Kree stood straight and tall in his dark mantle, his gaze somber as he looked down at Nelson.
"Then you have failed, outlander. But your judgment can come later for now the doom you helped bring here is sweeping toward us."
Yes, I helped bring that doom to L'Lan and the Brotherhood, he thought. I helped bring it, the death that is coming.
"Confine him until we judge him," Nelson heard Kree order. He heard the thought only vaguely, for his mind was too drunk with fatigue to function. He was hardly aware of walking unsteadily in the direction that guards pointed out with their swords, through corridors, through a door—
It was a green-glass walled chamber that they locked him into. Nelson, his mind darkening, stretched his wolf-body on the cool floor and sank into an abyss of sleep.
Chapter XV
THE WRATH OF THE CLANS
Nelson dreamed strangely in his stuporous sleep, dreams of thought-voices that his mind could hear, of forms moving around him, of, finally, a stunning, thunderous wave of force that rolled upon him.
He was overwhelmed by it, carried by it over the sheer brink of the world. He was falling into an awesome, howling gulf that was outside space and time, was falling, falling-
A strange shock stopped his fall. And then he became dimly aware that sensation was returning to him, that he was awaking.