Fortress in the Eye of Time

CHAPTER 11

He heard a clatter in the yard in the morning, and a great deal of it. It brought him from his bed and sent him to the door to ask the guards, who, in their way, knew most things that went on.

“We ainʼt to talk,” the one named Syllan chided him, “mʼlord.”

“Master Emuin,” said Aren, the one who would talk, sometimes, in single words and with his head ducked. “Leaving.”

“Leaving,” Tristen echoed, distraught, and flew inside to dress without the servants, without his breakfast, without attention to his person. He was in his clothes and out the door, as quickly as ever he had dressed in his life, in Ynefel or in Henasʼamef. “I wish to go downstairs, sirs.”

“Young mʼlord,” Aren said. “Ye know ye ainʼt permitted down there wiʼ the horses—”

But he was already on his way, and his guards followed. “Only from the steps,” he said, walking backward for a breath, then hurried down the hall and ran down the stairs, his guard overtaking him on the way.

The lower floor was echoing with activity, the doors at the middle of the hall were wide open, and when he went out to the great south steps, which he had never attempted to visit before, the courtyard was echoing and a-clatter with horses. He heard shouts and curses, not the angry sort, but the sort of curses men made when there was haste and good humor about a task. He went halfway down the broad steps before one of his guards interposed his arm and stopped him.

“Just a little further,” he asked of them, but they drew him over to the side, out of the jostling current of people coming up and down on business; and held him there — until straightway they fell into conversation with some of the soldiers waiting for a captain who had not shown up.

He watched the gathering of horses, and the men climbing into saddles, sorting out weapons and banners; it was bright and it was noisy, a show he would have been curious and delighted to see if he were not so achingly unhappy with the reason of it.

Emuin had shown him a way that he might find him even in a commotion like this if he really, truly wished—

No, he said to himself, that was not so. Emuin had said that it was dangerous to do and to do it only if he really, truly needed to reach him.

So he stood, doing as people had told him — until — just at the very bottom of the steps he saw Emuin walking past, and he moved two steps down before he even thought that he was testing the limits of his guardsʼ patience.

But Emuin had looked up and beckoned to him, so on that permission he ran down as far as the bottom of the steps.

“Remember what I told you,” Emuin said, taking him by the arms.

“Yes, sir,” he said. He looked Emuin in the face and saw neither disapproval nor anger, but anxiousness; and he wanted never to be the cause of Emuinʼs concern. “Mauryl taught me about dangers, and to shutter the windows.”

“The Zeide has no shutters,” Emuin said. “But be careful of dark places, young lord.”

“I shall,” he said earnestly. “Please, please be careful, master Emuin.”

“I shall, that,” Emuin said, embraced him again, this time with a fervor Emuin had denied him yesterday, and walked on toward the tall, spotted horse they were holding ready for him.

Emuin climbed up, then, with a groomʼs help. The mounted soldiers closed about, the Zeide gates opened, and the column filed out with a brisk clatter of horsesʼ hooves.

In the same moment Tristen found his guards near him again, ready to reclaim him, and he climbed calmly halfway up the steps with them, then stopped to look back at the last of the column.

The iron gates clanged shut. His guards began to talk again to the soldiers standing there. All real reason for him to be in the yard was done, and most people were going up the steps and inside or off through the courtyard toward the stables, but he had nowhere urgent to go.

A darkness touched the corner of his eye. He looked up and saw Idrys frowning down at him from the landing.

So did his guards see, and looked chagrined, caught in serious fault, Tristen feared. He went up the steps in company with them, as Idrysʼ cold eyes stayed fixed on him the while.

“It was my fault, sir.”

“Do you take the princeʼs order lightly? A matter to ignore at will?”

“No, sir,” he said. He feared that Idrys would do something to restrict the freedom he did have. Or that Idrys would unfairly blame his guards. But Idrys went inside the doors ahead of them, and did not look back.

“That were good of you, mʼlord,” Syllan muttered, and Aren said, “Aye. It were, that, mʼlord.”

“It was my fault,” he maintained, because it was, although he was also glad to have seen Emuin at least once more, and glad to have had that embrace of Emuin, which made him feel that Emuin did care for him and would, truly, be there at his need.

But he said no more of it, since the guards were supposed to say nothing at all and were breaking another order.

He went to the garden then, and found it as trafficked as usual. People laughed and talked, where there was often quiet for thinking. It seemed as if everyone who had taken leave of ordinary business to see Emuin leave now congregated to gossip about Emuin and his reasons, and they stood about in clusters, chattering together in voices they wanted not to carry.

