Текст книги "Fortress of Ice"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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But now that he and Feiny had reached a truce and settled the direction for the journey, he found his first time to think.

And thinking called up Aewyn, and Guelessar, and the meeting with Paisi and Gran, and leaving home again, when he had just reached safety.

He was a fool, he told himself. Then he doubted everything, and asked himself what he was doing riding away, and why he feared the soldiers, and why the presence in the tower scared him so this morning—as if he were caught at something wrong, when he knew he wasn’t wrong.

He hadn’t been wrong, in Guelessar, only out of place. Now he ran from his mother, chasing questions the answers to which he wasn’t sure he wanted to know at all, and going into a place where some people had gone and never come back. Was that a reasonable thing to do?

There were bandits, some years. He didn’t know if there were new ones, after Lord Crissand had hunted out the last. There were the old places, the ones Gran had warned him to avoid.

And Ynefel itself was nowhere a reasonable person ventured to go.

He didn’t, in fact, know what he was looking for. All his life, Paisi and Gran alike had been sure his father would come for him—and he had, had he not?

But that had gone awry. He had come home, all dressed in finespun, and with horses Gran had no way to feed, and with soldiers following him. Paisi insisted on calling him m’lord, even yet, and that wasn’t right—it would never be.

Gran’s place was still home: he was grateful for that. And it smelled right, and it was warm and comfortable, but he didn’t fit into it the way he had before he’d been to Guelessar; and he knew he brought troubles as well as help from outside. He didn’t know what might happen next, but the moment he was happiest, when everything had been the way he wanted—everything started going askew; and the moment he trusted what was what, things changed. That alone had been dependable, ever since he had ridden off to live among Guelenfolk.

Deep in his heart he found not only pain for that fact, but anger. That dismayed him. Gran had taught him most of all not to let anger put down roots—because, she had said, those roots found things; and perhaps they already had. They had dug down into his loneliness, into boyhood lessons with the Bryalt priests, who detested him, and his living with Gran, who he had early discovered wasn’t his real grandmother; and waiting for a father who wanted him to be what he was not, and finding a brother who wanted to be his friend but couldn’t be simply his friend, not considering his position, and the fact that a Guelen king would find it hard to have an Amefin brother. He discovered he had lived in narrow bounds all his life, sheltered from this, ignorant of that; and now, when he’d just gotten out into the world, he’d skidded right back down into Gran’s place, a burden to Gran.

The more he thought of it, the deeper those roots dug.

Add in the humiliation of going to his father in cobwebby, oil-soaked clothes, when he’d tried for the first time to use what he’d learned from Gran. Everyone assumed he had the Gift. Gran had always hinted he did. And the very moment he tried to use just the edge of what people accused him of having, everything tumbled into ruin, and all his good luck vanished.

Wasn’t that a warning, for a wizard or a witch, when luck turned, when like a tool breaking, it cut the hand that held it? Gran had always talked about Luck, and how it flowed, and how there were winds of the world that didn’t move the grass, but that might move a king, ever so subtly. A witch or a wizard had to feel that movement: that was part of using the Gift.

The winds were certainly blowing against his going back to Guelessar now, and had been, from the moment he had waked in that dream—that false dream, as it happened, or at least that greatly exaggerated dream of fire and ruin. He’d thrown over everything, everything good he’d had, and here he’d ridden in and found Gran up and about and Paisi taking care of everything just as he ought.

So what had he done next? He’d thrown over the safety he’d reached, again, out of restlessness he couldn’t reason with, a fear of soldiers who meant him no possible harm, and probably—yes, out of embarrassment, pure embarrassment in turning up back at Gran’s house, in failure. Embarrassment, too, before his mother, sitting smug in her tower, pleased at having him back again… oh, she had won, had she not?

He’d gotten just the least bit prideful in his fine clothes and with his fine horse that he couldn’t ride; he’d sat down at table with the king and his legitimate brother, and this morning he’d found himself back at a dusty hearthside sipping soup from a cracked bowl, back on Gran’s charity again, and giving her nothing to help her old age, nothing to deserve Paisi’s helping him, or sharing his gran with him—Gran owed him nothing, except Lord Tristen had settled him on her house and asked her to take care of him.

Well, when a man needed things or looked for a direction to take, he went to his proper lord, did he not? And if his Lord Crissand was Gran’s lord, still he wasn’t the only lord, nor was he the lord who had laid down the conditions of his life and told the king of Ylesuin to take care of him and not to drown him at birth.

