Except that, bit by bit, the words being spoken over his head became more intelligible, as if the language was slowly seeping into his fever-ravaged brain. This tongue—this arcane language—was like nothing he could have imagined. The syntax was all wrong, for one thing; these people spoke—backward, sort of. Not that he was any kind of a linguist, but for a long time he was confused as much by the order of the words as the words themselves…

He must be in Valdemar. The language was as twisted about as the Demon-Riders and their Hellhorses, with the verbs coming in the middle instead of properly at the end. How could you tell what a sentence was truly about if you stuck the verb in the middle? The meaning could be entirely reversed by what came afterward!

How was he learning these things? What demonic magic was putting them inside his brain? Or was this all a fever dream, and was he lying in the embers of the chicken-shed, dying of his burns, conjuring all of this up? He had saved the village with his witch-power, he had been condemned to burn by a Voice, he had been imprisoned and his prison set afire. But after that?

Madness, illusion, hallucination, delirium.

Surely.

But the voice in his head told him otherwise, and as the moments of his lucidity came more and more often, it began to tell him things he could verify for himself—little things, but none of which he could have hallucinated for himself. That, for instance, the reason why he was not able to open his eyes very often was because they had been bandaged shut—at first, the skin of his face hurt so much he hadn’t actually felt the bandages. And the skin of his hands was in such agony that he tried not to move them to touch anything, much less his face, which he wouldn’t have wanted to touch anyway, given how much it hurt. The voice warned him when he was to be fed, and what they were going to give him—all soup, of course, and juices, and very, very often. The voice warned him when his bandages were to be changed—long before one of those Healer-people even got within hearing distance. And the voice told him about a great many other things.