Gradually Oslang felt himself falling into a doze. He was vaguely aware of distant revelry seeping into the room and Urthryn and Sylvriss bestirring themselves to go and join it.
‘Will you join us, Oslang?’ said a voice, also some-where in the distance.
‘Later,’ he managed to reply, but he heard his an-swer being greeted with laughter, and a reassuring hand was laid on his shoulder.
Roused a little, he felt Sylvriss moving past him on the way to the door. Turning, he made a gesture that would have sent stars shimmering through her hair for the rest of that evening, but as he looked, the radiant stones flared up and the sheen of her black hair made him lower his hand.
Best confined, he thought. You’d paint a rose, you donkey.
‘Light be with you truly, lady,’ he mumbled as he slipped deep into a happy slumber.
‘Light be with you, Girvan Girvasson.’
The Line Leader turned and peered into the dark-ness at the approaching rider. The figure increased the light of his torch a little to illuminate his face as he came alongside.
Girvan smiled. ‘Brother,’ he said in some consider-able surprise. Then he leaned across to embrace him.
‘What’s drawn you from your relentless pursuit of idle leisure down at Westryn,’ he said, still holding him.
Girven laughed. ‘Our Festival Helangai, brother,’ he said. ‘I saw your Line had volunteered for coast watch duty to avoid being soundly beaten again so I decided to seek you out and offer you yet more instruction in the subtler arts of the game.’
Girvan smiled and shook his head. ‘You’re quite right,’ he said. ‘Avoiding your Line in the Helangai is always uppermost in my mind, as it is with anyone else who’s survived so far in life without being kicked in the head by a horse.’
Girven beamed, and his brother ploughed on.
‘However, I’d happily have my people trounce them, were it not for two facts. Firstly, we’re on duty, and secondly, as you may have noticed, it’s pitch dark. Though I appreciate that most of your Line can’t tell night from day.’
Girven grinned broadly and then peered intently out across the shore towards the lights of the distant look-out boats extending to the horizon and beyond.
‘Ah,’ he said, after a moment, in mock surprise. ‘You’re right. I suppose that means we’ll just have to share your watch and our meagre supplies with you.’
Girvan bowed graciously, partly to hide his face; it was a generous gesture on his brother’s part. ‘How meagre are your supplies?’ he asked.
Girven looked at him significantly. ‘As meagre as usual,’ he replied.
Girvan cleared his throat. ‘Have you got any of grandfather’s… liniment… with you,’ he said, affecting casualness.
‘A little,’ Girven answered, in the same vein.
Girvan smiled expectantly. ‘Then welcome to the coast watch brother,’ he said. ‘And Light be with you and your wondrous Line too.’
‘And grandfather,’ Girven added reproachfully.
‘Oh yes,’ Girvan chuckled. ‘Light be with Grandfa-ther especially.’
‘Light be with you, Ffyrshht,’ burbled the drunken Mathidrin as Dan-Tor appeared unexpectedly around the corner.
The trooper’s two supporters, marginally the better for drink, sobered abruptly and closed ranks quickly, if unsteadily, to support him; a griping fear returning control of their minds to them for the moment. Their suddenly pale faces heightened the flush of the wine in their cheeks and made them look like ghastly mario-nettes. Wide-eyed, they managed to salute their Master.
Dan-Tor strode past, and the two men, almost un-able to believe their good fortune, desperately dragged their oblivious colleague away with much fearful hissing for silence.
Dan-Tor’s face was unreadable, but the old and unexpected greeting had struck him as powerfully as Hawklan’s arrow, and he found himself unable to deal out the punishing response that such insolent familiar-ity would normally have earned. The scuffling sibilance of the departing drunkards mingled in his ears with his own tightly drawn breath.
Strangely uncertain and disorientated, he turned off the broad curving corridor and ascended the long stairway that would take him to his private quarters. No Mathidrin trooper guarded this part of the tower fortress, nor even any invisible snare woven from the Old Power. Both precautions were unnecessary; the aura of an Uhriel was protection enough.
With an angry wave of his hand he doused the globe that dutifully attempted to light as he entered. As its brief glimmer faded sulkily, an ancient, dreadful memory bubbled up from the dark and awful depths of the well of his history.
‘Light be with you, daddy,’ piped the childish voice. Dancing in its wake came other memories; a cherished face, glistening dark hair, opened arms, trusting eyes and, worst of all, the touch of a trusting heart.
His eyes opened wide in horror as this tiny flame rose from the grey ashes of his long crushed humanity to shed its cruel, penetrating light. Instinctively his every resource leapt to defend him with a ferocity that would have served to protect him from an assault by Ethriss himself.
For a moment he swayed, his whole being tense with the centuries of guilt and remorse that this small light threatened to illuminate. Wilfully he extended his Power into the arrow in his side until a physical agony so possessed his body that all else dwindled into signifi-cance.
Then it was over. As he withdrew the Power, his pain faded, and all that remained of the desperate memory was a livid afterglow. He sat down awkwardly.
Light be with you! The greeting raked across him. Damn the man, he thought. He should have consigned him to darkness where he stood, but…
He breathed out irritably. His natural inclination had been to forbid all celebration of the Winter Festival, but Urssain and Aelang had prevailed upon him.
‘Morale is low enough, Ffyrst. It would be a needless provocation unless it served some clearly visible purpose.’
Now, a quieter part of him mused, his response to this small incident had been a salutary demonstration of his vulnerability, and a reminder that his armours could not be too many.
Vulnerability. To have been brought so low by the mindless ramblings of some drunken oaf after surviving the giving of the news of the loss of Fyorlund to Him was a disconcerting irony.
For at Derras Ustramel, there had been no mighty outburst; no sudden black extinction. Only a brief, slow glance from those eyes, and a briefer touch of that chilling will. You are my Uhriel, it said. You must ever learn. Then, a silent, icy, dismissal.
Looking up, Dan-Tor peered out into the darkness over the mist-shrouded land to the north, doubly hidden now by the heavy snow-burdened clouds.
Learned? What was to be learned? That these incon-sequential humans were poor material for His work; always dangerously flawed and unreliable? The face of Rgoric came to him. He needed no lessons there. And how could he protect himself from the vagaries of random chance? Then, blasphemously, and we would have held Fyorlund if You would have unbound me.
Dan-Tor looked round, as if this treacherous thought alone might have brought Him there to deliver a belated retribution.
When he turned back again to the window, the darkness outside was at one with the darkness inside, and for a moment his extraordinary loneliness felt overwhelming.
As if responding, a dim, hesitant glow came from the globe.
As the images of the room began to form under its cautious touch, Dan-Tor found something blurring his vision, some cold, unfamiliar irritation in his eye.
Then, sustaining this time, came, ‘Light be with you, daddy.’
‘Light be with you all,’ Loman half-shouted, with a dismissive wave of his hand as the last few sentences of his speech disappeared under a mounting roar of cheers and applause.