Sic
Honed watched as Rohan paced the tapestry-hung foyer, where they were miraculously alone for a few moments. Time enough to gulp down bracing wine, to talk without having to shout to be heard—or having to be careful that no one overheard.
“They’re nearly at the walls,” she said. “Choose soon, before the chokes are gone.”
Rohan wiped sweat from his forehead with one gaunt-leted hand, leaving behind a smear of dirt and blood. He had acquitted himself well, fighting beside Chay. But when battle fever overtook him, he had despaired to recognize how easily he became the accomplished barbarian again. He flexed the shoulder injured over half his lifetime ago and schooled his features against a flinch of pain. Much too old for this sort of thing...
“Rohan—“
He faced her and frowned. “I don’t much like the choices you present.”
“Whatever we do, it must be done quickly, before we lose the chance.”
“I can’t give orders without consulting Chay.”
“At least let us make ready. It must be decided soon.”
“No. It must be now.” He drained off what was left of the wine in his goblet. His gaze swept the length of the hall. “The first time I ever set foot here was—good Goddess, forty-four years ago. Maarken and Jahni had just been born, and old cousin Hadaan gave me permission to leave Remagev. My parents were here, too...” He cleared his throat. “I thought this the finest castle and Chay the finest man in the world. I’ve never changed my opinion of either.”
Softly, Sioned replied, “You first brought me here when
Andry and Sorin were born. I’d just lost our first baby. Chay took me for long walks on the beach, sometimes talking, sometimes not.” She smiled fleetingly. “I adored him only fractionally less than I adored you. And I’ve never changed in that, either.”
“This is going to kill him, Sioned,” he murmured. “It’s killing me right now.”
“Here, within these walls, you’re trapped. You need the Desert, azhrei. And the Desert will provide.”
Rohan turned in a slow circle, memorizing a place he knew as well as his own Stronghold. It hurt to breathe; his heart suddenly seemed too large for his chest, throbbing painfully against the cage of bones like a frantic hawk. His left arm went numb, then tingled.
“Beloved? What is it?”
“I’m a coward,” he said softly, trying to steady himself. “I’m going to leave it to you to tell Tobin. I couldn’t bear it.”
“As if telling Chay will be any easier,” she murmured.
But neither the Lord nor the Lady of Radzyn Keep needed telling. Tobin, seated by her bedchamber window with Betheyn and Tobren beside her, had followed the battle by sunlight. When Sioned stepped into the pool of rose-gold afternoon glow, her voice was borne on colors darkened by grief and rage.
We can’t hold Radzyn. We must leave, Sioned.
Kneeling before her, she rested her cheek on Tobin’s useless left hand. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
It’s not your fault sorcery failed. But I suppose Rohan thinks it’s his fault that after thirty years of peace, we don’t keep enough troops anymore to battle an army.
I think you’re right, and Rohan does believe he’s failed—as a prince and as a man.
My noble fool of a brother! Who could have foreseen this? We’ll have to talk some sense into him once we’re safe at Stronghold.
Not Stronghold, Tobin. Remagev. We’ll lead them deep into the Long Sand.
Sioned looked up and saw the warrior princess in Tobin’s black eyes. Ah! she said. Excellent! We won’t have to kill them—the Desert will do it for us!
Sioned felt energy race through Tobin’s slight frame. For a moment it seemed she would throw off her disability like an ill-fitting cloak, spring to her feet, and start shouting orders. Only her hands moved. The reality of her physical infirmity sagged her back into her chair. But in another instant she squared her shoulders. Damn it to all Hells—I’m as useful as a newborn foal. Worse—I can’t even walk. What a time to start getting old.
You? Never. Sioned smiled, then got to her feet and told Betheyn to pack saddlebags for herself, Tobren, Maarken, and Hollis. “Clothes, jewels, anything you especially treasure. I’ll take care of Tobin’s things. The squires can do for me and Rohan and Pol.”
Tobren’s blue eyes almost started from her head. “Are we leaving? But we can’t! What about the horses? We have to save them.”
Clever girl! Tobin’s colors shimmered on sunlight again. We can’t let them have the horses, Sioned. That’s probably why they attacked to begin with.
“Your grandmother commends your quick thinking, Tobren,” she told the child. “We should have thought of that ourselves. Beth, Dannar can do the packing. Send Daniv to tell Chay about the horses.”
