Weeks passed.
One afternoon, after checking on the villagers he had mostly neglected, the Yellow Mage climbed the stairs of his tower carrying a tray with three bowls of soup.
One for himself.
One for Blackbird Sonder.
One for the Dread Mage, who never ate.
He set the third bowl beside the sleeping man anyway.
Of course, he would keep the Dread Mage alive for as long as he could, to the best of his abilities, but he would also treat him as a person.
There was no reason to stop.
If the Dread Mage miraculously recovered and woke, he would want something nutritious to eat.
Sonder ate, and so did her dragon companion.
Neither the Yellow Mage nor the Dread Mage did.
Afterward, he carried the one empty bowl and the two untouched ones into his kitchen.
Then he went to his workshop.
The mask rested upon the stone table.
It looked different now.
Not whole, not yet, but no longer obviously broken.
The fractures had become thin lines instead of gaping wounds.
The face upon it was calm and regal.
The Yellow Mage regarded it for several long moments.
He took his place once more.
There were still cracks to mend.
The mask occupied the room in a way that nothing else ever had.
The Yellow Mage had never dabbled much in such magic, nor in the people who created it.
He was curious. This was his first encounter with such an object.
Of course, there was always the possibility that the curiosity was not entirely his own, however slight.
He almost heard the words:
"You are curious."
That was true.
Any healer would be.
He wanted to know how something so thoroughly broken had managed to preserve so much of itself.
How its magic remained so vibrant.
Curiosity, however, was not obedience.
He rested one hand lightly upon the cracked surface.
Golden light flowed from his fingertips.
Objects such as this did not merely exist within the world.
They asserted themselves upon it.
And those who created them sought to do the same.
He was no druid, but he had come to understand their philosophy, even if there were parts—both great and small—with which he disagreed.
He did not travel, except when called or when there was no other choice.
More often, people came to him.
Among them were a few druids.
He worked on the mask until evening.
Not because he was tired.
Healing required energy, but more importantly, it required judgment.
One could mend too much in a single sitting.
Living bodies became exhausted, but the mask seemed almost too eager to become whole.
That made him cautious.
He withdrew his hand, but his gaze lingered upon it.
He flexed his fingers, and golden light answered the motion.
It was steady and controlled, but it was weaker than it had once been.
He had noticed it months earlier.
At first, he had dismissed it as fatigue.
Healing the Dread Mage demanded an astonishing amount of magic every day, especially during the early days of his care.
It had seemed only reasonable that the effort would wear upon him.
Except it had not stopped.
The decline had continued.
So gradually that another mage might never have noticed.
But the Yellow Mage measured everything.
The numbers had changed.
Enough that he could no longer pretend it was coincidence.
Nothing about him had changed.
He had examined himself thoroughly.
He was his first patient, and he knew himself best.
It was no illness, no curse, no hidden wound.
His soul remained intact.
His body was healthy.
His mind remained his own.
He was as certain of that as one could ever be.
Yet his magic continued to diminish.
It had begun shortly before the Dread Mage had been entrusted to his care.
That timing troubled him.
The Dread Mage had arrived already caught within that strange, unending sleep.
Whatever had happened during his battle against Endrith had not merely injured him.
The Yellow Mage had often wondered whether the drain afflicting the Dread Mage was no longer confined to him.
Perhaps it spread.
Perhaps every spell cast to sustain him carried away an imperceptible fragment of the caster's own strength.
Or perhaps it had nothing to do with him at all.
There was another possibility.
Endrith.
The name itself felt strange.
Every time he thought about it, wrote it down, or spoke it aloud, it sounded less familiar than it should.
As though memory itself resisted holding onto it.