Jabberwocky - 3. North

III. North

Jordan sat curled against the headboard--as far away from him as he could get, Brandon noticed--sipping water cautiously. He looked weak and tired and barely able to stay upright, but he wouldn’t let anyone near him.

Jordan didn’t speak. He sat there, drank water when it was given to him, following Jassa’s careful instructions to sip. Sumna had gone downstairs to get him some food. His eyes tracked the room nervously, keeping watch on Jassa near the door and frequently darting back to Brandon, who sat near the foot of the bed.

When Sumna returned with a bowl of watered down stew, she approached Jordan, who curled up and shifted away from her.

“Here, let me,” Brandon said, taking the bowl from her hands. “No offense, but now that you can see he’s alright, maybe you can give us some space. He’s pretty freaked right now.”

Jassa nodded from her spot in the doorway. “Sure, as long as you let us know what woke him later. Come on Sumna.”

Sumna cast one more concerned look in their direction before following her out of the room.

“They rescued us,” Brandon said after they had left. “Um…here.” He held out the bowl of soup, noticing it was mostly broth, with a few soggy vegetables. “You need to eat.”

Jordan reached out and took the bowl from Brandon, pulling it towards his chest protectively. He tipped the bowl and drank most of the contents down, then methodically fished out the lumps of potato and beans and ate them. When he was done, he placed the bowl back on the bed and resumed his former posture, curled up against the headboard, arms around knees. He tilted his head, resting it on his drawn up knees, eyes regarding Brandon with curiosity. Brandon had dimmed the lamps in the room after Jordan had woken up and now they gleamed in the dim light.

“Um…Sumna and Jassa. They are the ones who have been helping us out. They got you out of the palace and reunited us.”

Jordan didn’t respond, so Brandon took that as a good sign and continued to talk, filling Jordan in, keeping things as simple as he could to avoid overwhelming him. When Jordan’s eyes slowly closed and his breathing settled out, Brandon got up and resettled Jordan in the bed, straightening the sheets out and covering Jordan’s body.

At least this time I know I can wake him back up, Brandon thought as he got back in his bed. Exhaustion brought on from the long day of riding and worrying about Jordan had him asleep a few minutes later.

Brandon woke up in the morning, feeling marginally more like a human being. He blinked and glanced down, seeing Jordan’s arm slung around his waist. He smiled slightly, vaguely remembering waking up at various points during the night and making Jordan drink some water each time. And each time he had returned to his bed alone. Jordan must have snuck over sometime early in the morning---but he certainly wasn’t complaining. He turned over carefully, taking a look at Jordan, just taking him in for a moment, before gently brushing his lips over his cheek and getting out of bed. He pulled on his clothes, which were stiff but dry and warm, and ventured out. He found Jassa sitting in the main room, which was not as crowded as the other night, but still heavily occupied. Jassa shared her breakfast with him, then gave him some money so he could purchase a bowl of porridge and a glass of milk to take upstairs to Jordan. When he came into the room, he saw Jordan sitting back on his bed, pants on. His face turned pink when he saw Brandon enter the room, but he took the food without complaint.

“Drink the milk first, so you have something to coat your stomach, okay?” Brandon said. Jordan drank the milk, then stared blankly at the bowl in front of him, then back at Brandon like he was unsure of what to do.

“Go on,” Brandon urged him gently. He smiled. “Don’t make me spoon-feed it to you. I’ll make the little airplane noises.”

Jordan’s gaze moved back to the bowl and he started to eat; small methodical bites. When he was finished, had scraped the bowl clean, he offered it back to Brandon.

Once Brandon had taken the bowl from him, Jordan resumed his favored position, curled up near the headboard. He made no response to Brandon’s gentle inquires and refused to look up.

Finally, Brandon sat down across from Jordan, staring at him for a long time. He tentatively slid his hand across the bed, touching Jordan’s fingertips gently with his own. Jordan wouldn’t look up, but he didn’t pull his hand away either. Brandon felt encouraged and let his hand continue to slide over his until he was holding Jordan‘s hand. He slid a little closer.

“Jordan?” he asked. Jordan’s eyes remained downcast. “Come on, blue eyes. Talk to me. Or just look at me. Let me know what’s going on.”

“Are you mad?” Jordan finally asked.

“Mad? At you?” Brandon said.

Jordan nodded. “About what I did?”

