Free The Rivers of Zadaa by D.J. MacHale

#20
(CONTINUED)
    ZADAA
    T he first thing I saw was Loor.
    I had opened my eyes a crack. Only a crack. That’s as far as they’d go. I guess it was because they were swollen from the pummeling I’d gotten. But I didn’t have to open them far to recognize Loor. She was sitting close, looking at me. The expression on her face didn’t change when I opened my eyes. I think that’s because my eyes didn’t open far enough to even look like they were open. But I could see her, and she looked fine. And worried.
    â€œHow long?” I asked, though I have no idea what it sounded like because my mouth felt about as dry as that sand farm where we met the Tiggen guards. When she heard me croak, Loor snapped to attention and came to my side. She knelt down near my head, which made me realize I was in bed and not still lying in the Ghee compound.
    â€œPendragon!” she exclaimed. “I was afraid you would never wake up!” There was true feeling in her voice. She sounded worried, relieved, concerned…all those good emotions I wasn’t sure she actually had in her. At least as they applied to me, anyway. It made me feel much better. Okay, maybe not much better since I was a swollen mass of throbbing pain. But I figured I should take the good stuff where I could get it.
    â€œWater?” I asked, and immediately realized I had just asked for the one thing it was probably impossible to give. But I got it. Loor held a cup to my mouth, and I took a sip. It felt good on my lips, and in my mouth, but I coughed when I tried to swallow and blew most of it back out again. What a waste of an eighth of an ounce of liquid gold.
    â€œOops” was all I could say, lamely.
    â€œAgain,” Loor ordered and gave me another sip.
    I was in more control this time and was able to take a sip and swallow. The water helped to lubricate things a little, so I was able to speak without sounding like Frankenstein’s monster.
    â€œHow long?” I asked again.
    â€œSince the fight?” Loor asked.
    I nodded. It hurt to nod. I was about to find out that doing a lot of things was going to hurt. Including breathing, eating, moving…pretty much everything including blinking. Yes, it even hurt to blink.
    â€œYou have been asleep for twelve suns,” Loor answered.
    Twelve suns. The days on Zadaa were around twenty-four hours long, as far as I could tell. That meant I had been unconscious for nearly two weeks, give or take a sun. I think Loor must have seen the surprise on my face because she quickly said, “You were given herbs to help you sleep, and heal.”
    Oh. So I had been drugged for nearly two weeks. I guessed that was better than being in a coma from having been beaten into mush. I was slowly focusing, which wasn’t such a hot thing. My mind was coming around, but that meant I was becoming more aware of the sad and painful shape I was in. Everything hurt. Everything. Except my toes. My toes were cool. Woo-hoo! I thought of asking for a little bit more of that herb she had mentioned so I could slip back into dreamland, but decided I should stick around in reality for a while. Looking around, I saw that we were in a small room with stone walls. It looked very much like Loor’s home in the Ghee pyramid, but there wasn’t much in here except for the bed with the grass mattress that I was lying on, a stone chair where Loor had been sitting, and a low table that had some cups on it. Loor must have seen that I was trying to get my bearings because she said, “This is where the Batu care for the sick and injured.”
    I was in the Batu hospital. It looked straight out of The Flintstones. I wondered if some goofy pelican would show up and deliver my medication. I know, dumb thought, but give me a break. I was hurting, and drugged.
    â€œSaint Dane?” I whispered.
    â€œGone,” was Loor’s answer. “I asked many of the Ghee if they knew him, but nobody had