The light came up grey over the marsh, slowly, the way it did in the thaw, as if it were not sure of its welcome. It crept across the reeds and the frozen edges of the Sallow and up the wet black face of the Lessary Road, and it climbed the gatehouse wall one course at a time, the way Harrow had taught Idrin to watch the sun climb a wall in the mornings: from the footing up, a stone at a time, so that the eye could see the exact line where the day had got to. When it reached the gatehouse stone beside the door, Idrin was standing with his palm flat on the cold surface, and the light lay across the back of his hand, and he began.
He spoke the Writ aloud in the court, without raising his voice, because the stone would hear it whether he shouted or not. It was short. He had made it short so that he would not be tempted to say it twice. The words went into the wall under his hand and seemed to sink, as water sinks into dry earth, and then the wall took them and held them, and he felt the holding come up through his palm into his wrist and his elbow and the bones of his shoulder, like the hum of a bell that has been struck somewhere far off and is only now reaching the room.