But the garden, usually his refuge, reminded him only that Emuin would not chance here again, in this place which had, to him, seemed overwhelmed by Emuinʼs presence and now was dimmed and made small by his absence.

He would not abandon the birds, who looked for him. But he went away after he had fed them, and took to his room.

He read, sitting on the bench in the light of the diamond-paned window, with the latched section, not even large enough to put his head out, open beside him. He had lured the pigeons almost as far as the inside sill, but the boldest was still too wary. He had a secret cache of bread crumbs, which he set out on that windowsill now and again. That was his dayʼs entertainment.

He thought, too, that Idrys must have spoken sternly to his guards, because they were very quiet and had kept their eyes downcast when he walked back with them from the garden.

The next and the next days were as lonely, and as silent. He truly needed speak to no one. The servants brought him food, in which he had no choice, nor knew how to ask — it was delicate fare, on which he was certain the kitchen had spent much effort, but he picked over the plates with diminishing appetite, and on the third evening after Emuinʼs departure he rejected his supper entirely save for a bit of bread, which seemed enough.

Servants cared for his clothing. Servants renewed the candles. When, in his desperate loneliness, he ventured to bid a servant good day, that man flinched and bowed and turned away; knowing he had caused his guards a reprimand, he feared to speak to the guards more than to say where he would go, and they kept very silent now, even among themselves.

Owl had never come. That was better for the pigeons, but he was sad to lose Owl. He reckoned Owl probably hung about where he had seen Owl last, at the edge of Marna, where the bridge was. There were birds and small creatures on the shore, on which Owl could make his suppers, and Owl had likely become a terror about the bridge, Shadow that he was. He hoped that Owl was well.

Came a fourth morning, when he went down the stairs to begin his day of wandering about, in the escort of his guards, and he stopped and lingered at the foot of the stairs, lost and wholly out of heart this morning for the ordinary course of his walks, finding nowhere to go, nowhere at all he cared to go, nothing that he cared any longer to do, or see, or ask of anyone.

He walked down the hall, watching the patterns in the marble at his feet, finding shapes in them, knowing his guards trailed him as always, protected him as always, deterred conversation as always.

“Sir Tristen,” a soft, light voice hailed him — a forbidden voice, ahead of him in the hall.

He had no choice but look up — his heart having skipped a beat and reprised with dread of Idrysʼ displeasure. It was, as he feared, Lady Orien; but now he saw two Oriens, the very same, hair quite as red, both alike in green velvet corded with gold, and both smiling at him.

“I mustnʼt speak with you,” he said, and started to go down the hall away from them, but with a rustle of her skirts, Orien — or was it truly Orien? — closed the gap between them and hung on his shoulder, smiling at him.

“Tristen,” she said. “Where, in such a hurry? Musty books?”

“Mauryl bade me—”

“Oh, Mauryl,” the lady said. “Pish.”

And the other, exactly like Orien: “So sad of countenance, Sir Tristen.”

“Mʼladies,” he said, trying to brush first the one and now the other lady from his arms, “I have explained. Please: I am not permitted to speak to anyone.”

“Such cruel hospitality. How have you offended the prince?”

“Please,” Tristen said, and broke from them and walked quickly through his disturbed guards, back the way he had come. He had offended Orien Aswydd, he thought, yet Emuin had said she was to be avoided. And magic had made two of her. He did not look back. He hurried to climb the stairs.

Face to face with a pair of the gate-guards.

One he knew, a face out of his bad dreams; he met the manʼs eyes without willing it, and turned and fled down the steps, taking the side hallway toward the garden.

No one but his own guard followed. On the bench near the pond he sat down and clenched his hands behind his bowed head until he could draw a calm breath.

The gate-guards, he told himself, would not come for him. They had not seen his misbehavior. They had not reported him. His own guards would not. They stood silent, as they must, now, but they were his own, such as he had, and they would have rescued him from the encounter if they had had time, he told himself so, as they had intervened before to save him from untoward encounters, and he hoped that they themselves would meet no reprimand.

He stayed by the pond all the day, save once going to the kitchen to ask a bit of bread, of which he fed half to the birds and the fish, who never knew his foolishness or his failures or his indiscretions.

And in the afternoon he tucked up his knees and rested his head on his arms, risking a little sleep finally in the sunʼs warmth, for he had ceased to sleep well of nights. Breezes blew through his dreams. Wings fluttered in panic, and beams and timbers creaked. Stones fell from arches. Shadows crept among the trees, soundless and menacing, and the wind roared through the treetops, rattling dry twigs and leafy boughs alike, making them speak in voices.

