Kei's Gift (15 page)

The Prij knew nothing of Gifts. This he’d been taught at the academy, along with the fact the Prij had no gifted folk at all. It wasn’t in their blood, apparently. The Prij had heard rumours about some of the powers of the truly Gifted, and dismissed them as useless barbarian myths, which was all to the good in the present situation. But Kei couldn’t help resenting it a little that simple provable facts such as Gifts were considered fantasies, while the capricious, contradictory gods worshipped by every Prij were thought as real as their own parents, without the slightest evidence to prove it. He’d have to learn diplomacy if he was to survive in such an irrational culture.

They passed by the villages taken under Prijian control, but weren’t allowed to approach them. Instead they camped a mile or so beyond the village itself while some of their escort were sent to resupply and presumably retrieve any messages. Kei had no sense of how many soldiers were actually scattered across Darshianese territory. The force that had surrounded Ai-Albon seemed enormous, a sea of men and weapons, but their day-to-day contact was with the same twenty men who refused to discuss the army with them at all, beyond simple explanations about ranks and forms of address. There might be thousands and thousands of Prij invading. Equally there might only be a few hundred. Kei wasn’t a military tactician, so he had no idea how many were needed to subdue a continent. All he could tell was that, apart from their irrational religion and rigid social structure, the Prij were a war-like and aggressive race. Individually, they were much like the Darshianese. He couldn’t help but wonder what made the difference when they gathered together.

Although it felt like they had been walking for years, it was only four and a half weeks after they left Ai-Albon that they stumbled, cold, wet and exhausted, into a fort at the foothills of the Treyk Mountains. It was coming up for nightfall, so only the moon and the flames of the sentinels’ torches lit the fort. It looked terrifying, with jagged edges that looked like the teeth of an enormous beast. Kei had the sickening feeling he was entering hell and would never leave again. He sensed his comrades felt the same. It didn’t exactly encourage him.

Unmoved by their fear, their escort let them inside the high wooden walls. Kei could only catch an impression of the actual size of the structure, and of the numbers of soldiers within it. They were taken to see what he now knew to be a sergeant. Their names were recorded, and their condition assessed by the army medic, who was mainly interested in whether any of them were sick with communicable diseases.

Kei’s box of supplies was handed over, explained and then sealed in his presence. The medic told him, in perfectly wretched Darshianese, that if Kei needed the things, he had only to ask, but the medic would have to supervise any dangerous procedure, to which condition Kei agreed in words with no intention of obeying in spirit. Prijian medicine was as hidebound and riddled with myth as their religion, and he was damned if he’d let a Prijian doctor interfere with proper treatment of his people.

The sergeant told them they could wash themselves and their belongings tomorrow. For now they were taken to a large barracks where the other hostages were being held, and left there, the door being locked behind them.

The room was dim, lit by a few oil lamps, and in the corner, the faint red glow of a stove. All the waiting hostages were standing as they came in, clearly expecting them. A man stepped forward. “Welcome, Ai-Albon. I’m Gonji of Ai-Rutej.”

Kei let his hand be shaken warmly. “I’m Kei.” He quickly introduced the others from his village. “Gonji, we’re hungry and sore. Can we rest? We can give you what news we have.”

“Of course, there’s only the pallets, but it’s better than the ground. We have food waiting for you.”

The pallets, stuffed with straw, were the softest things Kei had sat on in a month, and his clansmen groaned in relief as weary bodies were eased down. The other hostages took their oilskins away to dry, helped them stow packs, told them where they could relieve themselves (in latrines in an adjoining building), and brought them bowls of hot, tasty stew in wooden bowls, apparently carved from the same trees cut down to make the fort.

As they ate, their hunger making them greedy, Gonji introduced the other Darshianese. The last person he brought forward was Jena, the Ai-Rutej mind-speaker, also their healer. Through her, the hostages in the fort had been kept fully apprised of the events in the north. She confirmed Ai-Kislik had fallen as they had expected, and that an enormous fortification was under construction just to the north of the village.

“However, I have better news,” she said with a smile, and behind her, Gonji also smiled. They’d clearly been looking forward to imparting this. “Every single person sent away to Darshek has arrived safely. Everyone from Ai-Albon is safe. They arrived three weeks ago. They’re well and being cared for.”

Kei’s grip on his empty bowl tightened as he clutched at his chest with his free hand. He was suddenly overwhelmed with such a barrage of happiness and relief he couldn’t think at all. It wasn’t all his own, but in his weariness, and with so many people suddenly so close after weeks on the march, he had nothing left to use to protect himself.

He struggled to stay upright, and might have managed to force the dizziness down if Urki had not, right at that moment, flung her arms around him. “Oh gods, Kei! Pito is safe!”

