Guardian Queen: Epic Fantasy Romance (Hardstorm Saga Book 3) Read online

  A few of the guards sucked in harsh breaths, others groaned. Several men turned their heads. One barked like an injured seal.

  Even I, a seasoned healer, had to close my eyes for a moment to steady myself.

  Chapter Two

  (Prince Graho)

  The prince’s loins glowed bright red, his left bollock swollen with pus, thrice the size of normal and ready to burst.

  I leaned closer and saw what I worst feared.

  Aye, a spot of blackening.

  He should have come to me sooner. Anger flashed through me, then sympathy, then worry. Was I too late? I could heal a lot, but I could not resurrect dead flesh.

  He held the fall of his britches in a white-knuckled grip. “Might it be set right then with some herbs, my lady?”

  His words were as tentative and hopeful as the first warm breeze of spring. And as weak.

  I looked him in the eyes. He deserved the truth—all patients did. “No. I am sorry.”

  His face, flushed with fever before, turned whiter than Landrian lace. While he gaped for words that would not come, Batumar, more warrior than diplomat, put what all the men were thinking into words.

  “You mean to geld him?”

  I clenched my jaw. “I mean to save his life.”

  A few of the remaining men backed away another step, but others pushed to the front, darkly curious to see the spectacle.

  “Could this not wait until we reach land?” Durak, the commander of the prince’s guard, looked ready for murder, his hand creeping toward his sword. He stopped only when he caught the warlord’s sharp gaze on him.

  “No,” I said as blades clashed abovedecks and soldiers shouted, hard at battle practice. I shut my mind to all distractions and addressed the prince’s guards. “I need fire in a cauldron, boiling water from the galley, and the cleanest strip of cloth on the ship.”

  I had to move quickly. I would not leave time for anyone to raise objections, least of all the prince.

  When I pulled my knife from the small leather scabbard on my belt, a couple of men grunted in alarm at the cold glint of the metal. I offered the blade to Batumar. “If you could shave the spot, my lord.”

  I thought myself clever, expecting him to object less this way, but the warlord’s dark eyes narrowed to slits, and his jaw tilted into the stubborn angle I knew only too well.

  I nodded, accepting his unspoken refusal, and shifted closer to the prince. “I shall do it, then.”

  At once, Batumar’s large hand clamped onto my shoulder. “Nay!”

  He growled like a distempered tiger and shot a look at the prince that was full of blame for putting me in this position. Then he barked at a young sailor, “You. Fetch my broadsword.”

  The prince’s eyes snapped wide. While his guard moved to protect him, he tried to scramble away on his back like an overturned crab.

  “My lord! It is no joking matter.” I looked at Batumar with exasperation even as I asked under my breath, “How would you feel in his place?”

  At least the warlord had the decency to look remorseful. He cleared his throat. “An ill-timed jest.”

  The prince gave a strangled laugh then. A heartbeat later, his men laughed too, in quick, unsure, nervous bursts.

  Batumar inclined his head to Prince Graho by way of an apology, yet I wondered if he had not made the jest on purpose. He had eased the tension.

  In any case, I could scold him no further. That brief lightness on his face reached all the way to my heart. He had returned to me a changed man from the torture chamber of the sorcerer of Ishaf. These days, his smiles were rare and all the more precious.

  He shot me an apologetic look as well before taking the knife from me. “How much?”

  “All of it, if you can.”

  As the warlord crouched next to the prince, tested the blade with his thumb, then set about his task, the prince did not breathe. He did not so much as blink. Neither did any of his men.

  To leave him as much privacy and dignity as I could, for as long as I could, I busied myself with the meager store of herbs that hung from my belt. The long voyage—two full mooncrossings so far, with storms pitching and rolling the ship—had been full of injuries. I had but some rosemary and lavender left.

  “Missing something you need, Lady Tera?” the prince inquired weakly.

  “Missing everything. But no matter. We shall make do with what we have.”

