She watched, eyes tired and weak, as he cut another section from a plant and began to apply the same treatment to the rest of her body, then turned away in embarrassment as she noticed her nudity.
Instead she turned her eyes to the pile of material that he had stacked beside her, noting the plant stuff especially.
Water cactus... she thought weakly, eyeing the sliced pieces of plant as he went on with her treatment. She'd know the plant anywhere; her mother had shown it to her when she was very young and told her to look for it if she were ever lost. The juice of the plant would keep a person alive, the fleshy part would feed them, though the needles were dangerous because they contained a poison that could numb the mind and make a person stupid in the desert.
"Who are you?" she rasped out then, looking back at the man as he dispensed with the chunk of cactus he had and cut a new piece.
"I told ye that," he said, his knife making quick, confident, cuts. "My name's Kaern."
She nodded. She could remember that, vaguely. "Thank you, Kaern."
He shrugged. "Dinna thank me yet. Ye've lost a lot of blood, and between the fever and the shakes, ye might yet do another Death Quest."
She swallowed painfully, shaking slightly. "Death Quest?"
He snorted, rolling his eyes. "Unbelievable."
"What?"
"Ye do a Death Quest into the Dreaming, even to the point of contacting another soul, and ye have no idea what ye've done," he said as he continued treating her burns. "Youth, child, is wasted on the young."
Her muddled mind really wasn't able to decipher even half of what he was talking about, but she did understand one word.
"The Dreaming?"
"Aye, child. The Dreaming," he replied, squeezing the last gel-like substance from the cactus piece he was holding before tossing it aside. "Ye do know that much, I hope?"
She nodded painfully. "S...some. I...my Father was showing me about it."
"Well I'd say that he did a fair job," Kaern told her evenly. "It's rare for someone, even in a Death Quest, to enter the Overmind, child."
More words that she couldn’t fathom.
Elan just shook her head. "I...don't understand."
Kaern snorted, shaking his head in turn. "Few do. Perhaps I will explain it, but later. Rest now, I'm done with you for the moment."
Elan nodded, then shivered. "C...cold."
"Aye." He nodded. "I know. Ye've lost a lot of blood, and only the fever kept ye from freezin’ to death last night, I'll warrant. Will be touch-and-go for a while."
She shivered while he busied himself with unrolling a pack on the ground beside her, then moaned in pain as he jostled her ankles as he moved her over to it. When that was done, he wrapped it around her, careful not to make it too tight on her burned flesh.
"There. That's the best I can do for now," he told her. "Rest. I'll be back in a couple hours."
Her eyes followed him as he gathered up a few more things then made his way to the tunnel that would take him out of the old cavern. When he was gone, she stared into the shadows for a while, then finally closed her eyes and felt the waking world slip away again.
*****
Kaern returned a couple hours later, two scrawny rabbits in his pack and another refilled canteen hanging by his side. He checked on his infirm patient briefly, but when he saw her chest rise and fall with a regular motion, he sat down cross-legged some distance from her and dropped a few bits of debris he'd managed to scavenge from the vegetation.
The wood, such as it was, was wet and would smoke up a smaller cave, but he could tell at a glance that there was room to spare in the Ancient Redoubt, so he went about setting up a small fire.
Once the wood was in place and a small spit braced above it, he took out the small blade he carried for skinning and went to work on the rabbits. Skinning them and prepping them for the spit took only a few moments, after which he drew a small device from his pouch and pointed it at the firewood.
A brief lance of flame lit the Redoubt, then a steady flickering fire was burning cheerfully as he mounted the rabbits and stood up to look around.
He hadn't been in this Redoubt before, and it looked sizeable. They were all different—those who had built them didn't much care for uniformity—but there were always certain commonalities in each that could be exploited.
If there is any power here, the lights should be controlled from a master room off this main cavern. He moved along the side of the cavern wall, running his hands along the glassy smooth surface, admiring the mottled pattern embedded in the material.
Finding the door wasn't hard, but opening it was another matter.
Locked. Lovely.
Kaern sighed, looking around the place, and wondered if that was good or not. Locked doors were a real pain, especially when you didn't have a half dozen guys to help batter it down with, but it also meant that no one had raided the interior yet.
Well, no one demonic at least.
He glanced over to where the young girl was sleeping, his face thoughtful.
Well, there's nothing to be done for the moment. He sighed, moving back to the fire and turning the rabbit.
*****
It was the smell that woke Elan the next time she opened her eyes, a scent of food that somehow managed to both revolt and entice her. She could feel that she needed food, but at the same time the last thing she wanted to do was eat anything.
She opened her eyes slowly, looking around at the flickering shadows that danced around her, then focused on the source of a scraping sound just off from the fire. The man who had cared for her earlier was sitting there, grinding something in a bowl with repetitive motions that seemed to suggest that his mind was somewhere else.
She shifted then, groaning slightly as the tough leather hide rubbed against her burns, and he snapped his head over to look at her intensely.
"Yer awake," he said, rather pointlessly, but Elan didn't think that pointing that out would be wise or polite so she just nodded. He got up slowly, and walked over to her. "How're the burns, lass?"
"They burn." She smiled weakly.
He snorted, shaking his head, and lifted the bowl up with one hand. "Here, lass. It'll help."
She looked into the bowl and started as she saw the half-ground cactus needles in it. She tried to move away, but winced instantly. "Those are poison..."
"Naw, lass." Kaern half smiled. "They're just not something you should chew on too much out in the desert. They'll kill the pain for a short while and are safe, ‘long as you dinna take too much and you have plenty o’ water nearby."
She eyed the bowl distrustfully, but noted that Kaern was chewing idly on one of the spines himself. After a moment she consented reluctantly to taking some of the powder with a drink of water and grimaced at the bitter taste.
"Think you can eat some food, child?" he asked after she had drunk her fill.
She shook her head slowly, closing her eyes again.
"Alright, then." He nodded, putting the water bladder away. "But ye'll have to eat tomorrow at the latest, even if I have to force it down yer throat."
She didn't even seem to notice his comment, and when her breathing became regular a moment later, Kaern sighed.
"I'm losing my touch," he said out loud. "I can't even threaten a girl child and make her believe me."
With that thought in the air, he pulled another of the cacti needles from a pouch and slid it between his teeth as he took another look around the old Redoubt in the flickering firelight.
No security doors, so it wasn't anything important. He eyed the stairwells, the glass-smooth marble, and molded fittings with a critical eye. Obviously public area. Probably a transport center.
He toured the huge room, noting a mural on the far wall, mostly hidden by dust, age, and shadow. It was a peaceful setting, showing a huge crystalline tower reaching into the sky until it touched the clouds.