The Broken Knife

Cleansing a wound of the lopo’s paralytic was no rapid process, and with the humans lying still and silent, Kaz soon found himself sinking toward sleep. He was exhausted after the long climb and the terror of the battle with the lopo, and his eyes drifted closed.

Within the darkness of his mind, the light rune flared again, swimming and swirling, until a few of its threads came loose and it turned into the rune Lianhua had told him represented ‘silence’. Dimly, he wondered what would happen if he fed it ki the way he had the light rune, and before he could think better of it, he did so.

Silence surrounded him, dampening even the faint sound of breathing, and the distant echoes of water dripping and movement in the darkness. It was so profound that he couldn’t even hear the rush of his own heartbeat in his ears, as he had a few times when he found himself alone in the dark. For an instant, he seemed to be floating somewhere above his own body, a shapeless form without sound or light, and then panic flooded him. His eyes snapped open as he instinctively pulled power from the rune and pushed it instead into his eyes and ears.

The world snapped into sharp focus. He could count the hairs in the strips of fur above Lianhua’s eyes, and hollow sounds of dripping resonated in his ears. Skittering, scratching sounds came to him, and he twisted in place, staring to his left. A deeper darkness lay just beyond the sphere of light cast by Raff’s stone, leading to a passage or another cave. With a little boost of ki in his nose, he could smell the metallic rodent-scent of fuergar.

Turning back to the humans, he looked them over. Raff and Gaoda seemed to be resting more easily, their faces clear of the strain that he now realized had drawn their faces tight when he last checked. With power in his eyes, he could see that their ki was cycling easily. The skin around their wounds was red, but no longer seemed puffy and inflamed.

Glancing at Chi Yincang, he saw that the silent man also looked more relaxed, though he’d never been as visibly distressed as the others. The wound he’d coated with firemoss no longer burned, and the flesh around it looked darker than the rest, but it wasn’t red and even seemed to be starting to close already.

Lianhua still lay, apparently unconscious. Her expression was smooth but her breathing remained shallow. When he looked at her wound, he saw that it, too, had finished burning, but it was still angry-looking, and small blisters were visible around it. Kaz narrowed his eyes, leaning closer, and saw that a strange darkness lingered in the flesh, trailing tendrils up into the shimmering ki-veins around the injury. With each cycle of her ki, the black shadow was pulled a little further up her leg, toward the whirling energy centered in her belly.

Kaz’s hand reached out, wavering between the inflamed scratch and his pack, which rested beside the unconscious female. His gaze flicked to Chi Yincang, but the dark male was still, eyes closed, and breathing deep.

Gently, Kaz prodded Lianhua’s leg, which dimpled beneath the pressure. When his finger was removed, the skin remained sunken for a long moment before slowly rising back up. That seemed bad, but he wasn’t sure what to do. Had his version of the firemoss oil been too weak? Had he just been too slow in applying it? Should he try again, and hope that a second application would finish burning away the paralytic, if that was what the darkness was?

Beside him, his pack shifted slightly as the little dragon moved around, and he was reminded of the time the little creature had nearly drowned. He had seen a similar darkness in its lungs, and had managed to clear the blackness away, though he was fairly certain it was that process that had merged their cycles so thoroughly.

Could he do the same for Lianhua? Should he? If she died, the male humans would have no reason to remain in the mountain. They would undoubtedly leave immediately, and they might not even bother to make sure Kaz made it safely back to the Longknife tribe. In fact, given the way Gaoda had all but accused Kaz of leading them into danger intentionally, the male might just kill Kaz and be done with it.

Also, he liked Lianhua. She was the first person besides Rega and Katri who had ever seen him as something more than a tool to be used. His mother had only wanted a female to follow her, and to most other female kobolds, males were interchangeable and replaceable.

Kaz knew he probably shouldn’t trust any of the humans, just use them like they were using him, but he couldn’t help feeling like he would be betraying the female if he didn’t do everything he could. Besides, it was in his best interest to keep her alive, wasn’t it?

Reaching out again, Kaz kept one eye on Chi Yincang and the other on the dark fog clogging up the channel in Lianhua’s leg. He laid his hand over the wound, and heat pulsed beneath his palm. He pressed gently, but Lianhua didn’t move, and neither did the male kneeling beside Gaoda.

Not without trepidation, Kaz closed his eyes, pushing out with his senses, though he kept tight control of his own power. He didn’t want to accidentally form a bond with Lianhua, the way he had with the dragon, so instead of feeding his energy into her, he needed to convince her own energy to repel the darkness and expel it from her body.

Unfortunately, the only opening close enough was the wound itself, and he had a feeling that if he just cleansed it, the bits that were already trailing up her leg would break off, traveling to her core, and that could be very bad. That was, of course, if he could do anything at all.

So, first, he had to force the parts of the shadow that were already in her ki-veins to return to the wound. That would be difficult with her own ki pulling them toward her center, so he needed to slow or stop the ki from carrying it away. Sliding his hand down, he found the place on her calf where the clean ki entered into the tainted area, and he pressed. Not with his hand, but with his own ki, creating a sort of dam, blocking any further current from cycling through the wounded area.

This did cause a reaction. Lianhua whimpered, and the skin beneath his fingers went from too hot to too cold in an instant. Kaz’s eyes opened, and he looked down at the blanched skin, seeing a visible line of healthy flesh leading into pale, sunken skin.

Clearly, blocking ki flow was a very bad thing, and he nearly released his little dam. Then he remembered how his tribe had once dammed up a thin stream to create a pool. Weeks later, the dam broke under the pressure of the water, and what had been a trickle became a flood. It hadn’t lasted long, but it washed away everything downstream, and he wondered if Lianhua’s ki might do the same, breaking off or carrying the black taint with even greater speed than it would have if he hadn’t interfered.