Here — the wind was pent in garden walls, the trees were trimmed by gardeners, the voices were all of passers-by who cared nothing for him.

But someone walked near on the gravel poolside.

And stopped.

He looked up into Idrysʼ grim face and started to his feet. He stood with heart pounding, for never had Idrys approved anything he did.

“Prince Cefwyn has sent for you,” Idrys said, then, the shape of his worst fears.

Guards stood at the door of Cefwynʼs apartments, downstairs from his room, grim red-cloaked men with gold and red coats and a gold dragon for their insignia: the Guelen guard, they were, which attended the prince. Idrys went through their midst without a glance, and Tristen followed him through the doors they guarded, through an anteroom and into a place of luxury such as, even imagining the ornament of his room done thrice over, he had never imagined existed.

Patterned carpets, gilt embellishments across a ceiling that was itself adorned with countless pictures, furnishings carved over in curling leaves, a fireplace faced in gold and dark green tiles and burnished brass. Idrys took up his station by that fire, arms folded, waiting, and Tristen stood still, not daring stare, only darting his eyes about while pretending to look down.

There were windows, tall glass windows such as he had seen in the solar downstairs, clear in the centermost panes and amber and green in the diamonded margins — amber and green that recalled, most inappropriately for his conscience, the ladiesʼ gowns. The windows looked down, he saw, upon the roofs of the town below the wall, varishadowed angles of black slates and chimneys from which individual plumes arose to mass into a haze of smoke smudging the evening sky.

A door opened to the left, next that alcove in which the windows were. Cefwyn came into the room, stopped, looked at him—

Tristen bowed, as he knew men should with Cefwyn.

“Good day,” Cefwyn bade him, walking to the table.

“Good day, lord Prince.”

“Emuin asked me to see to you.”

It was not, then, the discovery of his wrongdoing that he had feared.

But now, after Emuinʼs departure, now the prince unwillingly took direct governance of him? He supposed that was the way things had to be.

He had far, far rather Emuin.

“Do you want for anything?” Cefwyn asked.

“No, sir.”

“Anything?” Cefwyn repeated, although clearly Cefwyn was not pleased to be concerned about him, and clearly he might best please Cefwyn by making himself very little trouble. He knew such moods. Cefwyn threatened him. He had lost Emuin. He was content himself if Cefwyn forgot him for days and days.

“No, sir,” he said dutifully.

“If there is ever anything you need, you will tell me.”

“Yes, mʼlord Prince.” He thought perhaps that that last was his dismissal, and he should go, but Cefwyn was staring at him in such a way as said there might be something more.

“You have remembered your condition,” Cefwyn said, “to speak to no one in the halls.”

“Yes, sir.” It was not quite a lie. He trod closer to the truth. “Sometimes people speak to me, but I donʼt seek them out.”

“What do you do with your days, sir student?”

He shrugged, feeling a lump of anger in his throat, and kept his eyes fixed past Cefwynʼs shoulder, beyond the windows, on the roofs and the smoke haze. “I feed the birds.”

“Feed the birds?” Clearly Cefwyn thought it was a joke.

“They are grateful, mʼlord, as birds know how to be. And polite as birds know how to be.”

“Is this insolence?”

“No, my lord Prince. I do not intend to be insolent.”

“Do you want for anything at all?”

“No, my lord Prince.”

Cefwyn frowned and jammed his hands into his belt. “Idrys.”

“My lord.”

“Have Annas bring wine. — Sit down,” he bade Tristen, suddenly indicating the group of chairs in the corner of the large room.

Tristen unwillingly chose that nearest him and sat down. Cefwyn sat down facing him, crossed his booted ankles and leaned back, hands folded on his stomach.

“You have no diversions,” Cefwyn observed then. “You cease to eat; I have had report. You pace the halls or sit in the garden doing nothing.”

“I feed the birds, sir.”

“Youʼve not tried to leave,” said Cefwyn.

“No, sir, never.”

“Emuin claimed that there was no malice in you. He left you in my keeping. What am I to do with you?”

Cefwyn wanted to have an answer that would let him dismiss the matter. That was all.

“I need nothing.”

“What would you wish me to do?” Cefwyn asked. “Damn what you need, man. I have power. What would you have me do?”

“Have others speak to me.”

“You are gentler company than most. I cannot set you out among these Amefin lords. They would rend you like wolves.”

“I would not speak to the lords, sir. Only to my guards. If you would, sir.”

The door opened; the aged servant brought the wine and poured two cups, offered to Cefwyn and then to him. Cefwyn lifted his cup and drank, deeply and full; but Tristen only sipped at his, for he had eaten but little in two days, and it came very strongly to his stomach.

