Dream of a Vast Blue Cavern

Chapter 3: Sealed for Siege: Larc

The burial chamber was so crowded that Larc could barely breathe. Children and cababar covered the floor, makeshift sickbeds lined the walls, and elderly humans wandered through the mess, confused about where they were. Six days had passed since Krevas had ordered the non-fighting citizens to retreat, and the pit alcoves to the back were beginning to fill, causing the whole cave to reek of refuse. Above, the ghostly purple glow of burial ice cast a funereal light on frightened and uncertain faces. Larc wished she could say or do something to soothe the people. A song would have provided a nice distraction, in ordinary times, but in the face of grief and suffering, singing seemed in poor taste.

Normally, the burial chambers were silent, sacred, solitary caverns. This cluster of more than fifty large chambers, the nearest to the lake, had been linked by wide tunnels, shaped by Icers more powerful than Larc, and the chambers themselves widened to accommodate nearly twenty thousand people, about a fifth of the population of Iskalon. No amount of widening could accommodate such vast numbers, and Larc resorted to drawing cold from the air and hovering above the humans in order to move through the caves. It seemed a waste of vaerce, and it was hardly polite, but war did not make politeness or distant moments of old age a priority. Her ice-armor was heavy, and she carried a leather satchel with rags and some of the medicinal fungi that aided her tasks, so she did not rise very high. She floated to the nearest wall and waited patiently while children playing a constricted game of bladderball moved even closer together to give her room. After six days without bathing or changing, their skin and leather clothing were covered in grime.

An elderly man coughed ceaselessly on his molebear hide. Larc knelt and placed her hands on his chest. T'Jas flooded into her, strengthening, reassuring. She hummed softly, a lullaby her mother often sang, soothing him as she reached deep into his chest with T'Jas. She found the source of pain and healed it, then moved quickly to the next patient, leaving the man in a quiet, deep sleep. He coughed once from that sleep, then stopped as his chest realized the pain was gone.

She went from person to person, stopping occasionally to draw more T'Jas from the icy walls, humming under her breath all the while. Each life she extended would take a little time off her life, but she hardly cared. The average Icer lived twice as long as a human, and she was willing to trade a few years so that hundreds might live today. With only ten Icers to care for several hundred infirm, many of the elderly and chronically ill had worsened. And the constant shuffle of wounded, humans and Icers both, up the tunnel from the battle caves, had only taxed the Icers further. Larc had been forced to make the decision not to heal more than one Warrior who was past her help. She knew the other Icers were just as demoralized by those painful decision as she. The cramped conditions, and limited rations, did not lift anyone’s spirits.

In spite of her utter exhaustion at having T'Jas running through her almost constantly, Larc was glad that there was something she could do. Healing was her strongest ability with T'Jas. At least she had not been assigned to collapsing tunnels or shaping out new alcoves; she was hopeless at working with rock.

She was leaning over a pregnant woman, exploring her belly, when Pasten approached. The woman's child would have been a girl, but it was dead inside of her. She was shaking and moaning, and blood was seeping from between her legs and pooling on the floor around her. This was the third miscarriage Larc had seen in as many days, but it made her want to weep as much as the first had. At least she could save the woman’s life; without healing, she might have bled to death. Larc placed both hands over the woman's navel.

“I’ve received a command from the city, Larc.” Pasten looked haggard. She had not slept any less than the rest of the Icers, but it showed more strongly in her pale blue eyes. 

“Have you, Princess?” Numbness washed over Larc’s grief. Focus, she told herself. Her T'Jas weakened a little, and she drew more cold from the walls. Within the woman's belly, the dead child began to dissolve. The flow of blood began to staunch as Larc helped her body reabsorb the tissue. The patient stopped shaking and the horror of what was happening seemed to come alive in her eyes. “No,” she whispered. She tried to sit up as her stomach sank, and Larc gently urged her to lie back while she continued the healing.