His pulse thudded in his temples. Sweat was streaming off him now; the harmonies of the voices grew louder and louder inside his head, their volume rising to something impossible, intolerable. Yet how? Louder still and louder, till the song became a torment, a deafening, shrieking swirl of sound which he longed to shut out. He wished he could block his ears. Instead he saw more flames now, rising under the stone platform where the singers stood, each voice a hearthstone to this purple fire that did not burn. He felt terror now, horror, his discomfort creeping into a kind of nausea in his belly but soon spreading through his limbs. His left arm was shaking. He clasped the handle of his shield all the tighter to hold it still. The grip felt wet and greasy. He glanced down and saw, in confusion, that his left arm was soaked in blood. Blood streaming in crimson rivulets down his forearm, filling the cracks in his fingers. The scar across his bicep, the mark of the wound the Watcher had inflicted that had been so quick to heal, was split. His arm throbbed with new pain as if the wound were freshly struck. He felt the same in his calf, felt blood trickle down his leg to his heel and then the floor. The pain bit sharper. He clenched his jaw against it, forcing himself to stand steady, crushing his eyes shut to blot it out.