Casting small spells before him, 'Tj'Chin'Ker reached into the bundled cloth he held to take out another charm; runes carved onto corners of horded bread slices taken from passing trolleys outside his cell, scattering them across the shiny tiled floor he passed unnoticed. He did his best to throw them to the corners where the walls met the floors, lest they be trodden upon in the center of the hallways. Slipping through the long, chilly halls of the castle in which they held him, he saw sickness and death on every floor. But, ’Ker would admit, it was all cleaner than any collection of the human ill he had ever before seen. Even his little bread charms were swept up every day by cleaning thralls.
It was inconvenient. A little bread charm like the ones he now used could be counted on to last a few days, before small pests usually made off with them. His nighty jaunts about the Great Tower, as he had started to think of it, were very informative. He was learning so much about his powerful, but lazy captors.
The room directly across from his held a tall lanky man who would be considered very old by human standards. A wrinkled grandfather, hooked up to as many devices as ‘Ker himself had been. The old man breathed through a series of tubes running from his nose and mouth. As badly burned as I must have looked when they found me.
And indeed the old human had lost much of his healthy skin in a fire. Both arms and legs were hidden beneath so many bandages they could only be called limbs due to where they extended from the poor fellow’s body. The lay of the sheets told ‘Ker that the lion's share of the man’s torso was also wrapped in white cotton; and most likely stained here and there with blood and charred flesh just like those wraps on his limbs.
Flowers wilted in a vase on the bedside table, along with a cunningly wrought picture of what ‘Ker guessed was his family. Amazing, the details the artist could capture in so small a painting, an old man, and an equally old human woman, along with two younger humans, stood in a field of yellow flowers so bright, and so accurately depicted that 'Ker could almost smell the blossoms, and feel the warm breeze that bent them to the left of the image. The man in the portrait’s face was the wrong shape to be the injured soul before him. ‘Ker guessed it was either his children and grandchildren in the depiction, or the injuries done to him had reshaped his nose and jaw. He shuddered at the thought.
As he walked nude about the room ‘Ker found a closet with a box of the man’s clothing inside. Fresh and clean…obviously not the clothes he wore when this happened to him… whoever left this was an optimist. This man won’t be donning anything but a shroud to leave this keep. As adept as he was at small healings, 'Ker knew that the damages this man had suffered were far enough beyond his skills that this man's life depended more upon his own will to live than any healing magics that could be done to him.
Closing the box carefully, lest he be discovered by his meddling in others’ belongings; ‘Ker made is way slowly out of the room to stand once again in the hallway. He turned to the right to begin his search of the building. Floor after floor he saw more sick and injured people both abed, and a very few ambulatory. He had chose the night for his explorations due to the simplest of philosophies that would have most people, prisoners and patients both, asleep at night.
This Great Tower, it had too many floors to be a Keep, even a Great Keep as had been raised in many lands by humanity; this was more than ten levels above ground, and held more injured humans than he had ever seen in one place before that hadn't been a battlefield. And more strange machines and devices than he had ever dreamed humanity might command. Some hummed and clicked away as if always doing whatever it was they did. More sat dark and foreboding, red and yellow lights rhythmically pulsing, in darkened rooms as if warning you away from a treasury like a set of ill tempered guard dogs.
One or two machines he encountered had bled dangerous energies into the very air around him, making ‘Ker’s soft new skin prickle with irritation. They sat behind doors that boldly proclaimed, and he was not sure of his translations skills here, "The Son of beams of light study," or possibly "The Son of spokes of a wheel study." He looked at the sign several times, squinting at it to find the perverse joke it might be spelling out. The Njordi were like that. He grimaced, and moved on, scattering more bread to the corners about him as he walked, and stretched his limbs.
But even in these machine laden cells, always there were more sick and injured. Being led, or wheeled about by the many blue, white, and green clothed men and women of the Tower. Occasionally he would see a woman or man in a pleasant, dark red set of tunic and trews... a question for another day.
A war, then…must have been a big battle at the very least… The thought came to him that he must have arrived in the middle of a great battle. No other reason would there ever be for this number of sick and injured humans to be collected by the learned, and compassionate. The People had such battles all the time, but they also healed completely if not killed outright, or if they had been cursed to a sickness by an enemy.