  When two sailors arrived with hot water, I added several sprigs to the copper bowl. Both herbs had some mild disinfectant properties, although they were not what I would have chosen for this task. I wished for the essence of moonflowers, the drops of medicine that formed inside the creamy white petals, most useful for open wounds vulnerable to infection.

  Two other sailors brought a cauldron with glowing coals and fire, and I set the bowl over the flames until the water boiled again. I grabbed the clean cloth one of the men offered, ripped it in half, then dropped both halves into the water.

  Batumar finished shaving the inflamed patch of skin and handed back my knife as he stood. Only then did I return my attention to the prince.

  He clamped his teeth together, his gaze determined. Now that we had begun, he was prepared to see this through to the end like a good soldier.

  Commander Durak shifted on his feet, his hand hovering near his sword once again. He had pledged his life to protecting Prince Graho, and he stood ready at all times to fulfill that oath. Watching me cut into the prince would be as difficult for him to bear as for the prince to suffer the cut.

  I dropped my gaze to the commander’s finely stitched sword belt. “The prince will need something to bite on.”

  Durak offered the belt at once, placing his sword on the planks behind him, out of the way.

  “Please hold the oil lamp as close as you can,” I told him. “But not over the prince. The ship might pitch.”

  Durak obeyed without hesitation, and I was glad to see his right hand occupied. This way, should he grow alarmed, he could not grab my wrist as I performed the surgery.

  Next, I turned to Prince Graho. “I shall wash the wound. The water will be hot, but not hot enough to burn.”

  He tried to smile, even as more sweat beaded on his forehead. “I have been missing my long baths at the palace. Nothing better than a morning of pampering at the hands of the bathhouse maidens.”

  Yes. Well. This was not going to be anything like that.

  I set the blade of my knife on the hot coals to burn away any dirt. I let it cool for a few moments before using the tip to lift the cloth from the boiling water, then I waited until most of the water dripped out and the cloth cooled some. As gently as I could, I cleaned the injured area, even as the prince hissed curses around the leather he now held between his teeth.

  I paused to allow him a break, but I could not pause long. “Now I must excise the pus, find the sliver, and pull it from the wound.”

  Prince Graho blinked his agreement.

  With the tip of my knife, I pricked the black spot in the middle of the red swelling. A yellow discharge ran forth, the same as would leave a lanced boil.

  A foul, rotten stench filled the air as I watched the pus closely for a wood splinter. The cursed sliver did not leave, however, but remained stubbornly in place. I bit back a groan of disappointment.

  “How is it, my lord?” I asked the prince, hoping he would, at least, feel less pressure.

  “Good as new,” he said around the leather, then clenched his jaw tight as I began to work the swollen flesh with my fingertips until only fresh, living blood flowed.

  I pressed until I was satisfied that the wound was cleansed, then I washed off the area once again and dabbed at the wound with the cloth until the bleeding slowed.

  “That looked like fearsome hurt,” one of the sailors mumbled.

  The prince answered with a breathless “It but tickled a little.”

  “Now comes the easy part,” I joked along. “I shall remove the splinter.”

 
; I gave no more warning than that, no time for my patient to balk. I eased my finger into the wound, halting not when Prince Graho’s back bowed with pain. At first he moaned, then he fell silent as he bit so hard on the commander’s belt that the leather creaked in protest.

  The men around us watched, mesmerized by the kind of horror that does not allow the witness to look away. Even Batumar remained still and silent next to me.

  I prayed to the spirits and near sagged with relief when, finally, my fingertip touched a sharp little point.

  “There.”

  Yet I could not pinch the splinter, not even with the very tips of my fingernails. The sliver of wood had buried itself too deep. To retrieve it, I would have to employ more drastic measures.

  “I must cut,” I said gently as I withdrew my hand and wiped off the blood. And then I answered the question I knew the tortured prince most wanted to ask. “But not everything. You can still marry a princess. You shall have heirs.”

  Around us, men drew ragged breaths.

  “Aye.” Batumar, subdued now, bent to clap the prince on the shoulder. “You will but have a bit more room down there.”

