***
For a long time, Ran-Del was conscious only of pain. He floated in an ocean of pain. It ebbed and flowed with tidal variations, but it was always there. Eventually, he felt himself begin to surface—not to be free of pain, but to distinguish all the permutations of it.
There was the pain that burned his lungs and made each exhalation a minor torture. Another pain ached in the very center of his chest, deep and dull and steady. A third pain began at his forehead and flowed down his neck and shoulder, not constant but building slowly, increasing in intensity until a faint pressure on his arm caused almost total oblivion.
There was one last pain he couldn’t classify. It had no specific location, no association with any specific part of his body. This pain was a hurt of the mind rather than the body. It took Ran-Del a long time to realize that it was fear rather than pain. It came and went, this fear. Sometimes it wasn’t there at all, and then it would grow suddenly. A few times it swelled to enormous proportions, accompanied by frightening visions of himself, vacant, dull-eyed, listless. When this happened, the fear obliterated his pains and his sense of self and everything else. Ran-Del would moan and try to move away from the fear, but he couldn’t make his body obey him. He heard voices speaking over him without in any way registering what they said.
The Sixth Discipline Page 74
