“Gryphons—‘ He started to say, “Gryphons aren’t animals,” then stopped himself just in time.
“I thought gryphons were just animals, like the Kaled’a’in warhorses. I thought they only spoke like the messenger-birds . . . just mimicking without really understanding more than simple orders.” She sighed; the muscles of her back heaved and trembled a little beneath his hands, and he exerted his powers to keep them from going into a full and painful spasm. “I kept telling myself that, but it isn’t true. They aren’t just animals. I hate to see anything in pain, and it’s worse to see something that can think in a state like that gryphon was.”
“Well,” Amberdrake replied, choosing,his words with care, “I’ve always thought it was worse to see an animal in pain than a creature like the hertasi, the gryphons, the kyree, or the tervardi injured. You can’t explain to an animal that you are going to hurt it a little more now to make it feel better later. You can explain those things to a thinking creature, and chances are it will believe you and cooperate. And it has always been worse, for me, to see an animal die—especially one that is attached to you. They’ve come to think of you as a kind of god, and expect you to make everything better—and when you can’t, it’s shattering, to have to betray that trust, even though you can’t avoid it.”
“You sound as if you’ve thought this sort of thing over quite a bit,” she said, her voice sounding rather odd; very, very controlled. Over-controlled, in fact.
“It is my job,” he reminded her with irony. “You would be amazed at the number of people who come to me after a dreadful battle with nightmares of seeing their favorite puppy dying on the battlefield. Part of what I do is to explain to them why they see the puppy, and not the friends they just lost. Only I don’t explain it quite that clinically.”
There wasn’t much she could say to that, so after a few breaths, she returned to the safer topic. “Anyway, I was trying to treat the gryphon, and I’d gotten bent over in quite an odd position to stitch her up without tying her down, when she lashed out at me with both hindlegs. She sent me flying, and I landed badly. I got up, felt a little more pain but not much, and thought I was all right.”
Good. The gryphon has gone from “it” to “she.” That’s progress anyway.
“But the pain kept getting worse instead of better, right?” he probed. “That’s the sign you’ve done something to one of those spinal pads.”
“I think that’s one lesson I’m not likely to forget very soon,” she countered, with irony as heavy as his had been. “But as you said, the Healers were all busy with injuries worse than mine, and I don’t believe in whining about things as trivial as a backache.”
“I would never call telling of extreme pain whining,” was all he said.
She relaxed a little more; minutely, but visible to him.
“This is going to need more than one treatment,” he continued. “If you can bring yourself to resort to a mere kestra’chern, that is.”
The skin of her neck flushed again. “I—you are a better Healer than I am,” she replied, with painful humility. She hadn’t liked admitting that. “If you would be so kind—I know what your fees are for other things—but if you can spare the time—”
“To make certain the Healer of my friends is in the best of health, I would forgo the fee a king would offer for my services,” Amberdrake replied with dignity. “When you are in pain, you can’t do your best work; you know that as well as I do. Skan is not the only gryphon friend I have, and I want my friends to have nothing less than the finest and most competent of care.”
“Ah,” she said weakly. “Ah, thank you.”
He examined the injury again. “I’ve done all I can about this spinal pad right now,” he told her truthfully. “I need to finish that massage, and then you can go. I think you’ll feel some difference.”
“I already do,” she admitted.
He rubbed some fresh scented oil into the palms of his hands to warm it, and started soothing the muscles of her back he had not reached earlier. They had gone into spasms so often they had become as tense and tight as harp-wires, and as knotted as a child’s first spun thread.
She gasped as the first of them released; quivered all over in fact. Amberdrake was quite familiar with that reaction, but evidently she wasn’t.
“Oh!” she exclaimed and tensed again. “I—”
“It’s quite all right, don’t move,” he ordered. “It’s the natural reaction to releasing tensed muscles. Ignore it if you can, and try to enjoy it if you can’t ignore it.”
She didn’t reply to that; interesting. The last commoner he’d made that particular remark to had said, with dangerous irony, “What, like rape?” It was a natural thought for the ordinary soldier, who all too often found him or herself in the position of victim.
But there was no tightening of Winterhart’s neck muscles, no tensing at all to indicate that thought had occurred to her.
Interesting. Very interesting. So whatever she is afraid of, it isn’t that. And she is not the “ordinary soul” she says that she is.
“If I hurt you, tell me,” he said. “A good massage should not hurt—and in your case, if I start to hurt you, you’ll tense up again, and undo everything I’ve done so far other than the real Healing.”
“I will,” she promised. “But it doesn’t hurt. It just feels very odd. My m—the massages I’ve had in the past were never for injuries.”
What other kinds of massages are there? She can’t mean sexual. So—for beauty treatments?
That would account for the superb state of her body. There were no blemishes, no signs of scarring anywhere. When the posturing and stiffness were gone from Winterhart’s body, she was a magnificent sculpture of human beauty. She cared for her skin and hair scrupulously, filed her toenails, and had no calluses anywhere that he had seen, not even the calluses associated with riding or fighting.
Unusual, and definitely the marks of someone highborn, and he thought he knew all the humans of noble lineage who had ever lived near Urtho’s Tower.
Perhaps she was from before I came here? But that would date back to the very beginning of the war.
“Do you get along with your commanders?” he asked, adding, “I need to know because if you don’t, it is going to affect how your muscles will react and I may need to ask you to resort to herbal muscle relaxants when you are around them.”
She was silent for a very long time. “They think I am the proper subordinate. I suppose I used to be; that may be why my back went badly wrong all at once. I don’t ever contradict them, even now. I suppose you’ll think I’m a coward, but even though I don’t agree with the way they treat the gryphons, I don’t want to be stripped of my rank and sent away.”
“You wouldn’t be, if you took your case to Urtho,” he pointed out. “As Trondi’irn, it is your job to countermand even the generals if you believe your charges are being mistreated.”
“I can’t do that.” Her skin was cold; she was afraid. Of what? Of confrontation? Of going directly to Urtho?
“Besides,” she continued hurriedly. “My I . . . lover is one of Shaiknam’s mages; his name is Conn Levas. If I went to Urtho, I’d still be reassigned, and I don’t want to be reassigned to some other wing than his.”