Book One – Chapter 19

The door fell shut in front of him. For a moment, he only stared at the wood. In the next, a sudden urge for something, for anything familiar seized him. He realised then that not only his ears but his whole head was underwater. Vision came in patches — not blinks of blindness, but as though the world itself was smudged. Everything was submerged in dirty water; light slowed, edges bled, colours dulled into the muted greys of rotting things. He had to force his eyes to steady, to comb through the haze until a shape would hold.

He made out stone walls, the flicker of orblight, coats dripping on the garderobe, but no luggage. His gaze found the reception desk. There were no guards. Yu searched for people. Around the fire sat Harrow, Fallem, and four others. Imbiad and the borman were not with them. The guests looked at him. Some eyes met him openly, some only brushed him from the corner, but all of them saw him, marked him, fixed him, trapped him —

Yu pressed against the door and slipped into the walkway. It was one step, and the walls closed in on him. Another, and they bulged, as if the stone itself inhaled. Everything narrowed. The world became a throat. Yu halted and folded his wings around his chest. The sickbay door stood closed to his left. Ahead, the kitchen door. He tried to listen, but his body remained drowned in ever deeper, darker, colder water. There was nothing but a low hum. It came and went like a tide without direction. Or like something that was with him in the water, circling him just beyond recognition.

Yu needed to move. Somewhere. Out of the hallway. He could not follow the krynn. Whatever would happen with him and the selder lay beyond his reach. Yu could not stop it. He could not even make sense of what had been done to himself. To his self. Here he stood and stared, just as he had done half an hour ago after the toilet, as though nothing had happened — and yet inside, nothing was the same.

Something tried. Something in him still tried to be the same as before. It tried to be the whole; the Yu who had spoken to the krynn, fumbling for the right words; the Yu who was all nervous and afraid, embarrassed and ashamed and always, somewhere beneath it all, angry; the Yu who desperately tried to pull himself together and hold on to the hope to survive all of this. Until half an hour ago, that something had been all of Yu.

Now, it was not. Now, it was only the mask.