Roth's silent urging to withdraw, to flow back out of her brother and to her own body, to save herself. She refused, drawing more heavily on the energy of her body, feeding it to Bernard, to his laboring heart. She sent everything she could reach coursing into him and felt it flowing out of her, somewhere, felt herself growing weaker. She gave her brother all that she was: her love of him, her love for Tavi, terror at the prospect of his death, frustration, agony, fear, the joy of glowing memories, and the despair of the darkest moments of her life. She held back nothing.
Bernard quivered again and abruptly gasped in a breath of air that filled his lungs like cold fire. He coughed, and the horrible stillness abruptly fractured and fled as his lungs labored again and again and again.
Isana felt relief flood over her, as his body grew stronger, as the energy of him began to flow again, as the rhythm of his heart began to quicken and become regular, a hammer pulse that coursed throughout her awareness. She felt Rill dimly, as the fury moved through him, and felt her gentle confusion. Once again, Roth attempted to send something to her, through their furies, but she was too tired to understand it, too lost in relief and exhaustion to understand. She let her awareness drift, felt herself sinking down, into a darkness, into warmth that promised her rest from all of her anxiety and pain and weariness.
And then a dull fire pulsed in her. She thought that she remembered the sensation, from some time long before. Her descent slowed for a moment.
Again, the fire came. And again. And again.
Pain. I am feeling fain.
In a detached, remote, and unconcerned part of her awareness, she understood what was happening. Roth had been right. She had given too much of herself and had been unable to return to her own body. Too tired, too relaxed, too weak. She would die, back there beside the tub, her body simply slumping to the floor and empty of life.
The fire flared again, somewhere back up and away from the darkness.
The dead feel no fain, she thought. Pain is for the living.
She reached out toward it, toward that fire in the night. The delicious descent halted, though part of her screamed out against it. She reached back for the pain, but did not move, did not begin to rise again.
It is too late. I cannot go back.
She tried, regardless. She struggled against the stillness, the warmth. She struggled to live.
Sudden light flared like a newborn sun above her. Isana reached for it, embraced that distant fire with every part of her that still lived. It washed over her in a flood and became an instant, blazing torment, horrible and bright, an agony more searing than anything she had ever known. She felt a dizzying wrenching sensation and a sudden rush of confusion, of emptiness where Rill had been before, of more and more pain.
She went back into it, and gladly. The light, the agony, became all consuming, her limbs aching, her lungs burning with her ragged breath, her head pounding, and her mind screaming as raw sensation poured into it.
She heard shouts. Someone was screaming, and there was a heavy thump of impact. Then more screams. Fade, she thought.
"Get a blanket," replied Roth's steady voice. "And another for Bernard."
"Broth for both, they'll need food."
"I know that. Someone get that idiot slave out of here before he hurts someone else."
The general cloud of pain over her began to resolve itself, by slow degrees, to a dull throb in her hand, and a sweet and oddly satisfying ache of exhaustion spread throughout her. She opened her eyes and turned her head to one side to see Bernard looking blearily around him. She fumbled her hand toward him and saw the fingers of it swollen and oddly shaped. She touched him, and the pain swept down on her, blinded her.
"Easy, Isana." Roth took her wrist and gently pressed her hand back down. "Easy. You need to rest."
"Tavi," Isana said. She struggled to force out the words, though they sounded blurry, even to her. "Find Tavi."
"Rest," Roth said. The old Steadholder looked down on her with gentle, compassionate eyes. "Rest. You've done too much already."
Bitte appeared beside Isana and assured her, "We'll get the Steadholder back on his feet by morning, child. He'll take care of everything. Rest now."