Therewas where his life had begun. There was where, if it had gone wrong, there was one who might set him right again and tell him plainly what to do.

In simplest fact, when he and Feiny had fought, and the horse had turned about, he had felt as if he were facing into a contrary and bitter wind, and the only relief was west, west and south and away from the farm. Maybe even Feiny had felt it. The horse had stopped fighting the course he set.

Prison like his mother’s? Was that his fate, when he grew to be a man? Maybe it would not be so close a prison, but certain Guelenfolk would be happier to have him locked away and forgotten, if only on a farm in Amefel—but he feared that would not be enough for them.

And would they ever have remembered him if his father hadn’t brought him to Guelemara, under his own roof?

Entanglements, Gran had taught him—entanglements worked a certain magic… for good or for ill, and he was entangled with everyone in the world he could possibly love, and those people he could love had entangled themselves with powers that reached down into those very stones Gran said to avoid.

A wind began to blow out of the north, so that he had to snug his cloak about him and tuck it under a knee.

Winter and the weather weren’t obliged to agree with his choice of directions.

But he had known that before he started.

ii

IDRYS DARKENED THE DOORWAY. CEFWYN SPIED THE LORD COMMANDER FAR across the audience hall when he was at assizes. A scroll was in Idrys’ hand, sealed and official, and if it weren’t important, Idrys would not be in the doorway looking at him.

Cefwyn signaled with a move of his head. Idrys walked in, gave the requisite little bow, and came up the side of the room, past farmers and merchants wanting justice, past a felon caught in thievery—the second offense—and passed him the message, a parchment still cold from the weather outside.

Crissand’s personal seal, the Sun with its rays, on red wax, and bound up with red ribbon. Cefwyn cracked the chilled seal and unrolled the tight-furled bit of parchment, more border than message.

Crissand Duke of Amefel to His Majesty the king of Ylesuin, Greetings.

Your men came to me requesting sustenance and aid to a certain woman, the caretaker of your ward, and accordingly I sent inquiry to her, with gifts of food and drink from the Bryalt fathers, and also medicines.

Damn, Cefwyn thought. By the tenor of it, it was his first message to which this letter replied. What had the courier done, stopped for holiday?

But it went on:

My men found the woman with her grandson, Paisi, who was caring for her. He had come by horse, which Your Majesty may know. I accordingly sent more grain, beyond that I had already sent, and prepared to send a message to Your Majesty. However other messengers arrived before this letter was sent, advising me to expect your ward, who would have arrived likewise by horse, and requesting me to ascertain his welfare.

More to the point. Thank the gods. Then:

Accordingly I sent men with the men of the Dragon Guard to visit the house in question and was informed that your ward indeed arrived safely, but to my great distress, I must report that he has quitted the premises alone and ridden west, toward Mama Wood. He expressed to the woman and her son that he wishes to consult Lord Tristen. I have sent Earl Ameidan with a number of men to attempt to find him, but, given the delays in reporting, have little hope of doing so before he passes into Marna, where they will not follow. I have instructed my men to use no force nor lay hands on him at any meeting, not knowing whether he may travel at Your Majesty’s urging, or at Lord Tristen’s, and deeming it unlikely he might confide the nature of such a mission to others. I am left in confusion as to your ward’s intent and instruction, and hope that I have not failed Your Majesty in energy on the one hand or in prudence on the other.

My men will await your reply.

I rest in hope of Your Majesty’s good regard.

That was the sum of it.

To Tristen, Cefwyn thought, staring at the words on the paper.

It was, at least, not as bad news as might be. Gran was alive and well. The dreams had come to naught.

But Otter had left, and Paisi had not gone with him.

Had he ridden off directly? Had the grandmother told him to go there, and sent him well prepared and with Tristen’s consent, or had she not?

Damn it all.

He looked up, transported from Amefel in the dead of winter to a hall full of anxious farmers and merchants, all watching their king read a letter that had—he tried to conceal it—greatly shaken his soul.

And what should he do? Roll up the letter and bolt from the hall, leaving the populace to speculate on some province in revolt, some attack on the realm?

He quietly rolled it up, tucked it in his belt, and picked up the document the Lord Chamberlain handed him, a complaint of theft and a counterclaim of conversion of goods, and two lean and angry merchants glowering at each other.

