At first she thought it was going to be another dream like the first, but it wasn’t. Instead, he was whole, well; even happy—until he saw her. Then, to her distress, he began weeping—and blamed himself for what had happened to her.

She tried to put on a brave face for him, but when she moved, she hurt so much that her fragile pretense shattered. He shook off his own distress at that, and hurried to kneel at her side.

He somehow drove away some of the pain, spoke words of comfort, bathed her feverish brow with cool water. When she whimpered involuntarily as movement sent lances of hurt through her shoulder, he wept again with vexation at his own impotence, and berated himself for leaving her alone. When the other, horrible dreams came, he stood them off.

The next time she came to herself, she found that there was a scrap torn from her sleeve near the bucket, still damp. After trying to puzzle it out, she decided that she’d done it herself, and the dream had been a rationalization of it.

As delirium began to take her again, she tried to tell herself that it was unlikely that her hallucinations would include Kris a second time.

But they did, and Kris continued to guard her from the hideous visions, all the while trying to give her courage.

Finally she gave up even trying to pretend to hope, and told Kris about the argonel.

“No, little bird,” he said, shaking his head at her. “It isn’t your time yet.”

“But—”

“Trust me. Trust me, dearheart. Everything is going to come out fine. Just try to hold on—” He faded into the stone, then, as she woke once more.

That puzzled her. Why should a fever-dream of her own making be trying to urge her to live, when she only wanted release?

But for the most part, she simply suffered, and endured the waiting, watching for some sign that her message had safely reached Selenay. The Queen and her entourage should have reached the Border about two days after she and Kris had ridden through the palace gates. They would have been expecting Kris about three or four days after they arrived—a week after she’d been thrown in here. With luck and the Lady with him, Rolan should reach them about that time. She added the days in her head—that meant he would reach the Queen in six to ten days at his hardest gallop—six if he could take the open roads, ten if he had to backtrack and hide.

When Hulda first appeared, at the end of the third day, Talia thought initially that she was another hallucination.

If it hadn’t been that Hulda’s sharp features and strange gray-violet eyes were unmistakable, Talia wouldn’t have recognized her. She was swathed in a voluptuous gown of burgundy-wine velvet, cut low and daringly across the bosom, and there were jewels on her neck and hands and the net that bound her hair. But most amazing of all, she appeared to be hardly older than Talia herself.