Grenspad

Grenspad is a green spiky leaf with yellow veins, taken by mouth to numb pain. Tab was told it was "used by surgeons to numb pain", and keeps leaves of it at her desert camp among chests of herbs, leaves and plant parts gathered over the years from merchants passing through Varaar and elsewhere.^[1]

Use

A leaf is chewed whole. Tab pulled several from the pile, put one in her mouth and pocketed the rest, then carried on with a fractured foot she had cut her own boot away from and a wound of Fawn's still to close.^[1]

It can also be given to someone too far gone to chew. With Fawn barely conscious and bleeding from a beating, Tab pulled her chin down gently and squeezed several droplets of goop from a leaf into her mouth, then sutured the wound with a cactus needle while she lay quiet.^[1]

The relief does not last. Waking hours later with the pain shooting back up her leg, Tab took another leaf, and the pain only momentarily dissipated.^[1]

Other numbing leaves

Grenspad is not the only leaf in Eslura used against pain. Alpin Loomin carried a leaf almost as large and wide as his own body through the forest and wrapped it around the bite on Barnaby Britto's arm, telling him to keep it on because it was a pavlosia leaf and would numb the pain. Barnaby could feel nothing under it almost at once.^[2] That is the only appearance pavlosia makes, and nothing else about the plant is recorded beyond its name in the pronunciation guides.^[3]

Behind the scenes

Grenspad is listed under Other in the pronunciation guide at the front of A Sacred Tale Collection, as Gren-spad. Neither novel's guide carries it.^[4]