Scion of Cyador

LXXXI

Lorn paces back and forth in the small room at the waystation at Chulbyn, an ancient stone-walled room with a polished granite floor without any covering, a single bed, a low table, and a row of golden-oak pegs set shoulder-high in the stone for garments. There is one oil lamp in a bronze sconce, from which a low light suffuses the cramped space.

Lorn reaches out and slides closed the oak beam that is the bar for the door, then opens one of the two bags he has carried from Inividra. From it, he takes the wooden case that holds the chaos-glass. He places the glass on the low table.

He concentrates, and watches as the silver mists swirl and dissipate to reveal Ryalth and Kerial in the ornate bad he has not ever seen, except through the glass. He notes, for the first time, a smaller bed in the background, but both his consort and his son are sleeping, as they seem to, side by side, and they are safe. Lorn smiles as he releases that image.

For a long moment he waits, before trying to call forth a second image, and then a third. He still obtains but a silver blankness in trying to call up images of either parent-and a faint throbbing in his skull and dampness across his brow.

Finally, he releases the glass, shaking his head. He replaces the glass in its wooden case, and the case in the bag. From the other bag, he pulls forth the green-tinged and silver-covered volume that he has carried for so long across Cyador-and even across Jerans.

He opens the book, reading and paging slowly, seeking a verse, one that somehow seems right for the night, right for a journey whose end could be indeed anything. A verse that he might read in a new way, one that offers that melancholy insight of the ancient writer. There is a short verse, vaguely comforting, and he smiles.

Virtues of old hold fast.

Morning’s blaze cannot last;

and rose petals soon part.

Not so a steadfast heart.

“ ‘Not so a steadfast heart…’” Lorn murmurs. But how difficult it is to maintain a steadfast heart in a world where chaos reigns and the only thing steadfast seems the dark order of death.

He continues to turn the pages until he finds a poem he must have read, but does not recall.

Lorn shakes his head. The ancient writer had few illusions about Cyad, about men and women, or about himself-and yet, whoever he had been, he had persevered in the hope that what he strove for in building and strengthening Cyad would prove greater than he had been. Can Lorn attempt less?

He closes the book, replaces it in the bag.

In time…in time, he will sleep.