Publisher's Synopsis
In the darkness Young Lovell of the Castle rose from his knees, and so he broke hisvow. Since he had knelt from midnight, and it was now the sixth hour of the day, hestaggered; innumerable echoes brushed through the blackness of the chapel; theblood made flames in his eyes and roared in his ears. It should have been the dawn, or at least the false dawn, he thought, long since. But he knew that, in that stoneplace, like a coffer, with the ancient arched windows set in walls a man's lengthdeep, it would be infinitely long before the light came to his eyes. Yet he had vowedto keep his vigil, kneeling till the dawn ...When the night had been younger it had been easier but more terrible. Visionshad come to him; a perpetual flutter of wings, shuddering through the cold silence.He had seen through the thick walls, Behemoth riding amidst crystal seas, Leviathan who threw up the smoke and flames of volcanoes. Mahound had passedthat way with his cortège of pagans and diamonded apes; Helen of Troy hadbeckoned to him, standing in the sunlight, and the Witch of Endor, an exceedinglyfair woman, and a naked one, riding on a shell over a sea with waves like dove'sfeathers. The Soldan's daughter had stretched out her arms to him, and a courtesanhe had seen in Venice long ago, but her smile had turned to a skull's grinningbeneath a wimple. He had known all these for demons.