“Idrys,” Cefwyn said suddenly.

“Your Highness?”

“Be at ease. I judge no harm in him.”

Idrys unfolded his arms and sank down on a bench by the fire, tucked up one knee and rested his arm against it. His dark eyes did not cease to watch and his frown never left him.

“There are no civilized diversions in Henasʼamef,” Cefwyn said. “Only the hunt. No hunting about Ynefel, Iʼll wager.”

Tristen shook his head. Hunting was a Word of blood and death. It shivered down his spine.

“Gods, what did you do there? — Grammaries? Wizardry? Unholy sorceries?”

“I read, sir.”

“Would you ride, Tristen?”

Horses, and open land. Moving air. Sunlight. “Yes,” he said at once.

“My lord Prince,” Idrys said, sitting upright.

“With full escort,” Cefwyn said.

“The area is not secure, mʼlord. Even so.”

Cefwyn frowned, folded his arms tightly across his chest, and scowled, rocking his chair back. “Doubtless. So we ride with the guard.”

“Mʼlord,” Idrys protested.

“No, no, and no.” Cefwyn was angry now, and looked not at Idrys, only at the table, his face mad-eyed like Owlʼs sulk. “Damn it, I am strangling in this Amefin hospitality. With the guard, with a troop of heavy horse and the Dragon Guard to boot, if you like, but I shall ride, Idrys. Tomorrow. Gods.” He slammed the chair legs down and turned his face toward Tristen with a frown and an exasperation that Tristen did not take for anger directed at him. “Tomorrow,” Cefwyn said. “Tomorrow morning, at first light, we will ride out to the west, have a glorious day in good weather and come back to a good supper, does that suit you?”

“Yes, mʼlord Prince.”

“Idrys is careful with my life. Itʼs his business to suspect everything. — Idrys, is Annas waiting dinner, or has he deserted to the Elwynim? What is keeping him?”

“Is my lord done with business?”

“Yes. Finished, writ, waxed, sealed, and quit of. Not another lord with complaints, not another tax roll. I refuse. I deny them. I consign them to very hell. — No, damn it, you will stay, Tristen. Youʼll have your supper here. Will you?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, bewildered. He had started to rise, thinking himself surely dismissed with this flood of complaint and exasperation, but with Cefwynʼs offer of supper, and perhaps someone to talk to, he suddenly found that he had appetite, even with his trepidations. He sank back down; he drank the wine: his mouth was dry. Idrys had gone to call Annas in, and in the attendant commotion of trays, bowls, plates, and pages, a page hurried to fill Cefwynʼs cup and his, without his asking.

“So what have you done with your time here — besides the birds?”

“I read, sir,” Tristen said.

“Do you gamble? Play the lute? Do you do anything but read and feed the pigeons?”

“I — donʼt think I have, sir.”

“The court is abuzz with you. The men are jealous. The women are smitten. I receive inquiries.”

“Of what, sir?”

Cefwyn looked at him as if he had said something remarkable or perhaps foolish. He sat still, and Cefwyn ran out of questions.

But the old servant Annas and the pages had laid a glittering table in the next room in a magically short time, and Annas announced their supper ready.

So following Cefwynʼs lead Tristen went and took his place at the end of the table. Cefwyn took the other, while the man Annas walked between, serving them a delicate white soup that smelled of mushrooms. It was very good. It was, he thought, the best thing he had tasted in days.

Meanwhile Idrys stood guard, as if his legs never tired and his back could not bend. Tristen turned from time to time to see him, wondering at the man, disturbed to have his eyes constantly on his back.

“He will take his supper after,” Cefwyn said to his concern. “You donʼt understand the manners here.”

“No, sir.”

“That is a virtue.”

“Yes, mʼlord.”

“Is that all your speech?” Cefwyn asked. “Forever and ever, — sir and mʼlord without end?”

“I—can converse, mʼlord Prince.”

Cefwyn shook his head. “Idrysʼ silence is comfortable since I know its content; and yours is, if silence pleases you. — Idrys.”

“My lord?”

“No ceremony. You make our guest uncomfortable. Sit at table. This is no Amefin. For that reason alone I trust him.”

Idrys walked over to the sideboard and with a clatter disburdened himself of his sword. He sat down at the side of the long table and Annas set a place before him. He loosed several of the buckles of his black armor and held up his cup as a page poured him wine.

