BOTH MOONS WERE HIGH, DIMMING THE LIGHT OF ALL BUT the brightest stars. The campfires burned oher side of the river, stretg away into the night. Quietly flowing, the Deisa caught the moonlight and the e of the nearer fires and cast them ba wavery, sinuous ripples. And all the lines of light led to his eyes, to where he was sitting on the riverbank, hands about his khinking about dying and the life hed lived.
There was a glory to the night, Saevar thought, breathing deeply of the mild summer air, smelling water and water flowers and grass, watg the refle of blue moonlight and silver on the river, hearing the Deisas murmurous flow and the distant singing from around the fires. There was singing oher side of the river too, he noted, listening to the enemy soldiers north of them. It was curiously hard to impute any absolute sense of evil to those harmonizing voices, or to hate them quite as blindly as being a soldier seemed to require. He wasnt really a soldier, though, and he had never been good at hating.
He couldnt actually see any figures moving in the grass across the river, but he could see the fires and it wasnt hard to judge how many more of them lay north of the Deisa than there were here behind him, where his people waited for the dawn.
Almost certainly their last. He had no illusions; none of them did. Not sihe battle at this same river five days ago. All they had was ce, and a leader whose defiant gallantry was almost matched by the two young sons who were here with him.
They were beautiful boys, both of them. Saevar regretted that he had never had the ce to sculpt either of them. The Prince he had done of course, many times. The Prince called him a friend. It could not be said, Saevar thought, that he had lived a useless or ay life. Hed had his art, the joy of it and the spur, and had lived to see it praised by the great ones of his province, indeed of the whole peninsula.
And hed known love, as well. He thought of his wife and then of his own two children. The daughter whose eyes had taught him part of the meaning of life on the day shed been born fifteen years ago. And his son, too young by a year to have been allowed to e north to war. Saevar remembered the look on the boys face when they had parted. He supposed that much the same expression had been in his own eyes. Hed embraced both children, and then hed held his wife for a long time, in silence; all the words had been spoken many times through all the years. Theurned, quickly, so they would not see his tears, and mounted his horse, unwontedly awkward with a sword on his hip, and had ridden away with his Priainst those who had e upon them from over the sea.
He heard a light tread, behind him and to his left, from where the campfires were burning and voices were threading in song to the tune a syrenya played. He turo the sound.
"Be careful," he called softly. "Unless you want to trip over a sculptor.」
"Saevar?" an amused voice murmured. A voice he knew well.
"It is, my lord Prince," he replied. " you remember a night so beautiful?」
Valentin walked over—there was more than enough light by which to see—and saly down on the grass beside him. "Not readily," he agreed. " you see? Vidomnis waxing matches Ilarions wane.
The two moons together would make one whole.」
"A strange whole that would be," Saevar said.
"Tis a strange night.」
"Is it? Is the night ged by what we do down here? We mortal m