Part 11 (1/2)
”Let her go,” Garlin said. ”She is bored with her new toy.”
That's it.Roca was tired of his insults. She swung around on the first landing, her hand clenched on its railing. ”You overstep yourself, Garlin.”
He came forward, past Eldri, to the foot of the stairs, his anger like sparks, crackling against her barriers. ”You come here, so full of condescension. You play with Eldri as if he were no more than a toy to entertain you, though among our people he claims great respect.” His voice rose, powerful in the hall, with the astonis.h.i.+ng richness only the Lyshrioli could attain. ”And you presume to sayIoverstep myself?”
”Stop it!” Eldri strode past him and climbed the first two steps. ”Both of you.”
Roca braced herself against the waves of hostility from Garlin that flooded her mind. She could barely control her voice as she spoke to him. ”Among my people, you could be imprisoned for speaking to me in that manner.”
”Please,” Eldri said. ”Don't tear at each other this way.”
Garlin never took his gaze from Roca. ”Among my people, you are nothing.”
”Stop!” Eldri said. ”You are the two people I-I most-I-” His eyes suddenly lost focus. He grunted- And then he fell.
Caught off guard, Roca froze. Garlin reacted faster, lunging to catch Eldri as the younger man toppled down the stairs. Eldri's body had gone rigid. As Garlin eased him to the floor, Roca started down the stairs, her fear for Eldri swamping her anger.
His entire body jerked, his torso arching, his arms and legs moving violently back and forth. A convulsion wracked him from foot to head. Garlin pulled off his jacket and eased it under Eldri's head, to keep him from cracking his skull on the stone floor. Then he shed his overs.h.i.+rt and put it under Eldri's legs. He turned Eldri on his side and knelt by his cousin, staying back just enough to keep from being hit by Eldri's jerking limbs.
The seizure seemed to last forever. To Roca's mind, it felt like a raging fire, buffered by her defenses but threatening to overwhelm them. When Eldri's face turned blue, her breath caught with fear. For a moment she thought the seizure had ended, but then he began to jerk again. Garlin remained by his side, his face agonized, his hands hovering in the air as if he wanted to help but could do nothing more.
Roca had no formal medical training, but her node stored some knowledge. Eldri was having a generalized tonic clonic seizure caused by an overload of neurons firing in his brain. People sometimes put an object in the person's mouth to keep him from biting his tongue, but Skolian doctors advised against it. Garlin's quick response suggested this had happened before, enough that he had learned what to do.
Finally, mercifully, Eldri's body went limp. He seemed to collapse into himself, his muscles releasing their vise-lock on his body. For a moment the three of them remained frozen in a tableau. Then, in the same moment that Roca stepped forward, Garlin laid his hand on his cousin's shoulder.
Eldri's eyelashes fluttered up. ”Garlin?” he whispered.
Garlin's voice cracked as he spoke in their language, and his rea.s.suring tone had the sound of desperation. As Eldri's eyes closed, his face went slack. For one horrible instant Roca thought he had died. But no, he was breathing, the rhythm shallow but regular. Her surge of relief was so intense, it almost hurt.
With great care, Garlin slid one arm under Eldri's legs and the other around his back. Then he lifted his cousin and stood up, holding Eldri's limp body. When he turned to Roca, she saw the same guilt in his eyes that she felt in her heart. Had their argument done this? She couldn't speak, couldn't ask that d.a.m.ning question.
Garlin carried Eldri up the stairs and she followed. Eldri was sleeping now; the firestorm in his mind had ended.
In Eldri's suite, Garlin laid him on the bed and pulled off his boots. As he drew the quilt over his cousin, Eldri opened his eyes and spoke. Roca recognized none of the words except her name.
Garlin stiffened. He straightened up and stood, staring at Eldri, his face frozen. Then he turned to Roca with a leaden gaze. ”He wishes to speak to you alone.”
She answered quietly. ”Thank you.”
He just shook his head. Then he left. Roca watched him go, wis.h.i.+ng she knew how to heal this pain.
Turning back to Eldri, she sat next to him on the bed. ”Are you all right?”
His lashes drooped. ”Now you know.”
