heal.'
'Warm him,' Despair said. 'Let him feel his torment for a while. Bring him to a stupor.'
'Great Wyrm,' Vulgnash said, bowing a bit and cringing, 'he is too close to death.'
'He is young and strong. I have known him through many lifetimes. This one can resist death well. Revive him, just a little.'
Vulgnash stood above Fallion for a moment, with his left hand raised, palm downward, and unleashed a wave of warmth. It hit Lord Despair like a blast of hot wind from the desert.
The heat s effect upon Fallion was instantaneous. The young wizard gasped in pain as he neared consciousness, then lay groaning, huddled in a fetal position.
Despair stepped forward, used the toe of his boot to roll Fallion onto his back.
Lord Despair had lived through millions of lifetimes upon millions of worlds, and deep was his lore. The fleeting folk of this world had no idea who they were dealing with.
He spat upon Fallion s dirty forehead, anointing him with his own inner water. Then he leaned forward and peered into a drop of spittle, using it as a lens, and let his focus go deep, through flesh and bone, into Fallion s mind, and from there into his dreams.
Fallion imagined himself to be in his bedroom, far across the sea. The room was small and cluttered, with a pair of cots against each wall. It was dark in the room, blackest night. A chest of drawers leaned against the far wall, covered in sand-colored rangit furs. A collection of animal skulls adorned the top of the bureau-weasels and burrow bears, a dire wolf and a fossilized toth. These were all lit by the thinnest rays of starlight.
Fallion shouted to his brother Jaz, 'You left the window open again! It s freezing.'
Sure enough, as if conjured by Fallion s outburst, bits of snow began to swirl through an open window above the chest of drawers; tiny flakes of ice sifted into the bedroom, blanketing the skulls and furs.
Fallion was suffering various pains in his arms and legs, the pains he had taken upon him in his endowment ceremony. He was in so much pain, he could not understand why. His mind was muddy, his thoughts unclear. He wondered if he had been hurt.
'Jaz, come close the window,' Fallion begged, nearly weeping tears of frustration.
With a mental push, Despair entered the dream.
He darkened the room, so that it was pitch black, even the thin starlight fading into gray.
He chose a form, the form of someone that Fallion loved: a girl, he saw in Fallion s mind-his foster sister Rhianna.
She entered the room shyly, as if coming to a tryst.
'Fallion,' she asked. 'Are you awake?' She tiptoed across the room and closed the window.
'Rhianna?' Fallion asked. 'What happened? I m hurt. I m hurting everywhere.'
'Don t you remember?' Despair asked in Rhianna s soft voice. 'You fell. You slipped down a rocky slope and hit your head.' In a pitying tone she asked, 'Wake up, sweet one. We have much to do today.'
'Wha-?' Fallion begged. 'Wha?'
'The binding of worlds,' Rhianna begged. 'Remember? You promised to tell me how it was done. You said that it was so hard. You asked for my help.'
Fallion moaned and tried to look around. But the thin light and his own pain defeated him. He peered at Rhianna for all of half a second before his eyes rolled up, showing only the whites, and he turned his head away in defeat.
'The binding of worlds,' Rhianna begged. 'You promised. You said that you would show me how? So much depends on us!'
'Wha?' Fallion cried out in real life, not in his dreams. He made a gagging sound. His voice was thick from disuse, or perhaps from lack of water.
'Would you like a drink?' Rhianna asked in Fallion s dream. 'I have some sweet wine.'
'Please,' Fallion begged.
Rhianna reached out, and in the way of dreams, a purple flask appeared in her hands. She took it to Fallion, sat on the bed beside him, and let him sip. He peered into her eyes longingly, and Despair ratcheted up Rhianna s scent, so that the sweet smell of her hair mingled with the sweet wine, each lending the other potency. She leaned close to Fallion, forcing him to become aware of her curves, her desire.
Lord Despair leaned back, his focus drifting between Fallion s dream and the real world.
He wanted Fallion s thoughts to clear, and needed to free him from some of the pain. He reached out and placed a finger upon each side of Fallion s back, just below the first vertebra, placing pressure in a way that had been learned on many worlds. By pinching the nerve he dulled Fallion s pain.
Nor did he want Fallion to think too clearly, so with his left hand he placed a thumb upon Fallion s carotid artery, just enough to slow the flow of blood to Fallion s brain. The lack of oxygen would soon leave Fallion s head spinning.
In his dream, Rhianna poured her sweet wine down Fallion s throat. Fallion opened his mouth like a robin s chick, hoping for a worm. Rhianna fulfilled the lad s needs.
When the flask was empty, Fallion lay moaning from ghost pains. He had taken endowments of compassion, and now his Dedicates were in the torture chambers, receiving torments on Fallion s behalf. Some had been put into crystal cages. Others had been dismembered, losing hands or toes or worse.
Despair gloated.
The boy had the nerve to thank me for giving those endowments, Despair thought. I wonder how he enjoyed feeling bits of flesh ripped from his body.
Despair knew that those who suffered such acts of mayhem agonized most of all. It was not the physical pain that tormented them so much as the mental anguish, a sense of being un-whole for the rest of their lives.
The tormentors had been ordered to strip certain prisoners of various body parts, until Fallion imagined himself to be only a stump of a person.
Let him thank me then, Despair thought, a small smile forming on his lips.
'Why are you smiling?' Fallion asked Rhianna in his dream. The stupefied boy s head had begun to reel, and he imagined that the wine was dulling his pain.
'I smile because I love you so,' Rhianna said softly. 'Now, my love,' she whispered, 'about the binding of worlds. You promised, remember? You promised to tell me how it was done?'
Of course no such promise had been tendered, but the unconscious mind does not track such things well. Besides, Fallion s head was reeling, and Lord Despair was counting upon Fallion s stupor to aid in the deception.
'What?' Fallion cried, still wincing and shaking from unseen ailments.
'The binding of worlds? How did you do it?'
'It s… it s easy,' Fallion said. 'So easy, once you see it.'
That shocked Despair right out of the dream.
It was easy to bind the worlds?
Despair had always imagined that it was complex, that it would require great cunning, followed by lengthy preparation and exhaustive steps-major magical routines that were broken into dozens of subroutines. He had tried every easy solution, but the truth was that the Seals of Creation baffled him in their complexity.
He dove back into the dream.
'Yes, yes,' Rhianna said. 'I know that it s easy for you. You ve said that before. But you re wiser than you give yourself credit for-much wiser.
'Come,' Rhianna begged, 'to the Seal. Come show me how it is done.'
And in the way of dreams, she took his hand in the darkness and led him outside the front door of his father s cabin.
There in the yard, in the clear spot where the chickens scratched in the grass by day, beneath a white gum tree, the Seal of the Inferno lay upon the ground, a great circle of ghostly green flames dancing upon the lawn.
Blinking in surprise, Fallion stared at it.
Fallion swallowed, opened his mouth, and started to speak.
Despair leaned forward, straining to hear, lest he miss a single syllable.
'I… something s wrong. There s something wrong here.' He peered at the Seal as if studying it.
Despair had made the Seal the way that he remembered it. But in his dream, Fallion stumbled around the
