Idrin drafted the Oath’s words at the Gatehouse table, under the window, with the lamp turned down to a single blue flame and the back leaves of the old Register pushed to one side. He had the first draft in front of him, in Tallow’s neat hand, with its blank line in the middle. He had been looking at the blank for two nights.
He tried the Forms first. He could not help it.
We find ourselves bound by our own register, and We bind ourselves most solemnly, before the Chamber and the stone, to the law which We have entered.
He read it back, slowly, in his head. It sounded very fine. It had a fall to it, like the closing bars of a good hymn, and a balance between the clauses that would have pleased the dry old tutor whose voice he could no longer hear. It had the bow in it. He could feel the bow as a man feels a draught from under a door.
He took the pen in his right hand and struck through every word of it, from We to entered, in a single hard line.
Then he sat back and looked at the strike.
