The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [174]
“The infection in your body is bad, but not so bad that Nerat cannot draw it. The real difficulty will be in finding a way to drain off the pain you have allowed to build up behind a mental block. Open your mind to me,” he commanded.
I flinched at the hint of strength, for here was a mind easily as powerful as my own.
The bird tilted its head quizzically. “You find it hard to open your mind? Dying would be harder. Understand that there is only so much we can do from without. Your body must be taught to repair itself and build its immunities. That is a simple matter and can be done even as I drain the mental poisons. But you must open willingly to me. If you resist, the block will crumble. You will die. Let me in and sleep. Trust me.”
I swallowed dryly, wondering why even in the midst of a dream, I could not bear the thought of opening my mind completely.
“That is a question you will answer for yourself in time,” Nerat sent. “Now, do as I say, before the poison flows too deep. I can do many things, but I cannot bring the dead back to life. And you must not die with so much left undone,” he added cryptically.
I saw a sudden vision of Rushton’s brooding face and felt the curious ache his memory always evoked.
“He thinks of you, too,” Nerat said absently; then he made a choking sound and regurgitated a grayish lump of paste onto the stone.
“This comes from the substance the funaga call whitestick,” Nerat sent. “We call it narma. I have mixed it with various salivas and acids that I have generated to fight the poisons. Narma rose from the ashes of the Great White and is ever a reminder that the poisons now in the earth fade. Next time, there will be no narma.”
I shivered, imagining all the world fused smooth as glass, and black.
“That is how it will be, the next time,” Nerat sent. He stared into my eyes. “Come now, ElspethInnle, for it is not only your life that hangs in the balance. Open to me, but leave the block in place until I command you to release it.”
Slowly, I let my head fall back onto the stone, trying to make my mind a passive vessel.
Nerat’s probe was inside then, swift as a snake, smooth as a single strand of silk. “Relax,” he sent. “Dream, and I will do my work. I am not interested in the longings and secret thoughts of a funaga.”
Once Nerat commanded me to release the suppressing, I drifted between excruciating pain and numbness, burning heat and freezing cold.
And the pain in my legs. The pain. The pain.
For a time, I forgot who I was, and it seemed all my life had been spent in a dream of pain on the top of a mountain.
Occasionally, I was aware of Nerat’s mind weaving a pattern in my thoughts as complex and intangible as smoke in the wind. Sometimes I smelled flowers and herbs, and sometimes acrid, choking smoke.
And then I floated for a very long time.
“She wakes,” came a thought bound with weariness and satisfaction.
I opened my eyes and found myself looking into pale avian eyes. The bird was so close I could see the fine crack in his beak, thin as a hair. I felt his mind like tenebrous fingers at the edge of my thoughts; then he gave a strangely human bob of his head and hopped away.
I did not move for a long while, waiting to see where the dream would take me next. Idly, I wondered if I would feel myself plunge into the mindstream when I died. I thought I would like to hear that glorious siren song once more.
Astyanax appeared. “You are well, ElspethInnle. You can get up now. Or do you wish to lie there longer?” he sent with all the politeness of a host not wanting to upset a guest. Urged on by the eager expression in his eyes, I lifted my head carefully.
It is a dream, I told myself. That is why there is no pain.
Slowly, I sat upright. I made myself look down my body, prepared to see ruined, evil-smelling flesh and black infection. My legs seemed to rise at me from a dark mist.
Below the skirt they lay before me, pale as cream and utterly without blemish. Even the old childhood scars of skinned knees had vanished.
My heart sounded like a drumbeat