“Idrys is a man you should trust, Tristen,” Cefwyn said. “You should understand him. He is another fixed star in the firmament. And there are very few. He and Emuin, and Mauryl, each after his own fashion. — I think we shall ride out to Emwy, tomorrow, Idrys. That village has made complaint of sheep losses. I think we would do well to look into it.”

“Too near the river,” Idrys said. “Too far. It would require a night.”

“Near the river. Near the hills. Near the woods. There is nowhere on the godsʼ good earth someplace is not near, Idrys.” Cefwyn took a calmer breath. “It would be politic in the countryside, would it not, for me to show a certain — personal — concern in local affairs? I refuse to be seen cowering from the attempts against my life. Or relying on Herynʼs assurances — or Herynʼs maps.”

“Not overnight. Not this place. Not with an untried horseman.”

“Emwy.”

“My lord Prince,—”

“Emwy, Idrys. Or Malitarin. Now thereʼs a village loyal to the Marhanen. And only four hoursʼ ride, do I recall?”

“Emwy overnight,” Idrys said stiffly, “might be better.”

“A peaceful village. Missing sheep, for the good godsʼ sake. In the Arys district. Iʼve been looking for excuse to see the hills there, from safe remove, I assure you. I want very much to know how that land lies — how wide that precious forest is, apart from Herynʼs maps. And I had as lief know what the local grievances are, beyond the missing sheep. How they think the border stands recently.”

“A double Patrol would be at minimum wise, my lord Prince. — And lodge in Emwy, not on the road. Walls and an armed presence in the village.”

“I grant you. But no advance warning. No word to anyone where we ride. And polite and moderate in our lodging. Iʼd have this village stay loyal.”

“May I point out your guest has only light clothing?”

“See to that.” Cefwynʼs quick eyes darted back. “Youʼve never ridden?”

“No, sir. Mʼlord. Mauryl had—”

“No skill with horses. Have never handled weapons.”

“No, lord Prince.”

“Idrys chides me that there is at least a possibility of Elwynim on our side of the river. Not in force. But best we do have some caution.”

“The Elwynim are not safe, mʼlord?”

He amused Cefwyn, who tried not to laugh, and struggled with it, and finally rested his forehead on his hand, shaking his head.

“There is hazard,” Idrys said, completely sober.

“Indeed,” Cefwyn said, and soberly: “Ynefel once prevented that sort of thing. But my captains believe now there will be a set of trials of that Border — which is still far from Emwy, and I doubt there is anything to be feared there at the moment.”

“Your enemies pray for such decisions,” Idrys said. “And I remind you our young guest is not — without any impugning of his good will — entirely discreet.”

“And I,” said Cefwyn, “doubt anything at all in Emwyʼs strayed livestock but a straggle of hungry Outlaws, pushed out of the woods, if anything, by our real difficulty over on the riverside.”

“Outlaws,” Tristen said, lost in the notion of Mauryl and Elwynim, sheep and Borders. “Men in the woods.”

“Men in the woods?”

“I did see some. They were cooking something over the fire. But I know it wasnʼt a sheep. It was much smaller. They gave me bread.”

“Near Maurylʼs crossing?” Idrys asked, so sharply attentive it startled him.

“I suppose, sir, near the bridge, but not — I was walking so far—”

Pages had whisked away the soup bowls and served them instantly with a savory stew and good bread. The smell was wonderful, and he had a mouthful of bread and sauce. His stomach felt better and better.

“Most probably,” Cefwyn said, “there is the cause of Emwyʼs strayed sheep. Bandits. Outlaws.”

“The gate-guards thought I was one,” Tristen said.

“Well you might have been,” Idrys said, “but for that book. How fares that wondrous book, Lord Tristen? Still reading it?”

No question from Idrys ever sounded friendly. No question from Idrys was friendly.

“Do you read it?” Cefwyn asked. “Emuin said you made no sense of it.”

“I do try, sir,” Tristen said faintly, and swallowed a mouthful of bread, which he had made too large. A page had refilled his wine cup and he reached for it and washed the bite down. “But nothing comes to me.”

“Nothing comes to you,” Cefwyn echoed him.

“Not even the letters,” Tristen confessed, and saw Idrys look at him askance.

“Emuin said nothing?” Cefwyn asked. “Nor helped you with it.”

“No, sir, but I still try.”

“Sorcerous goings-on,” Idrys muttered. “Ask a priest, I say. The Bryalt might read it.”

“Damned certain best not ask the Quinalt,” Cefwyn said. “Eat. Plague on the book. Itʼs doubtless some wizardly cure for pox.”

“Mauryl said it was important, sir.”

“So is the pox.”