When they had gone, Sioned asked Tobin, “What besides your wedding necklets do you want to take?”
How frivolously romantic—and how like you, Tobin chided. A change of clothes and a warm cloak. That’s all. I take the most important things with me in my heart.
And you call me romantic! Sioned went to the huge wardrobe, sorting through Tobin’s dainty silk gowns and Chay’s jewel-toned tunics and shirts; rich fabrics, elegantly cut and finely embroidered, so many recalling times both joyous and grim. The wealth of colors and textures crumpled suddenly in her clenched fists and tears sprang to her eyes. Stupid— why was she crying over shirts and dresses?
“Sion-ned?”
Tobin’s halting voice alerted her. She wiped her cheeks on a blue lace veil and said over her shoulder, “You and Chay must account for half the silk trade all by yourselves.”
There was no reply, and she didn’t dare look at Tobin. She dragged out a few changes of clothes—not silk or velvet but sturdy leather and wool, durable garments that would hold up under hard riding and keep the wearer warm during brutal Desert winter nights.
She went to Tobin’s dressing table and picked through the jewel coffers, aware of that sharp gaze following her every movement. The wedding necklets, a few rings with particularly large stones, a carved sand-jade bracelet left by the Isulk’im in teasing apology for stealing a prize stud, a ruby pendant with diamonds that had been Chay’s present on the births of Maarken and Jahni—once again her eyes clouded.
“Not to mention you seem to have most of the gold and gems mined in all thirteen princedoms,” she said, cursing her unsteady voice. She stuffed the jewels into a velvet pouch and tied the laces. “Anything else? Letters you want to save, souvenirs—“
“Stop,” Tobin whispered. “Sunlight... must t-talk ...”
She dreaded it, but did as so laboriously asked. I’m here.
I know what you’re thinking. How can I leave this place where my sons were born, where my whole life is? If I think about it, I’ll start screaming and never stop. So I won’t think. Neither will you. Just do what has to be done. There’s always time for grieving, Sioned.
I’m so afraid, Tobin—
I know. So am I.
Chay needed no one to tell him, either. He had been wise in the ways of war before Rohan knew how to wield a sword; battles against the Merida at Zehava’s side had taught him reality early. He knew an untenable position when he saw it.
All he said was, “We’ll wait for dark, then ride out in small groups. The faradh’im can discourage pursuit with a few bonfires—it might bend their oaths a little, but no serious breakage, I trust.”
But when it came time to leave, and the first riders shot through the postern gate like arrows from a bow, and the Sunrunners had dappled the darkening battlefield with Fire, he gazed up at the eight towers of his keep with moisture gathering in his eyes. He caught Rohan’s anguished look a moment later, cleared his throat, scrubbed a hand over his face, and said, “I’ll go hurry the others.”
Horses within the courtyard were tied securely together and led out in bunches of ten to twenty, accompanied by the grooms and trainers they knew best. But even though the enemy would be denied these animals, they could pick and choose among those it had been impossible to bring inside, horses in far pastures and at Whitecliff. Chay couldn’t decide whether the loss of Radzyn or his blooded darlings hurt worse. But when he reached his wife’s chamber, he knew he’d gladly hand over everything he possessed if only Tobin could be safe.
Hollis had dressed Tobin in leather trousers and vest, a warm shirt, and a cloak. Her hair was braided tightly around her head. She sat straight-backed and calmly waiting for him. He paused in the doorway, knowing he should not glance around the room. All the nights, all the mornings... The gleam of candlelight on silver at her dressing table caught his eye: her brushes and combs. The thought of enemy fingers touching them—he knew it was ridiculous, but he crammed them in his pockets anyway. When he faced her again, she was smiling, and the angle of the light spared him the ruined side of her face.
“I’ll take your things downstairs,” Hollis said, and tactfully vanished.
Chay knelt beside his wife. “Beloved, I know you’re strong enough.”
“When ... was I ... not?”
He gathered her in his arms. She weighed even less than the girl he had first carried into this room long ago—both of them laughing at the scandal they caused by leaving their own wedding feast. All the nights, all the mornings... He kissed her hair and hurried down to the courtyard.
