CHAPTER 11The Other
Still more years passed. More fruitless springtimes came. More rains and winds scoured the dead hills, until the bare stones of the island showed through.
Amadel grew from a child into a maiden, and she grew alone, with her books and such random spirits as still wandered through the castle; but her father was almost a stranger to her as he withdrew more and more into his secret researches. Sometimes after many weeks she would suddenly come upon him in a room or a corridor, or walking the battlements late at night, and he seemed more like one the spirits, a fleeting, insubstantial thing which happened to resemble someone she once knew.
Her father had undertaken the study of the stars, and he slept by day. Once in a great while he would enter her chamber just before da