He heard the evidence, and conflicting witnesses, and heard his advisors, and their advocates, then rendered judgment against the foreign merchant, for conversion of a potter’s wares. It was a popular decision in the hall. He hoped it was a just one. He tried to do justice in the several cases following. But to his relief, a number of the attending crowd proved to be attached to the potter, and five to the subsequent case, regarding an inheritance, a minor daughter, and a marriage—easy, since the will was clear. There was the matter of a tavern brawl, which the first time he had heard it had sounded like a city matter, and the mayor’s problem before it even came to Efanor’s hearing: a street preacher and a Quinaltine-Bryaltine dispute, in a tavern near Weavers Street. The argument had gotten to blows, broken benches, and an accusation, though thin, of attempted arson. Even the latter would not have been his province, and it probably would not have been Efanor’s, if it were only a tavern fight. But it was now the Bryaltine holiday, the preacher had tried to tear down the Bryalt decorations and stir up a street mob to break up the tavern, and that had done it: add to that, the fact of an appeal from the queen’s Bryalt priest. He ordered the offending street preacher remanded to the Quinaltine for punishment—the Holy Father was not at all fond of itinerant preachers. The Bryaltine tavern owner was to be recompensed by the Crown, and he issued an edict regarding attacks on religious symbols from either side, offenders to be chained two days in the city square, wherein the crowd might express their own sentiments without hindrance.

That was the last business at hand, thank the gods. The edict had been prepared in advance, and a message already dispatched to the Patriarch: the hearing was no more than a venting of his anger and a public warning; but it exhausted him. Rumblings of discontent in the clergy were slow to settle, Quinalt zealots had made the Bryalt holiday grim, his son moped about, neglected his studies, and erupted in temper with his bodyguard and threatened to dismiss Selmyn himself, not the most pleasant of displays.

Most of all, his son wanted to know any news that arrived from Amefel, and daily seemed to hint it was kept from him. That tried his own temper, and his forbearance, and made his wife unhappy.

Now news had come, and it was not quite the good news he had hoped to give to his son, nor entirely bad, either. It might be the wisest move old Gran could have made, sending Otter off in that direction—if he could get there safely.

He took himself back to the robing room, shed the trappings of kingship and took himself and his message upstairs, Idrys shadowing him the while, ahead of his bodyguard. Idrys being a mortal man, curiosity doubtless consumed him. But he asked no questions until they reached the royal apartments.

There, Cefwyn drew the message from his belt and handed it to Idrys, who read it.

“Gone to the Sihhë-lord,” Idrys said then. “But on whose advice, my lord king?”

“That isthe question, is it not?” On longer thought, he found himself somewhat relieved, but he could not settle in his heart what he felt about his own failure. “The grandmother’s, perhaps. Certainly not his mother’s.”

“That one won’t be happy.”

“No,” he said. “She won’t.” Nor would his son, who would begin to think about that territory and begin to inquire into matters his son had never asked. So there had been a war. So the Sihhë-lord, his father’s good friend, had risen up, then gone away again, and never visited the capital, not since he was born. It had been no concern of Aewyn’s.

Until now.

Wiser, long ago, if he had separated the grandmother’s whole household from Henas’amef—settled her down in Ivanor with Lord Cevulirn, perhaps: his people understood wizards, and revered an honest hedge-witch, much as the Amefin did. Or down in Olmern, where Sovrag was lord. Nothing daunted that old river pirate. He’d made the decision where to put the boy when Tristen had been in Amefel, and he had never changed the arrangement when Tristen left the realm, deeming it wise not to disturb what seemed settled.

Well, he knew what Tristen would say about easy and natural courses… the thing that felt so right and natural to do… the situation unexamined for year upon year, as things subtly or not so subtly shifted: decisions forgotten and allowed to stand, though the safety in them had subtly eroded away.

Maybe—maybe he should have refused advice to send the boy home.

Otter had gotten through Festival and been written down; he could have taken ill for the last ceremonies, attendance at which was often taken somewhat lightly, if the privations and worship of the first days had rendered a body indisposed. They could have gotten through it.

But at least the boy had evaded his mother. He had not gone into the town: he had left, out of his mother’s reach. That was to the good.

“I’ll write a letter,” he said. “All hospitality for the messenger.” Idrys gave him back the letter, rolled up, and Cefwyn laid it on the desk. “We know what we know, and no more. It may be to the good.”

Idrys left. Efanor arrived, before he had quite sat down to write the reply.

“There was a message,” Efanor said, and Cefwyn told him the gist of it.

Efanor sat down unbidden, in the informality of the privy chambers, sat down and rested his arm on the side of Cefwyn’s desk. “Well, better than I had feared.”