The chaos of frightened people infuriated him—not because his people were afraid, but because he could do nothing to ease their fear. Rohan waited at the bottom of the steps with Chay’s favorite stallion. He held his sister while Chay mounted, then lifted her up to the saddle.
“Can you put your arms around me?”
She tried and failed, black eyes fiery with rage at her helplessness. Then her gaze shifted to the courtyard and fury became grief. This castle had been their life and their pride. By dawn it would be empty of them and all they had accomplished, befouled by the presence of enemies.
“Damn them all,” he heard Tobin whisper.
Holding her tighter in his right arm, he kicked his horse through the low, narrow postern gate and into a headlong gallop across the fields. Rohan, Sioned, and Daniv rode with him, and three grooms leading a score of horses. There was no pursuit; the Sunrunners had done their work well, and the enemy was too busy avoiding Fire to send more than a token force after them. Besides, soon they would have what they wanted: Radzyn Keep.
Chay never looked back. After a dozen measures he slowed the stallion to let the others catch up. Tobin’s slight weight made no difference to the horse at all.
“Maarken?” she asked. “Pol?”
“Waiting farther on.” She shifted in his arms, trying to turn, and he pulled her head gently to his chest. “No. We’ll see it again soon enough.” Pressing his lips to her hair, he added, “I’ll get it back for you, beloved. I swear I’ll win it back.”
Chayla’s fist closed around her pen as if it was the hilt of the knife, and candles lit earlier with Sunrunner’s Fire flared in response to her emotion. The home of her ancestors had been in enemy hands a full day now, her family was fleeing across the Desert, yet here she sat with a medical text before her and orders to make detailed notes by morning. Remagev’s faradhi, Relnaya, had decreed that no matter what, her education must continue.
It was an old trick and not a very subtle one. Chayla knew she was being kept busy so she wouldn’t think too much. Absurd, of course—and the assignment itself was the wrong one to give, rife with descriptions of complications that might ensue after a serious wound. The treatments she was supposed to be memorizing were even now being used in earnest. Physicians sliced away fevered flesh with thin curving knives, applied steaming poultices, kept careful watch on dangerously deep gouges in case they festered. It was all too easy to imagine faces she knew and loved tightening with pain.
Perhaps Relnaya was more clever than she gave him credit for. Goddess knew this book was appropriate to the circumstances. She might have to use these techniques herself very soon.
Always supposing the wounded survived long enough to let her work on them.
Rage sparked the candles again, and the pen broke in her fist. She flung the pieces across the room, tempted to send the inkpot after them just to hear the crash. Her even-tempered parents deplored her explosive anger, even while ruefully admitting she came by it honestly. Her grandmother’s furies were legendary.
Thought of Tobin brought a surge of fear even stronger than anger. No one in her condition should be moved—and certainly not in a flight for life across the Desert. Not that Chayla could bring herself to believe that her indomitable grandmother was ill, let alone that Radzyn had been abandoned. Relnaya had forbidden her to share the sun with him today, and she hadn’t enough knowledge to attempt it on her own. Distraction had been easy enough to come by during the light—readying a keep for war took every pair of hands. By rights she ought to be too exhausted to think. No use telling that to her frantic brain. It was night and she could do nothing but wait for two more days—and then her parents and family would be here. At least tomorrow Relnaya would ride the light to New Raetia, where Chayla’s twin brother Rohannon was, so she could know him safe. Perhaps she could go along and learn enough to go Sunrunning on her own, and not be dependent on him. But she knew Relnaya; not a chance.
“Damn!”
Her own voice startled her. The candle flames jumped and quivered perilously near the curtains. Chayla doused Fire with a single thought and got up so fast her chair overturned. She couldn’t stay in this room another instant.
But at the staircase she paused, irresolute. Had this been almost any other place, she could have lost her troubles in the scent of flowers and the sound of water. Remagev had no pleasure garden. Whatever miracles Walvis and Feylin had wrought here, roses were not among them. There were plots of kitchen herbs and medicinal herbs, and an arrangement of occasionally flowering cacti planted years ago by Sionell. But Remagev was an enclosed desert; its spring allowed it to live, but it was a desert just the same. There was no place where water ran free, and green growing things could shelter an angry, frightened, frustrated fifteen-year-old girl.