Brandon sighed a little. “I’m not mad about the fact that you dreamt about your family and didn’t want to wake up. That’s understandable. You miss your family. But I didn’t like the fact that you were willing to let yourself waste away and die. That I asked you to come back and you said no. I would die for you. I would be perfectly willing to lay down my life for yours. But I would never do what you did. I wouldn’t give you up. Not for anything.” Brandon glanced at their joined hands. “And I’m a selfish bastard. I wouldn’t want to do anything without you.”

Jordan blinked several times and Brandon saw a tear streaking down his face. “I’m sorry. I just miss them so much. And I knew what was happening wasn’t real. But it felt so good to stay there. And after a while it was easy to forget that it was all fake, just inside my head. But God, I missed you. Even when I was with my family, I could still remember you and I looked for you, but I could never find you… It made me sad.”

“Well, I’m here now, so no worries.” Brandon reassured him, combing a hand through his hair. Jordan leaned into his touch slightly and Brandon smiled. This was more like it.

“I’m still confused. Where are we?” Jordan said, moving his head away after a few gentle strokes.

“Somewhere in between the Silver Falls and the North Forest,” Brandon said. “The North Forest is where we are heading. The Silver Falls is where I was being held.”

Jordan looked up at him finally. His blue eyes were red rimmed and still a bit cloudy, but looked focused at least. “And why were you at the Silver Falls instead of the palace? And where was I?” He blushed and looked away again. “I wasn’t really understanding a lot of what you were trying to tell me yesterday.”

“It’s a long story and I’m not sure of all the details myself,” Brandon said and heard a sharp knock on the door. Brandon got up to answer, saw Jassa on the other side.

“We have to move,” she said, before turning and heading down the hallway. He and Jordan hurriedly got the rest of their clothes on and Brandon forced Jordan to down another glass of water before they left the inn. He didn’t know what else to give him to treat dehydration. He supposed Jordan should have something to help restore his electrolyte balance or something, but Charion sure as hell didn’t have any Gatorade. So he settled for water.

Sumna still didn’t feel confident in Jordan’s ability to ride solo so they took on the same configuration as yesterday. Jordan, silent and compliant, allowed himself to be strapped to Sumna again, though not as thoroughly as he had been. He was still rather weak and Sumna wasn’t confident in his ability to keep a hold of her if they had to move fast. Brandon could see the reasoning behind it, although he still longed for Jordan and himself to ride together. While they rode, he and Sumna related the details what had been happening while Jordan was unconscious.

“I was in the castle when the Queen went into labor,” Sumna added when Brandon finished relaying how he had been present as Leia had given birth and his encounter with Keith. He didn’t mention the encounters with Rajar and Ralph. “I knew when Keith and his Enabler had arrived at the castle. They already had our attention when they began to extermination of other teams, so I established a position at the castle, much like Brandon did.”

“Only she was a member of the harem instead of the guard,” Jassa chimed in, smiling gleefully at her counterpart. Sumna sent her a scathing look that made Brandon wince, but Jassa just laughed.

“Anyhow, I wasn’t there when the Queen gave birth, but I did hear Keith’s order for the guards to search the castle for Jordan. I frantically tried to remember his room. I had guided him there once before, but that had been a while ago.”

Jordan looked up. “You were the one. The girl from the harem that helped me that one day I got lost.”

Sumna nodded. “Yes. We can recognize another Enabler from a mile away, so I knew exactly who you were from the moment you entered the South wing. I finally found your room and broke inside. I really wasn’t fond about the idea of removing you from the palace, especially without knowing what would become of Brandon, or without knowing what Keith was planning, but I knew if I left you there, someone would find you and turn you over. And I couldn’t let that happen. So I took you and handed you over to Jassa to watch while I returned to the castle.” Her voice softened and dropped. “I saw them carrying the Queen’s body from the temple, but when I got there, Brandon was already gone.”

“The Queen’s body?” Jordan asked.

“Yes. She died in childbirth,” Jassa said, her voice uncharacteristically soft and gentle.

Brandon could feel the glance Jordan sent his way and ignored it. Jassa and Sumna were wrong. Leia was okay, Leia was just fine. It was just another fake, like when they thought Leia had committed suicide. She had to be alive. She had to take care of her baby. He would just have to wait until he could get to the palace again. He knew she would be there. He knew she would. She would be alright, she would be fine.

