Kei's Gift Read online

  Kei's Gift (Darshian Tales #1)

  Title Page

  Chapter : Darshian 1

  Chapter : Darshian 2

  Chapter : Darshian 3

  Chapter : Darshian 4

  Chapter : Darshian 5

  Chapter : Darshian 6

  Chapter : Darshian 7

  Chapter : Darshian 8

  Chapter : Darshian 9

  Chapter : Darshian 10

  Chapter : Utuk 1

  Chapter : Utuk 2

  Chapter : Utuk 3

  Chapter : Utuk 4

  Chapter : Utuk 5

  Chapter : Utuk 6

  Chapter : Utuk 7

  Chapter : Utuk 8

  Chapter : Utuk 9

  Chapter : Utuk 10

  Chapter : Return to Darshian 1

  Chapter : Return to Darshian 2

  Chapter : Return to Darshian 3

  Chapter : Return to Darshian 4

  Chapter : Return to Darshian 5

  Chapter : Return to Darshian 6

  Chapter : Return to Darshian 7

  Chapter : Return to Darshian 8

  Chapter : Return to Darshian 9

  Chapter : Return to Darshian 10

  Chapter : Return to Darshian 11

  Chapter : Darshek 1

  Chapter : Darshek 2

  Chapter : Darshek 3

  Chapter : Darshek 4

  Chapter : Darshek 5

  Chapter : Darshek 6

  Chapter : Darshek 7

  Chapter : Darshek 8

  Chapter : Darshek 9

  Chapter : Darshek 10

  Chapter : Darshek 11

  Chapter : Darshek 12

  Chapter : Darshek 13

  Chapter : Darshek 14

  Chapter : Darshek 15

  Chapter : Epilogue

  Darshian Tales:I

  Kei’s Gift

  Ann Somerville

  This story is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Kei’s Gift Copyright © 2009 by Ann Somerville

  Cover art copyright © 2104 by P L Nunn. Cover Typography by Kiri Moth.

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  For more information please visit my website at http://annsomerville.net

  Smashwords Edition 1, January 2011

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Published by Ann Somerville

  Chapter : Darshian 1

  Boiling the rind of tido palm fruit produces a gum which is inert and non-poisonous. If a way of strengthening it could be found which would let it be drawn into threads, I believe it would make....

  “Kei! Kei! Hurry, we need you!”

  Kei hurriedly dropped the book he’d been reading, and oophed as he caught the wildly running child in his arms, forcing him to stand still. Risa’s face was red from exertion, and stained with tears, which wasn’t at all like the stoic seven-year-old. Terror and anxiety rolled off him in powerful waves.

  “Calm down, Risa. What’s happened?”

  “Accident. Kiln exploded.” The words were gasped out in between harsh sobbing breaths, as fresh tears fell down Risa’s dirty cheeks.

  Blessed gods. He’d heard a loud bang, but had been too absorbed in his papers to think too much of it. “Risa, how many hurt? How bad?”

  “My father...Misek, and uncle... I think...Pa’s dead, Kei.”

  He had to hurry, but there was always time to calm the distressed. First thing in a crisis—keep people calm.

  “Risa.” The little boy wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and looked at him. “I need you to help me. Will you do that?”

  Kei deliberately kept his voice low and gentle, putting his hand out to hold the boy’s. Risa nodded, and sniffled.

  “Good. I need you to find Myka. She’s selecting herbs in the garden. I want you to tell her to come to your family’s workshop, and not to stop to collect anything. Tell her I have the kit.” Risa nodded again. “Repeat, please.”

  “Fetch Myka, tell her to come to our place, not to stop, you have the kit.” Another tear trickled down.

  “Good lad. Are you hurt?” The child’s clothing was torn, possibly from the explosion. He ran his hands quickly over the child’s body but could see no blood, and the boy was moving easily.

  “No. Kei...Pa—”

  “No, not yet, Risa. Myka, then find me. Go.”

