‘Perhaps it only appears that she was taken prisoner,’ Dameon said. ‘After all, Straaka told you Miryum was sick and delirious and we must suppose that she was suffering from taint sickness if she had crossed the Blacklands without any guidance. Yet she did not die. Maybe her captors force her to sleep that she might heal.’

‘Then why keep her asleep after healing her?’ Swallow asked.

There was no answer to that, and in truth, no matter how cleverly we speculated, we would not have any final answers until we reached the city on the white plain.

Chapter 25

25

‘Chew this,’ Analivia said, pressing into my hand a little pouch of herbs wrapped in a leaf. ‘Do not swallow it.’

‘Ugh, it smells truly foul.’ I grimaced when I had sniffed it dubiously.

‘It tastes worse but it will help your headache.’

‘How did you know my head was aching?’ I asked.

She smiled. ‘I could tell from the way you have been grinding your teeth. It is not surprising given the tumble you took. I thought for certain sure you had cracked your skull open. I am surprised you are not black and purple with bruises.’

I thanked her meekly and chewed on the leaf pouch, which turned out to be every bit as bad as she had promised, yet it did ease the headache that had begun to plague me again. In fact only half of my fretfulness arose from the headache, the rest was a combination of irritation and anxiety because Rasial and Gavyn had not yet returned, though the sun was now westering and the wolves were likely to appear at any minute. Swallow had chided me for fretting, saying that the dog and the boy would catch us up as they usually did, but I had pointed out that since we were soon to pass over tainted land, we ought to stay together.

Darga offered to mark out a scent trail that the ridgeback would have no trouble following, but I insisted that we would wait for them. I was determined to speak to Rasial when she returned and try to convince her to stop Gavyn wandering off. It would be a mistake to rage at her and utterly pointless to scold Gavyn, but I was determined to deliver a calm and pointed lecture about being a member of an expedition.

The leaf pouch took the edge off the headache but it did not abate entirely and I wondered crossly how it was that my body could heal me from near death injuries and yet be unable to get rid of a simple headache. But maybe the problem was that headaches could result from mental tensions as much as any specific physical ailment.