The lies comforted him.

“So, without knowing where Brandon was, we were at a loss. The next day, however, we saw some objects being loaded into a wagon and a body being assisted into a carriage, moving like they were drunk or drugged. I had a hunch it might have been Brandon. I got the location where the group was heading and then it took me a couple days to get back in touch with Jassa and then some more to get to where you were being kept.”

“It was hard for Sumna to get out of the castle,” Jassa said. “The harem group is highly guarded and not supposed to wonder around outside the palace on their own. If the guard hadn’t been in such disarray the morning the Queen gave birth, I doubt she would have been able to get Jordan out of the castle the way she did.”

“But the longest leg of the trip was getting to Silver Falls. I don’t know if you’ve seen a map, but Silver Falls is nowhere near Driamor.”

“I know where Silver Falls is,” Brandon said. He thought of Tananja and smiled a little. He admired her, selling her craft so far away from her home.

“Well, we found out where Brandon was being held and picked him up and traveled for a while. We stopped at the inn you woke up in, and the rest you know. Our main concern was you, of course. We didn’t know if you would wake up,” Sumna continued. “I thought you would both die if you didn‘t.”

“Brandon Creates. He would have survived,” Jordan said.

“If you died a natural death,” Sumna corrected. "If you had died because of bond strain or something similar, it probably would have killed both of you.”

“Bond strain?” Jordan asked.

Brandon let Sumna fill Jordan in on that one. He was still a bit fuzzy one those details. Instead, he thought about how they had felt during the first bond strain, when Jordan had been at the palace. A slow separation and a modest distance. Seeing him again had caused a reaction that was almost a force of nature, a compulsion to be near him, to touch him, to reconnect with him anyway he could. Like a rubber band pulled back and released suddenly, causing it to snap back. That’s what it had been like with Jordan the first time. A snap back, an urge to be back together, to be joined in the deepest way they could.

This time, however, it was different. Like the rubber band had been pulled back so far and for so long that the rubber had stretched and distorted, so instead of snapping back, it slowly relaxed back into place. Yes, Brandon wanted to be close to Jordan, wanted to touch him, wanted to reconnect, but it wasn’t that same hungry compulsion as the first time. He wouldn’t mind taking his time. He wanted to, actually, because he could sense how Jordan, and himself, possibly, weren’t in the happiest places, mentally or emotionally. Taking it slow would be good.

“Brandon?”

Brandon let himself drift back to the present conversation when he heard Sumna’s inquisitive voice. “Yes?” he said.

“We were wondering about what happened to you. Between the encounter with Keith and when we showed up,” Sumna said.

Brandon felt his insides grow cold and tight. “I was drugged, by Keith, led into the gardens by Leia. He was waiting for me. Leia had agreed to give me over in return for Keith taking care of her son. She went into labor while we were out there and we were all moved to the temple. She was screaming. I-I lost consciousness after that, either from the drug or…” Brandon shut his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t remember much after that. I remember being in the room, that bed, with the woman giving me food, shots. A lot of pain, so much pain.”

“That’s from the bond strain, right?" Jordan asked.

“Probably,” Jassa admitted.

“I think…while I was out…I had moments where I felt pain.” Jordan admitted slowly. “Sometimes, when I was about to surface, I would feel it. And I would get frightened and let myself sink back down into sleep again. It was easy. To the point where soon I didn’t even have to worry about waking up anymore. I knew I wouldn’t if I didn’t want to. If I didn’t make a conscious effort.”

“Bond strain affects you, whether you are awake or not. You’ll still feel it.”

Brandon’s mind drifted in and out of the conversation and Jordan drifted in and out of consciousness, often falling asleep for fifteen or thirty minutes at regular intervals. Brandon felt okay at first, but after a couple of hours on horseback, his body began to remind him, quite vigorously, that they had done this all day yesterday and his ass and back, especially, weren’t happy about having to do this again.

Partially in an effort to keep his mind off it, he asked Sumna and Jassa again about where they came from. “So you guys aren’t from Charion either.”

“No,” Sumna said.

“Where from?”

Sumna gave him a calculating look. “We stay mostly in the North Forest, because that is where our entry point into Charion is at.”

“The Great Tree?” Brandon guessed, able to remember that landmark from the map of Charion he had studied so diligently.

