Chapter Nine
Konrad was confined to bed for two weeks, which left him with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it was rather dull. He had books to read, but that got old fairly quickly, and he received few visitors. He suffered a great deal of pain, even with the assistance of Nanda’s herbs and potions, and that was an unpleasantness he would gladly have dispensed with if he could.
On the other hand, he was warm; the luxuries of Bakar House afforded him all the blankets and pillows and roaring fires he could possibly wish for. It had to beat trekking about in the frozen Bone Forest.
And he did have some visitors. Nanda came every day, though she did not usually stay long. The serpents pestered him all day long, to the point that he began to feel he would cheerfully strangle them if they we
