He hadn't ever lost consciousness, and right now, loss of all awareness would have been a blessing. Silverfox had given him something that turned the terrible agony into bearable agony, but he still hurt. Almost as bad was the knowledge of what had happened to him. He knew what he looked like—and worse, he knew what he was going to look like. No Healer would be able to keep scar tissue from forming, and his face—
He struggled to keep back tears, tears of pain, tears of loss. Yes he had been vain, and why not? His face had won him all the lovers he had ever wanted, and now no one would ever give him a second glance.
A touch on his arm made him start and open his tightly-closed eyes. "Ashke, I am here," said Silverfox, his face full of concern. "Are you in pain?"
"Better to ask, what doesn't hurt," he replied, trying to make a feeble joke of it. "I am trying not to scream; it is very impolite, and would frighten An'desha."
"We have sent the Kal'enedral out for stronger pain drugs," Silverfox told him tenderly, resting one hand on the part of his arm that was not burned. "They should be back soon. The blizzard stopped, and the snow is melting, and in a little we will have gryphons or horses here to take you to k'Leshya. Kaled'a'in Healers are very good." He hesitated, then added, "It is a pity they are not good enough to help Karal."
That snapped him out of the slough of self-pity he was wallowing in. "What about Karal?" he asked sharply.
"I think—he has lost his sight." Silverfox looked away for a moment.
Lost his sight? For one bitter moment, Firesong actually envied him. Better to lose his sight than to go through life, scorned and pitied, to have people look away from you because they could not bear the sight of you—
But even as he thought that, he rejected the thought with anger at himself. You fool, he told himself scornfully. You vain, self-important fool! You are alive with all your senses; you are neither crippled nor incapacitated, and you still have Aya.
As if to underscore that last, the firebird trilled a little from his perch beside Firesong's pallet.
Poor Karal, came the thought at last. "Poor lad," he sighed, "Florian, and this—" then involuntarily whimpered as the movement sent pain lacing through the burns on his face. He felt tears start up, and soak into his bandages.
Silverfox cupped his hands at Firesong's temples, and started into his eyes with fierce concentration. As Firesong looked into his eyes, some of the pain began to recede, and he almost wept again, this time with relief. "I will be glad—" he gasped, "—when those pain drugs arrive."
"They cannot arrive soon enough for me," Silverfox muttered, then managed something of a wan smile. "You are being much braver than I would. I cannot bear pain."
"It is not too bad, except when I am alone," Firesong said, still gazing into those warmly compassionate eyes.
And somehow, those eyes softened further. "In that case, ashke, I will never leave you." the handsome kestra'chern said softly. "If you think you can bear to have me here."
And for a moment, Firesong forgot any pain at all.
An'desha lay curled up with his face to the wall, and Karal could tell by his shaking shoulders that he was weeping silently. The view through Altra's eyes was rather disconcerting, given that Altra's head was about at knee-height, and he had to look up to see peoples' faces when they stood. But at least now, with Altra glued to his leg and lending him the view, he wasn't bumping into things, nor tripping over them.
Karal knelt down beside An'desha's pallet, and put a hand on his shoulder. "If you keep this up much longer," he said, trying not to dissolve into tears himself and make things worse, "you're going to be sick."
An'desha only shook his head violently, and Karal tried to remember exactly what it was that Lo'isha had told him.
"An'desha blames himself for the loss of the others, especially the Avatars," the Kaled'a'in had said. "You must persuade him to walk the Moonpaths, or—or it will be bad for his soul, his heart. I have not been able to persuade him."
The older man had left it at that, but there was no doubt in Karal's mind that he knew how An'desha had managed to help him through his own crisis of conscience. Altra had seconded the Shin'a'in's request as soon as Lo'isha was off tending to some other urgent problem. After that, how could Karal have possibly refused?
"There wasn't anything you did or didn't do that would have made a difference for the better," Karal persisted. "How could there have been? We tried to do more than Urtho could, and it still came out better than we had any reason to expect!"
"I should have known about those other weapons," An'desha said, his voice muffled by his sleeve. "I should have known what they'd do when they started to fail."
"How?" Karal asked acerbically. "Those were Urtho's weapons, not Ma'ar's! How could you have known what they were going to do? Foresight? When not even the Foreseers were able to give us decent advice?"
One red eye emerged from the shelter of An'desha's sleeve. "But—" he began.
"But, nothing," Karal said with great firmness. "You aren't a Foreseer, and you don't have Urtho's memories, you have Ma'ar's. And if you'd go walk the Moonpaths, you'd find out from the leshy'a that I'm right."
An'desha winced, blanching, which looked quite interesting though Altra's eyes. "I can't—" he began.
Karal fixed him with what he hoped was a stem gaze, even though he couldn't feel his eyes responding the way they should. "That sounds exactly like what someone who's been thrown says," he replied. "What do you do when a horse throws you?"
"You get back on," An'desha said faintly, "but—"
"You've already used 'but' too many times." Karal patted his elbow. "Try saying, 'all right," instead."
"All right," An'desha replied obediently, then realized he'd been tricked. Karal wasn't about to let him off.
"Go," he said, and got unsteadily to his feet again. Instead of looking down, he sensed that his head was in a position of looking out, echoing Altra's head-posture. "Go walk the Moonpaths. I want you to, Lo'isha wants you to. That ought to be reason enough, right there."
Having finished what he had to say, and having partly tricked An'desha into agreement, he left and returned to his own pallet, far from the others, where he sank down onto it, exhausted by holding back his own emotions, and cried himself to sleep.
"Karal."
He looked around, startled. He wasn't in his bed in the Tower anymore; he was standing in the middle of—of nowhere he recognized. There was opalescent mist all around him, and a path of softly glowing silver sand beneath his feet. Not only that, but it was his own eyes that he was looking out of, not Altra's.
Where was he? This wasn't like any dream he had ever had before. In fact, it was rather like the descriptions that An'desha had given him of the Moonpaths. But that was a place that only Shin'a'in could reach, wasn't it?
Wasn't it?