She is also without lineage protection, so I took her into Kirlin lineage’s protection.”
Shartee backed up, leaving Neela alone. “If she is a Healer the Clan needs to have her trained,” the Clan lady reminded her mate.
Kirlin looked at his concubine, who had been watching her lady inspect the junior. Keeshti asked, “Great my lord, the True-dragons have Healers in their number, do they not?”
“They do, my lord, and some of the Houses frequent Mountains’ Edge in the warm season,” Shartee added. “You could leave word with Tarkeela to have one of the True-dragon healers come here and train her.”
Kirlin swished his tail as he considered the idea. It sounded reasonable, but… “No, that would not be wise. Not the True-dragon training her if she really is a healer—that is a good thought. But do we want others knowing that we have someone like her?” Keeshti’s eyes widened and her tail stiffened as she realized the problem. “The Old Lizard already said that she should be sterilized or killed for being ‘cursed’.”
Keeshti made a small, very rude gesture with her hind foot, aimed at Old Kirlin. The Clan Lord ignored the insult, instead watching his mate. Shartee tipped her head to the side as she mulled over his words. “Who else has Healers?”
“The Trader clans,” and both females gave their lord disapproving looks. “The True-dragons of course, some humans, the Rowfow, and I seem to recall reading that the Sharrah do, although I’ve not seen or heard much about that. And that diplomat, ah,” Kirlin ducked his head and shook it, trying to jar loose a memory. “Master Thomas they call him. The strange mammal.”
Shartee snorted. “The True-dragons seem to be the best of a bad pack, my lord.”
“I think you are correct, Lady Shartee. If Neela can repeat her healing, then I want you to contact Cheerka at Tarkeela’s manor and have him speak to the True-dragons for Clan Kirlin. You know best what bait to use.” Kirlin needed Shartee’s silence, and having her be the one to speak with Cheerka seemed the best way to buy it. She remained a follower and buyer of the loose-born lizard’s writings, much to her mate’s amusement.
She bowed, “Very good, my lord and mate.”
“In fact, I would like you to go and look at the infirmary. There is another female junior there, Khae by name, and she may be just as underfed and ill-cared for as this one. Be my eyes and nose, my lady, and tell me what you sniff out.”
Shartee bowed again and hurried out of the workroom. Keeshti bowed as the Clan lady departed, then silently pushed the door almost closed at Kirlin’s gesture. “How may I serve?”
He got up and nuzzled against her. “If it would not awaken and totally terrify the little one…” and the female ducked a little, twining her tail around his. The passing years diminished only the capacity, not the desire, and Kirlin envied Tarkeela a talon’s length for having claimed Neetai as mate. However… he stepped away from Keeshti. “I need you to take this one in keeping. Get her a better harness and appropriate robes, make certain that she is fed as much as she wants, within reason. From what I recall, she needs to remain in the infirmary so she can learn, but I want her supervised and trained in other skills as well.” An idea struck the mottled male and he smiled. “Definitely other skills. She’s too valuable to limit to one male’s possession—the Clan needs her time, if she truly is a Healer.”
Two days later Kirlin and Sheek put Neela’s skills to the test. “Another female with delivery problems,” Sheek snapped. “Healthy male junior but big. Go take care of her.”
The limited information barely gave Neela and Khae any idea of what they faced in the auxiliary den. “Bleeding again?” Khae speculated as they washed carefully before going in to see the patient.
“Probably, and I read that sometimes the dam suffers from pulled or even torn hip muscles,” and Neela raised her tail to indicate the area she meant. Khae leaned around, saw the area in question, and swung her own tail in understanding. The two medics-in-training dried their forelegs and walked on hindlegs only into the den. “Oh.”
