Read Online Everran's Bane by Sylvia Kelso - Free Book Online

said.
    â€œAir and Water!” No doubt I was hardly a model of aplomb. “The quintessential pharr’az! ‘You’re on my land!’ Well, there are three hundred other dead men and a dragon also on your land, and if I had a bier I’d be more than willing to get this one off!”
    His eyes had not left Beryx. Now, not deigning to answer, he dropped on a knee, and I nearly leapt before noticing he had put down his sword. He went on staring. Just as I prepared to wring his neck, he sat back on his heels and began to pull off his shirt.
    â€œIn the Four’s name!” I bawled. “He doesn’t need a blanket, he needs a bier! And if you got off your behind and signaled Astarien you’d be more use than you’ve ever been in your—”
    He lifted those passionless gray eyes and said as if I had not spoken, “Undo that flap-coat of yours while I cut some saplings. It’s a litter he needs.” And, as I went quite rabid, he pointed to the welling pit in Beryx’s ribs and said, “Blood’s wet. Heart’s pumping: see how it makes? He’s alive.”
    * * * * *
    Whatever else befalls me, I shall number that week in Astarien as the worst in my entire life. It was not enough to be the sole survivor of a holocaust, nor to totter back with a king slung on a couple of shirts and saplings at the point of death, nor that I must bring him into that lunatic’s stewpot of a town where the local government could not make itself heard, or try to nurse him in chaos worsened by scenes of insensate grief, all with the dragon still lying on my friends’ bodies within wingbeat. I, a mere harper, had a kingdom landing round my ears. “Take it to the king.” That week I learnt just how much they took.
    Evacuees were still coming. Gerrar was beside himself: half the towns of Everran were asking where to put and how to feed them, every governor north of Saphar wanted to know what the dragon would do and what he should do next. The levy commanders in Saphar were ramping to sacrifice their green troops, the Guard wanted to give Inyx a military funeral. Quarred enquired if it were safe to summer their sheep in the Raskelf, the lords had illicitly raised the wine price, the Regent did not know what to tell Estar and Hazghend, and the farmer holding the phalanx’s horses wanted to know for how long and who would pay for it. There were only three rays of sun: Kelflase, intact, in touch, sending the commander Sarras up next day to Astarian. Stavan. And the nurse.
    It was Stavan who got us through Astarien, up to Gerrar’s house, into a bedroom, and before I thought how to strip the king’s armor had produced a thin, leathery, white-haired woman imperturbable enough to be his mother: which in fact she was. She took one look at the bed, the king, the household women in spasms around him, told me, “Clean sheets. Hot water. Lamp.” Told Gerrar, “Get them out.” And told Stavan himself, “Los Nuil. Wild honey. All you can rob.”
    Undoubtedly Thassal saved the king’s life that night. She had his armor off with minimal disturbance, the surface splinters out, and the blood sponged off before Stavan reappeared with a bucketful of wild honeycomb, that we were instantly set to crush and sieve, before she bandaged it in a huge poultice over the entire wound.
    Next she bade us find hethel oil: that night in Astarien, finding whiskers on a baby would have been a lesser enterprise. With that she soaked the burnt side of his face and bound it up in silk scarves annexed from the wardrobe of Gerrar’s wife. And at midnight, when the spreading stain on the poultice made it clear the sting-pit had not closed, she undid the bandages, bent down, and sucked the wound.
    As she spat in the nearest basin, I could not restrain a cry. She merely said, “If it don’t clot, won’t matter if I suck him dry.”
    Clot it did. When I said in