  Risa ran out of the hut. Kei stood and quickly checked his kit, the cleansing liquid, the soap, sutures, and pain drugs, making sure nothing was missing from the neat pack always kept on the workbench. It only took a minute, then he grabbed it and the box of bandages and headed out the door, knowing he had to expect the very worst.

  As he ran towards the site of the explosion at the outskirts of the village, his clansmen rushed in the same direction, several people shouting at him to hurry, though he was already moving as fast as he could. He ignored them in favour of mentally preparing himself for what would need to be done and who he wanted to help him. Myka, certainly. Reji—no, wait, Reji had gone north again yesterday. Damn. He would probably need to carry out field surgery, and was already assessing the people running to the accident, noting who was there, and whom he could ask to clear the area.

  He grabbed the arm of a tall brawny man as he dashed past. “Wait! Peit, I need you!”

  His grim-faced cousin stopped. “What do you need?”

  “Keep everyone back when we get there. Stick with me, and help me control things.”

  “Of course.” They were already almost at the workshop and Peit bellowed. “Everybody back! Let the healer through!”

  Not content with using his powerful voice, he pushed people out of his way. Kei followed in his wake, hoping no one would be offended at the rough handling, but he needed to get to his patients if there was to be any hope of saving them.

  There were more people inside, but these, Kei didn’t ask Peit to move. Three men lay on the floor inside the blasted workshop, attended by Risa’s mother, sister and his cousin. The damaged kiln stood in the corner, metal and bricks strewn all over the floor. Rin’s workmen were dowsing the last of the fires that had sprung up. It was serious enough, though the explosion didn’t seem to be as extensive as the one Kei had seen as a child. The carnage looked just as bad.

  “Meis? What happened?” he asked Risa’s mother as he knelt by her husband. He placed his fingers on the artery in Rin’s neck, and was relieved to prove Risa had been mistaken, as least for now. He didn’t wait for an answer as he scanned Rin’s body, noting someone had already tied bandages over wounds in the chest and shoulder. Bad enough—he would need Myka’s help, but for now, he would have to ask Meis to help her husband.

  “Here, put this dressing over the one on his chest—no, don’t take it off!” He guided Meis’s hand to hold the thick bandage in position.

  “Rin, Ban and Misek were working near the kiln when it blew—there must have been some kisu in that ore,” Meis said quietly. Kei nodded—it was always a risk with pujum, th
at it would be contaminated with the rare but explosive impurity. “Kei...will he survive?”

  “I don’t know, but I need to find out who is actually hurt worst.”

  “Kei!”

  He lifted his head to see his sister run though the door and over to his side, kneeling down. “Oh, no, Rin....”

  He felt as she did, seeing their father’s best friend in this condition, but there was no time for emotion. “Myka, you and Meis try to control the bleeding. I’m going to assess Ban and Misek.”

  His sister nodded, drawing bandages out of the box and handing them to Meis to add to the ones already applied. Kei hadn’t dared turn Rin over, only lifting him a little to see if he was bleeding at the back, but it looked as if all three men had been facing the explosion, their front sides catching the impact of the shrapnel from the kiln. He moved to kneel next to Misek and suppressed his shock at the sight of his friend. Misek’s face was a bloody mess, and there was a gaping hole in his side against which his younger sister, Pijli, pressed an inadequate dressing. He quickly assessed Misek was still alive—just, though he was in worse condition than his father. Incredibly, he was still conscious. “Myka! I’ll need to operate on Misek. Set up while I check Ban.”

  Silently his sister obeyed, and Kei thanked the memory of his mother that he had someone so reliable to work with him.

  The worst was the last. Ban was dead—probably killed outright. His son, Banji, knelt at his side, and lifted horrified eyes to Kei as he crouched beside him. “How?” he whispered. “It was so fast.”

