Ciaran looked up, stiffening. The boy's lips moved. His face, the eyes still closed, was twisted in an agony of pleading. His hands were raised, reaching, trying to hold something that slipped through his fingers like mist.
Dark mist. The mist of dreams. It was still in his eyes when he opened them. Grey eyes, clouded and veiled, and then with the dream-mist thickening into tears....
He cried out, "Marsali!" as though his heart was ripped out of him with the breath that said it. Then he lay still on the couch, his eyes, staring unfocused at the milky light, with the tears running out of them.
Ciaran said softly, "Lord Bas...."
"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.