Well, if sand she was compelled to look at, then she might as well do it right. Reversing direction, she took the upper stairs two at a time. Perhaps sight of the moons bathing the Desert in silver would soothe her. Perhaps she could imag- ine she gazed out on the sea from the heights of Whitecliff— the sea that was alive with dragon-headed ships.
Emerging into the night, she swung the heavy door shut behind her and nodded to the sentry on duty. He bowed his respects in silence and continued pacing the broad stones. Chayla looked out over the battlements to the stark landscape. The Long Sand was awash in moonglow, but not even her active imagination could portray the rolling dunes as the sea. To wander in a garden was to breathe in rhythm with life itself. To forget everything in the sound of the pounding sea was to hear the world’s heartbeat. But if she lost herself in the bleak and barren plain before her, she might never find her way back.
She walked down the long expanse of hewn rock lit by torches, across to the tower, turned in a dark corner where flames did not reach, retraced her steps—as single-mindedly as the guard who trod the walls and watched the Desert.
By her fourth circuit one moon had fallen below the horizon, her sisters not far behind. Chayla glared at them. All that light begging to be used, and she knew nothing of how it was done. She was helpless to know what might be happening at New Raetia, or where her family rode through the night—
All at once Chayla swung around, scowling. Someone was singing to the music of a lute, a sprightly tune that offended her. The strings were plucked with effortless skill and a pure strong voice rose in a language she did not understand.
She followed the music to where a man sat in the darkness between torches, long legs crossed at the knees, a beribboned lute cradled in his lap.
“You’re singing,” she accused.
His fingers continued their supple dance across the strings, but he broke off the song. “Better than weeping,” Kazander said matter-of-factly.
“How can you do such a thing—“
“—at such a time?” he finished for her, and in the dim light she saw the white flash of his teeth below his mustache. “Sweet lady, I am forbidden by my prince to go to his aid. I am forbidden to leave these walls to escort him and his to safety. I am forbidden to slice these enemies of my prince into dragon fodder. I am forbidden all that could be of any use. But I am not forbidden to sing.” He shrugged. “So, I sing. It makes sense, if you consider it.”
“It makes no sense at all!”
The lute fell silent. “And what would you have me do, my lady? Remagev is ready for war. My men are abed, cherishing the sleep they need and deserve. Those still awake listen for my lute and my voice. If you have no objections, I will continue.”
“Continue what? Singing them to sleep? Do the Isulk’im need cradle songs?”
“You scorn what you don’t understand.” He strummed a light melody.
“Explain it to me,” Chayla demanded.
“If there is time for music, then all is well,” he said simply, and began to sing.
It did make a crazy kind of sense—the kind she was growing to expect from this odd man. She flushed, glad of the darkness that would conceal her reddened cheeks, and started to walk away from him. But he was a talented and sensitive musician, worth hearing; she gave a little shrug and sat down near him with her back against the wall. From this angle torchlight afforded her a clear view of his profile: proud, hawk-nosed, eyebrow and mustache black slashes against sun-darkened skin. The song went on for a long time, and she began humming a harmony to the chorus, wishing she understood the words.
“I liked that,” she said by way of apology when he had finished. “What are the words?”
He cast her a sidelong glance as he retuned the strings. “If I said they were a poem inspired by the impossible beauty of your eyes, your formidable father and awesome grandsire might let me live just long enough to say my last devotions to the Goddess.”
Chayla grinned. “Oh, no, my lord, you’re wrong. They’d keep you alive for a long time. But I don’t think you’d enjoy it.”
Kazander laughed. “You’ve forgiven me!”
“What for? Oh—“ She recalled being snatched up and carried half a measure across the Desert on his knee. “I suppose I have. Now, tell me what your song was really about.”
He did not answer, instead starting another song. This one was quieter, and in her own language. The lyric was about the search for a white crown. It guaranteed its wearer everything from victory in war to gaining the love of a reluctant maiden. A lot for one crown to do, even an enchanted one—which was the argument of the skeptical prince who had been told to seek it out.
“Did he ever find it?” Chayla asked when the song was over.
“Not in this version. In another he takes a different view, and succeeds. I like this one better.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because its lesson is that we cannot hope to gain that in which we do not believe.”
“That’s not very optimistic.”
Kazander chuckled. “Reverse it, then.”
She thought for a moment. “If we believe in something, we can gain it?”
