"Only the shade of you I summon reads my mind," said Hal. "Otherwise, perhaps I could make you see some things you don't want to see. It was John Hawkwood who stopped Giangalleazo Visconti in 1387."
"And preserved the system of city-states that made the Renaissance possible? As I just said, I know your mind." Bleys shook his head. "But it's only your theory. Do you really think the Renaissance could have been stopped by one summer's military frustration of a Milanese Duke who was still in pursuit of the kingship of all Italy when he died, about a dozen years later?"
"Probably not," said Hal. "Giangalleazo's later tries didn't work. Nonetheless, the historic change was in the wind. But history's what happened. The causal chain I picked to work with links forward from Hawkwood. If you see that much, why can't you see people as I do?"
"And have them break my heart too?" Bleys watched him steadily. "I told you I found that inconceivable. And it's inconceivable to me that they can breaks yours - or that hearts can break, as I said, for any reason."
"It breaks mine, because I've seen them in actions you don't believe exist." Hal met the other man's gaze. "I've been among them and I've watched. I've seen the countless things they do for each other - the extraordinary kindnesses, the small efforts to help or comfort each other, the little things they deny themselves so that someone else can have what they might have had. And the large things - the lives risked and laid down, the lifetimes of unreturned effort, the silent heroisms, the quiet faithfulnesses - all without trumpet and flags, because life required it of them. These aren't the actions of mayflies, of animals - or even of savages. These are the actions of men and women reaching out for something greater than what they have now; and while I live I'll help them to it."
"There's that," said Bleys, remotely. "Sooner or later, you'll die. Do you think they'll build a statue to you, then?"
"No, because no statues are needed," Hal answered. "My reward never was supposed to be a recognition of anything I've done; but only my knowing I'd done it. And I get that reward every day, seeing the road extend, seeing my work on it and seeing that it's good. There's a poem by Rudyard Kipling, called The Palace - "
"Spare me your poems," said Bleys.
"I can spare you them, but life won't," said Hal. "Poems are the tool I've been hunting for all these years, the tool I needed to defeat those who think the way you do. Listen to this one. You might learn something. It's about a king who was also a master mason, who decided to build himself a palace like no one had ever seen before. But when his workmen dug down for the foundations they found the ruins of an earlier palace, with one phrase carved on every stone of it. The king ordered them to use the materials of the earlier palace and continued to build - until word came to him one day that it was ordained he should never finish. Then, at last, he understood the phrase the earlier builder had carved on each stone; and he told his workmen to stop building, but to carve the same phrase on each stone he had caused to be set in place. That phrase was - 'After me cometh a builder. Tell him I too have known!' "
Hal stopped talking. Bleys sat still, silent, watching him.
"Do you understand?" Hal said. "The message is that the knowing is enough. No more is needed. And I have that knowing."
"Shai Hal!" murmured Malachi.
But Hal barely heard the old Dorsai praise-word. His mind was suddenly caught up by what he had just said; and his mind wheeled outward like an eagle, seeing further and further distances lifting over the horizon as his wide wings carried him toward it.
The fire crackled and burned low behind him, unnoticed.
When he looked up, all four of the shades he had summoned from the depths of his mind were gone.
Chapter Sixty-one
Sometime in the hours of the night he exploded into wakefulness, sitting up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and getting to his feet in one swift, reflexive motion.
He stood utterly still in the darkness, his senses stretched to their limits, his eyes moving in steady search of the deeper shadows, his ears tensed for the faintest sound.
As he stood, his recently sleeping mind caught up with his already roused body. The hard electric surge of adrenaline was suddenly all through him. There was an aching and a heaviness in his left side and shoulder, as if he had slept with it twisted under him so long that a cutoff of circulation had numbed it. He waited.
Nothing stirred. The house was silent. Slowly, the ache and heaviness faded from his side and shoulder, and his tension relaxed. He got back into the bed. For a little while he lay awake, wondering. Then sleep took him once more.
But this time he dreamed; and in his dream he had come close at last to that dark tower which he had been approaching in his earlier dreams, across a rubbled plain that had become a wild land of rock and gullied earth.. Now, however, he was in a place of naked rock - a barren and blasted landscape, through which wound the narrow trail he was following.
He came at last to a small open space in which stood the ruins of a stone building with a broken cross on top of it. Just outside the shattered doorway of the building was a horse with a braided bridle, a saddle with a high cantle and armor on its chest and upper legs. It stood tethered to the lintel. When it caught sight of him, it threw up its head, struck its hooves on the broken paving beneath them and neighed three times, loudly. He went to it and mounted it; and rode on, for now the trail had widened. It led him along and between the rocks, sometimes by way of a scant ledge with sheer stone to his right, a sheer drop to his left; and then again between close rocky walls on either side. As he rode, the day, which was gloomy already, darkened even further until it was as if he rode at twilight.
What little illumination there was seemed to come from the sky in general. It was more light than starglow or moonglow, but not much more; and no trace of sun was visible, so that the dimness enclosed everything. Down among the rocks as he was, he could no longer see the tower, and the trail wound backward and forward, turning to every quarter of the compass. But he did hot doubt that he was still headed for the tower, for he could feel its presence, close now ahead of him.
He let the reins lie slack, because the horse seemed to be determined to carry him on, whether he controlled it or not; and in any case there was only one route to follow. From the first moment he had seen it at the chapel it had shown its eagerness to be ridden by him, and in this one direction.
Together, they continued a little ways; and then he saw, ahead and on his right, a break in the rock wall filled by a pair of locked gates, made of dark metal bars overgrown with green vines. Through the bars was revealed an area of stony wilderness in which nothing seemed to live or move; and pressed against the far side of the gates, gazing through them at Hal as he approached, was a slim figure that was Bleys Ahrens.
Hal checked his horse opposite the gate. It tossed its head impatiently against the pull of the bit, but stood; and for a moment the two men were face to face.
"So," said Bleys, in a remote voice, "we have the ghosts of those three tutors of yours, do we, raised again by you, and crying out against me for vengeance?"
"No," said Hal. "They were only creatures of history, just as you and I are. It's everyone who lives now, crying out to be freed from the chains that always held them."
"There's no freedom for them," said Bleys, still in the remote voice. "There never was."
"There is, and always has been," said Hal. "Open the gate, come through and let me show you."