“What have you done?” they raged. I was silent. I dared not tell them the worst of it. Sorrows of Kest “ I CAN’T BELIEVE,” Galen growled, “that you were stupid enough to do it.” Tallis and the Sekoi exchanged glances. “Never mind that now.” She pressed the warm cup into Raffi’s hands. “It’s all over, at last.” The room was dark. They were sitting around the fire, Tallis in her young-woman shape, the door behind her open, so they could see the moths in the soft moonlight over the lawns. Raffi sipped the warm ale. He still felt tired and guilty and dizzy. Yesterday they’d told him he’d been in the dream-coma for three days and nights. He knew now he’d never have gotten out of it on his own; Galen had come in for him, in deep, into the journey, because that’s what it had been, the Deep Journey that only Relic Masters should make. It would have killed him soon. Even now, a whole day later, he barely had the strength to make a sense-line, and fell over if he stood up.