“Better than frozen in a snowbank,” Cefwyn said shortly. “Everything’s better than what could have happened.”

“And the woman is well.”

“Perfectly well, as seems,” Cefwyn said. “His dreams were for naught.”

“ Tristenwouldn’t send a false dream.”

“We know who would. Spare me. I have yet to explain to my son where his friend is. He will ask, of course, when he’s coming back, and if he’s gotten my letter, and I have to say no, the letter went to Crissand, but not to our fugitive, and nothing is mended.”

“The spot on the stone, meanwhile—”

“The Holy Father’s masonry, brother, is not my chief concern. And you said—”

“The blot is there again,” Efanor said. “Not visible to everyone. But—”

“How many paving stones has the inner chapel? We are not destitute. They should last until thaw.”

“Don’t make light of it, I pray you, brother. Listen to me. This is not the Holy Father looking for favors. If your son has gone to Lord Tristen—”

“If he has. He most certainly has. There’s nowhere else he could go, in that direction, and what in the gods’ own name does it have to do with the Quinaltine floor?”

“I told you, after the war, after the battle in Elwynor, the foundation—”

“The foundation is flawed. The Lines run amiss. I know it. They wouldn’t have Tristen deal with the matter, oh, no, nothing so reasonable. Now I’m to repave the whole Quinaltine, a stone at a time?”

“It’s not that, brother.” Efanor reached out and laid a hand on his wrist, quietly compelling him. “The foundations, yes, were mislaid from the start. The Lines are completely askew. I know you can’t see them, but trust me in this, they’re not what they ought to be.”

“Given that, they never have been.”

“Our grandfather founded the place on old ruins, and took them over, and they’re flawed from that beginning. I’ve tried to mend them. His Holiness has blessed them, with no success. And, without tearing the holy precinct down…”

“Good gods, brother.”

“Pavings are not the flaw here. The flaw is in the rock beneath.”

“The Holy Father proposes to tear down the Quinaltine?”

“I’ve not broached this with the Holy Father.”

He stared at his brother, not believing what he heard. “Tear it down.”

“As we build a new shrine.”

“Oh, good gods!”

“The manifestation—” His grip on Cefwyn’s wrist tightened. “The manifestation has not gone away with Otter’s departure. If anything, it’s spreading.”

“Well, then it wasn’t his fault, was it? Tell that to the street preachers! Did Nevris mention to you there was a tavern brawl, which ordinarily isn’t my concern; but this man was preaching against Bryalt observance, trying to burn down a tavern and blaming my son when he did it?”

“Otter, you mean.”

“Yes, Otter, damn it.”

“You think of him in those terms.”

“As my son? He is my son. He ismy son, brother, however inconvenient. I can do nothing about that. Nor can he. I thought you thought well of him.”

“Well of him, indeed. But he’s a doorway. Whose, remains to be seen.”

“Gods, you sound like Emuin!”

“I heartily wish Emuin were still with us. He would tell you—”

“What, that I have a spot on the Quinaltine floor and we have to tear the building down? And it’s all my son’s fault?”

“No. He’d say that the door has already come ajar. The boy seesthe Lines…”

“So do you,” Cefwyn retorted.

“He more than sees the Lines, brother. Things beyond the Lines see him. I see the Lines. And I guard my own soul. Who guards his?”

“Well, damned well not the Quinalt Father, does he, despite writing him down in the book? And what will the old man say when you propose to tear the building down? I’m sure that will patch things.”

“Listen to me: the Lines, the Lines, brother. I don’t understand them, but they exist, they’re confused, they’re a trap for spirits, and as tangled as they’ve grown—I’m not sure even Tristen could untangle them…”

“They won’t let Tristen through the doors, remember? They won’t take blessings from a Sihhë. And we can’t afford to build another Quinaltine.”

“Brother, if we begin it, if we only begin it—”

“ Where? Every morsel of ground atop the hill is built on. There’s not room for a chapel, let alone another Quinaltine! And since when does the Holy Father believe in Bryalt Lines?”

“They’re not Bryalt.”

“Does he see them?”

“He can’t.”

“Nor believes in them, I’ll warrant. It’s a Bryalt belief. And you propose to explain to him how this exists in his Quinaltine, while explaining to him you want to tear down his sanctuary.”

“And build one that’s clean, and whole. I can lay it out. I know where, on the hill, there is a place.”

