CHAPTER VI
The pretty daughter of the squire,
She mourned and would not eat;
The Mink he tried to tempt her
With barley bread and meat.
"O no, O no, you rebel cur,
I'll never eat nor drink,
Till father's hall I see again!
Till death has trapped the Mink!"
—Ruck's Ballad of the Mink
There were seven hundred silent men in the amphitheater of the forest, and more came in each minute, slipping from the trees without a sound, taking seats on the sloping grass. Miner's lanterns, the marvelous contraptions that hung in the shafts beside the veins of coal or pockets of diamonds, glowing with a dull penetrating radiance, had been filched from the mines one by one over years, and now illumined the strange hall like blue glowworms spaced around a pit.
Revel sat, uneasy, on the sward in the center, at the bottom of the bowl; beside him were Jerran and Dawvys, the small rebel's cousin who served in the house of Ewyo the squire. There also was the Lady Nirea, dressed in a miner's plain short-sleeved shirt and unornamented pants, but looking as delectable to Revel as she had in the silver gown. She had not spoken to him since the great bang and the twin clouds, but his mind was so full that he didn't care.
He had killed gods. This had brought his whole world down in ruins, shaken his belief in all he had ever been taught by the priests.
He had killed gentrymen, squires whom no breath of trouble from the ruck had ever disturbed. This had made the myths of rebellion very real to him, very possible; and then Jerran had admitted to being a rebel himself.