"Silence!" Dolanna snapped, holding the shirt harder to his bare chest. She had to stop the blood. If she could just stop the bleeding! Then he may have a chance! She could feel his hearbeat through the shirt held up to his chest. She could feel it slowing more and more, becoming irregular in its rhythm, see that his breathing was becoming shallower and shallower. He was starting to falter!

"No, Tarrin, do not give up!" she said in a desperate tone. "We are here for you!"

But her pleas had no effect. His heartbeat stopped for a span of seconds, each an eternity to her, then it started up again, much weaker than before. It managed only a few beats before it stopped again, and then he let out all his breath in a slow sigh.

Then she felt someone behind her. Dolanna turned to look, and gaped in astoundment as Triana stepped through the doorway. As tall as Azakar and as lithe as Allia, the strong-featured Were-cat took only one look at the three of them, and then at Tarrin. Her expression never changed from its stony mask as she reached out and put her paws on his chest, between Dolanna's hands, and looked right at her. "Don't move it," she said. "And be careful. When I do this, he may jump."

Dolanna nodded wordlessly and pushed down hard. She never felt anything, but Tarrin's body suddenly convulsed, and he took in a powerful breath, as if he'd been dunked into a icy pond. Then he collapsed back to the bed, his hearbeat and breathing stronger.

"What did you do?" Allia asked in worry.

"Gave him the strength he needs," she replied in her powerful voice. "Now keep that bandage on the wound. I'm not done yet."

The three of them watched as she kept her paws on him. They couldn't see anything that she did, but Tarrin lost the pallor that had denoted the loss of blood, and his breathing stabilized into a very slow rhythm. "Keep that bandage on him," she said again. "Don't move it until I tell you to."

"Why are you doing this?" Dolanna managed to ask, keeping her elation that he seemed to be improving to herself. "Tarrin said you meant to kill him."

"I've meant to kill my other children from time to time as well," she said gruffly, keeping her paws on him. "He's no different."

"Your child?"

"He is now," she snorted. "And I don't let my children die unless I'm the one that kills them. Who did this to him?"

"It was the Wikuni," Allia said quietly. "They ambushed us. Tarrin never had a chance."

"I saw them," she said. "I'll deal with them later. Right now, I'm needed here. You, out," she said, looking at Faalken. "Stand at this door and kill anyone that tries to come in. You, go get some hot water and rags. We need to clean the wound before we dress it," she ordered of Allia. "You, Sorceress, stay here. I need your Sorcery."

"I cannot heal him."

"I know, but you can use your power in other ways. We need to get this rag off of him and bandage him without reopening the wound, and we'll need your power to do it."

"As you command," she said obediently. "Allia, Faalken, do as she says. Tarrin's life is in her hands."

"Is he going to be alright?" Allia asked hesitantly.

"I can't promise anything, but he's tough. I think he'll make it, if we're very careful."

Allia burst into tears, and Faalken embraced her. "Go on, my dear ones," Dolanna said gently. "Tarrin still needs us."

It was like trying to find a way out of nowhere.

Tarrin's consciousness floated in a sea of blackness, and he was curiously detached from his senses. He'd felt that way before, and a part of him seemed to understand that he'd been hurt. But he couldn't recall when or how it happened. He floated in that sea of nothingness for either a second or eternity before the first fringes of sensation reached him, wondering what had happened.

The first sensation was pain. A chronic wave of pain that seemed buried in his chest, and emanated out in pulses timed with the beating of his heart. He was somewhat accustomed to feeling pain, but this was something new. Even in his detached state, he could tell that it was intense, acute pain, pain that would leave him thrashing about in agony if he were fully conscious. But it felt strange to him, knowing that it was pain, yet not reacting to it as he felt that he should. To him, it merely was, and though it was a bad sensation, there was no fear or worry in it for him, and it couldn't seem to touch him.

But that pain became more and more focused. He began understanding it, realizing that it was the pain of a deep wound, and it became clearer and clearer to him. It did start to feel for him, and he began to get uncomfortable with it lodged inside him the way it was. But as the sense of the pain sharpened in him, so too did other senses. He became fuzzily aware of sounds around him, of someone holding his paw, of the feel of sheets against bare skin. A cool sensation on his skin, like the air of an autumn night. But overwhelming all of them was the pain.

It was in his chest. It went through his chest, like a spear of pain that drove right through his heart, and it was the beating of his heart that made the pain throb through him.

He had no idea where he was, what had happened, or why he was there. Wherever there was. Everything seemed hazed over his semi-conscious awareness, and he found it hard to even think. He couldn't remember anything, and images from his memory seemed to drift through his mind randomly. Memories of his life before Jesmind, memories of Jesmind and the Tower. Strange memories, things that seemed like they belonged to someone else. Of him and Allia and Keritanima in the baths, laughing and playing like children in the empty chamber, splashing at one another. Of the day he found the strange gossamer wing that still resided in his special box, one of his most prized and treasured possessions. Images of his mother, Elke Kael, holding her axe lightly in her hand and teaching him the best way to hold a sword. Of the many fights he'd had with Jenna when both of them were very young. How they had hated each other when they were very small, only to outgrow it and have it turn into a powerful friendship when they entered adolescence. He couldn't remember when that had happened, of which memory was older than which, or even of what had happened recently. The images were a jumble, and he couldn't sort out which ones were long ago, and which were only last month.

He felt someone squeeze his paw. It was a strong contact, strong in physical power and strong in the sensitivity of the touch. He struggled to find some way to tell whoever was holding his paw that he knew it was there, that he was nearly awake, but he couldn't figure out where his paws were.

The effort had cost him, more than he realized. He spiralled back into the unfathomable blackness.

The next time he clawed himself near the surface of his sleep, things seemed different. The pain was still there, but it seemed somewhat duller now, as if time had taken the edge off of it. There was warmth now rather than cold, and he could sense light striking his eyelids. He could hear garbled voices, and it seemed that his ears were trying to discover the direction from which they issued. There was still someone holding onto his paw, squeezing it gently. But this time, he had enough sense of himself to understand which muscles to use to respond.

"Dolanna!" a voice said in a frenzy. For some reason, he could understand the words now, when before it was nothing but a jumble, but he couldn't identify the voice. "He squeezed my hand!"

About that time, he managed to remember how his nose worked. The scents in the place where he was were thick, and the air was a bit stuffy. It was someplace small, someplace with no windows to let air flow. The coppery smell of Allia was the first one he managed to pick out, then he could identify the lavender scent of Dolanna. Dar's dusky scent registered to him, as did the leathery smell of Faalken. There were other scents in the room, a few he couldn't identify, but the musky smell of Triana was almost immediately recognizable.