“Where? Just suppose for a moment that I even entertain this notion. Where would you put it?”

“Midsquare. The square itself is clean.”

The public square. The meeting place of the populace, the precinct of vendors and artisans, by kingdom-old right.

“Get the Patriarch to deal with the street preachers,” Cefwyn said. “Get them in hand before I ever consider this thing. Do that!”

“It may not be possible,” Efanor said. “It may get worse, as the Lines get worse. They want that place. They intend to have it.”

“Who wants it? The street preachers?”

Efanor shook his head. “No. The things behind the Lines. The ghosts of our own dead, among other things less savory.”

“You’re mad. You’re quite mad, brother.”

“You were on the field. You saw, in Elwynor, when the dragon passed…”

“I saw a shadow! I am not favored, to see dragons.”

“You saw it, I say. You’ve dealt with it. You’ve dealt with Tristen, far more than I. The Quinaltine is failing, and your son has very sensibly gone to him, but I cannot swear to what may result if Tristen should move from there. What he does we cannot predict. But give me my shrine. Give me that, brother.”

“The people in the streets will be in uproar at the idea, every tavern will have its rumors, and your street preachers, your infernal street preachers, will seize on the matter like a hawk on a sparrow, brother. Give me a better proposal, and a cheaper one!”

“There is nothing cheaper,” Efanor said, “but the Patriarch might foreseeably propose it himself. Or I might do it. It need not come from you.

“Too dangerous for you. And as suspect. I’ll not have you embroiled in the matter. I’ll not have you proposing it.”

“If he proposes it—do I get my shrine?”

Cefwyn drew a long, long breath. Complications, controversies, gods knew—it would divert attention. They could dally for years, ripping up pavements, laying a new foundation, priests debating the design.

Ripping up the city square? Oh, certainly that would be a diversion, at a time when royal power was likely to come under challenge.

Trust that it would come under challenge, when something was loose among the priests in their sanctuary. He hadseen strange things in Tristen’s company. They tended to stay in the back of his mind, shut away from the ordinary tenor of his life. Workaday, he could maintain his balance and swear no such things existed. But he had seen the shadow sweep down the field. He had seen terrible things, and their grandfather—gods, their grandfather Selwyn—had burned candles all night in every hallway: he had had a conflagration of candles, until there was shortage in the city, the week he had died. He had ordered them burned day and night, as the light in his eyes dimmed, and he knew he was dying. He had seen things: the betrayer of Elfwyn Sihhë had seen things at the last and feared the dark above all things.

So where had they buried Grandfather? In the Quinaltine. That thought sent chills down his limbs.

“The people need a parade or two,” he said peevishly. “Damn this snow. Enough ale in the public square, a few more comfortable visions among the priests. It could improve the temper in the city.”

“Hold a feast. That will be a welcome diversion. Call in the lords.”

“The roads are frozen, have you noticed?”

“Call them in for snowmelt. But send now. Let the word go out. That will start the people thinking toward a happy event. And who knows, there may well be a profound vision among the priests… vision of building.”

Cynicism, in his pious brother? “You amaze me.”

Efanor let go his wrist. “I have my uses, brother, dull as I may be.”

“Never dull. Never that.”

“Nor are you as blind as you try to be. Open your eyes. Emuin taught you how. Tristen surely did.”

“Emuin’s left the world. So has Tristen.” The latter was the source of greater pain. Emuin had simply faded from his knowledge, part of the earth, part of the stones. But Tristen—Tristen’s absence was a decade-long grief, half of his heart missing, a part even Ninévrisë failed to mend. “I so miss him, Efanor.”

“So do we all.” Efanor shrugged. “But we, meanwhile, have the world to deal with. He may hear your son. In the meantime, summon the lords. Make a feast. Cheer the people. There’s been too much winter this year.”

“Storm after storm.” Holiday penance brought annual discontent in the Quinalt faith, and now, with snow still coming down, the year did head for spring, regardless. Another year of Tristen’s absence. Nevris’ annual pilgrimage, and the anticipation of the Elwynim… this time she would show them her new daughter, born this last summer: he had to commit her and the baby to the road in only a few months, and Guelenfolk here in the city would raise another hue and cry when the Elwynim acknowledged their Princess, the child the treaty had promised them. Aemaryen would never marry some lord of Ylesuin. She would rule in Elwynor.

The people might have forgotten that provision of the treaty between Elwynor and Ylesuin, as they had forgotten the king’s bastard living in Amefel, and only now took to brawling, in their unease—so it was a year of forgotten matters coming due, for the populace, first Otter, then Aemaryen.

