Читать книгу Keepers of the Flame - Robin D. Owens - Страница 17

Elizabeth spent her afternoon studying in-depth with the medicas, especially the non-invasive healing of muscle and bone. As predicted—or perhaps dreaded—a Chevalier fighting pair had arrived in bad shape.

Calli and the Marshalls took care of the volarans’ injuries since the medicas wanted to teach Elizabeth.

The Marshalls’ healing circle was more like calling down a blessing, or general healing, not detailed work with the chakras—God help her!—or individual systems of anatomy. The medicas could do this, too, and had participated in such circles to use the Marshalls’ incredible strength and teamwork. But individually and in pairs and triads, the medicas were more specialized, drawing on what Bri called the healingstream and performing with their minds and magic what surgical teams would do with hands and tools.

Incidentally, Elizabeth learned other things. The Chevaliers she worked on were an independent pair, which meant that they were poor and didn’t fly under anyone’s banner, like Faucon’s people. The image of that man distracted her for a moment, and she had to ask for elucidation of the lesson. The medicas were waiving their fee because they were teaching her.

The Chevaliers were pairbonded which meant marriage, and no stigma attached to homosexuality in this culture, a very good thing.

And the wounds were fearsome.

Elizabeth had never seen anything like them and had to keep her breathing, her emotions detached, her mind focused so she wouldn’t vomit.

She learned from the medicas which “horrors” perpetrated each wound. Apparently the Chevaliers had been unlucky enough to run into a combination of all three major horrors.

The long, deep and razor-thin slices were from “renders.” The easiest to mend with Power. “Slayers” had duller claws but poisonous spines. Elizabeth helped flush the poison from the Chevalier’s system, through the skin pores, which was gross enough to remind her of her beginning days of med school. Little round bumps left from “soul-suckers” showed a deadening of the skin around the wounds. Physical life force had been drawn from that injury.

What was even more incredible to Elizabeth was that sometimes the Chevaliers wouldn’t get help if they felt the wounds weren’t severe enough.

Any wound was dangerous in Elizabeth’s mind. The Lladranans had a different point of view. A very, very tough people.

A people who’d been at war for a long time.

Bri woke from her nap feeling restless. She tried to reach Elizabeth telepathically and was reassured when she touched her twin’s sleeping mind. They’d be able to communicate mentally, then. She wandered through the rooms, feeling like the greatest fraud. This wasn’t her; usually she shared small rooms with other women of her ilk. What would she do if she were in a new place on Earth? She’d go out. Even if she was unsure of the language, she’d unpack then hit the streets. Something was always going on outside if she didn’t want to stay in.