It was night again. An old man sat on his bed, still as stone.
No three silences surrounded him; no, that would be silly. He was no hero, slowly dying; he was not the man with whom he had spoken a few minutes ago, the man whose hair was red as flame. But perhaps a kind of stillness, of waiting, did surround him. It was the sort of stillness before a storm, before lightening and thunder and torrents of rain. The kind of stillness even children learn to fear.
If there had been a lantern bobbing outside, or the sound of laughter or crying, it would have driven back the stillness, back to some forgotten place. If there had been a pair of early lovers going for a nightly jaunt, they would have sucked away the stillness with their earnest love. If there had been a… but no, of course not. In fact, there were none of these things, and so the stillness remained.
Even so, it was not an easy thing to notice. If you focused for an hour or so you might detect it in the harsh darkness that lurked outside to scare any unassuming strangers out of their wits. It could be heard in the creak of the bed springs that protested under the weight of a small man; it could be heard in the dull drab of iron that hugged the man's breast, glimmering, winking in and out of the darkness as if wanted to be something again.
And it was there in the chest of this old man that heaved silently, filled with an unknown, troubled past and delicate, dangerous secrets for the future.
The man's hands were lined and worn. His fingers were long, smooth and perfect; they tapped rapidly on the bedrest and after a while one could make out a sort of melody, bright and sweet as melted snow. Until it stopped.
His face was far away and his eyes were a lighting blue that blinked rapidly as if to dispel tears. The Innkeeper's story had awakened too many memories within him, memories he'd thought washed away by the rivers of time and regret. Memories of when he, too, had met Skarpi. Memories of when his family . . . the man sighed, forcing it all away from him. The sigh should have dispelled the stillness but it didn't. On the contrary, it added to it.
The stillness was thicker now, thicker than ever before.
Thick enough, even, to choke.