Korhien quietly. ‘Come, lads, let us leave your father in peace.’
Teclis pushed himself painfully up from his chair and limped over to Father, his body writhing as he moved. He laid a hand on Father’s shoulder and whispered something in his ear. Tyrion wished that he could bring himself to do the same, but he felt sure that Father would not have accepted it from him. Instead he waited for Teclis and then helped him along the corridor to his room.
Tyrion lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, tired and excited. All around him he sensed the presence of the strangers in the house. Some of them were still awake, talking in low voices so as not to disturb the others. Tyrion, who knew every night noise of their very quiet house, was disturbed by the sound. He had read of ship’s masters who knew there was something wrong with their vessels because of a faint, unfamiliar creaking. He suddenly understood how that could be.
He made himself relax. His breathing became deeper and slower and he closed his eyes. He became aware that a vast weight pressed down on him. He felt as if all of the breath was being crushed from his lungs. He had to force air into them. He tried to sit up but his body was weak and would not obey him. He burned as with a dreadful fever and ached all over as human victims of plagues were said to. He opened his eyes but the room was unfamiliar to him. There was a bell on the table for summoning assistance and a flask of the cordial his father had prepared to ease his sickness.
He reached for it, but his limbs felt wasted and numb. They refused to obey him with their customary alacrity. He forced more air into his lungs but it was a struggle. He opened his mouth to call for help but he could not force the words out. He knew he was dying and there was nothing he could do about it.
Suddenly his eyes snapped open and he was back in his own room, his own body. It had been a dream, but not just any dream. He got up from the bed and raced through the house to where Teclis lay, burning with fever, struggling to breathe, desperately reaching for his medicine. Tyrion moved over to the bed, poured some of the cordial and helped his brother to drink.
Teclis swallowed the medicine like a drowning man, a look of strange revulsion on his face that Tyrion understood. What must it be like to feel like you are drowning and have to force yourself to drink?
‘Thank you,’ said Teclis at last. His breathing had become more regular. The rasping sound coming from his chest had died away. His eyes were no longer bright with panic.
‘Shall I call father?’ Tyrion asked.
‘No need. I am all right now. I think I shall sleep.’
Tyrion nodded. His brother looked terribly frail and wasted in the beams of moonlight coming in through the gap in the shutters.
‘I shall sit a while,’ he said. Teclis nodded and closed his eyes. Tyrion watched silently and wondered whether his twin was dreaming about being him. He hoped so.
It would be the only experience of good health Teclis was ever likely to have.
Tyrion moved silently through the house, unable to get back to sleep now that he was awake. Night noises seemed determined to keep him up. Downstairs he could hear his father and Korhien talking quietly of old times as they sat beside the dying fire. Lady Malene was locked in her chamber. Teclis had finally drifted into fitful slumber.
Tyrion found himself inevitably drawn to his father’s work room, filled with curiosity as he sometimes was, and half-lost in a waking dream of adventure and glory and things that might yet come. Visions of grim knights and silken princesses and mighty kings filled his mind along with great ships, huge dragons, proud warhorses. He saw himself in palaces and on battlefields. He pictured jousts and sword fights and all manner of adventures with himself as hero. Sometimes Teclis was with him, a proud mage from the storybooks.
Beams of moonlight came in through the crystalline window, illuminating the huge armoured suit that was his father’s life’s work. Not for the first time, Tyrion thought how strange it was that this room should have windows of precious crystal when Teclis’s did not. When he was younger such thoughts had never troubled