A nurse came around with a light, checking on people.
"Where am I?” he asked.
She told him.
"What happened?"
"You had an accident. Do you want another needle?"
"No. I'm all right.” He did not like the silent music the drugs brought.
"Try to sleep,” she said, and went away.
Trouble was, he seemed to have been sleeping for weeks. The shock was wearing off, he decided. His leg lashed him with a sickening beat of pain, he was stiff with staying in the same position so long. He kept trying to remember, and when he did remember, he didn't want to. His recollections were very patchy and most of them must be nightmares.
When he did sleep, he was tormented by those same nightmares. He would wake up in a state of shivering funk, soaked with sweat and remember nothing of what had so frightened him. For the first time he began to wonder what on earth he had done to himself. Not playing rugby at this time of year. Train accident? There was a bandage around his head and his leg was in splints.
Yet the strangest dream that came in that endless night was amazingly sharp and memorable, so that in the morning he was to wonder whether it had really been a dream at all.
Light was shining in the door, and the room was a mass of confusing shadows. This time he seemed to have just wakened naturally, not frightened. His leg throbbed with a regular pulse that seemed to go all the way through him. He studied the ropes holding it up and then turned his head on the pillow. There was a window there with no curtains, and the sky outside was black. He rolled his head over to the other side to look up at the man standing there.
"Behold the limpid orbs,” the man said, “reflecting the sense within, the very turning of the soul. Prithee, then, this maiming of thy shin, it does not pain thee o'ermuch?"
Edward said, “It's not too bad, sir.” It wasn't, really.
"To dissemble thus becomes thee more than honesty."
The visitor was an odd little man—quite old, with a fuzz of silver curls and a wrinkled, puckish face, clean-shaven. He was stooped, so his face stuck out in front of him. His overcoat had a very old-fashioned Astrakhan collar and seemed slightly too large for him. He was holding an equally antique beaver hat in one hand and a walking stick with a silver handle in the other.
"We have not come into acquaintance beforetimes although ink in veritable tides has flowed between us. I am your worship's servant, Jonathan Oldcastle.” He bowed, clutching the topper to his heart.
"Mr. Oldcastle!” Edward said. “You're ... You're not what I expected, sir.” In the way of dreams, Mr. Oldcastle's appearance seemed perfectly acceptable for an officer in His Majesty's Colonial Office. Yet none of the letters he had written to Edward in the past two years had read like Mosley Minor's atrocious efforts to extemporize Shakespeare.
The little man chuckled, beaming. “I fain perfect attainments beyond expectation. This council needs be consummated with dispatch. Pray you, Master Exeter, being curt and speedy in response, avise me what befell, what savage circumstance contrived this havoc upon thy person and thy fortunes. Discover to me the monument of thy memory that we may invent what absences the dickens may have wiped thereof."
He had a broad accent, which Edward could not place, and his speech would certainly have been unintelligible had this not all been a dream.
"I don't remember much, sir. I went ... I went to the Grange, sir, didn't I? To stay with Bagpipe."
Mr. Oldcastle nodded. “I so surmise."
"Just for a few days. They said they didn't mind, and I was welcome. I'm planning to enlist as soon as mobilization starts of course, but until then..."
There hadn't been anywhere else to go. Words caught in his throat and he was afraid he was going to start piping his eye.
"Comfort thyself!” Oldcastle said soothingly. “I think someone approaches. Tarry a moment."
Edward must have drifted off to sleep again, because he jumped when Oldcastle said, “Now, my stalwart? What else lurks in thy recollection?"
"Dinner? I didn't have any proper togs. It's all very vague, sir."
Mr. Oldcastle breathed on the silver head of his cane and wiped it on his sleeve. “And after that?"
"We turned in. The general was going to be reading the lesson in church next morning."
"Yes?"
A curious smell of mothballs was overpowering even the ever-present stink of carbolic.
"Then Bagpipe came and said did I feel like some tuck, and why didn't we raid the larder."
"And you did. And what then befell?"
Screaming? Long curly hair? Porcelain sink....
"Nothing!” Edward said quickly. “Nothing! I can't remember."
"Be not vexed,” Mr. Oldcastle said, matter-of-factly. “Oftentimes a wounding of the head will ruptures cause upon the spirit withall. Thou cannot fare hence upon the morrow, good young coz. Dost peradventure know by rote the speech of bold King Harry before Harfleur?"
"'Once more into the breach,’ you mean, sir?"
"The same."
"I should. I played the king when Sixth Form did Henry V last Christmas."
"Be it that, then. No bardic fancy ever better nailed the spirit of a man. Now mark me well. Here are you well cosseted and I shall set a palliation about thee, but if thy foes evade my artifice and so distrain thee, do thou declaim that particular poesy. Wilt keep this admonition in thy heart?"
"Yes, sir, I'll remember,” Edward said solemnly. In the way of dreams, the instructions seemed very important and logical.
"I wish thee good fortune, Master Exeter."
"Goodnight, Mr. Oldcastle. I'm very pleased to have met you at last, sir."
He slept better after that.
17
A CLICK FROM THE BOLT WAKENED ELEAL. THE LOCK turned, making much less noise than it had for her. In utter darkness, all she could see was the window, a lopsided patch of not-quite light, distorted by clinging snow. Yet somehow there was enough light for her to know how the door swung open, with not a hint of its usual squeak.
He glided in, blacker than black, making no sound. The door closed, equally silent. Moving like smoke, he approached. He stopped at her feet and she supposed he was looking down at her, but she could see no face, no eyes, only a pillar of darker dark.
All she could hear was her heart.
"You saw.” It was a whisper, but even a whisper had resonance when it came from Dolm Actor.
The words were not a question and she was incapable of answering anyway.
"Normally that would seal your fate in itself,” said the whisper.
Normally? Was there a shimmer of hope there? Would she die of terror before she found out?
Obviously he knew she was awake. “You are an incredible little snoop. I always wondered if you would ransack my pack one day. I would have known, of course. It is given to us to know when we are detected. Then I should have had to send your soul to my master. I hoped it would not be like that, Eleal Singer. We do have feelings, you know. We are not monsters. We mourn the necessity."
Pause.
Not quite a chuckle ... yet when the deadly soft voice spoke again, it held a hint of amusement. “I thought I was the problem, you see. I thought it was my master's print on my heart that had displeased the Lady. Yes, my master is he whom you call Zath—the Unconquerable, the Last Victor. I reported to my master, as you saw, seeking guidance. I was told that it is you who are the problem, not me."
She wanted to scream, Why me? and her mouth was as dry as ashes. Her nails were digging into her palms and her insides were melting to jelly. Her teeth continued to chatter.