Book One – Chapter 18

Bubs held one of the double doors open. It was enough for Deltington and the krynn to ease the stretcher through, with the krynn’s back nudging the other door just wide enough to pass. Yu realised too late that he should have stepped forward to help. By the time he moved, they were already through. So he was left where he always seemed to end up; standing still and staring stupid.

As the right door swung wider, he caught glimpses of the room beyond. It was bare and cold, a surgery stripped to its bones. At its centre stood a massive slab of stone, hacked raw from the mountain except for its surface, which had been sanded to a flat, pale gleam. Its crooked base fused into the floor like roots. From each side hung broad metal plates, hinged to fold upward, so the block could be widened to hold even a borman.

The walls bore shelves heavy with tools that looked stolen from a butcher’s stall or a battlefield. Some were shaped like weapons, others like farm equipment. Their purposes wavered between repair and mutilation. Some had no clear use at all. Yu’s eyes flew over them and fled just as quickly; iron spreaders with ratcheting arms, bone levers wicked in curve, clamps wide as wings, tongs barbed like fishhooks — for pulling, holding, or tearing? As he spotted a whole array of saws, he forced his gaze lower, from the walls to the subtler things on the workbenches: kits of bone-handled needles, chisels as thin as quills, hammers with flat heads, wedges meant for splitting things apart, pincers that were nothing but angles and edges, and all right thank you that is enough.

The stretcher came down onto the slab. The leather straps creaked as the human’s body curled weakly against them. Her thin voice rasped through clenched teeth. It was just so much whimpering. Yu tore his eyes from the writhing thing and fixed them on the unconscious selder instead, but that did nothing to unhear her. The dread in him only rose. Oh god, he did not want to see him wake. He did not want to be here when his pain came loose.

“I can’t do it,” Yu blurted. His beak clicked shut on the words, too late to catch them. “Bubs, sorry, I really don’t —”

“You have your instructions.” Bubs had already turned toward the surgery.

“Bubs, wait!”

Bubs halted, one hand still on the door, ready to pull it shut.