Tori

mother... I'll spare you the details, but she killed a few people before one of our Quis took her down."

  "How many?" Up until this point I had been listening quietly, but I couldn't help interjecting the quiet question. My mind yearned to know the full extent of my mother's illness, even as my heart suffered from the knowledge.

  "Five," my uncle replied quietly. "Three men and two women."

  "How?"

  "She was a Healer. It wasn't pretty. They aged decades in the few minutes she had her power turned on them. You could say they died of old age."

  "And then she was killed?"

  "Yes."

  It all made sense. No wonder nobody would speak of her.

  "Anything else?" the King said.

  "Who killed her?" Hesitation flickered across his face.

  "Nobody you would know." He lowered his head back to the desk, silently dismissing me.

  I lingered for a few moments as the silence grew, then turned and stalked from the room. Overcome by conflicting emotions, I wandered the halls of the palace for a time. I returned to my father's room at one point, but he was sleeping, and I didn't want to disturb him. Besides, I wasn't sure I wanted to face him at the moment. How could he keep this from me?

  Eventually, I returned to my room and fell into a restless sleep filled with mangled birds, infected wounds and a woman shrieking while the people around her withered and died. Needless to say, I awoke in the morning less rested than when I had taken to bed.

  Still, the night had not passed uselessly. I found my anger and frustration with my father had abated somewhat, and early in the morning hours I found myself wandering the hallsof the palace, making my way tomyfather's room. It gave me a chance to think.

  I'd always wanted to be a Healer. Now, that dream was solidified by the fact that my mother had been one. If I became a Healer, I knew I could contain the Madness, and devote my life to helping others. I didn't give a thought to how my family would react. For some strange reason, I seemed to think they would be proud of me, support me, for my mother's sake.

  I was wrong.

  When I arrived at the room, the first thing that struck me was the smell. A terrible odor was seeping into the hallway, even through the closed door. There was nobody else around, so I pushed open the door. I nearly gagged. Covering my nose and mouth with a sleeve, I made my way to the bed. The sheets were wet with blood and pus. I tried to lift them to examine the wound, but they were attached to him. I peeled them away carefully. As I did, I watched for somesign that he was still alive. His chest moved, but barely, and in an irregular rythm.

  Overnight, the injury had opened again. The skin around the area was covered in both dried and fresh blood, and it was very obviously infected. I cleaned it as best I could with a clean part of the sheet and water from the washbasin. Underneath, the skin was the colour of death and infection. There would be no recovery from this. I doubted he would survive the next couple of hours.

  I took a seat in the chair by the head of the bed and put a hand across my father's forehead. It was cold and clammy, so I wiped it with my sleeve. His face was contorted in a perpetual grimace. He must have been in immense pain. I briefly considered the small knife at my belt. I could use it, and save him at least a couple hours of agony.

  My hand got as far as touching the hilt before turning back. I couldn't do it. Despite the secrets he kept from me, he was still a good man, and I couldn't bring myself to take the life of the one who had raised me. Even if it was for his own good. Besides, there was achance, however slim, that he could still pull through. A glance back down at the gash in his side shook my confidence in that thought, but I had nothing else to cling to.

  If only I could bring a Healer in, there would be no problem. She could Heal him up as quick as a thought, and then everything would be right again. He'd sit up and smile, hug me, and tell me he was never going hunting again. The thought brought tears to my eyes. There was no Healer. He was never going to hug me again.

  I cried silently as my father's breathing grew shallower and more ragged. If only my mother was around, I thought. She could have made it all better. She was strong, while I was weak, useless.

  No, I thought with a sudden determination. No, that wasn't true at all. My mother was strong, and so was I. I may not have been able to Heal, but I had spent years doctoring the birds and animals in the gardens. I wasn't about to give up so easily, not while there was still something I could do. I jumped from the chair tostand by the injury. I tried my best to distance myself from the situation and look at it critically.

