Owlsight

“If they thought it was an evil thing, they wouldn’t be looking for Healers,” Nightwind added. “No, I don’t think this is a case of doing away with children showing the Gift. Anyone with an untrained, unused Gift of Healing would just go off by himself to get away from the things he started to pick up from everyone else, and that’s hardly unusual behavior among these folk. From what I’ve gleaned, people split off from their clans all the time, either because of feuds, or jealous protection of a good hunting range, or basic dislike of others in the clan.”

One of the apprentices cleared his throat; this was a young man Keisha would have picked for a scholar, not a Healer. “It makes more sense in a society like theirs for people who don’t fit to go off on their own. They’ll never find a mate, and dissension weakens the group.”

A scholar’s reasoning if ever I heard it, but he’s right.

“Still - wouldn’t at least a few of them learn what the

Gift meant?” Nala asked. “I’ve known plenty of self-trained Healers.”

“But those self-trained Healers knew not only that there was such a thing in the first place, but what it meant and what signs to recognize it by,” Nightwind replied. “Not only that, but think of what their lives are like, particularly now! With that much pain and illness all around them, children with the Gift might well shut themselves down completely just out of instinctive self-defense. They’d probably do so long before any other real signs manifested. It’s happened that way before, and if you don’t know that the bad feelings you are getting are coming from other people or that they mean that you can actually help those other people, you’d welcome anything that made them go away.”

“There are times when I’d welcome it now,” Nala put in wryly.

At that point, Darian arrived, with a message that made all of their debate moot, at least for a few days. “May I interrupt you?” he asked, poking his head inside the tent, and bringing with him a breath of cooler air.

“Be my guest,” Gentian responded. “You aren’t interrupting anything that hasn’t been talked to death by now. We’re arguing in circles.”

“The barbarians have shut themselves up in their camp, and the war council has agreed to pull back and let them settle for a couple of days anyway.” He joined the circle, squeezing in next to Keisha, who obligingly moved over for him. “The thought is that maybe we were a bit too good at giving them a scare, and that they may need some time to stew things over and figure out that we don’t want to wipe them out. Well, some of us don’t. Anyway, no one is going to do anything for the next day or two, or even three. Thought you’d want to know.”

“That gives us some breathing room,” Gentian said with obvious relief, then looked around the circle. “Go think about these things, and we’ll talk them over tomorrow. Maybe a little sleep will give us a new direction.”

Keisha already had a direction in mind, but she was going to need Darian’s help to make her plan work. She waited while the others went their separate ways, then said, before Darian could leave, “I’d like to get your opinion on something. May I borrow a little of your time?”

“Of course!” he agreed, eagerly enough to give her a little thrill of pleasure. “Let’s collect some dinner, and we can talk while we eat.”

At that point she realized that the chava and vegetables that had been passed around the Healers’ conference had worn off a very long time ago, and she was only too happy to follow his lead.

He seemed to want real privacy as much as she did, for he found a place near the brook that supplied water for the camp, practically on top of a set of fist- and head-sized water-rounded rocks that broke up the flow, where the babbling waters effectively masked low-voiced speech. “I have an odd feeling that our minds are running along the same lines,” he said, managing to get his dinner eaten while avoiding talking with his mouth full. “So, what did you have in mind?”

She stared at the water for a moment, phrasing her plan in her mind. “I think we ought to try and catch a barbarian,” she replied. “First of all, we need to be able to talk to them in their own language. We can’t do anything by just going through Tyrsell, not really. Maybe they’ve experienced Mindspeech before, but talking to them in their own language would make them feel more comfortable.”

“You are either reading my mind, or we’re reasoning along exactly the same lines!” he exclaimed, with muted surprise. “And you are absolutely right, that’s precisely what we need to do. I had it in mind that we weren’t going to really learn what’s going on in their camp unless our watchers knew their tongue. But you have something more in mind than that, don’t you?”

“We need to find out directly whether or not this Summer Fever is in their camp, and just what they expect a Valdemaran Healer to be able to do about it,” she told him firmly. “At that point, we’ll have a basis for negotiations, don’t you think?”

“Negotiations or not, we do need to know if there’s anyone that can spread the Fever to us, absolutely.” He toyed with a bit of bread, his expression so opaque that Keisha couldn’t read it.

“We aren’t going to get any of that from the leaders; they probably have some stupid code about fighting honor, and they’ll certainly have their status tied up in warfare. We’ll have to catch someone ordinary, someone who isn’t a fighter, who’d be perfectly happy if there wasn’t a battle, or at least wouldn’t be looking to start a fight,” she continued. “An old man, or a woman, perhaps.”