Blood soaked everything in sight. Khae made a half-startled and half-curious noise, and the two females rushed to their patient. Khae grabbed a clean piece of cloth and wiped the blood away from the delivery vent. “Sutures, needles, and leg restraints,” she recited quietly. Neela grabbed them, pulling the second-finest threads and needles from their kit and bringing them to Khae. The pale green female touch-stitched much better than Neela did, and she very carefully reached up into the egg passage, feeling for the tears as Neela restrained the unconscious female, in case she woke and started thrashing. “She’s bleeding too much, Neela. Can we chill her?”
The brown female searched in vain for the cold packs. “No. Keep working and I’ll see if I can…” Neela squeezed in beside Khae, careful not to jostle the female as she worked. Neela rested her hands on the injured patient forward of the birth organs and closed her eyes, reaching with her mind and trying to feel where and how the blood moved. “Oh.”
The large junior had torn his dam’s egg chamber lining as he passed out into the egg passage. “Khae, fist your forefoot and push up toward the egg chamber,” Neela asked, feeling the small forefoot sliding the torn flap of tissue back into the egg chamber. “Perfect.” Neela imagined the egg chamber lining back in place, and the blood vessels and tissues knitting together, the blood no longer flowing free but remaining in the healed channels. Nothing but the patient’s egg chamber existed for Neela as she pushed energy into the cells, forcing them to heal, tricking the blood into flowing properly but not leaking out of the still-damaged micro vessels. The young female saw the wound starting to heal an instant before blackness swept over her and she collapsed, as unconscious as the older female.
Two days passed before Neela learned the final results. Sheek stormed into the infirmary, followed by Lord Kirlin-Sharlin, the Clan heir. Neela and Khae bowed low, scuttling out of the males’ way. “Bah. Neela, Khae,” he gestured, introducing the females to the other male. “Neela may be a Healer, but the female will bear no more juniors unless they are cut out of her.”
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“But she is alive,” Sharlin pressed, glancing from Sheek to Neela.
Sheek called up endoscope images on the main infirmary display screen. “Yes, she is alive and she can run a household and care for the juniors and work. But see this?” He pointed to a dark half circle surrounded by healing red tissue. “That is the entrance of the egg passage. Tissue has grown over half the width, possibly more than half, so only an early miscarriage or a fatally small junior can leave the egg chamber the normal way. It will also be harder for her to conceive,” Sheek explained to the fascinated male.
“What are these little lines?” Sharlin pointed to one. “They look like stitches.”
“They were tears in the egg channel.” Sheek grunted, “Khae does a good stitch.”
Neela lay on her belly and covered her eyes with her talons. She’d hurt the patient! Oh no, she’d ruined the other female’s life, had made her sterile. Clan Kirlin would punish both of them—Neela for failing and the patient for not having more juniors.
Sharlin swirled his forefoot hard enough that Neela and Khae felt the breeze from the motion. “At the behest of my lord sire I’ve been doing research into Healers, Sheek. What Neela did is common among un-trained healers. She put too much of herself into the treatment and overdid it. That’s why she passed out, just as Khae would do if she worked three days without rest, stitching wounds and administering medicines.” Sharlin smiled at the females. “Despite the legends, the Healing touch is not the only or the best option for medical care.”
“Well, Neela can’t be allowed to do this again.”
“True. My lord and lady-dam are arranging training for her so she will know better.” With that Sharlin waved his tail toward the two females and departed.
A double-moon later, Lord Shu listened to his spy’s message and shuddered with pure disgust. Kirlin should have terminated the mis-born female as soon as he knew that she’d been cursed. And now Kirlin wanted the King-Emperor to approve an exemption for Healers, letting all of them live instead of culling them! Over half the other nobles supported the proposal, enough that Seetoh, who should have enforced the law, agreed to permit Kirlin’s experiment. Shu’s spy could not tell where the abomination would be trained and Shu wondered if Kirlin had invited outsiders to Drakon IV, compounding his stupidity with further treachery. Tarkeela’s perfidy continued to spread, now affecting Kirlin as well as Peitak and Beesh. That thought sent Shu into another paroxysm of rage and he ripped a cushion apart, scattering tree-fluff in the air like snow.
