... You will be pleased to know, Little Brother, that the Good Doctor's last days with us were extremely uncomfortable and, so far as I could manage it, humiliating. He was never tortured, but I would not permit him to change his clothes nor to bathe, so that he might dwell at length in the odor of his own fear. Had it been two months earlier in the year, he certainly would have frozen to death in the unheated Keep, but as you may remember it was spring, and he only took a chill which did not last. I had him moved from cell to cell so that he would have no chance to become familiar with his surroundings, and I questioned him every day, though never at the same time, and since we were below ground it was always dark, so he soon lost his sense of time.

I am sure you would have known well how to interrogate such a man, but all I wanted to do was buy you time, so I simply asked him every question I could think of about the imaginary plot against the Golias, until we both began to believe it was real, in a way.

But after some weeks of this, his spirit broke, and he became almost peaceful. His countenance took on a serene expression that looked not very different from the one on Robenc's face the night I pried his fingers off the Good Doctor's throat. The Good Doctor had been thin to begin with, as you know, but now his skin took on a kind of glow, his hair and beard turned white, and his voice became so soft that I had to put my ear to his lips in order to hear what he was saying.

And of course what he was saying was nonsense, because everything we had ever said to each other was nonsense. It was a disturbing experience....