Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 64872 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 259(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64872 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 259(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
We slap on our soggy feather masks and race back through the caves into the harsher light of the clearing. Four of the teams have arrived. The royal team and the Orange Cloaks are swirling with autumn-coloured magic as they spell the antidote, while the other two teams are crawling to their patients, suffering under the effects of the puff.
For one of those teams, the poison clogging their meridians makes using their magic impossible. The other team at least left a person behind with their patient, someone whose meridians are still intact. But they only absorbed the pollen in the cave, didn’t bring any nectar back; they need to use an extraction spell, which would tire the one magic wielder, before they can work on the antidote—or, they have to go back into the caves . . .
I sink to my knees at our patient’s side and check his pulse, asking Olyn to give me her calculations. She tells me how long between bouts of seizures and I call out measurements to Megaera, who gets to work grinding the herbs we picked up earlier and the key nectar.
Two flags are raised—onlookers cheer for the royal team and the orange one. The teams next to me are yelling out solutions. The team who’ve lost throw a sachet to the sole magic wielder in the team that still has a chance.
I don’t look over. I don’t let the glow of magic distract me. My vision tunnels to my patient and his consumption of our antidote. He chokes on the bitterness but swallows, and Megaera and Olyn hold their breath as I keep two fingers at his pulse, waiting for the change . . .
I focus on the rhythmic beat of blood under my fingers becoming slower, smoother, silky—
“Judge!” I call, and our shocked orchestrator stumbles to our patient. His face pales.
“He’s cured,” I say.
“How could he be . . .” the judge looks at me strangely, like his own magic has to be failing him when he checks.
The next team call for a judge, and my heart rams against my chest. “Your flag. Raise your flag.”
“But . . . but . . . you don’t have magic.”
I stare hard into his puzzled gaze. “This trial of itself is the reason why you should not be shocked. Poisons and perils. Save and survive. The sharp and the weak. . . . With the peril of being poisoned, vitalians may have their meridians temporarily damaged. To survive, they have to find other ways. Healing methods like ours. You are a healer. Judge from your heart.”
He stares at me and slowly his disbelief morphs into respect. Just as the neighbouring judge grabs his flag, ours shoots his arm into the air, golden fabric flapping smartly.
I sink onto my haunches, murmuring over and over my gratitude to the world for this narrow win. My enthusiasm is not shared by many. Megaera and Olyn, the prins, Kjartan, the stormblades. The rest—the surrounding teams and the crowds between the trees—are silent. The kind of silent that tries to smother overwhelming mortification. The kind of silent that precedes a storm of anger, frustration, retaliation.
I dare to glance at the regent and my nape prickles. He’s staring right at us, one hand drumming the arm of his throne.
The sixth team—the team that had been rendered unconscious by fungi spores—emerge from the caves, their mouths and noses still covered. They bow to the remaining teams, graciously accepting their loss. “Thank you to whoever aided us. Only true healers would stop in a race to help the helpless.”
Teams look at one another, and I hold Megaera tight with a quiet shake of my head. Under the eyes of the regent, it’ll only add fuel to the fury. Florentius, not far from me, catches my eye and I feign a clumsy fall in his direction, tossing a pouch to his feet. He bends to pick it up as I gather myself and murmur under my breath. “There’s more nectar in there. Make a show of it.”
His intelligent eyes hit mine; he rises and pulls his team with him in a dramatic display of saving the last suffering patients—and curing the members of the failed teams.
The sixth team assume the royal vitalians are their heroes too, and again bow to them. Whispers of how gallant, gracious, and generous the royal team is sweep through the crowds until they’re chanting. Medicinal and moral winners. The clear favourites.
The regent is placated by this show of enthusiasm for his chosen team and announces—to the shock of the orchestrators—that he himself will design the third and final trial, and that it’ll be more difficult than any that has come before. “An impossible challenge, if you will.” His gaze cuts to mine and he adds, with a sudden soft smile that makes me shiver, “But as a token to our guest team, I’ll give it a Skeldar twist.”