He stopped on one floor of this Tower of the Ill, as he started to think of the huge place he had been kept these last several... many?... months. Stopping dead in his tracks, all motion arrested at the sight of the young. From the door at which he stood, to the farthest walls, small bodies in troubled sleep.
Bed after bed filled with ill and injured children. Humans, he knew, often cut down anyone in the heat of battle, even the young, but this was beyond anything he had ever feared to see. This entire floor of the Keep had been packed from one side to the next with children unable to escape the swords and the plagues they brought. Monstrous! Why do they fear us so, when we at least would never attack a child, even in the heat of a pitched battle? Theft is one thing, but to cut a child like so much rye? More questions assailed him s he slid from one child’s be to the next. And why do they languish? Most are just ill. Are these children prisoners of whatever war is being fought? Is there an invasion?
Cut flowers adorned almost every flat topped space, and colorful pictures on paper rectangles adorned the heads of most beds, childish wardings for many an ill. They aren’t working. I’ve never been great at human magic, and I don’t know this language, but these wards don’t seem to work against whatever felled these children.
He saw one poor child asleep on his bed, the covers where his legs should have been thrown up to reveal two bandaged stumps. Bruising strewn across his small face, autumnal leaves peaking through the hoarfrost. Light skinned with almond shaped eyes, overlarge lashes that, if the boy lived to be an adult, would catch many looks from numerous women.
Dark, slightly curled brown and red hair, mostly plastered to a fevered forehead, and a small delicate mouth graced by a pair of well proportioned bow-like lips. An array of sun kisses sprayed across the boy’s nose onto each cheek where bruises didn't crowd them out.
He looks like ‘Am’Ad’Aine! How could a human child, ANY human child, so remind me of my youngest nephew? He thought with rising horror.
A tear came to his eye as he looked down at the injured boy. Sweat on his sweet face, and a lingering smell of decay told him the injuries had been too severe for the child to cleanly heal. If the human mages didn’t work fast and hard, the boy would soon get the Green Rot. Withering in this bed, an apple dead on the tree long before the harvest came.
Right then! A look of extreme anger charged across his features. Transforming the usually blandly smiling expression to one many an enemy held as their last vision in two different worlds.
This is not ‘Am’Ad’Aine, but it is as close as I might ever see again, and he WILL not suffer this straw death! Outrage flooded his mind as it had his face.
Looking around he found all that he required within the small ward. A pair of locking tweezers better than any human made tools he had seen before his people had left this world, were the H'Aghram still here? That was good news, 'Ker had always enjoyed there company; almost more than any other race, the H'Aghram were makers and builders, like he thought himself to be. There a glass vial from a surgical tray, most importantly, to 'Ker, at least, a bouquet of Blue Smiles at the table near another child’s bed, and a small bowl and a cup of clean water from an uneaten platter of food by a door that led to another room.
Stripping the petals from the flowers he dumped them into the bowl, and using a dribble of water he then pounded, ground, and pulped them into a lightly yellow paste; ‘Ker then grabbed the rest of the bouquet. The purple tinted seed pods of the honey scented plant went into the bowl to be macerated along with some of the child’s blood and a prayer ‘Ker chanted in a whisper. Bluing his fingers and the back of a metal spoon in the process, he worked as quickly as the necessities of the healing art would allow him.
His sweating brow knotting and bunching under the strain he was exerting on himself and the mashed pigment as he mumbled and sung strange words over the now azure mixture. Reaching over, he took up the fine glass tube, striking the corner of the desk at which he labored. Breaking the glass of the vial, ‘Ker then sifted the fragments until he found the best shard among the rubble, and wedged it into the locking tweezers, clamping the arms hard against the glass. A few strands plucked from the child's sweaty head allowed 'Ker to securely tie the glass and metal together, and act as a wick for the now faintly glowing blue ink.
Then he turned to the child in the bed, the boy’s loud, wheezy breathing boding ill for his future if nothing were done for him soon. ‘Ker stripped the piebald haired boy’s bandages as gently as he could, still eliciting a few whimpers of pain from the poor thing.