”Yes,” she murmured. ”Do you have the seizures often?”
He opened his eyes, struggling with the effort. ”More as I am older. Every ten or twenty days.
Lately...every few days. It is why we came to the mountains. I improve here.” His voice was fading.
”Happens more if I become upset...”
”I am so sorry,” she whispered.
”Not your fault.” He gave up the struggle and let his eyes close.
”The demons have come all my life...long before you and Garlin didn't like each other.”
”Demons?”
”Garlin says they shake my body.”
”Ai, no.” Roca felt as if her heart ached. What else would he believe, in a society with so little health care, one where they became old in their thirties? She hated to think what he must have felt, spending his life convinced angry spirits wracked his body with such violence, growing stronger each year.
She spoke softly. ”There are no demons, Eldri. You have a medical condition, a treatable one. I think it is epilepsy.”
”I do not know this word.”
”It means your brain has a problem.”
He smiled wanly. ”When I was young, Garlin said similar. I often got into mischief. He would intone about my behaving myself. But really, he liked fun, even if he tried to be stern...” His voice trailed off.
After a moment, Roca realized he had fallen asleep. She watched him for a while, smoothing the hair off his forehead when he stirred. He looked younger in sleep, hardly more than a boy.
Brad Tompkins had asked if she had ever had to watch someone she loved die because they lacked medical care. She remembered all too well her self-righteous response. G.o.ds, she wished she could take back those words. Of course she had never suffered such heartbreaks. Everyone in her circle had the best medical care possible. Eldri lived on the other side, in the bleak struggle to survive an illness with no cure among his people, no treatment, no explanation.
The severity of his attack frightened her. Having so many of his neurons fire at once had to be like a storm sweeping his brain. And psions had extra neural structures. She had never known an empath or telepath with epilepsy before, but she could see how having so many more neurons could worsen his condition. His seizure had lasted longer than the one or two minutes predicted by her node. Her files listed a condition, status epilepticus, in which the seizures didn't stop, but kept on going. Mercifully, Eldri's had ended. But if he experienced such severe attacks often, increasing in frequency as he grew older, then without treatment he had no chance of a normal life. It was no wonder he wanted to live his life with such intensity now, fearing he might die tomorrow.
He could be right.
Roca walked down the Vista Hall, a long, narrow room that overlooked the northern mountains, behind the castle, on the side opposite the approach from the plains. The windows here were twice the height of a person and wider than she could stretch her arms. Normally they let in copious sunlight, but today most had their shutters closed. At the end, one pair was open, letting light and freezing air pour into the hall.
Outside, across the canyon that surrounded Windward, a secluded valley nestled in the cliffs. The Backbone Mountains rose above it like gigantic, contorted needles.
Garlin was sitting on a bench by the window, with one foot up on the cus.h.i.+on, his elbow resting on his bent knee. He faced away from Roca, gazing at the snow-covered peaks, his hair blowing back from his face.
His resilience daunted her. He had on only a fur-lined tunic, trousers, and boots, with no other protection from the icy wind. She wore heavier clothes and a jacket, and her nanomeds had boosted her metabolism, but the cold still bothered her. She had never faced weather like this without the computer-regulated warmth of garments that included their own climate-control systems. Eldri and his people lived this way every day, with no heating except fireplaces, no electricity, and only marginal plumbing. It brought home with inescapable bluntness just how much she took for granted.
She let the tread of her feet alert Garlin to her approach. He didn't turn as she reached him, but she felt his recognition. Although he had nothing resembling Eldri's luminous mental gifts, he was an empath.
When she stopped next to him, he continued to gaze at the mountains. Then he said, ”How is he?”
”He sleeps.” Roca came around and sat on the bench facing him. ”Will he be all right?”
He finally looked at her. ”Yes, I think so.” His pain showed clearly on his face. ”This time.”
Roca chose her words with as much care as if they were blown gla.s.s that might shatter. ”In my life, over the years, I have developed a certain cynicism. Many people have wished to make use of what they thought I could give them, either physically or from my position among my people.” She spoke quietly. ”If I have judged you unfairly because of that, I apologize.”