  Strangled laughter escaped the sailors, but the tension did not lessen this time. All eyes hung on the blade I held in my hand, my fingers tightening as the ship jolted.

  The waves were smaller and kinder now than they had been during the storms, but still tall enough to give us a good toss from time to time. I sat back on my heels so I would not fall onto my patient, while Batumar strode to the ladder, put a foot on the bottom rung, and called up, “Hold the ship steady!”

  “Aye, my lord!” The deep voice of our captain responded from above.

  When several heads appeared in the opening, Batumar waved the curious soldiers back. “The Lady Tera must have light.”

  The heads disappeared. Batumar returned to us to crouch at the prince’s head and hold down his shoulders. Two of the prince’s guards dropped to their knees on either side of him to hold Prince Graho’s hands out of the way, pinning his wrists to the blanket. Two other men moved to hold his feet. I could show no hesitation. No time now for anything but full confidence.

  I held the knife over the fire again. “I shall be as quick as possible.”

  Prince Graho’s complexion turned green, his gaze focused on the blade. Batumar’s expression was encouraging, if grim. Many of the men around us were as pale as if they too were sick.

  As I removed the knife from the flames, the prince squeezed his eyes shut. I waited until the blade cooled. And then I cut.

  The sailors gasped and cursed. Prince Graho screamed around the leather in his mouth, his body bucking off the floor. Batumar wrestled him back down, but the prince only relaxed, his muscles turning slack, when he lost consciousness.

  Sweat rolled down my temples. I held the future of the Landrian throne in my hands. Help us, kind spirits.

  I sliced the thin skin up straight, slid two fingers into the opening, and popped out the swollen, infected ball of flesh—half furious red, the other half nearly all black. Cutting had been the right decision. Another day’s wait, and I would have been too late.

  I could not draw the blackening from the prince’s body, not even if he and Batumar agreed to the use of my powers. I could heal nearly anything, but blackening had to be cut out before more and more of the body deadened and the illness killed the patient. I refused to lose the prince to blood poisoning.

  I paused long enough to draw a full breath, then, holding the knife steady, I removed the deadly threat from the prince’s body with one last sharp slice.

  Once again, I let the flowing blood cleanse the wound. Then I thrust the knife back into the fire, heated the blade to red, and cauterized the main blood vessels. I washed the wound with herb water before stitching the skin closed, leaving a hole where any pus and blood could seep out for the next few days.

  When I finished, I sat back on my heels, as drained as if I had given my own strength to the prince. “The worst is done.”

  All around me, shoulders slumped with relief.

  I wished for ruhni powder and shlunn hulls, but settled for packing a freshly boiled and cooled piece of cloth against the hole in the prince’s skin. I wrapped another strip around his groin to hold the first one in place. He did not awaken, thank the spirits.

  “You need to wash his face with cold water, keep a cold cloth on his forehead, and make sure his fever does not worsen,” I told Durak. “If it does, strip him naked and wrap his whole body in a cold, wet blanket.”

  Two sailors hurried off to fetch water.

  “I shall be back often to check on the prince. But if he calls for me when I’m not here, you must find me, day or night,” I ordered his royal guards as I stood at last.

  “Aye, Lady Tera,” Durak answered, his voice rough, his gaze haunted, as if he had just returned from bloody battle. He looked at me with grudging respect instead of the disapproval I had grown used to since I had rejected the prince’s courtship.

  I nodded at him, then raised my voice to make sure it would carry. “The prince will live.”

  Prince Graho groaned in his oblivion. I hoped he heard me.

  As I watched him, my hand strayed to my empty herb belt. I needed more cleansing herbs for the days to come. And herbs against infection. Feverfew too, if the wet sheets proved insufficient to bring down the prince’s fever.

  Help us, kind spirits.

  We needed to reach land.

  One of the prince’s guards crouched next to me to clean up the remains of the surgery: the blood and the pus and the blackened piece of flesh. I thanked him, even as my lungs begged for fresh air. I picked up my knife, cleaned it, sheathed it, then headed to the worn oak ladder that leaned against the open hatch above. I limped for a moment, my legs half-numb from kneeling.

