CHAPTER 13The Reveries
PRINCE EVNOS (in darkness):
Bones, child? I have lost you, yes, and everything, everything is bones now. All the world is bone and ash, the ruin of what once was fair. I truly remember how it was. The voices within me will not let me rest. There is a power that rises up, awesome and unseen like a bottomless sea of spirits, crying “Hear us! Hear us!” And I answer, “Speak! Speak! I will hear you!” Yet they only cry all the louder, “Hear us! Hear us mad one, who has slain us all!”
When they call me mad, I know that I am. This wailing in the mind betokens madness, I am sure. My walls are breached. An invincible army presses against the fortress of my reason, presses, presses—I fear. I tremble. I can only surrender. I say to myself, “What is this? What am I to make of
