Healers (24 page)

As the guards led Eva up to the palace, she saw Tarc near the entrance. For a moment, she hoped he’d speak to her, but he didn’t. She whispered, “Tarc,” several times, but he never responded to her.

The guards took her into the palace and put her in a small room furnished with nothing but a bed. They stacked her supplies in the room with her. Eva had carried two liters of sterile saline in her precious ancient glassware bottles herself. She set them down on the floor in the corner.

Feeling hungry, she turned to the guard they’d posted outside her room, “Do I get any food?”

He shrugged.

“The king may not be very happy if I’m too hungry to do the healings he’s expecting me to do in the morning.”

The guard shrugged again, “I’ll ask when my relief comes.” He closed the sturdy door and she heard the large steel lock clunk shut.

Eva sat on the bed feeling exhausted and hopeless. Suddenly, she heard Tarc’s voice whisper in her ear, “Dad and Daussie send their love.”

Startled, Eva said, “Why didn’t you talk to me when I passed you out at the gate? And how do you know what Daum and Daussie have to say?”

Tarc replied, first explaining how he had preceded her to the caravan to talk to Daum and take Daussie and Kazy away. “Then I beat you back here to the palace, but when you went by I was mostly focused on following you to wherever you went inside so I could talk to you now.”

“You ignored me when I whispered as I went by!”

“Oh, sorry. I can’t hear you whispering unless I’m focusing my ghost on you when you do it. I’ve been thinking about this. You can probably do the same thing with your ghost since you can sense things with it. That’ll let you know what people are whispering around you if you need to know. It seems to me like people might be talking about you tomorrow.”

Eva frowned, “How do you do it?”

“You know how sound’s actually little vibrations in the air?”

Eva nodded, then realized Tarc might not be focusing on what her head was doing, so she whispered, “Yes.”

“So, the way I think of it, I’m using my ghost to feel the molecules of air right in front of your face. I feel them vibrate with your words. When I first thought of this, I didn’t expect to be able to understand them, just know someone had spoken, but I
do
understand it. Daussie can do the same thing, so I’ll bet you can too. Unfortunately, you probably won’t be able to vibrate the molecules to
make
sound from a distance like I do. Daum’s going to try to make sound, and he might be able to hear like we can. He’ll only be able to speak to people he can see.”

“Oh,” Eva said, trying to visualize the concept in her mind. “I’ll try it after you’re gone.”

Tarc’s voice came back, “I’m going to stay here for the night.”

“You are
not
! Nothing’s going to happen tonight except you maybe getting mugged! Go home, get a good night’s rest and come back in the morning.”

After a pause, evidently for Tarc to think about it, he replied, “Okay, I’ll be back early in the morning. But I’m worried about what to do if they move you. We can’t recognize people very well with our ghosts. What Daum and I’ve talked about is putting a hand up behind your back like you’re trying to scratch yourself. So, if they move you in the middle of the night, or shuffle you through a crowd tomorrow, scratch your back a lot like you have a bug bite back there. Then my ghost will be able to tell which person’s you. I don’t know if you’ve tried to reach out with your ghost and sense things from far away?”

Eva felt surprised at herself. She knew Tarc and Daussie could sense things a long ways away with their ghosts, but she hadn’t tried to do it herself! She sent her ghost out to the wall, then through it and into the room next to her. Someone huddled despairingly on the bed in that room.

Tarc’s voice came to Eva again, “Since you haven’t replied I don’t know if you’re trying to reach out with your ghost. If you are, I’m directly behind you. There’s the wall of the room you’re in, then about a twelve foot gap, then another row of rooms, then the wall around the palace grounds. I’m just on the other side of the palace wall.”

“Oh, sorry, yeah, I am sending my ghost out… There’s the wall. There’s somebody standing on the other side of it. Is that you?”

The person on the other side of the wall reached up behind his back as if scratching an itch.

“You’re scratching, aren’t you?!”

“Yep, so it looks like it works both ways. How far out can you reach with your ghost?”

“I can faintly feel the walls of the house on the other side of the street from you, though I can feel the people inside of it pretty well and even some people in what I assume are the next houses, though I can’t feel the walls there.”

“That’s the way it works for Daussie and myself too. It’s much easier to feel warm things like people and animals. Objects are hard.”

“How far can you feel things?”

“Further than you, and Daussie can feel farther than I can.”

“How much farther?”

“About twice as far.”

Eva felt a small twinge of jealousy that her talent was weaker than her children’s, yet pride in their strength. “Okay, you’d better head on back to the caravan. Let me know when you get here in the morning?”

“Sure. Love you.”

Eva almost felt like he’d shut something off when he turned and moved away. “Love you too…” she said, but he didn’t respond.

Eva settled down to make an attempt at using her talent to listen.

Reaching out with her ghost, she found the guard outside her door. For a moment, she was tempted to explore his body for illness. After all, for her entire life,
that’s
what she’d used her talent for. Stopping herself, instead she sent it outwards. There was the huddled person in the room next door. Most of the other neighboring rooms were empty, but five rooms down a couple was fornicating. They certainly didn’t seem to be making love. She kept focusing in different areas where her ghost reached in hopes of finding someone making conversation so she could try to listen. She did find two people all the way across the street who faced each other like they might be talking. She tried to listen to them without success. Since even the people themselves were faint she thought they were probably just too far away.

Finally, with some distaste, she focused on the room where the people were having sex. Surely those two would be talking. She tried to grasp the air molecules in that room to sense their vibration like Tarc had said. A moment later, she realized she
could
hear them, though they weren’t talking, only grunting.

