Riding the Serpent's Back by Keith Brooke Page B

have been half a million or more people below them, Leeth thought, and each of them the independent centre of their own world. It was a daunting thought.
    Soon Edge City thinned out into sporadic clusters of homes, clinging to the track that led to the Falls.
    “Your mother asked me to get you away for a break,” said Leeth, as they flew west, their course dogging the Falls track. “She thinks you’re doing too much.”
    “Don’t call her that,” said Chi, with a brief flash of his old aggression. “Please. I’m my own man.”
    Leeth squeezed him reassuringly. “We just think you’re trying to go too fast.” An epidemic of dysentery was in the process of sweeping through Edge City and Chi’s Talent had been called on more and more frequently: first with neighbours, and then with friends and relatives of the neighbours, and then their friends and relatives, until finally the queues had stretched far into the distance along the streets and paths of the slum district, all hoping desperately for the touch of the Boy Healer.
    Chi’s Talent was returning powerfully as he healed, but the intense mental effort was taking an increasing physical toll.
    “If I’d taken it more slowly, do you think you’d be alive?” demanded the boy, referring to Leeth’s own bout of fever.
    “Probably,” said Leeth. “I expect I’m fit enough to have survived. I’m not arguing that you haven’t worked wonders, that you haven’t saved the lives of dozens or even hundreds of people, and eased the suffering of many times that figure. I’m just saying you should think about the consequences for yourself. Your body isn’t strong enough yet for this kind of workload. You said yesterday that you thought some of the Raggies might have latent Talents – can’t you train them as your assistants and start to share the burden?”
    Leeth sensed the tightness of the boy’s body, the sudden silence that often built up to tears. “You have it exactly right,” Chi said, his voice tight with emotion. “This cursed body can’t keep up with the man it contains. My Talents leave me exhausted in no time. People treat me like some snotty little upstart – even those who humour me and pretend to believe that I am who I claim I am. Even they don’t really believe me: I’ve hidden and listened to some of my captains – they laugh at me, they think I’m some kind of dwarf stuck in a body that hasn’t grown!” His control had improved in the months Leeth had been with him – even now, he managed to bite back on his tears. He leaned back against Leeth and struck himself on the chest with his own fists. “I hate this thing,” he said. “This body is sometimes more than I can bear!”
    Leeth could see the billowing steam clouds of the Falls ahead. He thought the command-shape into Sky’s mind to tell her this was their destination. Then he said, “If you hate your body so much then why don’t you change it?”
    Chi peered back at him, a quizzical look on his face.
    “I mean...” began Leeth, struggling to work out exactly what he did mean – the question had made sense at the time. “I mean, you seem capable of so much. You can change an illness in another person – why can’t you change what it is that you so hate about yourself? Or why can’t you make yourself like what you are?”
    “I’m not a shape-changer,” said Chi. “Yet you make it sound so easy. Have you tried? Is that your secret?”
    Leeth shook his head. “You know I’m no healer,” he said. “My Talent is the bond with Sky and a little simple Charming. But you – you’re different, Chi.”
    Chi squirmed, suddenly, within his harness. “Look!” he cried. “The rainbows!”
    Sky was swooping in through the swirling clouds of the Falls and, unusually, the sun had broken through a thinning in the sooty grey atmosphere, smearing single and multiple rainbows across the backdrop of steam so that it looked as if a giant hand had hurled pots of dye into the