Hal moved slowly up past the pictures to the head of the table and stood behind the single chair there, looking back down the room. The night before Donal's leaving, who would have been here at Foralie of those who had gone out to the other worlds?
Kamal Khan Graeme - but he would not have been with the rest at the table. By the time of Donal's outgoing, he was confined to his bed. Eachan, of course, who had been home since his right leg had been so badly wounded that field command was no longer practical for him. Hal tried to remember who else might have been here; and, slowly as if of their own accord, the names swam up to the surface of his memory. Ian and Kensie had been home then. And Mor, Donal's oldest brother, had been home on leave from the Friendlies. James had died at Donneswort seven years before.
So… there had been five of them at the table after dinner that night. The unchanging twilight of the room about Hal seemed to thicken. Eachan would have been here, at the head of the table - in the chair before Hal. Ian and Kensie, as the two next senior, would normally each have taken the first chair on either side, at Eachan's elbows. But the twins always sat side by side - this night they had sat on Eachan's left, out of the habit of years, with a wall at their backs and both entrances in view. At Eachan's right, then, would have been Mor; and in the chair next to Mor, then…
Hal left his station at the head of the table and moved down to stand behind the second chair on Eachan's right, the one Donal would have occupied.
He focused mind and eyes together, rebuilding the scene in his mind. Gazing at the empty chairs, he filled them with the images of the men whose pictures he had seen in the books about Donal. Eachan, tall and gaunt, now that he could not be as physically active as he had been - so that his shoulders looked abnormally wide above the rest of his body, and below the dark, lean face. The face with the deep parentheses around the mouth and the frown-line born of chronic, unmentioned pain deep between his black, level brows.
Ian and Kensie, alike as mirror images - but unmistakably different, with the inner characters that altered their whole appearance. Kensie bright, and Ian dark; both of them taller even than Eachan and Mor and with the massiveness of working muscle that Eachan had lost. Mor, leaner than both his uncles, smooth-faced and younger, but with something lonely and hungry in his dark eyes.
And Donal… half a head shorter than Mor, and even slimmer, with the double difference of greater youth and smaller boning, so that he looked like a boy among men at this table.
Eachan, leaning with his forearms on the table, Ian upright and grim, Kensie laughing easily as he always laughed. Mor leaning forward, eager to speak. And Donal… listening to them all.
The talk would have been of business, of working conditions for professional soldiers on the worlds they had last left to come home. Ordinary shop talk, but with an ear to Donal, so that they could inform him without seeming to directly give him advice…
The sound of their voices had run and echoed off the beams overhead, fast and slow. Statement and response. Pause and speak again.
"… The lusts are vampires," Eachan had said. "Soldiering is a pure art…"
"… Would you have stayed home, Eachan," Mor had asked his father, "when you were young and had two good legs?"
"Eachan's right," it was Ian speaking. "They still dream of squeezing our free people up into one lump and then negotiating with that lump for the force to get the whip hand on all the other worlds. That's the danger…"
"As long as the Cantons remain independent of the Council," said Eachan…
"Nothing stands still," said Kensie.
And with those last three words the whiskey they had been drinking had seemed to go to Donal's head in a rush; and to him it seemed that the table and the dark, harsh-boned faces he watched seemed to swim in the dimness of the dining room and Kensie's voice came roaring at him from a great distance.
About Hal the room was filling with others, other Graemes from before and since, taking the other chairs at the table, joining in the talk, so that the voices rose and mingled, the atmosphere of the room thickened… and then, abruptly, the after-dinner gathering was over. They were all standing up, to go to their beds ready for an early start in the morning. The room was full of tall bodies and deep voices; and his head spun.
He had to get out, himself. He was very close to something that had now picked him up and was carrying him away, faster and faster, so that soon he would be beyond the power of his strength to get free. He turned toward what he thought was the living room entrance to the dining room, but which he could no longer see for the shapes all around him. He pushed his way between them, stumbling, feeling his strength go. But he could not see the entrance and he did not have the strength to turn and go back the other way -
Strong arms caught him, held him and steered him, on unsteady feet through a mist of wraiths. Suddenly there was fresh air on his face, a breeze blowing against him. His right foot tripped on a downstep and dropped to a yielding surface, and the arms holding him brought him to a halt.
"Breathe deeply," commanded a voice. "Now - again!"
He obeyed; and slowly his vision cleared to show him earth and mountains and sky. He was standing on the grass, just outside the front door of Graemehouse; and it was Amanda who was upholding him.
Chapter Forty-five
"I'd better get you home," Amanda had said.
Dazed and numbed, he had not objected. The sensation had lasted through most of their ride back to Fal Morgan, so that he remembered little of it. Only when they were nearly to Fal Morgan did his head clear and he became conscious of the fact that he felt hollowly weak; drained as if by some emergency physical effort that had taken all his strength.
"I'm sorry," he said to Amanda, when he had stumbled at last into the living room of Fal Morgan, "I didn't mean to be a problem. I just seem to be knocked out… "
"I know," she said. Her eyes were steady on him, almost grim, and unfathomable. "Now, you need rest."
She turned him about like a child and steered him down the hall, into the room he had used the night before and to a seat on the edge of the bed. Hal did not see her signal the sensors, but the drapes came together over the windows and the room dropped into semi-darkness.
"Sleep now," said Amanda's voice clearly out of the gloom.
He heard the door close. He was still sitting on the edge of the bed, but now he fell back. Chilled, he turned on his side and reached out to pull over him the heavy quilt that topped the bedding, then fell instantly asleep.
He did not wake until the following morning. Pulling himself out of bed, he dressed and went in search of Amanda. He found her in an office off the living room, at a desk stacked with what appeared to be bound printouts of contracts. She was gazing at a screen inset in the desk surface, stylus in hand, apparently making corrections on what was being shown her on the screen. She lifted her head as he looked in.
"Come along," she said; and he came in. "How do you feel?"
"Wobbly," he said. In fact, he felt as if he had hardly slept at all since dismounting from his horse after the ride back from Foralie.
"Sit down, then," she said; and herself laid down the stylus she had been holding.
He dropped gratefully into an overstuffed chair. She eyed him keenly.
"You'll have to be quiet for a few days," she said. "What can I do for you?"
"Tell me how to arrange for some transportation back to Omalu," he said. "I've imposed on you long enough, here."
"I'll tell you when you've imposed," Amanda said. "As far as Omalu goes, you're in no shape to go anywhere."