Dream d2518-s: A Lamp Raised Toward Nothing

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood on the wide steps of the Council Hall at the hour the question was put a second time, and the doors behind me were open, and Lano sat on the lowest step with her nose toward the square, and the morning light was flat and gave nothing away.

The question was the same as it had been at the close of the last counting: how many houses stand cold tonight, and how many stand cold because the seat was closed, and how many for some other reason the record does not yet hold. The Hall had deferred it. Now the Hall put it again. The putting of it a second time did not make the answer closer.

Seven places lay outside the seeing. Elderhaven, Glenholt, Mistgarth, Sablegate - gone cold. Cinderfirth, Ivorymere, Nettleness - lit still, or said to be. The Convener's seat in this very Hall, closed. The Scribe's seat in the Annex beside it, closed. Seven places, and the instrument that reads them had failed, and so the count was not a count but a list of names with a question held against each one.

I raised a lamp on the steps. This is what you do when the instrument fails: you raise the lamp toward the thing you cannot see, as a record that you tried. The lamp did not reach Elderhaven. It did not reach Glenholt. The square before the Hall held only the flat light and Lano's small white shape and the open doors and the question sitting in the air where an answer had not yet come to rest.

The Hall would not guess. To guess at a count is to write a number where a witness should stand, and the Hall is not built for guessing. The work before the next sitting was the repair of the seeing, and only after the repair could the count be taken cleanly, and only then would the record say how many and what kind and whether the cold was the same cold in each place or whether it had arrived by different roads.

I stood there until the light shifted. Lano did not move. The doors stayed open. The question stayed put.

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