  The wound was infected. How bad was it? I ignored the smell and probed into the injury. Some of the stitches had ripped through the skin. That was where the fresh blood had come from. The infection ran deep. I shook my head at the shoddy job the doctor had done. It looked like the wound hadn't even been cleaned.

  For an hour I worked, using my knife to cut away the remaining stitches and dig out particles of dirt. I became absorbed in the project. There were little materials available, but fortunately I had a basin of water. I made a small fire to heat it, and carefully washed the injury as best I could. As I did, my confidence in my own abilities grew. I was doing a better job than the doctor had done.

  It wasn't until after I had finished cleaning that I realized I had nothing to seal the injury with. No thread, no needle, not even a clean piece of cloth long enough to bind it with. And without sealing, the injury would just become infected again. After all the work I had put into it, I wasn't about to let that happen.

  As I looked around the room for something, anything I could use, my eyes fell on my father's face. It had softened somewhat, and some color had come back to it already. It no longer had the look of a man at death's door.

  I had brought a man back from the brink of death.

  I was a better doctor than the one the palace employed.

  I was the best doctor in the country.

  I was amazing.

  There was nothing I couldn't do.

  With that realization, I turned back to the injury. I reached a hand out and touched the skin just above the gash. Nothing I couldn't do. At the back of my mind, I felt a small tingle. I focused on it, and it became stronger. I was the best. The tingle filled my mind. With a thought, I directed it down my arm and through my hand, into my father.

  A moment later, my mind was flooded with sensations of the man on the bed before me. I was instantly aware of every beat of his heart, every breathhe took. I could see, in my mind, the courses his nerves took as they brought sensations from every point of his body into his head. Most importantly, I could control it.

  As deft as sparrow, I threw my mind into the stream of information, and set to work fixing the damage. I don't know how I knew what to do. I only know that I could see everything that was wrong with this man, and when I focused my concentration, could fix it. As I watched, the healing process accelerated. The puncture wound in his lung sealed itself. Bits of dirt and other objects I had missed were pushed out as the flesh sealed itself together. Before long, I had reached the entry point of the wound. A little more focus, and the dead skin dropped away, replaced by fresh cells grown in a fraction of the time it would have taken them unassisted. The new cells joined themselves together, and I promptly dropped into the chair by the bed, the power fading from me.

  So I was a Healer.

  Before I had a chance to dwell on that fact, my father stirred and opened his eyes. They went wide as he put a hand to his side, then narrowed as he glanced around the room. They settled on me.

  "I've always told you," he said, his voice strong. "Not to let a Healer touch me. Why would you allow that? Why would my brother even let a Healer in here?"

  "It was me," I said quietly, avoiding his stare. I couldn't help but smile, though I tried to keep it hidden. My father was alive, and healthy. I was a Healer. I didn't know what was going to happen to me now, and I didn't care. For the moment, I was happy. Ignoring the look on my father's face, I threw my
arms around him. By reflex, he embraced me - for a moment.

  "You?" he whispered. I felt him tense, and he pushed me away firmly, holding me by the arms. "You did this, Tori?" he repeated.

  I nodded, still smiling.

  "You - no. I don't believe it."

  "There's nobody else here."

  "You can't. First Midie, and now - why would you do this to me?"

  "You mean save your life?" I was starting to get a little frustrated, and I think it showed in my tone. Couldn't he see this amazing thing that I had done? And it wasn't as though I had succumbed to the Madness.

  "But at what cost, Tori?" He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I made my peace with death. You brought me back from that, but now I'm going to lose you anyway."

  "What are they going to do?" I said.

  A voice from the door answered. "Preferably, we'd like to take you to the Asylum," it said. I whipped my head toward the voice. It was Strin. "But you must realize that I have little say in the matter. The King has the authority here, and he will do what he feels is right."

  My father sat up on the edge of the bed, and started to stand.

  "Sir," Strin said, raising a hand in protest, "are you sure you should be doing that?"

  "I feel better than ever," my father said. As if in demonstration, he stood tall and walked confidently around the bed to where his clothes had been laid. He held up his shirt, which was ripped and stained with blood. "They must not have had