Nerilka's Story Read Online Free PDF

Anella and that, if he was on the first story, she was expecting to have guest quarters. I myself would have put her on the inner corridor of the fifth story. But the apartment at the end of the first story was more than appropriate for her. There was no way that I would accommodate her in my mother’s suite, with its convenient access to Father’s sleeping room. My father was, after all, in isolation, and my mother was alive in Ruatha
    Anella had obeyed Tolocamp’s instruction to the letter. She had brought not only her two babies, but her mother, father, three younger brothers, and six of the frailer of her family dependents. How they managed to climb the fire-heights I did not inquire, but two of them looked about to collapse. They could go to the upper stories and be attended by our own elderlies. Anella pouted a bit at being assigned rooms so far from Tolocamp, but neither Campen nor I paid any attention to her remarks or to those of her shrewish mother. I was just relieved that the entire hold had not descended on us. I suspected the older two brothers had more sense than to chance their arms on their pert sister’s prospects. Although I felt Anella ought to be well able to care for her children, I did assign her two servants, one from the Nursery level and a general. I wished to have no complaints from my father about her reception or quarters. Any guest would have had as much courtesy from me. But I didn’t have to like it.
    Then I sped down to the kitchens to discuss the day with Felim. He needed only to be told he was doing splendidly. The kitchens are always the worst places for rumor and gossip. Fortunately, no one there understood the coded messages, although they must have recognized that the drum tower was unusually busy. Sometimes one knows the drums are relaying good news, happy tidings. The beat seems brighter, higher-pitched, as if the very skins are singing with pleasure at their work. So if I fancied that the drums were weeping today, who could blame me?
    Toward evening, mistakes were made in the messages relayed as weary drummer arms faltered in the beat. I was forced to endure repetitions—despairing pleas from Keroon and Telgar for healers to replace those who had died of the disease they tried to cure. I put plugs in my ears so that I could sleep. Even so, my eardrums seemed to echo the pulse of the day’s grievous news.

 
    Chapter IV
     
    3.14.43
     
     
     
    O NE OF THE plugs fell out during my restless sleep, so I heard the drums all too clearly that morning when they beat out the news of my mother’s death, and then the deaths of my sisters. I dressed and went to comfort Lilla, Nia, and Mara. Gabin crept in, his face reddened with the effort not to cry in public. He howled as he buried his head in my shoulder. And I cried, too. For my sisters and for myself who had not wished them a safe and happy journey.
    My brothers, all but Campen, sought us out during the morning and so we had the luxury of private grief. I wonder if any of us hoped that Tolocamp would fall ill of the disease he had left our mother and sisters to die from.
    When a messenger from Desdra found me, I welcomed him as an excuse to leave the sorrow-filled room. I could have gone down the back stairs to the stores to fill Desdra’s request for supplies, but I led the man through the main corridor. Clearly I heard my father’s vigorous voice calling out the window, and I saw Anella lurking just round the first bend in the corridor. Quick as a snake, she scuttled away, but the gloating smirk on her face provoked me past indifference to active dislike and disgust of her.
    The healer apprentice was hard-pressed to keep up with me as I whipped down the spiral stairs to the lower levels. When I piled sack upon sack of the herbs and root medicines that Desdra had listed, he protested that he wouldn’t be able to lug so much to the Healer Hall. I summoned a drudge, my voice almost a shriek, and the scared Sim rushed in answer,