Since the shipwreck, Edward had become something of a light sleeper. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a full night's sleep - it was a few hours of rest here and there, in between poultices wearing off and occasional relapses of fever. The doctor had told him he'd been unconscious for several days when he was first pulled out of the water and brought to the palace; Edward supposed he must be making up for it.
The nurse outside the door to his room in the infirmary was incorrect, then, in telling the visitor outside that Edward was asleep. Even if he hadn't been woken up a little while ago by a unnerving dream of drowning and a dart of pain stabbing through his side, the visitor's booming voice and heavy footfalls would have certainly jolted him out of slumber.
The nurse - a quiet fellow who seemed to be slightly lost without the doctor to help him - was arguing with someone just outside his door. Edward could barely hear the nurse, but the visitor's words echoed loud and clear through the curtain that separated the infirmary from the hallway. "What do you mean the doctor's not here?...I know that, but she isn't even -"
"It's all right," he said, as loud as he could manage with his still-ragged voice, "let him in." The nurse peered around the corner pensively, then pulled the curtain aside and vanished.
Tellah was not a large man, but he always gave off the impression that he took up much more of the room than he actually did. As he swept into the infirmary with his staff clacking on the marble floor and his great purple coat billowing around him, it was rather like the sudden appearance of a majestic thundercloud on a previously still horizon.
The sage pulled up a stool and sat down on it. Tellah regarded him a moment with his expression concealed behind his great beard and round spectacles; Edward was unsure what to say, so he said nothing.
"Have you even seen a white wizard since you washed up here?" Tellah eventually said. This, Edward guessed, was probably the source of his altercation with the nurse at the door. Edward shook his head.
"I couldn't say. I was unconscious for the worst of it," he said. Tellah made an irritated grumble, but it was hard to tell where his irritation was directed. Edward raised himself unsteadily into a sitting position and leaned against the headboard. "They do have wizards here, but I think they've done all they can for now."
"What about your leg?" Tellah asked.
"I'm told the break is...complex," Edward said. The doctor's explanation seemed to satisfy Tellah for now - at any rate, he sighed heavily and pushed his glasses back up on his hawkish nose without any further objections.
There was a silence that seemed quite long to Edward, whose thoughts were tripping over themselves in a desperate attempt to produce something to say. "Tellah - I...I'm sor-" he began, but Tellah raised his hand warningly.
"No you don't, boy. You aren't going to go stealing my thunder like that, prince or no."
Edward blinked, uncomprehending.
"You see," Tellah continued, "I've come to talk to you."
"Is there much to talk about?" Edward asked, looking past Tellah and out of the window, where the Epopt's garden was starting overflow its embankments.
"Of course," Tellah huffed. "If you'd talked a little more back in Kaipo, then maybe you wouldn't have come off like-"
"Talked more? You threw a pot at me!" Edward snapped, then caught himself. "That is - I didn't mean -"
"Of course you meant it," Tellah said. "You're a prince, aren't you, boy? Then act like it, and say what you mean!"
"You sound...just like my father," Edward said quietly.
"Then your father had a bit of sense."
"Mother always said so." Sitting here taking admonishments from Tellah seemed strange to Edward - The sage had always seemed more like a force of nature than a human being to the young bard. Tellah was great, blustering maelstrom of irrational hatred and threats, whose only words for him were shouted out of a second-story window - and, on at least one occasion, followed by a warning bolt of purple lightning that fused the sand in front of Edward into red-hot glass.
And now, after so many weeks of tragedy and danger, that blustering maelstrom was the only family he had left.
"I'm sorry," Edward found himself saying. Tellah shook his head.
"Blast it, boy, that's what I was going to say." Edward looked surprised, so Tellah continued. "Anna...was a clever young lady. I should have trusted her judgement, instead of throwing a pot at you."
"Twice," Edward said with a smile. "And then you threatened to burn me to a cinder if I ever showed up at your house again."
"Yes, that was probably a bit harsh." Tellah pushed his spectacles back up on his nose, and Edward caught a flash of the sage's surprisingly gentle eyes. "But not every traveling minstrel is a brave young prince in disguise, you know, and it's a vice of fathers to err on the side of caution."
Brave. No one had ever called him that before.
Edward blushed, and bit his lip.
"Thank you," he said, quietly. "If I ever manage to rebuild Damcyan -"
"Don't say 'if'," Tellah interrupted. "You'll manage it, my boy, mark my words."
" - you'll always be welcome there," Edward finished, breaking into a grin.
"I'd be honored," Tellah said. "And for my part, I'll make sure that it's never razed again."
Golbez. Of course.
"You're really going to kill him, aren't you," Edward said, unsure of whether or not it was a question.
"For Anna, and for Damcyan, and for you," Tellah said firmly. There were footsteps in the hall - probably the doctor, from the sound of it.
"For me," Edward repeated. Tellah nodded. He thought of Tellah's bolt of lightning, ripping through the air with a deafening crack that must have woken half the town. The warning had worked - he'd fled in blind terror and hid in the inn for the rest of the night. Despite his age, the sage was one of the most fearsome wizards the world had ever known, with enough magic at his command to restore a wounded man to perfect health...or tear him to shreds in the blinking of an eye. He wondered if Tellah had ever killed anyone before.
"The doctor's coming back. I'd better go," Tellah said, laying a hand on Edward's shoulder. "I'll see you before we leave for the Dark Elf's island."
"Be safe," Edward half-pleaded, closing his eyes. Tellah may have nodded - at any rate, he pushed back his stool and left as suddenly as he had arrived, without another word.