Appalled, she dropped her ghost and went back to wondering what would happen tomorrow.

***

Though the guards did find her a hunk of stale bread at their shift change, Eva woke very hungry in the morning. She got the guard to take her to the outhouse. When she returned, her ghost found someone leaning against the palace wall. Remembering what Tarc had said she reached up between her shoulder blades to scratch. Tarc’s voice immediately whispered in her ear, “Mom, are you okay?”

“Uh-huh, just hungry. I can hear with my talent just like you said, but so far I haven’t learned anything of value.” Though she found it amusing, she wasn’t about to tell her son about the first sounds she’d heard with her talent.

“Good. It might come in handy today when they’re ‘testing’ you. If they whisper amongst themselves, and you listen, maybe you can figure out what their goal is. Hopefully, you’ll know whether you should do your very best to heal because it’ll help you, or whether you should say you can’t do anything.”

Eva frowned to herself, “I don’t know if I can refuse to heal someone just because it’s not the best thing for me. That’d violate all I’ve ever stood for.”

She heard Tarc’s sigh. “Still, maybe you’ll be able to modify what you do based on knowing what they want.”

“Maybe.”

“Hopefully, they’ll do their testing near enough to the palace wall that I can observe with my ghost and know what’s going on, maybe help out.”

“Oh! That
would
be great. What they said yesterday implies they’re going to
cut
someone and then have me sew them up! I keep telling myself they wouldn’t really do such a horrible thing, but worrying that they actually will. Anyway, if you’re close enough, maybe you can block the nerves of whomever they’re having me treat if they’re in pain. I know they’re looking for someone with an abscess for me to drain. If they find one, it would certainly be a kindness to that person for you to block the nerves before I lance the abscess.”

“Um…” Tarc said sounding uncomfortable. “What if I don’t know which nerve to block?”

“Tell me to wait. If I know the nerve, I’ll point to it. If I don’t, I’ll do some mumbo-jumbo while we’re both trying to figure it out by tracing our own nerves.”

“Okay.”

It was pretty late that morning before another guard came. He and the guard who’d been waiting outside Eva’s room marched her away across the palace.

Tarc followed his mother across the palace grounds as best he could with his ghost while walking outside the walls to stay close to her as he could. A sudden conviction came over him that he should have climbed the wall last night, killed her guards, even though Eva’s imprisonment wasn’t their fault, and tried to get her back out over the wall.

He reminded himself of the ramifications.

He pictured his family trying to get away in their wagon before the palace roused itself and sent soldiers to search the caravan for them.

As their wagon surely couldn’t outrun their pursuit, he imagined trying to fight off an entire troop of soldiers sent after them on horseback.

Alternatively, he imagined his family leaving their wagon and its precious cargo to flee across the countryside on foot. They’d have to pray someone in the Nortons would take care of their wagon for them.

Despite a feeling of impending doom, Tarc took a deep breath to calm himself and resolved once again to see if they could work their way out of this problem without hurting anyone. Perhaps the king or one of his relatives had an illness and he just wanted to see if Eva was any good before having her treat them?

Tarc felt like fortune had smiled on them when Eva and the guards stopped in a small courtyard right next to the wall on the west side of the palace grounds. An obese man sat at a small table, apparently eating. Two women attended him and several guards stood nearby. More guards surrounded a few men who were right beside the palace wall.

Tarc assumed the fat man must be the king. Someone stood talking to him, so Eva and her guards simply waited off to one side of the courtyard. Tarc reached out with his ghost and listened to them for a moment, hoping they were talking about his mother, but they were discussing some kind of building project. Tarc turned his attention on his mother and projected his voice to her ear in a whisper, “I assume the fat guy’s the king?”

She nodded, but said nothing.

“They’re discussing something unrelated to you. Fortunately, the high wall just west of you is an outer palace wall, so I’m really close if you need my help.”

Eva nodded again, presumably choosing not to waste words that weren’t needed, but might bring suspicion.

After what felt like a long time to Tarc, the other man left and the king barked some orders. Tarc didn’t have his ghost extended to listen, so he didn’t really know what the king said, but the guards holding the prisoners by the wall started moving closer to the king. Tarc sent out his ghost so he could hear what would be said.

The king said, “Wait, hold them there in the light.” The king got up and walked out to them. After inspecting them for a moment, he said, “
That’s
gross. How long’s it been that way?”

One of the guards spoke up. “He fell at the garbage dump a few days ago, Sir King. Some kind of stick punctured his leg there and it’s festered since then.”

The king waved Eva over. As she approached, Tarc used his ghost to investigate the man’s leg. He found a large, hot swelling on the back of the man’s calf. Sending his ghost inside, he found a large collection of thick fluid, presumably pus. He turned his attention back to his mother and the king so he wouldn’t miss anything they said.

The king said, “Well,
there’s
a challenge for you. Treat it.” He folded his arms in front of him to wait.

Eva turned to her patient, saying, “What happened?”

The king grunted, “I didn’t tell you to have a chat! Just make him better.”

Eva turned to eye the king, “I’ll have no idea which treatment to embark on if I don’t know what’s wrong!”

The king barked a laugh, “Well, aren’t you the sassy one?” He waved a negligent hand, “Go ahead. Talk to him. But don’t waste my time.”

Eva got the story of the stick puncturing the man’s calf four days earlier. At first it just hurt, but then yesterday his calf began to swell and turn red. Overnight the entire leg had begun to swell and he’d started having fevers. Walking over to the palace this morning had been excruciating. Knowing the infection was going to kill him, his only wish was to see his family one last time.