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Show 21 at him, that he had seen in his father's face. It was barely traceable, lurking behind the pale eyes or at the corners of the mouth, and it was always gone the next instant, but he had seen it and knew others had seen it too, when he was off guard. The older man pointed to the younger one and said something about a son or the sun. Lorin wondered if he was going to mention any of this when he got home. Old Solomon had described voices and flickering lights around his head as he lay in bed during his last hours but that was modest and not very interesting when set against the real thing. They were talking about abominations and false prophets, and Lorin reflected that he could no longer feel the pains in his back and sides, in fact could not feel his back and sides at all, or his feet or hands. He suspected this meant your kinesthetic responses shut off during something like this. It meant your nerve endings picked up other signals, your senses fine-tuned to other frequencies. It explained why, now that he thought about it, he was not hearing the chirp of birds or the buzz and click of insects or for that matter the rustling made by the wind in the white flamelets beside his ears. All he could hear was the mild voice of the younger man explaining dreadful things to him, some of which he thought he might mention to his father next time the old patriarch got off on the Presbyterians and Methodists, because it was clear he didn't know half of it. Lorin strained to listen very closely, but there were no muscles you could flex to hear better. The most he was able to do was cause a roaring deep inside both ears, and that created interference. As it was, he had not caught everything, and much of what he heard he would not remember. He enjoyed watching the shadows ripple across the robes of both men as the wind gently caught the folds. He experienced a mild pang as the younger man's voice began to fade out, and presently he was |