And he walked on with his head somewhat hunched between his shoulders, as if himself enduring, and longing to avoid, some pain.
Arren turned, hearing a scuffle of feet behind them on the road. A man was running after them, a good way off but catching up fast. The dust of the road and his long, wiry hair made aureoles of red about him in the westering light, and his long shadow hopped fantastically along the trunks and aisles of the orchards by the road. “Listen!” he shouted. “Stop! I found it! I found it!”
He caught up with them in a rush. Arren’s hand went first to the air where his sword hilt might have been, then to the air where his lost knife had been, and then made itself into a fist, all in half a second. He scowled and moved forward. The man was a full head taller than Sparrowhawk, and broadshouldered: a panting, raving, wild-eyed madman. “I found it!” he kept saying, while Arren, trying to dominate him by a stern, threatening voice and attitude, said, “What do you want?” The man tried to get around him, to Sparrowhawk; Arren stepped in front of him again.
“You are the Dyer of Lorbanery,” Sparrowhawk said.
Then Arren felt he had been a fool, trying to protect his companion; and he stepped aside, out of the way. For at six words from the mage, the madman stopped his panting and the clutching gesture of his big, stained hands; his eyes grew quieter; he nodded his head.
“I was the dyer,” he said, “but now I can’t dye.” Then he looked askance at Sparrowhawk and grinned; he shook his head with its reddish, dusty bush of hair. “You took away my mother’s name,” he said. “Now I don’t know her, and she doesn’t know me. She loves me well enough still, but she’s left me. She’s dead.”
Arren’s heart contracted, but he saw that Sparrowhawk merely shook his head a little. “No, no,” he said, “she’s not dead.”
“But she will be. She’ll die.”
“Aye. That’s a consequence of being alive,” the mage said. The Dyer seemed to puzzle this over for a minute, and then came right up to Sparrowhawk, seized his shoulders, and bent over him. He moved so fast that Arren could not prevent him, but Arren did come up very close, and so heard his whisper, “I found the hole in the darkness. The King was standing there. He watches it; he rules it. He had a little flame, a little candle in his hand. He blew on it and it went out. Then he blew on it again and it burned! It burned!”
Sparrowhawk made no protest at being held and whispered at. He simply asked, “Where were you when you saw that?”
“In bed.”
“Dreaming?”
“No.”
“Across the wall?”
“No,” the Dyer said, in a suddenly sober tone, and as if uncomfortable. He let the mage go, and took a step back from him. “No, I- I don’t know where it is. I found it. But I don’t know where.”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” said Sparrowhawk.
“I can help you.”
“How?”
“You have a boat. You came here in it and you’re going on. Are you going on west? That’s the way. The way to the place where he comes out. There has to be a place, a place here, because he’s alive- not just the spirits, the ghosts, that come over the wall, not like that, -you can’t bring anything but souls over the wall, but this is the body; this is the flesh immortal. I saw the flame rise in the darkness at his breath, the flame that was out. I saw that.” The man’s face was transfigured, a wild beauty in it in the long, red-gold light. “I know that he has overcome death. I know it. I gave my wizardry to know it. I was a wizard once! And you know it, and you are going there. Take me with you.”
The same light shone on Sparrowhawk’s face, but left it unmoved and harsh. “I am trying to go there,” he said.
“Let me go with you!”
Sparrowhawk nodded briefly. “If you’re ready when we sail,” he said, as coldly as before.