“Correct,” Sumna said, nodding her head. “Anyone from our world wants entrance into Charion, they have to use that entry point. I take it you came in from a sacred place as well. The stonestack, if I remember correctly?”

“Yeah,” Brandon said. His back throbbed at the mere mention of the name of that place, right along where the hooping cat had attacked him.

“All of the seven sacred spaces are entry points into Charion. Probably why there is such an exotic mix of species here. We’re pretty sure that Charion is a Nexus world.”

“Nexus?” Brandon asked.

Sumna glanced at him. “I take it you're not familiar with this term?”

Brandon shook his head.

Sumna and Jassa exchanged glances. “The Nexus concept is a pretty complicated thing to explain. It’s something we’ll need to discuss once we reach the North Forest.”

Brandon felt a burn of curiosity but let it rest. If it was as complicated as they claimed, he would rather Jordan and himself both be awake and alert to hear it.

* * *

They continued to ride for hours in a comfortable silence. Brandon found himself satisfied with that, perfectly content to just watch the scenery going by, lulled into a drowsy, lazy state by the rhythm of clopping hooves and the gentle rocking motion of the horse underneath him. Jordan would wake up occasionally, but would usually fall back asleep within a short amount of time. Sumna would occasionally sing softly… Her voice was as beautiful as the rest of her. Brandon was fairly surprised at his reaction to his current circumstances. This would normally bore the hell out of him and he would be crawling with impatient need…to do something besides just sit there. But aside from the complaints his body was offering up, this felt almost nice. Even riding the horse was relatively tolerable, with Jassa in front of him, taking control of the reins.

The sun had passed over their heads and was low in the sky when Jassa slowed and drew their horse to a stop. “We need to make a camp,” she said. “There’s no way we can reach an outpost before the sun dies.”

“We can’t ride by moonlight?” Sumna asked, sounding hopeful.

Jassa shook her head and Brandon felt a measure of relief. His legs were sore and his thighs were beginning to cramp. The idea of riding a good eight to twelve more hours sounded more tortuous than tolerable at this point. “Not with an inexperienced rider,” Jassa said. “Plus, we have the boy-”

“Jordan,” Brandon interrupted sharply.

Jassa rolled her eyes. “Plus we have Jordan with us, and he’s too weak to do long rides. He needs rest and some more fluids. His companion isn‘t looking too hot here either.”

Brandon bristled at the fact that the two of them were talking like they weren’t even here.

“We need to find a place to set up then,” Sumna said. Jassa nodded. “You go,” Sumna added with a nod. “I’m still attached to sleepyhead over here and you can get higher then I can anyhow.”

Higher? Brandon thought. What is she going to do, climb a tree?

Jassa performed a flawless dismount from the horse, leaving Brandon in the saddle--alone, he suddenly realized. A little worm of worry began to wiggle its way through his stomach.

“Just be gentle,” Jassa said, almost like she could tell what Brandon was thinking. “He’s a good horse. No trouble.” Her voice was growing softer and her eyes more vague as she stepped away from the horse.

“Not here, Jas, the horses,” Sumna warned.

Jassa nodded, then turned around and took off down the path. She moved fast and in a moment of seconds had rounded a group of trees and had disappeared from sight.

“What is she doing?” Brandon asked, perplexed. Running ahead of them to find a place to “set up”?

Sumna was staring at the sky, not answering. Brandon thought she was ignoring him until she pointed and said “There she is.”

Brandon looked in the direction she pointed and saw what he thought was a bird in the sky. At first the odd shape didn’t faze him because it was Charion and it was expected that he would find strange creatures, birds included. But after a few seconds he realized he wasn’t looking at a bird. He was looking at a person.

“Wh-What?” Brandon said. Sumna shifted her gaze from the sky to Brandon.

“I told you we were Outworlders,” Sumna said. “Where we come from, we have modes of transportation other than walking and riding.”

“You can fly?” Brandon asked weakly. He looked up at the sky again. Jassa, if that was who it was, was too far away to see clearly, but he could swear he saw a pair of wings. A few seconds later, Jassa had disappeared from sight completely.

“Most of us have the appropriate equipment,” Sumna said. “Our arms can morph into wings. But few of us can actually fly with any efficiency. Jassa is a better flier because she’s light and short. She can get an aerial view of the area and find a good place for us to set up for the night.”