“We may seek it, which is not the same thing at all. But with courage, strength, and cleverness, we may yet succeed.”
“But you like the version where the prince doesn’t believe in the white crown.”
He nodded. “The one in which he doesn’t even try.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I prefer it because by being a fool, he loses all. A more useful warning than when someone believes, tries, and succeeds. There are a hundred songs of similar theme. This one is unique.”
“Do songs always have to teach lessons?”
“It helps the peculiarly stubborn.” Shifting to get more comfortable, he said, “You may know this one, my lady. Will you take the woman’s part?”
As she sang, she smiled to think what Kazander’s listening men must think—let alone Walvis and Feylin and anyone else who heard. But as she concentrated, weaving her voice around and through his in the difficult melody, she forgot all but the song. Even Kazander’s voice and lute were only the loom to the fabric of her own music. Did Pol’s wife Meiglan feel this when she stood before her fenathl Did Sunrunners, when they stitched their colors with threads of sun- or moonlight?
Suddenly the framework of sound was gone. Chayla choked off the last verse and stared in embarrassed confusion at Kazander. He was on his feet, the lute abandoned on the stones.
“What is it?” She stood beside him looking out at the Desert.
“Listen.”
She heard nothing, and said so.
“You’ve lived too long near the sea,” he said, more sharply than he had ever addressed her. “Your ancestors were mine, at least in part. Listen to the oldest blood in you.”
She thought he meant the ability to sense dragons before they appeared in the sky; her great-grandsire Zehava had passed that eccentricity on to his progeny. Chayla could not do it—yet. Pol had come into it late, too. But when she finally heard something at the very edges of her perception, it bore no resemblance to the sound of wings.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say that was the sea,” she whispered. “Breakers in a storm.”
“Yes,” he answered grimly. “A storm. But not of the sea.”
Back at least a couple of hundred years, the Long Sand had been a kind of white-gold river slicing the Desert in twain. Water holes along its edge had given rise to a string of temporary settlements, then permanent fortresses, and finally communities clustered around castles. But then the sand began to flow like a slowly swelling river, claiming one keep after another. Remagev was the only one still inhabited. Some of the rest had vanished completely under encroaching sand. The others served as way stations for travelers, empty rooms and crumbling walls offering protection from the searing heat—and shelter during sandstorms.
Before the survivors of Radzyn reached the abandoned keep that was their first goal, a dozen frantic horses stampeded into the stinging, wind-driven grit. Another ten injured themselves severely in panicky straining to escape the storm. Once within the walls, Sioned, Pol, and Hollis, who knew how to weave sleep, ran frantically from group to group of hobbled animals before sand blocked all light. Their hasty work in some cases was so sloppy that rather than peacefully dozing on their feet, the horses toppled to the ground.
People huddled beneath tentlike cloaks, backs to the wind. Rohan took Sioned under his own cloak for added protection. Made of thick red wool, borrowed from Chay’s collec- tion, it afforded better insulation than the light silk he had worn on the way to Radzyn. He could even hear himself think above the whining wind. He could also hear Sioned’s painful breathing. He soaked a piece of his shirt with his water-skin and pressed it to her nose and mouth.
“Better?”
She inhaled and nodded. “Some. Our Desert usually speaks in whispers, Rohan. But now it sounds furious.”
An ancient lyric about sand and the Wind Father beat through his mind in sibilant rhythm with the tempest. He murmured portions of it to himself.
The sands sing a yearning song of beginnings when rain sank into embracing land when water-rich flesh fashioned proud fortresses when water-blood flowed sweet-singing... the song changes the Desert’s arid soul mourns itself its dead dry castles, its thirsting skin...
Sioned moved closer in the blackness and spoke the poet’s words of storm.
The sands shriek the Desert wars against itself raging anguish in the wind no one answers for its lost life yet there is strange vengeance in self-destruction though flesh and blood are dry the Desert’s soul lives and grieves given voice by the Father of All Winds...
“The Storm God seems to be on their side, not ours,” she finished.
“If we’re trapped, so is the enemy.”
“I hope the wind lashes their bones clean,” she muttered.
“Goddess, but you can be vicious. Some might be appalled, but I’ve always found it rather exciting.”
“I’m not in the mood for jokes, Rohan.”
