The Road to Rebirth: Book Two of The Children of Telm by Dean F. Wilson

Author:Dean F. Wilson [Wilson, Dean F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781909356047
Publisher: Dioscuri Press
Published: 2014-01-28T00:00:00+00:00

XI – HOME SWEET HOME

Herr’Don dozed uneasily. Days passed in the reverie of recovery, where the waves of the body washed in, and there was pain. Then the waves of the mind washed in, and there was the dull sense of knowing that pain existed somewhere, in some other place or time, and there it was agony. The barbed teeth of the saw still seemed to bite, first his flesh, and then his mind, and then as days began to blur together, the teeth were but a memory—but the memory still stung, as if it too were barbed.

Not once while Herr’Don lay in his stupor did Herr’Gal come to him. Not one did the King call for him. Not once did his father stand by his side, to hold his hand or kiss his brow, or whisper of love, or simply just stand there to show by his presence alone that he cared.

Yet Herr’Don remembered a figure standing there, hand in hand, whispering encouragement. On one side Edgaron stood guard, watching his life, holding his hand as if it were a disappearing thread. On the other side stood Belnavar, another warden, but he could not hold his hand. Indeed, there was no hand to hold. Yet the shimmering figure, the phantom friend, still stood there, as if to remind him of that dark place where the thread of life will lead.

Edgaron held him, as he often did when they were children and Herr’Don raced from his father’s room in tears, a shimmer of his own to the cooks and the cleaners who wandered the corridors like moving statues. Edgaron was there for him as ever, that one pillar of support in a castle of many falling pillars.

Fever was his other companion, holding him as closely as Edgaron did, rocking him in the evil hours of the night. Sweat lined his body, building on his brow where Edgaron had kissed him. The night yawned on, and the darkness lingered, and the stifle sauntered in his body like a grudge, that one gift his father had given him.

Sleep finally came when dawn broke in with its comforting rays, and Herr’Don dreamed he was a child again, sitting on the battlements with Edgaron, their feet dangling over the edge, high above the heads of the people of Madenahan. They talked and they laughed, and sometimes they just sat there, shoulder to shoulder, their heads tilted together in repose. This was their hideaway from the halls of Ilokmaden, their sanctuary from the smothering stone. They were as gargoyles on the roof, scaring away their solitude.

Edgaron rarely left his side as he slept, and somehow Herr’Don knew this in his soul, and he felt he needed to know it, needed to know that it was not just him and Belnavar. Edgaron should have been on duty, and to fail to show up before the chief guard Mendran for inspection every morning would have earned him time in the stocks. Luckily Edgaron’s mother Alrah was Mendran’s

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