Free Cloud Walker, All Fools' Day, Far Sunset by Edmund Cooper Page A

read of them in the book you gave me’.
    ‘I had done better to burn it. My father does not read, and therefore cannot have known that his library contained heresy.’
    ‘Had you burned it, Alyx, I still would have lifted my eyes unto the stars. It is not in the nature of man to remain earthbound … Come, kiss me. Then I will try to be of some credit to Master Hobart.’

11
    The days passed quickly. Kieron’s leg mended and was not noticeably shorter. Spring deepened into summer – and brought a bloom to Mistress Alyx’s face that did not pass unnoticed. She taught Kieron to ride – or, at least, not to fall off a horse when it was in motion. He made studies of horses. Horses grazing, horses ambling, galloping, jumping. The first time Alyx took her mount over a seven-bar gate for him, he was too terrified to put charcoal to paper.
    ‘My love, never again! Don’t do it. You are like to break your neck.’
    ‘Poof! Thus speaks the cloud walker, who rose ten times the height of a man and fell into the sea.’ And, to emphasise her point, she put her horse to the gate again; and rose, chestnut hair streaming in the sunlight, to ride like a goddess between sky and earth in a moment of infinite beauty.
    Kieron worked like a demon, like one possessed. He made a hundred sketches and discarded ninety. This portrait of Alyx Fitzalan would be his sole claim to greatness as an artist. He knew it would be good, because it would be compounded of love, of beauty, of youth, and of joy in life.
    Master Hobart coughed much and complained little. He complained little because Kieron had ceased to complain at all.
    Hobart gazed at the sketches he brought back, and was filled with wonder. The boy had achieved rapport with his subject. There was elegance in his work and, yes, greatness. Hobart reached for the usquebaugh or the eau de vie and contemplated this greatness. Escapades with kites mattered little – indeed, were irrelevant – against such purity of line, such mastery of motion.
    Soon, Kieron would begin to paint. Not at the castle, but in Hobart’s studio. And the painting would be a masterpiece, signed Hobart. And when is was acclaimed a masterpiece, Hobart would add: app Kieron. Thus would his life’s work be completed. Thus would Kieron be set upon the path to fame.
    Kieron executed the painting in one day only. One day being a full twenty-four hours. During that time, he did not speak. He did not recognise Hobart. The old man hovered about the canvas, wringing his hands, and Kieron did not know him. The Widow Thatcher brought food. Kieron stared at her, uncomprehending, and the food was left untouched. As darkness fell, Hobart brought lamps, many lamps, and squandered whale oil prodigiously. Kieron muttered to himself at the change of light, but did not know what brought it about.
    Once he fell to the floor, and was conscious of someone forcing a fluid that burned between his lips. He got up, and went back to the canvas. The rider was finished; but the fetlocks of the leaping horse were wrong. He scraped them away from the canvas and started again.
    Now, what of that damned tail? And the nostrils? And, Ludd have mercy, the mane? And now the eyes were wrong. The creature should have great, proud eyes as it supported its glorious rider in that impossible leap. He looked at Alyx once more. Purgatory and damnation! The hair was wrong. That long, beautiful hair should flow with movement, be alive in this instant with a life of its own.
    Master Hobart tended the oil lamps and drank usquebaugh and muttered plaintively to himself and gazed with awe at the young man who seemed to be engaged in a life or death battle with brushes and pigments as his weapons.
    Who was the enemy? Hobart asked himself blearily, drunk with spirits and fatigue. Who was the enemy against which Kieron waged so ferocious a battle? It came to him that the enemy was time. Kieron was not only trying to paint a great portrait, he was challenging the