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patient scholars. The boy finished the short paragraph and raised his face, wreathed in confusion. There was a moment of silence.
    “That’s it, Grandpa?”
    Lord Erik grinned. “What did you expect, Rob? Prophecies are short and very vague.”
    “I thought it would be more like a story.” The boy seemed disappointed.
    Lord Erik sighed. Perhaps the book was too sophisticated for Rob after all.

CHAPTER 5
     
    T wo days after Ayrton left, Ewan got sick. He broke into a sudden, violent fever that made him incapable of leaving his bed. He sweated through every pore of his body. His joints hurt and felt hollow. Other young brothers tried to help him, rubbing his body with wine and soaking his feet in potato peelings, but the fever did not seem to abate.
    He watched them through half-lidded eyes, purple flashes of pain clouding his vision anytime he moved his head, anytime they opened the small shutters to the chamber to let the foul odors out, anytime they changed the linens or propped him up to use the pot.
    But the worst were the nightmares he suffered. Day after day, they came, the same, repetitious, attritive dreams that gave him no rest. He saw the dreaded, predictable images every time he dozed off. They floated above and behind his eyes, like a leaden weight, pulsating in rhythm with the spasms that riddled his jellylike muscles.
    It was always the same scenario. He stood in a gray world, shimmering silver and black shadows dancing at the edge of his vision, surrounding him, denying him any sense of bearing. In front of him, an oval frame showed a flickering gallery of morbid pictures, which he could not identify, but which left him with a cold knot of foreboding every time he saw them.
    After staring stupidly at the images, he would start walking into that frame, never quite reaching it. The shadows would twist and engulf him, nausea stabbing through. His footsteps echoed, becoming a drone of slow drums. Then, his breath would join in. And then his heartbeat.
    And then, he was running, running for his dear life, looking back. But all he saw was a raging, hungry blackness, a void that threatened to suck him in. He ran, ran across dead earth covered in little rocks and fragments of bones.
    His chest threatened to burst, but he could not stop sprinting. The agony was unbearable. After an eternity of pain, he would collapse and start clawing at his chest, drawing blood. He would stare at his own fingers, broken and smeared in blood, and recoil at the revulsion he felt. Then, he would see his rib cage jutting out beneath his shirt and cry in dismay.
    He awoke, a shrill, raspy scream jammed in his gullet. He spat blood on the floor, near a pool of old vomit. His throat burned. The sockets of his teeth were raw with pain from the acids of his stomach. He wished he were dead.
    “Have some water,” Adrian, one of his friends, suggested.
    Slowly, Ewan reached with a feeble, trembling hand to discover he did not have enough strength to lift a small pewter cup. Involuntary tears slid down from the corners of his eyes. His cheeks were already white with salty trails.
    Adrian helped him drink, sip after agonizing sip. The air in the room stank. Bowls of vinegar had been placed in the corners of the chamber in an attempt to kill the humors.
    “I want to die,” Ewan whispered.
    “Be strong. Everything will be all right,” his friend reassured him.
    Ewan nodded and collapsed back onto the clammy, tangled sheets. The world of darkness engulfed him once more.

    When he woke again, he realized he had not dreamed that stupid nightmare again. He had slept without dreaming, the deep, blank sleep of recuperation after severe exhaustion.
    Tenderly, he sat up. He had expected horrible pain to wreath him, but blessedly, he felt merely sore from lying in bed for some time. There was obvious weakness in his body, but new tendrils of strength were coursing through his mangled flesh, growing thicker. He was hungry.
    As he slowly regained his