Brightly Burning

EIGHT

WHEN Pol first opened his eyes, he found, much to his bemusement, that he was in an unfamiliar room. That was not necessarily an unusual circumstance, but this wasn't a waystation or an inn, which would have made sense; it was a pleasant, but rather bare chamber with pale green walls, and that didn't ring any notes of familiarity.

Then the Healer came in, and he remembered, with unnatural clarity, the rain, the wind, Satiran's neigh of surprise, and something rushing at him. He didn't know this Healer, a lean, hard stick of a man, with his hair going sparse around the temples, but any Healer at the Collegium would be a good one. As always, the Healer wore garments in the standard color of deepest green, but he chose a long tunic and trews rather than floor-length robes.

'A tree fell on me?' he said aloud, incredulously. 'A tree fell on me?'

'That's what your Companion tells us,' the Healer replied, with a dry chuckle. 'Evidently the soil was too water-soaked to hold it anymore; from what the rescuers had to tell me it was a giant. They took a while cutting you loose.' The Healer raised Pol's head and tucked another pillow behind him to get him propped up. 'Your Companion couldn't get out of the way fast enough, but you were the one that got a solid blow to the head. He was just battered and bruised; pinned, but conscious, and able to summon help.'

Pol groaned. If that just wasn't his luck! It seemed that anytime he was involved in anything that produced injuries, he was the one that got the worst of it.

On the other hand, I'm not dead yet, so maybe I am lucky.

'You're really quite lucky,' the Healer echoed his thoughts, taking his chin in one hand and turning his head to both sides, examining his eyes, then the bruises around his face and head. 'From the look of things they tell me, a little more or less to one side or the other, and you'd both have been hit by a main trunk piece and not just a branch.'

'Have I missed anything?' he asked. 'Anything important happen? How long have I been unconscious? Is my skull cracked?'

'Yes, but nothing to worry about, four days, nothing in Collegium or Court, but there was some excitement down in town.' The Healer left off prodding at Pol's bruises; apparently he'd taken a solid hit, but his scalp hadn't split open, since his head wasn't bandaged. Or else it did, but they mended it quickly and washed the blood out of my hair. Or the rain did. He didn't have much of a headache either, so the Healers must have put in some serious work on his skull.

The Healer frowned a bit, though not at Pol. 'The Merchants' and Crafts' Guilds had set up a sort of Collegium of their own to educate their brighter children, the ones who weren't falling right into their parents' Guilds. There was a fire there three days ago; four boys were killed, and several burned badly.'

That made him sit right up straight, which did start his head pounding. 'Good Lord!' he exclaimed. 'How did that happen?'

'That's the strange thing; nobody seems to know,' the Healer replied, pushing him back down in the bed and putting a soothing hand on his forehead that erased the pain. 'The boys have a peculiar story about the fire coming from out of nowhere.' His frown deepened. 'They also have no explanation for being in the building, in an unused classroom, at that time of the late afternoon. Classes were long over, and they should have been home. If they were staying after hours, studying, they should have been in their own classrooms.'

Pol pursed his lips, thoughtfully. 'You think they started the fire?' It wouldn't be the first time that adolescents started a fire as a prank or to vandalize and had it get away from them.

'I think the Guard thinks they did,' the Healer replied. 'They're questioning all the boys that are fit to talk to. I'm not so sure. I'm treating one of the injured, the youngest of the lot.'

Pol looked inquiring and attentive, and the Healer continued. 'The thing that bothers me is that all but one were in the same age group, the same clique. The odd one was a new student, and was in one of the much lower classes. They shouldn't have had anything to do with him, so what was he doing with them at that time of the day?'

Something had roused the Healer's suspicions, that was certain. 'Where's that particular boy?' he asked, sensing that this Healer, at least, wanted someone with authority to get to the bottom of this.

'Here. He's been unconscious since they were dragged out,' the Healer replied, mouth set in a hard line. 'Look, Herald Pol, I'm not trying to cause trouble, but I don't like some of the things we've uncovered, or the way those other boys are acting; it seems to me that they want desperately to hide something, and it has to do with that younger boy. It's hard to tell, under the burns, but we think there's a lot of bruising all over him that doesn't look accidental, and it definitely looks as if he's been caned.'

Pol hadn't been around the Court as long as he had without gathering a fair understanding of how 'ordinary' children sometimes acted. 'You think he's being bullied, knocked around—'

'I think he was being tortured,' the Healer interrupted, icily. 'That's what we'd call it in an adult, and I see no reason to call it by a lesser name in children. I've been trying to get the Guard to call in some of the other, younger children of the school to find out what those older boys could have been up to, but they haven't paid any attention to me. They keep saying that the younger children couldn't possibly know anything about it.'

Pol eyed his physician with a lifted eyebrow. 'You've had some... personal experience with bullies, I take it?'

The Healer's mouth twisted into a thin smile as ironic as Pol's own. 'I was an incipient Healer—which means empathic and sensitive—in a Holderkin family. What do you think?'

Pol winced. He had taken one circuit in Holderkin lands; male children were raised to be manly men, autocratic rulers of their children and (multiple) wives, rough, taciturn, and without emotion, as warmhearted as granite. Females were expected to be subservient in all things, bowing to the will of any male older than ten. No child growing up with the Healer's Gifts could survive long in such an environment without becoming the target of attempts to 'toughen him up,' and 'make a proper man of him.'