"Awake," whispered the boy. "I'm awake again. Music--a harp crying
out.... I didn't want to wake! Oh, God, I didn't want to!"
He sat up suddenly. The rage, the sheer blind fury in his young face
rocked Ciaran like the blow of a fist.
"Who waked me? Who dared to wake me?"
There was no place to run. The light held him. And there was Mouse.
Ciaran said:
"I did, Lord Bas. There was need to."
The boy's grey eyes came slowly to focus on his face. Ciaran's heart
kicked once and stopped beating. A great cold stillness breathed from
somewhere beyond the world and walled him in, closer and tighter than
the milky light. Close and tight, like the packed earth of a grave.
A boy's face, round and smooth and soft. No shadow even of down on the
cheeks, the lips still pink and girlish. Long dark lashes, and under
them....
Grey eyes. Old with suffering, old with pain, old with an age beyond
human understanding. Eyes that had seen birth and life and death in an
endless stream, flowing by just out of reach, just beyond hearing. Eyes
looking out between the bars of a private hell that was never built for
any man before.
One strong young hand reached down among the furs and silks and felt
for something, and Ciaran knew the thing was death.
Ciaran, suddenly, was furious himself.
He struck a harsh, snarling chord on the harpstrings, thinking of
Mouse. He poured his fury out in bitter, pungent words, the gypsy argot
of the Quarters, and all the time Bas fumbled to get the hidden weapon
in his hands.
It was the long nails that saved Ciaran's life. They kept Bas from
closing his fingers, and in the meantime some of Ciaran's vibrant rage
had penetrated. Bas whispered:
"You love a woman."
"Yeah," said Ciaran. "Yeah."
"So do I. A woman I created, and made to live in my dreams. Do you know
what you did when you waked me?"
"Maybe I saved the world. If the legends are right, you built it. You
haven't any right to let it die so you can sleep."
"I built another world, little man. Marsali's world. I don't want to
leave it." He bent forward, toward Ciaran. "I was happy in that world.
I built it to suit me. I belong in it. Do you know why? Because it's
made from my own dreams, as I want it. Even the people. Even Marsali.
Even myself.
"They drove me away from one world. I built another, but it was no
different. I'm not human. I don't belong with humans, nor in any world
they live in. So I learned to sleep, and dream."
He lay back on the couch. He looked pitifully young, with the long
lashes hiding his eyes.
"Go away. Let your little world crumble. It's doomed anyway. What
difference do a few life-spans make in eternity? Let me sleep."
* * * * *