A new Quinaltine? Construction in the city square? That would be gossip for more than a month, perhaps enough stir, if the Holy Father backed it, to divert the people from the Elwynim question. Perhaps change would catch the popular fancy.

“If the Holy Father asks it,” he said to Efanor. “If hedeems it good: think of the old thief, with all those artisans to cheat. That will occupy him. To the greater glory of the gods. Thatshould please the devout.”

“Brother,” Efanor said with a small, tight smile, and took his presence away

Perhaps, Cefwyn thought, in the closing of that door, the visit of a couple of old southern friends with attendant festivities would soothe the spirits of the people and settle their uneasiness—even the eternal politicking of the dour old northern lords, some of them with sons and daughters to marry off, would be a pleasure this year. The zealots always exhausted themselves in Festival, and slowly settled, once the holidays were past. Religion would give way to the more forgiving, liberal days of spring.

A new Quinaltine? It was an idea to catch the imagination. Glory to the gods. A shining new sanctuary.

And more careful masonwork.

He touched the medallion he wore, remembering that not everything could come down to a building project and a revel. He had a glum and unhappy son on his hands… and now bringing all the lords in, and this crazy business of Efanor’s, this building—

No, best leave that sort of thing to Efanor, who cited holy writ back at the Holy Father with a scholar’s deep understanding, and had a knack for catching hold of the priests’ fervor and turning it to his own purposes. To no other man in Guelessar would he have yielded, but he had utmost hope in Efanor, and hang the expense, so long as expense came slowly, year by year, layer by layer of a new foundation, and became a popular cause and a project to divert the damned priests. If Efanor wanted the square ripped up stone by stone, and gave him that, he should have his way.

CHAPTER TWO

i

SNOW LAY THICK IN MARNA WOOD, OUTSIDE THE WALLS, AND MOUSE CAME from his kitchenside hole this dawn with a message of trouble. Mouse would not stay for his morsel of bread on the floor, but ran in circles, stood up, his whiskers twitching in alarm.

Tristen tossed another crumb, nearer Mouse’s safe door, but the trouble was in the wind, it was in the stones of the old fortress. By night the faces that haunted its walls had changed and moved. The stairs themselves proved unreliable, as if they hoped to catch an unwary foot. They shifted restlessly in the last several days and led places they ordinarily didn’t visit.

All these things, and Owl sulked in the loft, making carnage, Tristen feared, among the pigeons.

Omens enough, if the place ever lacked them. The face at the turning of the hall toward the main door wore a worried look, unhappy, perhaps, in its memories or unhappy with present prospects. Tristen avoided that particular countenance, tempted, too tempted, to ask it questions: what slept in Ynefel’s long existence, best slept on; what waked, fared well enough; and what had passed from the world ought to stay past, if the world was to get along as peacefully as it did.

Mouse’s actions this morning were worrisome. Mouse was very old, even from Mauryl’s days, prone to tremors and terrors, that was true, but the peace Tristen had sealed about his keep felt a little thinner this morning—he had sealed them in and sealed things out.

In Mouse’s refusal to have breakfast, Tristen found himself thinking of old friends, and troubles. He pushed open the kitchen door, moving aside the snow, and went out into the safe little courtyard that contained the cottage Uwen had built—a little cottage with several sheds, and the lean-to stable, which had full tenancy this morning, as happened: they had brought all the horses in from pasture, the light horses and the heavy. Uwen was outside with Cook’s nephew, Cadun, clumping about in the snow, carrying grain and hay for hungry animals.

“M’lord!” Uwen called to him. “Goin’ to come a storm, ain’t it? Feels it, in the air.”

“It does,” he said. That might be what had troubled Mouse. Uwen had good weather sense. He had been much in his own thoughts the last several days, and had paid little attention to the weather, which rarely signified to the keep, except to bring the horses in and lay in a supply of firewood.

“Cook’s got porridge on,” Uwen called back. “wi’ the blackberry honey, m’lord!”

He heard that invitation and gladly came down to help Uwen and the boy with the horses before breakfast. His own warhorse, Dysarys, was a handful, as Uwen put it—bow-nosed, contrary, and with a prodigious appetite for a stablemate’s grain. They had put up a log barrier to curb his ambitions, so he took to kicking out. He never had hit anyone: Uwen was wary and Cadun, who was not so quick-witted or skilled with horses, was at least nimble at dodging.