“Well,” he said cheerfully, “we could discuss Denirov’s rules of grammar, or Drukker’s Precepts, or dragon statistics,”
Sioned glared at him; not that he could see her expression in the reddish darkness of Chay’s cloak. Her voice was enough. “Why not be really creative and decide the meaning of life once and for all?”
“Heart’s treasure, I thought you already understood that.” He meant to kiss her lips and got a mouthful of dry, dusty hair instead.
“Nice try,” was her comment on the kiss and the chiding. “But there’s more to it than making love.”
“An unfortunate truth.” He kissed her anyway, with better aim this time, and caught the side of her mouth. “But I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“Will you stop!” she shouted, totally out of patience.
Other low conversations around them ceased; then Maarken, in a deliberately provocative voice, called out, “Our High Prince chooses the damnedest times and the most inconvenient places, doesn’t he?”
“With a wife that beautiful, who can blame him?”
“Who said that?” Rohan bellowed.
Sudden laughter defeated the storm, and Rohan would have been the last person to credit his own very personal magic for the miracle.
Visions came to Andry again in his sleep that night. Radzyn in ruins; dragon ships in the harbor; a boat drifting out to sea in flames, living sacrifices burning along with enemy dead; a hatchling dragon shot from the sky.
He woke before dawn, shivering and drenched in sweat. Cloud cover and unfriendly patrols had kept him bound all the previous day and evening. But the sky was clear now, and he waited in a fever of impatience for enough light to work with. His escort of Medr’im slept on in enviable peace. He did his pacing a considerate distance from them.
Ossetia was a sweet land—low forested hills alternating with pastures and farms, wearing autumn colors of leaf and flower that were a feast to Sunrunner senses. Andry saw none of it. He watched the eastern sky, counting his own heartbeats until thin golden rays slid through the trees on the near hills. Only a little while longer; only a few more breaths, readying himself for the first touch of sunlight on his face...
The landscape spread out below him, shallow valleys, rich meadows, harvested fields between the broad silver-blue ribbons that were the Catha and Pyrme and Faolain—tattered at irregular intervals by blackened farmhouses and enemy camps. He had no time for any of it. He sped along woven sunlight—and nearly unstrung the careful loom in his shock.
Radzyn was still standing. All eight towers. Every wall. Smoke did not billow from the stones, nor were there fiery fingers tearing at the last of the gutted ruin. Radzyn was whole, and he nearly wept.
But the burning ships bearing casualties—and captives— floated to sea on the tide. Dead faces shorn of beards, ritual chin-scars revealed, gazed empty-eyed at the lucent dawn sky.
And the dragon of his vision? Unable to watch the living burn with the dead, he cast about for the hatchling and did not find him.
Warriors gathered onshore to praise the dead turned as one, faces to the sky. Not hatchling, but dragonsire. Andry drew back; he had heard how Sioned and Maarken had once collided colors with a dragon. This one was blue-gray with silver underwings. The great jaws parted in a roar. He swept down with claws extended, circled the keep, soared out over the breakers to the dragon ships.
Andry tore his attention from the sire to the warriors. To a man, they were prostrate on their faces on the beach. Again he was so stunned that only instinct and training kept his weaving coherent. He had not seen this in any vision; the implications staggered him.
With a mighty wrench the dragon tore the carved prow from one of the ships and flew over the beach with his prize. Sunlight gilded the silver and blue-gray of him, sparked off the spines along his neck, turned his eyes to flame.
Small wonder the enemy groveled.
Andry followed the dragon back across the Faolain, careful to keep a respectful distance. The sire rode the wind with wings unfurled, twisting his head to rip the wooden dragon head to splinters with his teeth. The bits scattered along the regular route to the Catha Hills, where many dragons wintered. As Andry made his own way back to Ossetia, he remembered where he had seen this particular beast before.
Opening his eyes to the Ossetian dawn, he began to laugh. So Azhdeen didn’t approve of dragon-headed ships, did he? And those stupid, superstitious barbarians cringing in the sand—perfection. And quite possibly very useful. Pol would enjoy hearing about his dragon’s exploit.
Pol, who knew how to construct the ros’salath from the Star Scroll copy in his possession, but was too inept to defend Radzyn with it.
Anger stilled his laughter. He turned on his heel and went back to the small camp, determined to say nothing about what he had seen.