No, he had to finish what he had begun, and he had to do it quickly. He turned his attention back to the shadow lingering beneath the injury. It laid quiet now, like oily sludge in a streambed, waiting to spread. And he had no idea what to do about it. He needed to pull it out somehow, but he couldn’t force it all the way up into Lianhua’s lungs to be coughed up. It would have to come out the way it had gone in.

Leaning closer, he considered licking it, the way a den-mother might lick a pup’s wound, but he didn’t want it in his mouth. Besides, he didn’t know if it was a real, physical thing, even though what he and the dragon had hacked up certainly had been. Could he squeeze it out with the hand that wasn’t holding the dam in place?

He tried it, squeezing around the edges of the wound, and thick, dark blood oozed out. He didn’t really see a difference in the amount of black fog inside Lianhua’s leg, but he was starting to notice that the cold stiffness of the limb seemed to be spreading upwards the longer he held the block.

Throwing caution to the darkness, he extended his own ki into her flesh. Now that her ki wasn’t flowing there, he hoped that their power wouldn’t become entangled. Kaz filled the channel with his own ki, surrounding the blackness with power, then yanked it back out of the long scratch in the female’s leg.

There was a wet sound, and the sides of the wound split, allowing a dense, gooey fluid to emerge. It stank, and Kaz’s eyes watered. Quickly, he wiped it away, repeating the process of wrapping his ki around each trace of black, then pulling it out again. After a few tries, the dark fluid was replaced by red, and Kaz released the dam blocking Lianhua’s power from flowing through her own body.

Blood gushed out through the widened cut, and Kaz pressed his hand over the injury, trying to staunch the flow. A human hand stretched out into his vision, holding one of the squares of cloth that the humans used as if they were disposable. Pushing aside Kaz’s hand, Chi Yincang replaced it with his much larger one, then quickly wrapped the injury in a strip of white cloth almost as long as Kaz was tall.

Kaz sank back on his haunches, staring at the ever-silent male as he deftly tucked the ends of the wrap into place. Red had partially soaked through it, but not much, and the pressure seemed to be working. Beneath the skin, ki pumped through, carrying life and energy to the damaged flesh at a rate much faster than normal. He could see the power pulsing in Lianhua’s belly as it cycled.

Eyes huge, Kaz stared at Chi Yincang, who ignored him as he checked the bandage and touched Lianhua’s wrist. Seeing that the female was once again resting quietly, he finally turned his black gaze toward Kaz. He said nothing, but Kaz felt the weight of that regard like a sudden fall of rocks.

“I… think that’s supposed to happen,” Kaz stammered, hoping the human hadn’t seen or sensed anything that would tell him what Kaz had done.

One side of Chi Yincang’s forehead-fur lifted, and he reached up to touch his neck, where he had applied the firemoss to his own wound. The injury had no black goo seeping from it, and certainly wasn’t bleeding.

Kaz restrained a whimper as the pressure surrounding him intensified. “I swear,” he managed, “I wasn’t trying to hurt her. Please!”

Lianhua’s eyes fluttered, and she turned her head, staring from Chi Yincang to Kaz. Her voice was slurred as she said, “Helped me. Leave hi-”

Lids so pale Kaz could see a faint tracery of veins through the skin drooped closed, and Chi Yincang’s hand tensed where it rested on her bandaged leg. The force of his intent faded, though, and Kaz slumped backwards, barely managing to catch himself on his hands. The right one slid away, leaving a trail of black muck on the stone. Chi Yincang’s eyes caught on it, and an indecipherable expression crossed his face.

Looking back up to meet Kaz’s eyes, the human nodded once.

It felt like Kaz’s muscles turned to water, and he nodded back. Feeling a bit braver, he glanced at Gaoda. “Could you… Do you have to tell..?”

Chi Yincang’s eyes narrowed again, but he said, “If asked.”

Kaz’s head nodded jerkily. He wasn’t certain what that meant, but Chi Yincang was a rather mysterious being. Until this moment, Kaz had assumed that he was as faithful to Gaoda as a male to his mate, but it seemed that he held some loyalty to Lianhua as well. Though perhaps he simply bowed to her words because Gaoda had told him to do so? That seemed entirely plausible as well.

Chi Yincang turned away, returning to Gaoda’s side and sinking back into silence, though he didn’t close his eyes again. Kaz could see he’d get nothing else from the human, so he decided he’d have to hope for the best, and assume that unless Gaoda questioned Chi Yincang about the incident, which he had no reason to do, that Chi Yincang would remain as silent as he had been for the rest of their journey.

Completely ignoring Kaz’s disordered thoughts, his belly growled loudly, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since their hurried lunch, and he’d fed half of that to the dragon in his pack. His gaze turned toward the spot from which the chittering and scratching had emerged earlier. He knew what those sounds and smells meant, and his stomach gurgled again at the thought. Fuergar certainly wasn’t his favorite meat, but it was likely the easiest to acquire, and he needed to find at least one anyway. Perhaps if he brought back dinner, the humans would be too distracted by that to question anything else?

Kaz cleared his throat softly, looking at Chi Yincang. He sniffed twice, far more vehemently than necessary, and said, “I smell fuergar. I’ll try to catch a few for our dinner. Um, if that’s… all right?”

Chi Yincang’s chin dipped, and that was all the permission Kaz needed. Grabbing his pack and the fire-striker from beside him, he scurried away from the circle of light once again.