Excerpt from Plea to a Frozen God

 Please enjoy this excerpt from my new fantasy novel Plea to a Frozen God:

The infirmary door slammed shut and Riggan pulled off the prince’s two-layered boots. Sweat beaded on her brow as the roaring fireplace warmed the sterile room. She continued to remove Prince Ligo’s clothing. Urine soaked his trousers. Could have been worse. With a warm, damp cloth, she cleaned and inspected each part of his body.

“No external injuries, thank Fieg.” She imagined a scowling King Kolf breathing down her neck.

Riggan covered the naked prince with a blanket, then hurried to her apothecary cabinet and began grabbing ingredients. He’ll have a headache, for sure, and I’ll need to warm his blood and get it flowing.

“Willow bark, betony, verbena,” she mumbled as she worked. “Some cumin and mint.”

Riggan added the ingredients to a ceramic mortar and began grinding the grassland herbs and flowering plants into a powder. She added the pain-relieving concoction to a simmering alembic solution and then increased the heat. The mystic repeated the process for a second elixir, using sage and snogre blood.

With the amalgams boiling gently, she grasped her lodestone and returned to her still-unconscious patient. Riggan wiped the sweat from her brow. Standing toe to heel, she slipped off her boots, providing relief from the sweltering room. The stench from his soiled garments intensified in the warm air. Riggan kicked her boots under the table and uncovered Prince Ligo. With the lodestone in her right hand, she traced his bare skin with the magnetic mineral while pressing his flesh with her left hand.

Riggan started at Prince Ligo’s head, running her fingers through his curly hair, feeling his scalp for abnormalities. Convinced his skull was physically unharmed, she advanced her examination to his limbs. Riggan sensed the stone’s subtle magnetic field while probing flesh and muscle to the bone. She covered each sinewy arm, around shoulder and armpit, across his smooth forearm and long fingers, all the way to the tips. She repeated the procedure for each leg and found no injury or affliction. His fitness is certainly not an issue.

She inspected his chest, feeling each rib, from spine to sternum, then on to his abdomen as it rose and fell with each breath, using her deft fingers to prod his organs. Lodestone’s telling me nothing.

She moved to his groin and noticed his first bodily reaction to her touch. That’s a good sign. Riggan would dutifully check every inch of him to discover what was wrong. Her lifelong training provided her an unparalleled knowledge of the body. And yet, she lingered over him, completely flummoxed. Can’t find anything wrong. Why won’t he waken?

With her hand still between Prince Ligo’s legs, she startled as King Kolf cleared his throat behind her.