Riklon

Riklon is the master who keeps the infirmary of the Archon in the Mürekkep ve Çelik ("Ink and Steel") campaign. He heals with medicine, splints and herbs, and says plainly that he is no priest. Castor credits him with pulling him back from grave harm three or four times.^{1 2}

After the witch hunters

When Traumir and the paladins brought Castor to the infirmary late at night, his face swollen and many of his bones and fingers broken, one finger cut off, Riklon came in his nightclothes. He set the bones, splinted and bound them and cleaned the wounds with alcohol. Castor wished to stay awake through it; in the end Riklon gave him something to help him sleep.³

He came often to dress the wounds and keep out infection, and would not let Castor get up. They spoke of finding a priest, perhaps of Amarath, to restore the lost finger, but nothing came of it. Before letting him go he gave him a wolfsbane draught to take after meals and a sea-salt remedy for pain, told him to come back if a phantom itch troubled the missing finger, since it might help his thesis, and said he could learn to make the gestures of his spells with another finger. He recommended wine for the shock, and told him not to make a habit of coming back hurt.^{4 1}

After the Dwarf Gate

Castor was among the first of the wounded brought back to the Archon after the battle at the Dwarf Gate, and Riklon met him at the door. He prescribed four months of rest on crutches, slow exercise and reading in bed. When Herrenhal came and kept prodding the sore places, the healer was too much in awe of the grandmaster to stop him, though he protested at Herrenhal's other advice.^{5 6 7}

Castor said he had nearly saved the emperor. Riklon answered from his long years of healing that the will of the gods cannot be forestalled: if the Watcher means to take someone, the Watcher will. He told him to eat well, take honey, sleep regularly, keep out of the wind, and not walk without his crutches.⁸

Farewell

Before Castor's master's exam, Riklon was stitching the brows of two children hurt in a fight over a ball game, and put one to sleep with a spell. He told Castor of a teacher who had come out of the exam two years earlier, saying it had gone well, but had needed twelve or thirteen hours of surgery and could not walk without a draught the healer prepared three times a month; the name that slipped out was Nocklin's. The colour of the seal on a certificate, he advised, is not the only thing that defines a person.^{9 10 11}

He missed Castor's mastery ceremony because he was tending someone badly hurt, and Castor thanked him in his absence.^{12 2}