A few seconds later, he saw a familiar figure streaking back through the air, low to the ground, and a few minutes after that, Jassa came running around the curve, sweaty and breathless, but with an energetic bounce in her step.

“I found a place. C’mon.”

Jassa’s place was a small clearing in the middle of a heavily wooded area. It was cool and shady and Brandon rather liked it.

“There’s a stream that forms a small pool through those trees and behind those boulders,” Jassa said.

Sumna sighed and pulled a small branch from her hair. “I guess the reason this place is so unused is because no-one else would bother to try to fight their way through those trees.”

Jassa rolled her eyes as Brandon reached up and shook Jordan awake. “Come on, let’s get you off that horse, okay?” Brandon said once Jordan opened his eyes and blearily looked at him. Brandon and Sumna unhooked the straps around him and Jassa helped him dismount. Once on the ground, Jordan’s legs buckled and Brandon all of a sudden had his hands full.

“Come on, buddy, let’s get you lying down,” Sumna said, getting down from the horse and helping Brandon lower him to the ground. “Get him some water.”

Jassa took a pouch from the horse and passed it to Brandon. Brandon uncorked it and pressed the opening against Jordan’s mouth. “Water, blue eyes. Drink up.”

Jordan obediently drank and seemed to revive a little bit.

“Do you have a handle on this?” Sumna asked.

Brandon nodded. “Yeah.” Brandon busied himself with taking care of Jordan and watching Sumna and Jassa “set up”. “Setting up” consisted of creating and enabling whatever they needed for the night that they hadn’t brought with them, and they were able to do this so quickly and flawlessly that Brandon was amazed. He was also delighted to see another team creating and enabling, which he had never witnessed before. There was little outside evidence of what they were doing except for a slight disturbance in the air when Jassa enabled, like a heat shimmer off of hot pavement.

Later on, Jassa had gone to “catch” them some food. Brandon was fiercely curious about Jassa and Sumna’s ability to transfer into winged creatures, but so far he hadn’t gotten the opportunity to see it up close and first hand. Sumna was busy setting up the numerous items she and Jassa had just Enabled over. Neither one of them had asked for his help, so he stayed where he was, with Jordan, which made him perfectly happy. He spent that time talking to Jordan, filling him in about what Sumna and Jassa had told him while he was asleep, with Sumna throwing in an occasional editorial comment. When Jordan asked more detailed questions about Leia and Keith, his voice soft, Brandon only hesitated for a moment. He saw Sumna’s posture shift slightly, and even though her eyes were focused on the pile of kindling she was trying to coax a flame out of, he could tell she was suddenly listening very intently. She wanted to know just as badly as Jordan did. So Brandon carefully edited his story--he didn’t want Sumna to know of the exchange between him and Ralph, and he didn’t want either one of them to know about the run in with Rajar. So he told them about Jordan being asleep, being woken up by a nightmare and Leia’s summons. Then he went over Keith’s appearance and Leia giving birth again.

“And after that?” Jordan asked.

“I don’t know. It’s hard to remember. I just hurt a lot. I was locked up in someone’s house when Sumna and Jassa found me.”

“Brandon, I have a question for you,” Sumna interrupted.

Brandon gave her a surprised glance. She had remained largely uninvolved in this conversation up until this moment. “Yeah?”

“When Leia gave birth, you were present to witness it, were you not?”

“I was,” Brandon said.

“The...being that she gave birth too, was it human in appearance?”

Brandon hesitated again. He hadn’t gotten a very good look at the child--it was bloody and covered with substances he would rather not think about, but it did have unusually long arms and legs as well as being big---far too large for a human infant. He couldn’t believe Leia had been able to carry it. But again, he didn’t want to offer that information to Sumna…he didn’t know what she would do with it.

Trust no one, he reminded himself. “I don’t really know. I was at a bad vantage point and there were so many people there. They blocked my view. Sorry.”

Sumna narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips, and Brandon knew she was trying to figure out whether or not he was lying. It was the first time he had seen her with an unattractive expression on her face.

He looked down at Jordan instead, asleep again and stroked his hair until Jassa arrived with dinner.

