"Mercedes Lackey & Larry Dixon - Mage Wars 01 - The Black Gryphon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

blood clots and filtering them from the bloodstream, until the wings had been wrapped in a binding of
energies that would, in time, allow Skandranon to fly again.
Skandranon moaned and coughed weakly, as if something were caught in his throat. His breathing
steadied as the fourth Healer pushed him back into slumber, but he was taken by a fit of coughing again
that caused everyone near to hold onto him tightly. Amberdrake was peripherally aware of Tamsin
putting his arm down Skandranon's gullet while an assistant held the beak open with a metal bar, and then
the badly wounded gryphon wheezed, shook, and fell into deep sleep again.
The assistants administered fortifying herbal and mineral infusions of all kinds into the gryphon while
Amberdrake set Skandranon's fractured forearms and splinted his foreclaws.
Finally, it was over, and he swayed away from the table, letting the assistants do their mechanical
labor of bandaging and bracing. He saw then that Tamsin and Cinnabar had already finished; Cinnabar
was telling the litter bearers where to take Skan, and Tamsin had disappeared. The early morning sun
shone brightly through the walls of the tent, making them glow with a warm amber light.
The tables and floors were a disaster. Blood—how could a flyer hold so much blood? he
thought—and cut-away feathers pasted bits of bark and leaves to the floor. On the table, a length of a
crossbow bolt lay amid the other debris, next to something that was relatively clean—a leather-wrapped
handle of some kind, perhaps a broken sword. That must have been what was blocking his throat,
Amberdrake thought numbly. How would it get there...?
Amberdrake blinked once and staggered back.
"No, you don't!" Gesten left Skandranon's side to go to Amberdrake's, getting under the
kestra'chern's arm and bracing him upright. "It's bed for you, Drake. Skan's going to be fine—but you'd
better lie down before you pass out!"
"I think you're right," Amberdrake murmured, actually finding a chuckle somewhere. Skan's going
to be all right. He made it back. That was all that really mattered, after all. The cold place inside him
had warmed; the emptiness erased. Skan made it back.
With Gesten's help, he tottered off down the slight slope to the kestra'chern's portion of the camp,
just beyond the Healers'. He was so tired, he hardly noticed when he was guided into his own tent,
except that the bright light of the morning sun dimmed, and the cool, fresh air took on a tinge of incense
and body-scent. That was when he pulled away from Gesten, staggered to his bed, and collapsed across
it. He managed to position himself the right way, but after that, he knew nothing more.

Amberdrake felt Skandranon's pain and frustration as he awoke. Even after—how many?—hours
of needed oblivion, there was a dull ache in Amberdrake's body in all the places he'd helped Heal in
Skandranon's body the night before. In all the places that Amberdrake didn't have a direct analog
to—the wings and tail, especially the wings—there was an ache. It was an aftershock effect that Healers
knew well and had to live with; in the case of the wing pain, it bunched in Amberdrake's shoulder blades
and upper arms, like a bruised muscle cramping to the bone.
Amberdrake had awakened feeling as if he had run for days carrying a full pack; as if he had
worked for two days without a rest—
—in short, as if he had served his full roster of clients, then Healed a gravely injured gryphon.
Gesten—loyal, competent Gesten—had drawn the sleeping-curtains to block as much light as
possible from reaching the exhausted kestra'chern and was, no doubt, away from the tent clearing
Amberdrake's schedule of responsibilities.
Amberdrake pulled the blankets from himself and stood up, steadying himself on a ring set into the
oversized bed frame. He washed quickly and gulped down a meal of meat strips and flatbread, then
pulled on the caftan and belt Gesten had laid out for him. By his clothes was a roster-sheet of
appointments for the day; all but one had been crossed out, and that one was not due for another two
hours.
Amberdrake stepped out from the spell-quieted canvas of his multiroomed tent into the afternoon
daylight of the camp. Messenger-birds shot past, brightly colored, calling their descending chittering cry,