  Batumar followed me, lost in thought. I remained silent as well, watching where I placed my feet on the rungs. Then we reached the deck, and I could not have said anything if I tried, for the sailor in the crow’s nest up the mainmast began shouting.

  “Land!”

  Chapter Three

  (Land at Last)

  I had seen battles that produced less clamor. A flock of seabirds circled above us in the air, but their cries drowned in the noise of men climbing up the ladder behind us. The soldiers already on deck rushed to the railing, loudly guessing what land awaited ahead.

  The sudden shift of weight rocked the ship, until Temro, the barrel-chested captain, began shouting from the helm, “Pull back, ye motherless bastards, curse yer eyes!”

  His four-pronged black beard fell to his chest, each prong representing one of the four directions of the compass, each wrapped in a length of blue leather cord to symbolize that the captain had mastered the seas and could take his ship anywhere he wanted.

  Batumar drew me through the throng of excited men, shielding me with his wide shoulders. Then, when we reached the railing, he moved me in front of him. Far on the horizon, the sun was setting over a dot of land, bathing it in an orange glow, as if both land and water were burning. I could not tear my gaze away.

  “No matter what island it is, they will have news of the other islands of Mirror Sea. They might know how Dahru fared in our absence.”

  Batumar responded with a heartfelt “Aye.”

  I had met the warlord after tragedy had taken most of his family, but he had four living daughters, all matched to warlords far from Karamur, the Kadars’ capital city. And he had only recently found his indomitable mother. The last we saw the Lady Leena, she was leaving on a pilgrimage to the sacred springs to thank the goddesses for returning her son to her. We had been worrying about our loved ones, and more than a little.

  “The island of Rabeen!” Captain Temro’s booming voice reached us from the helm.

  My heart danced around in my chest like a drunken sailor. Rabeen was an outlying island, a market island in the Strait of Ghel, the most commonly used entrance to Mirror Sea. The way home.

&nb
sp; A cry of celebration went up from the men, followed by more back clapping than at a wedding. If anyone bumped into me, I cared little, but the warlord placed a hand on the railing on either side of me to protect me from the jostling crowd. No matter what went on around us, I was always his first thought.

  “Blow the horn!” the captain called up to the crow’s nest. “Thrice repeated!”

  A horn blared, letting our other ships know—if they were close enough to hear—that we’d sighted land. But even after our horn sounded the second time, no response came.

  I turned my head enough to look at Batumar. “I wish we had a way to know how the Sword and the Lance fared.”

  We had sailed from the harbor of Uramit with five of the finest Landrian warships, each manned by fifty Landrian sailors and carrying two hundred soldiers. Our flagship, the Shield, a handsome six-sail carrack, had been accompanied by four square-sailed caravels.

  One caravel sank the day we entered the hardstorms. Another we lost halfway through the storms. Only two caravels trailed our flagship out of the graveyard of the ocean, the Sword and the Lance, but we lost sight of both in a blind fog shortly after. I prayed to the spirits daily to keep them safe.

  “If Lord Karnagh and Tomron did not lose their ships in the hardstorms, they will not lose them on calm seas.” Batumar’s gaze was steady, his voice sure.

  All the leaders of our army had begun the journey on the flagship. We used the first two days of our voyage on the Shield to strategize, to plan how we would approach our island once we reached it, how we would lead our combined armies.

  We stopped at an uninhabited atoll before entering the hardstorms, the deadly gales that left the wild ocean near impassable. Lord Karnagh, along with the other Selorm lords and their battle tigers, moved to the Sword, one of the four smaller, square-rigged caravels. Tomron, whom I had appointed the general of my army, boarded the Lance.

  Batumar and I should have separated and gone to the last two ships to lessen the risk of losing too many of the leaders if the flagship sank, but Prince Graho had insisted that I remain with him on the flagship because the carrack was the largest and the safest of our five vessels. Batumar, of course, remained with me. He rarely let me out of his sight. In truth, I did not want the warlord out of my sight either.