He whispered a prayer to the Goddess of the Great River, and pursed his lips. And then the real pain began. Tapping the blunt end of the glass blade as gently as he allowed himself to do, ‘Ker started the tedious process of saving the boy’s life. The point of the fragment as sharp as any knife, sharper than any a human would make, and never getting dull in the procedure, dipped over and over into the sick child’s flesh as ‘Ker set to; a blue tipped crow’s beak darting above the remains of the battle slain.
Hours of solid work passed without ‘Ker noticing in more than a passing way. The bread charms he had spread by the door to the hall would keep anyone too curious from coming in while he worked, and the last of his charms, scattered about the bed at which he now worked would keep eyes from seeing him, nor anything they didn't already expect to see.
The boy’s stumps were finally dressed and circumscribed in new looping and spiraling tattoos. From within a finger’s width of the wounds on each leg, to a full hand’s distance from the stretched and stitched skin, this little child now had one of this world’s oldest forms of healing magic. The faint blue spirals and whorls marking a tight and intricate pattern around each truncated leg. The pleasant smell of the ink, sunshine and honey laced, already replacing the reek of the Green Rot that had been working to kill the boy. Dark and viscous fluids had begun to force themselves from the child’s previously stitched wounds even before the designs had been completed.
These bits of bedding are fouled beyond any washer woman’s ability, I’d bet my right hand on that. ‘Ker thought, looking down at the blood and puss soaked sheets.
His nose wrinkled at the warring smells emanating from the damaged stumps and the ruined sheets, as he surveyed his work’s affects on what was someone else’s nephew, and he sighed. 'Ker was more tired than he remembered being for at least two months. But, this labor would be worth the fatigue if the child recovered.
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If a mage sees this, they will know a wolf is among the dogs. But his parents will have a living son at next day’s end. And if they are lucky, for many years more. Children adapt well, better than their elders. These parents may forgive me my trespass this time. Mother of the Great River, and Father of Stars' Light, Bless and keep this child.
Hazel eyes shot through with blood red veins cracked open, and a strained voice whispered something, and a smile of obvious relief settled onto his young face as the child slipped away into more peaceful dreams.
"Don’t know what you said, boy, but you’re welcome all the same. Go live as good and long a life as you may… Find a trade that will let you sit, find a wife who likes a short man, oh, and get a dog. Dogs are great." 'Ker's voice bobbled and cracked as he spoke. It had been a long night.
Stretching his now sore muscles and joints, he stood and glanced about the "Pediatrics Ward." He knew that with little work he could cure most of the other young prisoners he saw in the beds as well; but even a little work done a hundred times was more than he could do with the remains of tonight. And this was not his mission. He needed to move fast now, to learn enough about his captors to flee not only the Tower, but the city he saw beyond his window.
He needed time he knew he did not have. But, there would be other nights, he could come back here. Do more.
Leaving the ward he found a door that to his trained eyes positively glowed with dark power. He had to look, knowing full well that dallying could see him found out, but as tired as he now was, he knew curiosity now could save him tomorrow.
The room was an alchemists’ lab of some sort. Instruments beyond his ken on tables lined most of the room. And a set of giant white cases hummed with a low thrumming sound on the far wall. As he stepped nearer, cold radiated from the enameled white trunks before him. The cold went into his soul, as well as a lighter, more physical cold that crept toward his fingers like the promise of ice on a windy autumn day.
With a steeling of his resolve, ‘Ker threw open the nearest of the large cold chests before him. With a shock he recognized the contents; flesh taken from some of the people in the beds in this building. Each held in bags as magically clear as any window glass, and marked with letters. Some foul magics, here… some necromancy.
Carefully he checked each chest, until he found a large pair of bags each holding a small child’s legs from foot to knee. ‘Ker knew he should move on before being caught, but he just stared for a time as he thought of his earlier efforts. An idea finally wheedled and greased its way into his head.
After another hour ‘Ker slipped silently from the darkened room with a small bundle wrapped gingerly in a pair of towels appropriated from the room’s wash sink. He tried to keep the last few blood stains on his hands from leaving marks on everything he touched; in such a clean manse, blood spots on walls and doors would lead quickly to him if he was not careful. Washing well after his efforts in the sink removed most of the oozing red and the smaller gobbets, but still left his fingers blue from his earlier work. Remembering the markings of the area he was in, ‘Ker made his way back up to the room of the old burned man to hide his bundle under the box of clothes in the closet.