“No, Urki, don’t,” he protested but it was too late. Her physical touch was the last straw, and his vision faded, the waves of emotions dimming suddenly, and then...nothing.

~~~~~~~~

His head pounded, dark red flowers blooming behind his eyelids in time with his heartbeat. He felt sick, nauseated to his core. He curled up and wished the pain in his head would stop.

Something cool was placed on his face, and a very gentle touch on his face failed to bring a renewal of the emotional input.

“Kei
.”

The voice was in his head, rather than in his ears—very soft, calming. “
It’s all right, Kei. It’s Jena.”
The soothing hand stroked his face again, and it lessened the pain a little. “
I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you were a soul-toucher, or I’d have been more careful how I told you that news.”

He fumbled a hand up to touch hers. “S’all right,” he mumbled, and winced as the sound of his own voice rang unpleasantly in his ears.

“Speak this way, Kei, it won’t hurt you so much. We have some pijn.”

“No, keep it for something serious. We don’t have any way of replacing it.”

“Very wise. You must be Erte’s son. I was sorry to hear of her death.”

He risked opening an eye to squint at her, but she was just a dark blurry haze backlit by an oil lamp, so he closed it again. It wasn’t worth the pain it caused.

“You knew her?”

“I knew
of
her. Your mother was well-respected among healers, as was your father for his discoveries. A great loss.”

There was nothing he could say to such an obvious statement, so he didn’t respond. Her hand seemed to be leeching the pain away, although he suspected it was something she was actually doing with her mind.

“Were you not taught better control than this at the academy?”

“It’s only a minor gift, Jena.”

“Not so minor, that I can see.”
Her ‘voice’ held a note of dry reproach. “
It’s also one strengthened and affected by many things, such as the profession of the person with the gift, and their emotional state and those around you. You’ve been careless, Kei. You, a healer, are at most risk if you do not protect yourself, and that’s even without your parents’ deaths and this most recent event. You must have been taught some protective exercises—all soul-touchers and mind-speakers are.”

Kei
had
been taught them, but as he had once had a good degree of natural control, his gift had rarely troubled him and so he was rather lax about carrying them out. He hadn’t been able to stay for the full course of training in Darshek as news had come of first his father’s death, and then a month later, the suicide of his mother, which meant he’d to come home and take up the role of healer before he was quite ready or fully trained in his gift.

He’d known his emotions had been badly battered after his return from Darshek after his mother died, but he had accepted this as normal. He hadn’t realised how he had let things slip, how he had repeatedly exposed his gift to greater and greater insults.

The parting from Myka and the others had been the last blow. Jena was right—he’d been careless. “
I’m sorry. Can anything be done? Everything hurts now. I’ve been hurting for weeks.”

“Yes, I can see,”
she said kindly. “
Of course I can help you. For tonight, sleep where you are, away from the others. I’ll warn them to leave you alone. Rest, get some proper food, regain your physical well-being. Then we’ll begin your exercises again. We need you well. We two are the only healers our people will have while in the hands of the Prij, and I dread to think what will happen if a Prij physician has to treat any of them for something serious. Their idea of a good dressing for a burn is roasted snake fat.”

Kei shuddered in disgust. “
Yes, I know. Why doesn’t your voice hurt my head?”

“Because I am making it so, and buffering your gift. I can only do it when I‘m touching you.”

“Are you a mind-mover too?”

He felt her surprise. “
No, of course not. Are you saying that you are?”

“Um, yes.”

“Don’t you know how rare it is for someone to have two gifts? Do the people at the academy know?”

“Um. No. Ma knew but she never said it was special, so I didn’t think anything of it. The instructors were only interested in training soul-touchers and mind-speakers. If you don’t have a true Gift, they don’t really care what else you can do. I don’t talk about it much because no one understands it, and I can’t do anything spectacular with it. I just...you know, move small things in the body. Broken bones, bleeding, that kind of thing, I can deal with a little easier than most. It helps, but it’s not all there is to my healer craft.”

She took the cloth from his forehead, and he heard her wetting it. She put it back on his face. It helped the throbbing in his head a good deal. “
Well, you’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”
she said fondly. “
Rest now. Everyone’s safe for now. We don’t know what the future holds, but we can only do what we can do.”

Kei agreed wordlessly. He was so damn tired. There was one more thing before he could rest, though. “
Have you sent word of our arrival to Darshek?”

“I will as soon as you’re asleep.”

“Could you...just this once, send a message to my sister, Myka? Say I am safe and well and missing them all.”
He hesitated to ask since all the hostages would want personal messages sent in this manner. The network of mind-speakers was thinly stretched. To cover such great distances, each of them had to work very hard to send and receive the thoughts of the others.

Jena didn’t seem at all disturbed at his request. “
I’ll do that. I’ll collect all the messages from your people, and send them at the same time. We all know how hard this is for everyone. We mind-speakers have to do our best for you all.”

Kei squeezed her hand in gratitude. It eased his mind to know Myka would have direct word of his welfare. And Reji and Banji too. Even though they would not hear from Ai-Albon itself, it would help them a little, he hoped.

Jena covered him with a blanket and changed the cloth again. “
I’m going to send you to sleep for your own good. Please, stop fighting your need to rest.

He opened his mouth to argue, and shut it. She was right. He let her touch send tendrils of relaxation through his painful head, and as the pain disappeared, he felt able to let go, slipping gently into oblivion.

~~~~~~~~

When he woke to dim sunlight coming in through the high windows, his thoughts were much clearer and he felt calmer. He still had a bit of a headache, but nothing he couldn’t handle easily, and the need to piss outweighed the desire to lie still for a little longer. Throwing the blanket back, and turning over, he found he was on a pallet in a far corner of the room, away from where his fellows apparently had spent the night. There were only two other people in the barracks—one of them was Urki. She saw him standing up and she came over to him with a worried, apologetic look on her face. “Kei? Are you better now?”

She kept her distance. Jena must have impressed them with the need to give him space. “I’m much better. I’m sorry to worry you all.”

She bit her lip. “No, I’m sorry. I was just so happy my sister was safe, I didn’t think.”