“If I learn anything of it—”

He saw by Cefwynʼs expression he had been foolish. Cefwyn had stopped eating, crooked finger planted across his lips, stopping laughter.

Tristen stopped eating, too. Cefwyn composed himself, but did not seem to be angry.

“Sometimes,” Tristen said, “I donʼt know when people mean what they say.”

“Oh, youʼve come to a bad place for that,” Idrys said.

Cefwyn was still amused and tried not to show it. “Tristen. I care little for pox, except as I could apply it to Lord Heryn. — Which,” Cefwyn added, before Tristen found a need to say anything, “is a very boring matter and a very boring man. — Eat.”

“Yes, sir.” He felt foolish. But Cefwyn said nothing more about it, and the stew went away very quickly as Idrys and Cefwyn discussed the number of men they should have along on their proposed excursion.

But the Name of Elwynim nagged at him. So did the accusations the gate-guards had flung at him. So did his recollection of the men in the woods. He reached for wine. He recalled the guards that had thrust that Name at him amid blows. It was a Name that would not, as commoner things did, find the surface and explain itself. He pulled at it, as something deeply mired.

“Are not—” he ventured to ask finally. “Are not Elwynim and Amefin both under Heryn Aswydd?”

“Maurylʼs maps are vastly out of date,” Cefwyn said.

Idrys said, “Or perhaps the old man never quite accepted the outcome of matters.”

Cefwyn frowned. “Enough, sir.”

“They are no longer under one lord,” Idrys said. “The Aswyddim are no longer kings. The capital has moved. Did Mauryl never say so, master wizardling?”

“You see why he does not sit at table,” Cefwyn said, leaning back with the wine cup in his hand as pages began to remove the dishes. “He provokes all my guests.”

“Only to the truth, my lord Prince.”

“But—” Tristen said, confused and not wishing to provoke a quarrel. “Why should the Elwynim be crossing the river to steal sheep from Heryn Aswydd?”

“Easiest to show,” Cefwyn said, and thrust himself to his feet. Idrys pushed back his chair to rise, and Tristen did, in confusion, thinking they were leaving the table, and looked for a cue where to go next; but Cefwyn immediately found what he wanted among the parchments stacked on a sideboard and brought a large one back to the table, carelessly pushing dishes aside to give it room as pages frantically rescued the last plates. The salt-cellar became a corner weight. A wine pitcher did, moisture threatening the inks. There was an up and a down to the words, and Tristen diffidently moved closer as Cefwyn beckoned him to see.

In fair, faded colors and age-brown lines, it was a map; and Cefwynʼs finger and Cefwynʼs explanation to him pointed out a design that was subscribed Henasʼamef; and a pattern that was the Forest of Amefel, and then, differently made, and darker — Marna, and the Lenúalim which wound through it.

“Here sits Ynefel and the river. There is the old Arys bridge. Our realm of Ylesuin ends here—” Cefwynʼs finger traveled up where the Lenúalim bent through forest, and Marna Wood stopped. In that large open land were divisions of land, drawings representing fortresses, and the whole was marked Elwynor. He saw one fortress, Ilefínian, that touched recognitions in him. Ashiym was the seat of a lord, a place with seven towers, but they had only drawn six…

Names: Names, and names.

“This is Elwynor. Did Mauryl show you nothing of maps?”

Cefwynʼs voice came at a distance. He tried to pay attention, but the map poured Names in on him. “A few. I know he had them. He never showed me. But I know what they are, sir. They—”

A haze seemed to close about his vision.

“Tristen?” he heard.

“Elwynor was much larger once,” he said, because it seemed so to him, but that was not what he was seeing. His heart pounded. He felt the silence around him.

“Yes,” Cefwyn said, in that awkwardness.

He could easily find Emwy. It was where it seemed to him it should be. He ventured to touch that Name, which he had not known, though Cefwyn and Idrys had spoken it, until he saw it written on the map — Words could be elusive like that: there, but not there, until of a sudden they unfolded with frightening suddenness and he saw them — he saw all of Amefel, and the air seemed close, and warm, and frightening.

“Emwy, indeed,” Cefwyn said. “Thatʼs where the sheep go wandering.”

“More than near the river,” Idrys muttered. “The stones of that place are uneasy. I still would speak with you privately, mʼlord, on this matter.”

“Pish. Sihhë kings. Before my grandfather. — Did Mauryl teach you the history of Althalen?”

“No, mʼlord, nothing.” Tristen felt faint, overwhelmed with Places, and distances.

“Probably as well. It — are you well, Tristen?”