  “I know,” Kei said gently, looking past him to Peit and signalling his cousin to come over. “Banji, I need you to go with Peit. I have to help Rin and Misek. We will pay honour to Ban when I’ve finished.”

  “Kei...Pa is dead.”

  “I know, Banji-ki.” Kei wanted to keep his clothes clean for the surgery, so he didn’t hug his friend as he would have liked to, but he put all the sympathy he could into his voice. “Please help me, Banji. I need room and to be able to concentrate so I can save the other two. Can you do that?”

  Banji’s eyes were full of tears, but he nodded slowly and let Peit help him to his feet. Kei only waited a moment to confirm Peit was leading Banji out of the workshop, before he turned back to Misek. He’d passed out in the brief interval Kei’s attention was elsewhere. Probably just as well. Myka had laid Kei’s instruments out on a clean sheet and found him a bucket of clean water. He washed his hands with soap and then cut Misek’s clothes away from his body. It immediately became obvious how serious his injuries were. Pijli screamed quietly at the sight of torn gaping flesh and the edge of bone where the ribs were broken.

  Myka put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Pij, go to Rin. Help your mother.”

  She almost shoved Pijli towards where her father lay. Kinder than asking her to watch him delve into her brother’s guts. Kei’s own stomach rebelled a little at the thought, but he knew how to deal with that now. He drew on his training—not only that of his masters in Darshek, but also of his mother, so patient and clever—to centre himself and calm his nerves, focusing his energies.

  He forced himself to ignore everything around him except his hands on Misek’s body, and the body itself. He closed his eyes. Blood was his great enemy in this situation, obscuring the real damage, blinding his path, and stealing the patient’s life away. His mind’s energies narrowed down to the hole in Misek’s side, and as they descended, he stopped the blood pouring out of the larger veins and arteries, clamping them down so Misek would stabilise enough to allow Kei search for the shards of brick and metal buried in his gut.

  And there they were—several large, sharp pieces of iron which had both cut and smashed their way into Misek’s insides, doing great harm in their passing. Each would need to be removed with care, and the bleeding behind them staunched. Kei opened his eyes, and found Myka waiting with needle and gum stitches.

  “I think he has a chance,” he said in response to her unasked question. She nodded. She wouldn’t expect him to lie or make things out to be better than they were. “Is Rin stable?”

  “We’ve slowed the bleeding. He has a large piece of metal in his shoulder. I could try and move it, but I think it would be better if you did it.”

  “Yes. Just keep him still, the bleeding under control, and I’ll see to him. Meis?”

  “Calm,” she said briefly, glancing in the direction of their other patient. Both Kei and Myka had kept their voices deliberately low. “She knows what needs to be done.”

  “And so do I. I’m going to remove the shrapnel, stop the bleeding and stitch.”

  “His face?”

  “Will have to wait—it won’t kill him. Oh—wait.”

  So stupid of him not to have checked. Kei closed his eyes and looked inside Misek’s skull—as he suspected, the man had been knocked out briefly by the blast, and awoken again, but Kei found deeper damage, bleeding in the brain. He carefully suppressed it. Foolish. He’d allowed himself to be distracted by the blood, just as his teacher and his mother had both warned him against, and Misek had nearly paid the price for that inattention. The head wound would have killed Misek almost as fast as that in his gut. Kei took precious seconds to check Rin was not similarly and silently dying, but the big man wasn’t so precarious. Kei could now give all his concern to the patient in front of him.

  It was a slow business, because he didn’t want to cause more damage in the removal of the metal, but there was so much he needed to do. No point in stopping Misek bleeding to death if he died of a gut infection days later. Myka sponged away blood, and washed away the detritus from bowel and stomach with a distillation of nitre weed which would inhibit infection, as Kei eased fragments of metal from Misek’s intestines and liver, stitching, clamping and pushing organs and broken ribs back into position, all the while keeping an ear on his breathing, and an eye on his colour.