Another floor down and he found himself in what must have been the guards’ rooms. Row after row of small metal pantries, benches bolted to the floor, and what looked like an old Roman Caldaria. Clothing, like the various Shamans’ who wandered the manse, hung in one open pantry and while the fit would never be the best, it was better to his mind to not walk about in the nude. He didn’t really mind “nude,” and one of the People could ever truly be “naked” like some humans, but his charms for making the humans holding him captive not notice ‘Ker’s differences worked better the less they had to actively not notice, like a man with a dangling nathair walking amongst them.
He glanced down at the "offending appendage" and winced at the thought of redoing all of his restorative and protective tattoos. That was tomorrow's pain for tomorrow's concerns.
As he left the barracks room, and turned a corner he found himself in the entrance to a large room with many blue, green, and pink clad people sitting at tables. Some scattered few wore more cumbersome and obviously ceremonial clothing, white robes over their tunics and trousers. Some of the men had on fine white linen shirts, and strange, narrow, colorful ribbon-like bibs hanging down their chests from knots at their collars. A ceremonial bit of frippery. He thought. He had seen the affectation before in those who visited his own cell numerous times.
Must be an officers’ mess hall…With all those bibs it’s obvious the officer’s don’t eat any neater than the field troops. ‘Ker’s mind was always at work, his eyes taking in every detail they could. He noticed that the bibs they wore were incredibly varied in colors and patterns. Some way to denote rank? Must be, those older men at the far table all have the same color pattern on their narrow little bibs, and they chat like old friends…must be officers…or head scholars…related royalty? something like that, BOY am I hungry…I wonder if they have lemon cakes…
A sudden commotion of many feet behind him caught ‘Ker off guard as a group of young men and women all dressed like him, save his lack of shoes and assorted accessories, rounded the corner.
He was swept up in the moving mass of chattering bodies as they entered the mess hall, and lined up to be served food. He saw that the room was wide and spacious, well lit, clean, and as pleasant a place to eat as the best inns he had seen around the southern costs of the Cymru lands long ago. This place even verged upon the pleasant nature of some of the taverna the Greeks had, though, he doubted the food would be anywhere nearing as good, judging from the prevalent smells. The smells here weren't objectionable, but it was hard to beat the garlicy smells of roasting, herb smothered lamb, and the wonders the Greeks could do with vegetable stuffed pastries.
He noted the almost rivaling the calming décor of the eateries and travelers inns of far Cathay in decoration. Potted plants even hung from the ceiling in random locations throughout the room. Fresh and verdant, they gave the spacious hall a friendly look. Inviting. Makes one feel at ease.
He had never seen humans use LIVING, growing greenery indoors in all his years in the Sunlit Lands. So many cultures had made use of cultivated plants outside any number of buildings, but flowers in the home had always been dried for their scents. Rushes on the floors, aromatic petals to walk, sit, or sleep upon, bathe in; but nothing was ever actually grown indoors that he had ever seen. His brother told him of a time before ‘Ker’s birth when Babylonians would grow festive and yet cooling gardens on the balconies of even the poorest homes of even their lowest servants.
He wondered if they came up with such things themselves over the years or if other races had influenced them. Mayhap some of the very few stragglers of the People that had stayed behind rather than flee the encroaching war had made plain to humans that a home with flora was both more inviting and a healthier place to live. It was just easier to breathe when you were surrounded by living things.
The young woman in front of him had a lush fall of dark brown, almost black, hair that made him reach up to his own bristled scalp. While not truly self-conscious, he did miss his hair. He knew it would be back soon enough, but being nearly hairless was just odd. Currently he sported a mere finger's width of hair. At most. He himself had never gone about with hair shorter than a hand’s length, though he rarely wore a beard, it was vanity pure and simple, and he always knew he was too pretty to hide behind face fur. But this new baldness…how did bald men stand it? And in winter, no less…
Going through the mess line he had no clue as to most of the foods on the lit tables. The large metal tables. The large metal tables emitting light. Some of them warm, some cold. The levels of magics involved in this keep were astounding. Even trivial things were given a great deal of power. If the room has lighting, why too do the trays of food have their own lighting?
