The other two furies swirled off at once, gathering together the scarlet droplets of blood that had begun spreading into the bathwater, and shepherding them back to the gaping rent in Bernard’s thigh.
Isana didn’t wait for the furies to complete their task. She instead slipped closer to the fading aura around her brother, focusing upon it, and upon the much stronger thrum of life in the body touching Bernard—her own.
She knew that what she was to attempt was dangerous. The anima of life was never simple to touch or easy to manipulate. It was a force as potent and unpredictable as life itself—and as fragile. But dangerous or not, it had to be done. She had to try.
Isana reached out and made contact with that faint, fading quiver of life around Bernard. And then, touching upon that of her own body, above him, she gathered both together and melded them, blended them, drew upon the energy of her body to surround both of them, to an immediate, violent response.
Bernard’s body convulsed in the water, a sudden thrash of motion that moved every muscle in him at once. His back contorted, and Isana felt more than saw his eyes fly wide open and unseeing. His heart contracted with a heavy, unsteady thumping sound, followed by another, and another. Isana felt a thrill of exhilaration fly through her and, with Rill, poured into Bernard through the wound in his leg, a rush of sudden confinement, a sense of herself stretching down hundreds of blood vessels, spreading through him, her awareness fracturing into a multitude of layers. She felt his weary heart, the bone-deep ache of his limbs, the terrifying cold of oncoming death. She felt his confusion, his frustration, his fear, the emotions pressing like a knife against her heart. She felt his body struggling against the injuries. Failing. Dying.
What she did next was not a process of logical thought, of stimulus and response, of procedure and reason. Her thoughts were too far divided, too many, too much to direct so clearly. Everything relied on her instinct, on her ability to release conscious will and to reach through him, sensing every part of the whole and then acting to restore it.
She felt it as a pressure building up against her, as steely chains of tension that closed in upon her myriad thoughts with a slow and steady inevitability, shutting them down, crushing them into stillness. She fought against that stillness, fought to keep her awareness, her life, sparkling in every part of Bernard’s wounded body. She threw herself into the struggle, straining against death, while around her, through her, within her, she felt every wavering, uncertain beat of his too-labored heart.
She held on to his life, as she felt Roth and Otto’s furies send blood back into his battered body. She held on to him as the two watercrafters went to work upon the injury itself, closing the ragged wound and crafting the very fabric of his flesh together again. She held on, with all of her strength and in a horrible space between one heartbeat and the next realized that she could hold on no longer. She was losing him.
Through Rill she felt Roth’s silent urging to withdraw, to flow back out of her brother and to her own body, to save herself. She refused, drawing more heavily on the energy of her body, feeding it to Bernard, to his laboring heart. She sent everything she could reach coursing into him and felt it flowing out of her, somewhere, felt herself growing weaker. She gave her brother all that she was: her love of him, her love for Tavi, terror at the prospect of his death, frustration, agony, fear, the joy of glowing memories, and the despair of the darkest moments of her life. She held back nothing.
Bernard quivered again and abruptly gasped in a breath of air that filled his lungs like cold fire. He coughed, and the horrible stillness abruptly fractured and fled as his lungs labored again and again and again.
Isana felt relief flood over her, as his body grew stronger, as the energy of him began to flow again, as the rhythm of his heart began to quicken and become regular, a hammer pulse that coursed throughout her awareness. She felt Rill dimly, as the fury moved through him, and felt her gentle confusion. Once again, Roth attempted to send something to her, through their furies, but she was too tired to understand it, too lost in relief and exhaustion to understand. She let her awareness drift, felt herself sinking down, into a darkness, into warmth that promised her rest from all of her anxiety and pain and weariness.
And then a dull fire pulsed in her. She thought that she remembered the sensation, from some time long before. Her descent slowed for a moment.
Again, the fire came. And again. And again.
Pain. I am feeling pain.
In a detached, remote, and unconcerned part of her awareness, she understood what was happening. Roth had been right. She had given too much of herself and had been unable to return to her own body. Too tired, too relaxed, too weak. She would die, back there beside the tub, her body simply slumping to the floor and empty of life.
The fire flared again, somewhere back up and away from the darkness.
The dead feel no pain, she thought. Pain is for the living.
She reached out toward it, toward that fire in the night. The delicious descent halted, though part of her screamed out against it. She reached back for the pain, but did not move, did not begin to rise again.
It is too late. I cannot go back.
She tried, regardless. She struggled against the stillness, the warmth. She struggled to live.
Sudden light flared like a newborn sun above her. Isana reached for it, embraced that distant fire with every part of her that still lived. It washed over her in a flood and became an instant, blazing torment, horrible and bright, an agony more searing than anything she had ever known. She felt a dizzying wrenching sensation and a sudden rush of confusion, of emptiness where Rill had been before, of more and more pain.
She went back into it, and gladly. The light, the agony, became all consuming, her limbs aching, her lungs burning with her ragged breath, her head pounding, and her mind screaming as raw sensation poured into it.
She heard shouts. Someone was screaming, and there was a heavy thump of impact. Then more screams. Fade, she thought.
“There,” someone shouted. Otto? “Look! She’s breathing!”
“Get a blanket,” replied Roth’s steady voice. “And another for Bernard.”
“Broth for both, they’ll need food.”
“I know that. Someone get that idiot slave out of here before he hurts someone else.”
The general cloud of pain over her began to resolve itself, by slow degrees, to a dull throb in her hand, and a sweet and oddly satisfying ache of exhaustion spread throughout her. She opened her eyes and turned her head to one side to see Bernard looking blearily around him. She fumbled her hand toward him and saw the fingers of it swollen and oddly shaped. She touched him, and the pain swept down on her, blinded her.
“Easy, Isana.” Roth took her wrist and gently pressed her hand back down. “Easy. You need to rest.”