I gasped. It was cold water. Very cold water. Water so icy it shocked and numbed my entire body.

Stunned, I didn't move, couldn't breathe. I just stared at him, feeling like a whipped dog thrown out into the pouring rain in the dead of winter just in time to be kicked by a runaway horse.

“Now,” said Aber, “we're even.” He grinned mischievously at me.

Folding my arms, I silently cursed all siblings to the worst of the seven hells. Fathers, too. A special torture-pit must be reserved for the gleefully malevolent. Dworkin had doubled up with laughter.

So I glared at both of them and waited for their composure to return.

“Remember, Oberon,” Dworkin said sharply, catching his breath. He leaned toward me, one stubby finger leveled at my eyes. As I focused on him, his entire body seemed to waver like a flame in a strong breeze. “No sleeping. If you go to sleep, there is a good chance you will never wake up.”

I gave a low growl of displeasure. I wasn't sure if I meant it for him or Aber.

“We need to talk,” I said to Dworkin.

“Not now.” He returned to the table, gathered up half a dozen scrolls scattered there and hurried out the door.

“When—” I began.

The door slammed before I could finish. I looked at Aber.

“Off to see the king,” my brother said with a half sigh. “I told you he'd been summoned, remember?”

“Why?”

“Dad petitioned for an audience. It took a while. Everything has its proper time and ceremony. And I'm afraid Dad isn't held in very high regard at the Courts. None of us is.”

What rot. I saw the truth. The delay was a deliberate insult… King Uthor's way of letting us know we weren't important enough to merit his attention. We would have to change that. Being here was the first step. Making ourselves important would be the second.

Right now, though, I felt like crawling into bed, pulling the covers over my ears, and hiding from the world for the next ten years. Fathers and their advice be damned, if I could just get rid of Aber…

“You should go with Dad,” I suggested.

“Hah! He would never let me.” A sour note crept into his voice.

“I'm not like you…”

“He didn't ask me.”

“No, he wouldn't. Not with you being sick. He would have taken Locke, though. He was always the privileged one. The favorite son. And now there's you, of course. As soon as you're well, you'll take Locke's place.”

“If you're not happy with your place here, do something about it.”

He chuckled. “What do you suggest? Should I murder my way to the top of the family? Make sure I'm the last male heir, so he has to depend on me whether he likes it or not?”

“No. But I'm sure there's something…”

“Uh-uh. Dad doesn't like me. That's not going to change.” He smiled a bit at my expression. “I do have a plan, though, and I am doing something to help. I don't stand around all day whining about my place in the family, you know.”

I gave him a searching look, but he didn't elaborate. I changed the subject.

“I don't suppose you have any intention of letting me go back to sleep?”

“Nope.” He focused on me and grinned wolfishly. His horns were back. “One must take these small pleasures as they come. Just try, and I'll empty a lake on your head!”

“You're a sadist!”

“I'll take that as a compliment.”

I gave him a half-hearted glower. “Then how about a towel? And maybe some dry clothes.”

“Well… not just yet, dear brother. I've been ordered to keep you awake, and that's what I'm going to do. I don't want you too comfortable just yet.”

Dripping, cold and miserable and thoroughly wide awake now, I stumbled to one of the dragon-backed chairs, sat heavily, and glared at him. At least the room wasn't moving so much anymore. Maybe there was something to his “Chaos legs” theory. Or the ice-water had shocked the worst of the disorientation from me.

“I am going to kill you, you know,” I promised. “Don't think this is over.”

He gave a thoroughly evil chuckle.

“First you have to catch me,” he said, “and I don't think you're up to it.”

At that remark, I rose and took a step toward him. The room jumped and shook. My skin seemed to be on fire. Winds howled in my ears.

I ignored everything and took another step. No matter what it cost, I wouldn't let him get the better of me. That was the difference between us. No one ever got the better of me.

“You ought to sit down,” he said hastily.

“No.” I gritted my teeth and took another step. Then another.

“You're going to fall.”

“You'd be amazed at what I can do,” I said, “when I put my mind to it.”

One foot at a time. I took another step. Everything around me swayed. That howling noise, like wind but a hundred times louder, filled my ears.

Chaos legs, indeed.

I reached for him.

Aber gulped.

Chapter 3

I don't know if it was the shock of the cold water or just getting up out of bed and moving around, but it came to me suddenly, as I was advancing with malicious intent on my brother, that I had stopped paying so much attention to the strange noises, pulsing colors, and seemingly random movements of the universe around me. Instead, by focusing all my attention on fratricide, I found myself at least beginning to compensate for the distractions around me. With effort, I could stand and walk on my own—if awkwardly and unsteadily. A small improvement, but an important one.

Aber suddenly laughed, then reached into the air, felt around for a second, and plucked a large white towel seemingly from nothingness.

“Here.” He threw the towel in my face. “You're no fun when you're wet.”

“About time you realized it.”

I shook my head like a dog caught in the rain, mindless of the way the room suddenly lurched and dipped, just to spray him with droplets. A petty revenge; I quickly regretted it.

“Hey!” He shielded his face.

That gave me some small satisfaction. Then, as I began to blot myself dry, he flopped down on one of the chairs, watching me like a hunter studying an unfamiliar beast. Somehow, I got the impression he didn't trust me not to keel over dead or unconscious at any moment. Well, he had me up, and now I had no intention of resting. Sick or not, I had to find out what I'd missed. We hadn't come here for me to waste time sleeping.

“How long was I in bed?” I demanded.

“Three days.”

“Three!” I stared at him, scarcely able to believe it. “Impossible!”

He shrugged. “We've been busy. Dad finally decided you weren't going to wake up on your own, so we spent the last three hours talking to you, shaking you, and yelling at you. You only started to respond when he told you some king needed you. Not King Uthor, I guess?”

“King Elnar. I served him in Ilerium.” I shook my head, then winced as it suddenly throbbed; the room whirled around me, then steadied a bit when I stopped moving. “I barely heard you. I was dreaming. I thought I was sailing on a ship.”

“A ship? Why?”

“This room—this place—it all feels like it's moving. It still does. But it's not, is it? It's me?”

“Afraid so, Oberon.”

I sighed. When I stayed still, the room largely stopped jumping around. Turning slowly and carefully, making no sudden movements, I found the floor seemed to glide subtly underfoot, as though trying to shift with or against me depending on which way I turned. Cold and damp and sick and altogether miserable just about summed up my condition. But for now the worst of the dizziness had passed, and with it at least some of my desire to strangle Aber.

Feeling less like a drowned dog, I threw the towel back at his head. He caught it, tossed it aside, and made it disappear with a snap of his fingers as easily as he had appeared it.

“No sleeping,” he warned me again.