The shuffling progress of the humans around him made ‘Ker conscious of the chattering people themselves. Not a real soldier among them…I would never use such soft men as guards. Acolytes, mayhap? Some of them have the nervous look of acolytes before a test…or doctors before seeing the ill…
‘Tj’Chin’Ker watched the people all about the room. “Doctors”…That was the word she used. That and “Pompouswindbags”…or “Thickheadedarsesfurrrhats”… sometimes just "thetwatincharge"...
These could not be doctors. The sad and often confused old men that he remembered as human doctors were always old. Scholars of the lowest sort, mostly who did more harm than good to the actual patients. Confused about the simplest of things about the body, they would lop off limbs rather than learn how the body worked, and bleed a sick person as if to hurry them along to Awnkhou’s Black Doors. The best of the human physicians he had ever met had been in the old Helena islands, and Samos, before the militant rise of the Romoii, when he had been a very young child. They, at least, paid attention to what nature tried to do to injuries and illnesses. Making the injured bodies comfortable and letting them heal themselves, or die, as they observed and took notes. They did nice drawings, did some of those Athenians.
But later the study of medicine had devolved into weird old men with many eccentricities trying to mix superstition, science and religion. …And fetishes…some old quacks had a thing for feet, so suddenly the cure they always gave involved something with the patient's feet… headache?…put a poultice on your feet…broken arm?...put lavender in your shoes…asthma?...mix bird poop and smear it on your feet… the honking of geese resounded with more wisdom!
The worst had attended Rollo the Strider, and his campaign from the Norman lands into those held by the Angles. Three fussy little old men with more nervous ticks than a dog on fire he had never met. ‘Dne and he had been sent to meet the battle lord Rollo, himself, and had offended him horribly by laughing at the silly little scholars that hung on to his retinue like fleas. The idiots bled the sick as a way to cure such maladies as dysentery, food poisoning, and in the case of one poor soldier, the Campaign-Wife's Plague.
When Rollo had irritated his older brother once too many times at dinner, ‘Dne had suggested that Rollo himself was looking pale, and might do well under these doctors care. They immediately set to plastering his feet and chest with a poultice of ground charcoal, boiled nettle, and bird shit.
They would call it medicine, when the sick or injured lived in spite of their bizarre ministrations and God’s Will when the poor fellow died.
But the overriding commonality was “old men.” Humans had always given the idea of medical studies to “old men,” and to their priests, also old men. People believed to be better at the saving of endangered lives. All around him now were, with few exceptions, young people. Healthy, young, vigorous, well fed people. They were all soft, not a callous on any well manicured hand in sight. Too many privileged children here, mayhap a school for the wealthy young was attached to this Tower? But why so many injured and sick at a school? Did they just intend the rich to learn medicine until they were needed to work their families’ holdings? The idea of only human royalty being in charge of medicine made 'Tj'Chin'Ker shudder.
As he progressed through the line he picked random food items. Most smelled very good to ‘Ker, though only a few bits he recognized. Real food had not touched his lips in many months as he lay in the bad. At least one of the many skin piercing cords they put into him must have been magically feeding him. ...and that's creepy, creepy, creepy…OH that’s gross…
At the front of the line a shriveled human woman behind a desk talked briefly with each person in turn, and then took from them colored bits of paper, shiny coins, or the small flat rectangular charm each person wore pinned to their tunic. A few people passed their left wrists over a red light that emitted a tiny chime and blinked, ‘Ker had no idea of what that might mean other than that it allowed them to get the food they wanted.
The small cards were easier, though; he guessed they must be like letters of credit. The Templars used them, and issued them to those who could afford Templar usury. These were bleached white and had been fashioned maybe of the cunningly wrought horn, or wood that most things around him had been made. Once handed to the woman, each time the charm was then passed over a magic box by the harridan’s side that made little whirring and chirping noises, and was then handed back, to be repinned to the student’s tunic. He had no papers, notes of treaty or otherwise, no coinage, and no such small magic tablet to use.
Oh, dear…