“Yes, sir.” The haze lifted as if a cold, clear wind had blown onto his face, and now the solidity of the table was under his hands. He caught a breath and set his wine cup farther away from him. “Mauryl said I should be careful of wine. I feel it a little warm, sir.”

“Gods, and us straitly charged not to corrupt you. — Annas, open the window. The fresh air will help him.”

“No,” Tristen said quickly. “No, I am well, mʼlord Prince, but I have drunk altogether enough.” He made himself stand straight, though the dizziness still nagged him, a distance from all the world. “Iʼve not eaten today. Not — eaten well — for several days.”

“So I had it reported. Cook is a spy, you know.”

“I had not known, sir.” He found Cefwynʼs humor barbed, sometimes real, sometimes not. He feared he was being foolish; but he truly had no strength and no steadiness left.

“A dangerous young man,” said Idrys. “My lord Prince, for his sake as well as yours, do not bring him into your society. His harmlessness is an access others can use. And will, to his harm and yours.”

Trust this man, Cefwyn had said. Yet Idrys called him dangerous, and spoke of harm, when he had only looked for a little freedom. Idrys might be right, by what Cefwyn said. It might well be that Idrys was right.

“I shall go to my room, sir, if you please, I want to lie down. Please, sir.”

“He has not drunk all that much,” said Idrys.

“Much for him, perhaps. Perhaps you should see him to bed.”

“Aye, my lord.”

Tristen turned, then, to go to the door, and had to lean on the table, bumping the salt-cellar. “Sometimes,” he tried to explain to them, “sometimes — too many Words, too many things at once—”

“Too much of Amefin wine,” Cefwyn said with a shake of his head. “Debauchery over maps. That youʼll sleep sound tonight I donʼt doubt. Idrys, find some reliable Guelen man that can stand watch on him personally, someone he can confide in, and mind that the man is both kind and discreet. Heʼs utterly undone. Have care of him.”

“Sir,” Tristen murmured, yielded to Idrysʼ firm grip and made the effort at least to walk, foolish as he had already made himself. He wondered if Cefwyn would after all take Idrysʼ advice and send him back to solitude.

But Idrysʼ advice he already knew, and asked him no questions.

Idrys escorted the wobbling youth to the care of the assigned guards — one could take that for granted, as Idrys knew his duties.

And for no particular — and more than one — reason, Cefwyn wandered to the clothes press in his bedroom, and to a chest that, with a turn of the key set in its lock, yielded up a small oval plaque set in gold, with a chain woven through with pearls.

Ivory, on which an Elwynim artist had rendered black hair, green gown, a face—

A face lovely enough to make a man believe the artist was bewitched himself. A face fair enough to make a man believe in Elwynim offers of peace and alliance, while Elwynim bones bleached above the gate for trying to cut short his tenure in Henasʼamef.

A face of which one could believe gentleness and intelligence, wit and resolve alike. Could such clear eyes countenance assassins? Could such beauty threaten?

There might for all the prince knew be a bewitchment, not on the artist, but on the piece itself, which warmed to his hand. He should have sent the piece back with the last dagger-wielding fool, or flung it in the river, but he had not. He had not been fool enough to reply to it, save by the means of word passed to suspected spies that he wished to hear more — how should a man or a prince wish not to hear more of such a face, even from his mortal enemies? — but no answer had come, either floating the river, flying pigeon-fashion, or trudging down Amefin roads.

And, failing such elaboration — he should have tossed the miniature out the window, lost it, forgotten it at least, and kept the chest, which was finely done, of carved wood and brass.

But at certain moments he still resorted to it, asking himself — what in fact was this offer of the Regent in Ilefínian, what was the scheme that had the sonless Regent offering his only daughter to prevent a war his lords and advisors seemed bent on provoking, a war the Elwynim march lords invited in daggers, in poison, in cattle-theft? Count the ways: Elwynim found occasions to make his tenure difficult, and he counted this proposal among the tactics, a way to ruin his fatherʼs digestion did he even mention it in court in Guelemara.

Perhaps, on the other hand, Elwynor thought to create a better chance for its assassins, and that was why the chest had come to him secretly, by an Amefin carter, who said a man had given him the box and said the prince in Henasʼamef would pay more than Heryn Aswydd to have the piece.

That was the truth. One wondered what other rules of commerce the Amefin commons had understood.

The door opened and shut. Idrys walked back in.

“Ah,” Idrys said, having caught him temporizing again with the border.

“Ah, yourself,” Cefwyn said. “I take oath that he knows nothing of Elwynor.”

“Oh, that one? Sir mooncalf? I take oath he knows nothing Mauryl did not tell him.”

