Drawn Blades Read Online Free PDF Page A

And then, with a faint puff, the smoke form collapsed in on itself and Siri was gone.
    “Next time,” I said to Faran as gently as frustration would allow, “please save the arguments until
after
the important questions are all asked and answered.”
    She looked down at her feet, but nodded anyway.
    “When do we leave?” asked Triss.
    I thought about it for a moment. “We’ll have to stop at the house and the fallback at the abandoned warehouse both to collect all the supplies we’ll need for traveling before we hit the western road. That’ll take some time. We really ought to leave here within a quarter of an hour if we want to get clear of the city yet tonight.”
    “I’m coming with you,” said Faran.
    I was not feeling in charity with her, and I immediately shook my head. “No, you’re not. You have to complete your healing here, with Harad.”
    “Look,” said Faran, “we can have this argument, and you might even win. But if you do, I’ll only sneak out and follow you like I did the last time, and the result will be the same as if you’d just agreed in the first place. Besides, Harad says that I’m at a stopping point in his treatment anyway, so the timing is perfect.”
    I looked at Harad.
    He spread his hands noncommittally. “What I said was that we needed to take a break from your sessions so that you could rest and see how the healing was working. A two-thousand-mile speed run across the eastern edge of the eleven kingdoms isn’t exactly what I had in mind. . . .”
    Faran looked stubborn. “It’ll be
much
more restful for me than staying here would be. I’d fret myself into a mess worrying about all the trouble Aral will get himself into if he doesn’t have anyone to watch his back.”
    “Hey!” Triss flicked his wings grumpily.
    “You know what I mean, Triss,” said Faran. “Given the sort of trouble a buried god is likely to pose, can you honestly say that you won’t need all the help you can get?”
    “There is that,” Triss agreed reluctantly. “But I’m not taking you anywhere unless Ssithra and Shang both agree.”
    Ssithra contracted briefly in a shrug. “I gave up arguing with her when she gets this tone in her voice years ago. But you’re right. If Shang doesn’t think it’s a good idea, we’re not going.”
    At that point, all eyes turned to the river dragon. While Harad might be the one formally in charge of Faran’s treatment, it was Shang who was ultimately responsible for her progress. The curative powers of the great water dragons were without peer—most of the healing springs of legend had drawn their magic from a resident dragon.
    Shang slid his huge head down and forward till he was inches from Faran. Then, much more gently than he had done with me, he extended the tips of his tongue to touch either side of Faran’s forehead. He stayed like that, perfectly still for several minutes before finally drawing back and canting his head to one side so that he could look deep into her eyes with one of his own.
    “I know your vision is much improved, though it will never be perfect again. But tell me true, child, how are your headaches?”
    “Bad,” Faran said in a small voice. “But not nearly so frequent as they were, and never so awful that I think about killing myself anymore.”
    The dragon sighed, then nodded. “If you do this thing, I do not believe that you will backslide. But neither will you get better. It is true that you need a time away from my active care to set what we have done so far. But if you spend the time moving about rather than resting, what might have taken a few weeks will take some months at the least, and I won’t be there to soothe the pain for you.”
    Faran winced. “I know, but I won’t be resting if I don’t go with Aral either. I’ll be stuck here alone with Ssithra and going mad with worry, just like I did when he went to face the Son of Heaven alone. He’s too gentle, and that’s going to get him killed one of