He was a fanatic. He told me of a plot to murder his commander. His eyes stretched wide. But in a little while he spoke more softly, and then he turned to me. “Our general pretends to take advantage of the thaw. He pretends he is hunting atheists and cannibals, and clearing out these hills for good and all. But it is more than that. He is afraid. He is searching for the One. The risen One. The risen Angkhdt.”

I looked around at the gathering dark. Music had started again, one of the many kinds of fire music, boastful, proud, and you could see fire flashing from the empty doorway of the hall. The soldier sat with his own thoughts, rocking and humming, and fingering his amulet. So I settled back to listen, and I watched the stars gather and combine as darkness fell, solitary at first, the brightest, one or two in all the sky. As I watched there were always more, filling up that aching space with light, with stars and patterns, numberless, nameless.

Some children came down through the bright doorway, running and laughing, and carrying torches. You could see their faces in the torchlight, dirty, thin, and full of joy. One threw her torch high up into the air, meaning to catch it as it came down; she missed, and it exploded in a shower of sparks. And then they all ran down together across the open stones towards the tower gate, their bodies disappearing in the dark, until below us all that remained were their high, wordless voices and the flickering lights, chasing and spinning, part formless dance, part ruleless game.

The soldier, too, was covered up in darkness. His body had retreated from my sight, and in the long silence I would have let his image go as well, until I remembered nothing. I would have cleared my mind, opened up my hand, and like a timid animal he might have stayed for a while, trembling on my palm until I prodded him away. In the end he would have gone, just as if he had been eager to escape. I would have forgotten him and everything. For that night I was in love. It filled me like a brimming flood, too deep, too painful for joy. I felt it around me as if for the last time. In the cooling dark, I could hear it in the music, in the scattering voices, see it in the children’s restless torches, mocked from above by an eternity of stars.

But in time the soldier spoke again. I was surprised to hear the sadness in his voice, for without thinking I had thought that my new ecstasy was filling all the world. “The stars will shine like day,” he said. “And in the new light, the earth will blossom like a flower in springtime, and it will need no tending. Stones will move, and fish will speak. Birds will speak. The earth will bring forth all good things, and all men will be free. And Angkhdt will wipe the dirt from our faces, and He will stand up like a giant in the farthest north, and He will say, ‘Bring to me all tyrants and false priests, all kings and Starbridges . . .’ ” The old man’s voice sounded so sad. “I shall not live to see it,” he said, turning towards me, and I could see the outline of his face. “I have come to prepare the way . . . I had hoped to see Him,” he continued, his voice breaking. “No matter. In the new starlight He will come, born of this music.”