Bas raised the Stone of Destiny in his clasped hands and pressed it to his forehead. And Ciaran took his harp.
He was looking at Mouse when he set the strings to singing. That was why it wasn't hard to play as he did. It was something from him to Mouse. A prayer. A promise. His heart held out on a song.
The music rippled out across the packed mass of humanity. At first they didn't hear it. Then there was a stirring and a sigh, a dumb, blind reaching. Somewhere the message was getting through the darkness clouding their minds. A message of hope. A memory of red sunlight on green hills, of laughter and home and love.
Ciaran let the music die to a whisper under his fingers, and the people moved forward, toward him, wanting to hear.
He began to walk away, slowly, trailing the harp-song over his shoulder—and they followed. Haltingly, in twos and threes, until the whole mass broke and flowed like water in his wake.
Bas was gone, his slim young body slipping fast through the broken ranks of the crowd.
Ciaran caught one more glimpse of Mouse before he lost her among the others. She was crying, without knowing or remembering why.
If Bas died, if Bas was defeated, she would never know nor remember.
Ciaran led them as far as he could, clear to the wall of the pit. He stopped playing. They stopped, too, standing like cattle, looking at nothing, with eyes turned inward to their clouded dreams.