When writing for a character who’s very “out of it”, you run the risk of making the writing an indecipherable muddle for the reader, as well. I can’t quite tell with this one.
Author’s Note
Keelath let him up — it has been he whom Tyrric had been grappling with. Alelsa had hurried inside, perhaps to get more medicine, and Tyrric was left outside alone with his brother and his sister-in-law. It didn’t make him feel any better.
Though the lies he had told them had been lesser than that he’d told Alelsa, the pain he had inflicted wasn’t. Mirium sat beside him and held his hand, but he couldn’t look at her. After a long moment of regarding them both in silence, Keelath swept in with a gesture long-remembered from their childhood together — a tight hug made tighter by the fact Keelath was undead and couldn’t know how hard he was squeezing.
For a moment, Tyrric considered not telling him, letting him squeeze him into breathlessness and eventually, hopefully, a quiet dark that would last — but then Keelath let go, and the thought withered away as air rushed back into Tyrric’s lungs.
At least the near strangulation had stopped his desire to cry.
“You’re home now,” said Mirium gently. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
She didn’t know how wrong she was.
“Why are you here?” he asked, and his voice came out hoarse again. “I thought I banished you.”
“Alelsa overturned it,” Mirium answered.
“This place is in a state,” said Keelath. “No servants, no squires? Did your paranoia drive you this far, brother?”
“No,” said Tyrric past the lump in his throat. He didn’t want to answer, and Keelath obligingly pinched him.
“Stop that!” Tyrric cried. “I’m awake. You hear me? I’ve been awake, all along. You were hurting me earlier!”
“We didn’t know what else to do to rouse you,” said Mirium quietly: an apology.
Tyrric shook his head wordlessly. He still wanted to crawl into dreams to escape the horror. Only instead of the horror of being a prisoner in the Void… the horror of telling them the truth…
“It’s been in me all along,” he said in a small voice.
“It?” asked Keelath. “What’s ‘it’?”
“Since that day… that day, Mirium. When you gave birth to Medi…”
“What?” said Mirium, alarmed now.
“Talthan.” Was it really that simple? “Took me aside, when I came to see you. Did something. Put it in my head.”
“The Void,” said Keelath.
“As he did to me,” Mirium whispered, and Tyrric could feel her clinging to Keelath.
“Who did what?” Alelsa was back. Tyrric felt terrible looking at her. Her normally sleek hair was bushy and bent, and though she had changed into a new gown recently, evidenced by the neat folds in the sleeves and collar, her eyes were red from crying and lack of sleep.
Keelath released Tyrric into her arms, and she seized his head first thing, looking into his eyes searchingly.
“Tyrric Sunwalker… is it you? Or am I speaking to another l-lump of vegetable?”
He couldn’t smile at her sarcasm. He has betrayed her too much. He had to speak of it soon, he knew, but in the meantime, he let his eyes slip shut.
“Tyrric!” Alelsa shook him viciously, rousing a cry of protest from Mirium. A large hand — Keelath’s — gripped his shoulder and held him steady.
“I should like to sit up in the parlor, please,” Tyrric said, and it wasn’t a lie.
“Of course you would,” said Alelsa, her voice gravelly. Between the four of them, he was brought to his feet. He stumbled sideways as they began to walk from weakness, but also because of the shame gnawing at every footstep…
He must have blacked out along the way, for the next thing he knew, Alelsa was crying over him.
“I don’t know what to do for him!” Her fingers grasped and pinched his chest, his arms, tugged at his collar, almost spasmodically.
Tyrric wanted to tell her he didn’t know what to do either.
He found they had propped him up in his armchair in the parlor, just as he had asked. Alelsa left the room, but Mirium quietly poured tea for two, while Keelath was standing by the door, stiff and silent as a sentry. Tyrric found relief in that he was spared from saying the hateful words to Alelsa, but he knew it was only a matter of time until he had to. He bowed his head.
“Now,” said Mirium, coming to him with a full cup of tea. He jerked his head away, reflexively expecting a force-feeding, but she only set it by his hand.
“Now what?” he asked groggily when she didn’t continue.
“I don’t know,” Mirium answered, and she glanced up at Keelath.
Keelath sighed, leaving a puff of frost in midair. “We can’t leave them like this,” he said reluctantly, then, “Light knows they couldn’t be trusted not to burn the manor down around their own ears,” as if he needed a better reason.
“It’s close to burning down on its own,” said Tyrric dully.
They both gazed at him in silence.
“I’m so — brother, I’m so sorry,” said Tyrric, and he leaned forward to cup his face in his palms. “I’ve done… horrible things.”
“Join the crowd,” muttered Keelath.
Tyrric was about to answer with just how he had manipulated Alelsa, to have the long painful truth out of him right then and there, but could he betray her like that? She deserved to know from him first, directly.
Mirium sat beside him, watching him quietly. He wordlessly reached for her hand, and she took it, with a reassuring smile.
“I’ve wronged you,” Tyrric croaked.
“It is alright. The worst has been undone.”
“I should’ve never… treated… f-family… like that.”
“We’ve all been pretty rough on one another,” said Mirium with a glance at Keelath. Tyrric’s brother just looked uncomfortable.
“Can you ever forgive me?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Mirium. “Though some things may never be the same.”
“We’ll stay long enough to help get the manor back in order,” interjected Keelath, before Tyrric could think too long on what she meant.
“You should just take it,” said Tyrric.
“Eh?”
“You should take it. The manor. The title…”
“What would I do with a dusty house far from the front?” Keelath asked sardonically. “I am still officially deployed, and the place is best left to the living…”
“No… no.…”
“You’re still the best man for it.”
“No…”
Tyrric was sinking into darkness again. As he hadn’t trusted himself with the sword earlier, so he didn’t trust himself with the command of the manor, now.
A tea cup was pressed into his hands as Mirium shifted herself closer, as if to offer comfort. It wasn’t helping. Pain and shame wracked Tyrric, and he thought he would scream if it would have done any good. The weight was in the past. The weight was in an unfixable present. If he could just spiral down, down to oblivion, he would be better off for it. They would be better off for it.
“This, too, will pass,” said Mirium, and she gave him a squeeze of her hand.
He shook his head. Mountains and chasms spanned between him and any kind of salvation. A bog clutched greedily at his feet, sucking him down.
And down…
“Your wife needs you,” added Keelath. “She’s alone except for you. If you can’t maintain this place for yourself, then do so for her.”
He had probably meant the remark to be bolstering, but it ripped Tyrric open anew. I can’t! he wanted to shout. I have already betrayed her. She can take the manor. She can be the baron. Oh, that all of you were far away from me and the suffering I inflict!
Mirium was looking at him oddly, and he dully realized he had said it aloud.
“How did you betray her?” asked Keelath
“I don’t love her,” said Tyrric. “I married her… for power. To get back at Mirium and at you. To prove you all… false.”
There was a hitch of breath from the hallway. Oh. No.
Tyrric felt his inner reserves collapsing as he leaned forward and willed darkness to close over his head again. Mirium was running down the hallway with a clatter, shouting, “Alelsa! Wait!” Keelath just looked at him long and hard, shaking his head as if in disappointment.
Somehow, that little gesture worst of all. This time, instead of dreaming of a tree of safety, Tyrric dreamed of death.
Keelath swept from the room as Mirium’s cries intensified.