* * *

The second day of riding, when his body was already sore and complaining, was a long one for Brandon. The third one was worse. His only consolation was that Jordan was awake enough and strong enough to ride with Brandon. At first, it had been awkward. Brandon didn’t know if it because he was used to riding behind Jassa and was now riding in front of Jordan, but when Jordan pressed up behind him and wrapped his arms around Brandon’s waist, Brandon felt himself growing tense, unconsciously arching his back in an effort to put some space between them. In an effort to hide the effect Jordan was having, Brandon placed his hand over Jordan’s and gave them a gentle squeeze.

“Alright baby?” he asked softly.

Jordan nodded against his back. “Are you?”

“Fine,” Brandon lied. He felt sweaty and panicky, bordering on sick, and he wasn’t even sure why. His skin was crawling and his breathing was bordering on wheezing.

“Brandon?” He looked up and saw Sumna giving him a concerned look from atop her own horse. Jassa had gone to fly ahead and check their route. “Are you alright?”

Brandon forced a smile. “No problem.”

At the end of another long day, with the sun sinking down towards the trees again, and Jassa having flown ahead of them again, Brandon would frequently glance at Sumna, expecting her to tell them to slow down and stop at any moment. When that didn’t happen, he brought the idea up himself. “Won’t we need to stop soon?”

Sumna smiled and shook her head. “No, we’re almost where we need to be. Jassa is already waiting for us. There, see?”

Sumna pointed and Brandon’s gaze followed the line of her finger. He could see someone waiting for them in the distance in front of a large group of trees. Sumna urged her horse to move a little faster and Brandon nervously followed suit. Jordan and Jassa had both given him instructions during the journey as to how to handle the horse, but he still preferred to do little more than just ride and have as little necessary interaction with the horse as possible.

Jassa grinned at them as they approached and Sumna slid off her horse and embraced her Enabler briefly. Following her example, Brandon and Jordan carefully dismounted as well. Jassa led them into a highly wooded area, their pace slowed by the poor light and the necessity of leading the horses through the heavy underbrush. As they walked, the trees eventually thinned out and the village of Odwayon, set in the North Forest, came into view.

The village that was lit in the dying light of the bleeding sun was unlike anything Brandon had ever seen before. The inhabitants of Odwayon didn’t build their houses on the ground, but instead constructed their dwellings, some elaborate, others simple, in the towering trees of the North Forest. He craned his head back, studying the different buildings. Most were round or circular, built around the trunk of the tree, branches threaded through the building for extra support. Various ladders and knotted ropes hung to the ground, offering easy access to trees that were too difficult to climb. Various beings were milling around, lighting torches on the ground, far away from the dry wood of the trees.

“Wow,” Jordan said, echoing Brandon’s thoughts. “This is crazy.”

“The villagers initially lived in the trees and built their homes there to protect themselves from predators who roamed the ground at night. They live very simply.” Jassa said. “This is where we stayed when we first entered Charion. They are very hospitable and kind. Extremely innovative, too. This will be a good place for us to rest and for you to recover and get your strength back.”

“Once you decide what you want to do and where you want to go,” Sumna added, “they will do what they can to help you, but make sure you don’t take advantage of these people.”

Sumna and Jassa led them to a large group of people who recognized them, welcoming them with hugs and hellos, obviously quite familiar with the two girls. They cast curious glances at Jordan and Brandon, but at Jassa’s introduction, welcomed them just as warmly. They were of a similar human appearance, but with long arms and strong legs…good for climbing, Jordan thought. They were quickly ushered up a dizzying series of steps wrapped around a thick tree trunk that led into a larger structure cluttered with tables and chairs…a restaurant, Jordan discovered.

Jordan was grateful to sit down, his legs feeling weak and unsteady after the strenuous climb. He felt mildly embarrassed… He used to be quite athletic. His weakened and helpless state did not sit well with him. The villagers set down plates and tureens loaded with food in front of them. After eating the tough, stringy meat from birds and small wildlife that Jassa had caught, the warm, savory stews and thick, marbled pieces of steak tasted wonderful. Jordan ate until he began to feel vaguely sick, then stopped. One of the things that he had been careful about the first several days was how much he could eat at one time. This was the first time he was allowed to eat his fill and it felt wonderful.

Everything was a blur after that. He could remember Brandon gently taking him by the shoulder and leading him out of the restaurant. More dizzying stair climbs, and finally falling onto a small, soft bed with warm sheets and plenty of darkness to help him sleep.

It was, Jordan reflected before he fell asleep, the first time he felt anywhere close to normal in this world of Charion.