He had, in fact, rewarded the messenger handsomely for this ivory miniature, carried to him from the border by an Amefin peasant. And he doubted not at all that Heryn Aswydd wished to have intercepted that box.

But no paintings in ivory comprised Herynʼs offer of alliance. Herynʼs offer came straight to his bed. Often. And twice over.

Cefwyn tossed the miniature back into the chest and closed the lid and locked it, insofar as the lock could serve to protect it from general knowledge.

“Is there a reason,” Idrys asked, “my lord contemplates such Elwynim gifts, on the eve of a ride so near the border?”

“I might, of course, wed Orien instead. Or Tarien. It would secure the province.”

“My lord jests, of course.”

“Heryn counts it no jest. Nor does Orien. As my Lord Commander knows.” Cefwyn walked to the window, where the sun went down into sullen dark. The window showed the far horizon and a seam of red light.

One could not see Ynefel from here. One could not know for certain, except as one believed Tristenʼs tale, that the fortress had fallen. And one did, in such unsettled times, want to know what the situation was, bordering Marna, and what the locals saw and surmised about changes in their sheep-meadows.

Though in the wizardly fashion in which Emuin knew things, Emuin had confirmed it was so, that Ynefel and its master had indeed fallen — and a prince could become so utterly dependent on such attesters as Emuin, and Heryn, and even Idrys, with all his attachments and private reasons.

By far less arcane means a prince knew that the twins had their own designs, independent of Heryn, and knew that their brother Heryn, who could not keep his tax accounts in one book, had his private reasons, and his none-so-private ambitions. And all the cursed pack of them, Elwynim, Amefin Aswyddim, and the Elwynim barons, had a notion how to secure in bed and by other connivance what they could not win of Ináreddrinʼs heir in war — unless Ináreddrinʼs heir grew careless about personally verifying the reports others gave him.

One wondered what effect Maurylʼs fall had had on the border — or if they were remotely aware of it.

Or what the inhabitants of such villages as Emwy thought their taxes were, that Heryn collected for the Crown.

And how far the Crown Prince of the kingdom of Ylesuin should ignore the situation.

It was given as truth among every borderer that Ylesuin would eventually have to marry and mistress some sort of agreement to settle the ancient question of the border heritance. That such an agreement was imminent and due in this generation was an article of faith among borderers; that the Prince of Ylesuin had no more choice in the matter than Lord Amefelʼs sisters had was an article of faith on his fatherʼs part — but the heir of Ylesuin did not accept that role yet: the heir of all Ylesuin had other ideas, which involved bedding the Aswydd twins, enjoying the labor, and affording the Aswyddim the confidence that their habitually rebel province had secured useful influence.

And if the heir of Ylesuin was bedding the Aswydd twins, the heir of Ylesuin thus became too valuable to offend or assassinate, at least for the Aswydd partisans in Amefel, if not the other Amefin nobles who hated Heryn and his taxes.

It was thus far a comfortable and tacit bargain, one he was certain the Aswyddim had no wish to see the Elwynim outbid with a marriageable daughter. Heryn Aswydd had lately betrayed two Elwynim assassins who thought they could rely on Aswydd aid; and thus far (at least until, at his pleasure, the matter of Aswydd taxes racketed to Guelemara and the Kingʼs exchequer) Herynʼs sisters, particularly Orien, the eldest, were a pleasant dalliance, so long as Aswydd excesses and Aswydd ambition stayed in bounds. It was all Amefin sheep Heryn Aswydd sheared, and thus far none of them had complained to the Crown.

But now Mauryl entered the game, with this wizardling — for that was a very good guess what the youth was — casting his own sort of feckless spell over sane menʼs credence and doubts, and saying, all unexpected, Believe in me, lord Prince. Cast aside your other plans, lord Prince. Mind your former allies, Marhanen Prince, in Ynefel.

“He might be Sihhë,” Idrys said, out of long silence, and sent a chill down the princely spine.

“He might well,” Cefwyn said, looking still into the gathering dark, at the last red seam left of the sky, far, far toward Ynefel. “But Mauryl did serve us.”

“Mauryl Kingmaker. Mauryl the sorcerer.”

“Wizard.”

“The Quinalt will have apoplexies.”

“Priests seem to recover quite handily.”

“Three bids, Cefwyn prince. Do you realize? The Elwynim, the Aswyddim, — now Mauryl. How many directions can you face at once?”

He made no answer for a moment. The light was going. To see the horizon became, through the distortion of the crown glass, a test of vision.

He said, then, “Only guard my back, master crow. Iʼll care for the rest.”