  Kei wasn’t sure how long it took, except that it took a long time, and he swayed a little on his knees as he laid the last dressing over the neat stitches and the drain in Misek’s side.

  “Do you need a rest?” Myka asked quietly, a supporting hand on his shoulder. Mind-moving always took so much out of him.

  “Later. Can you clean up his face? I need to see to Rin. We can make Misek handsome later.”

  “I think one eye is blinded.”

  “Yes, I know, but better one eye and alive, than dead with two. You know how to deal with that. Let me know if you can’t.”

  She grimaced at his words, but set to as he moved back to Rin’s side. Meis held her husband’s hand, and stared at him as Kei knelt. Pijli had gone—Kei had been too occupied to know where or why.

  “Misek?” Meis whispered.

  “I think he’ll live. Can you help me with Rin?”

  “Yes.” Still little more than a whisper, but Meis was a calm, sensible woman and he could rely on her not to have hysterics at the sight of her husband’s injuries. Actually, when he removed the bandages, it wasn’t as bad as he feared, the shoulder injury being the most serious, although several other bad cuts would need stitching, and he’d lost a regrettable amount of blood. Kei washed his hands and set to work once more.

  It took nearly as long to attend to Rin as it had to help his son. His wounds were somewhat less dangerous, but there were more of them, and, just as Kei was finishing, Rin roused, and started to struggle. Meis and Kei had to hold him down while Myka made him swallow a sedative potion. It took some time before Rin calmed—Kei couldn’t work on a struggling patient, so he had to wait until it took effect before continuing. A patient in pain fights himself and the healer, his father had written, and it was true.

  Finally Rin settled, his body relaxed, and the bleeding his struggling had reawoken eased again. Kei could finish his methodical repairs of the long lacerations.

  At last he was done, and he washed his bloodied hands off as he assessed the damage to Misek’s face. The young man would have some ugly scars as a result of toda
y’s mishap. Still, he was luckier than Ban, and it was possible to adjust to the loss of an eye. Satisfied both men were stable, he stood and stretched, feeling the ache in his back and his knees.

  His body told him it had to be nearly three hours he’d been crouched over his patients. Now he paid attention to his surroundings, he realised Peit had barricaded the door. Inside the ruined workshop, it was curiously quiet. Now he had time to regret the death of Ban, a good, honest man who had been so very kind to him, and to spare a thought for his friend, Banji, and how the loss of his beloved father would be affecting him.

  “Peit? We need to get Rin and Misek out of here, back to their house.”

  “Leave that to me,” Peit commanded, throwing open the door he’d barred. “Oy, you and you. We need two litters. And someone send for Kento, he can start on the workshop.”

  Past Peit’s broad shoulders, Kei saw twenty or more heads, probably only a fraction of the people waiting anxiously for news of their friends and relations—as everyone was to everyone else here.

  “Peit, we need a shroud.”

  Meis spoke, her eyes wounded but her voice firm and low, as calm as it always was. “No, I‘ll provide that. Have my brother taken to our house.”

  Of course. Ban, a widower, still had his sister and his son to carry out his burial rites.

  Peit nodded and bellowed an order for another litter to be brought. Kei laid a hand on Meis’s shoulder in comfort, feeling her pain at her brother’s death and also her relief that at least her husband and son were alive.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Erte would have been so proud of you.”

  “If I were a tenth of the healer she was, I’d deserve that praise. I’ll come to your house later, but they mainly need rest and liquids when they wake. Myka can bring you a supply of dressings shortly and we’ll administer pijn as needed.”

  Meis bowed in acknowledgement. Kei found a stool in the ruins and sat down heavily. Now he’d completed the surgery, he felt weak with tiredness, his body claiming payment for the substantial debt of energy his gift used. Myka, long used to this phenomenon, took charge of things, supervising the careful transfer of the three men onto the litters. Meis covered Ban’s face with her scarf and walked behind his body as it was carried out of the workshop.