Текст книги "Fortress of Ice"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 32 страниц)

But with his master, black Dys was better behaved, and liked to have his ears rubbed, the great, fierce deceiver: “You don’t really want to kick Cadun,” Tristen whispered into a backturned ear, tugging gently at it while the huge head was down in the grain bin. “There’s a lad.”

His hands were, of course, all over dirt and hair. He bent and washed them in the snow outside the stable, the rain barrel having frozen last night. His breath made puffs on the air, miracles of the day, and when he did trouble himself to reach out and know the weather, he smelled the storm coming, the way Uwen had.

But something else was there.

Someone else was there.

He stood for a moment listening to the world. Then, stamping the snow off, he went into Uwen and Cook’s house, Cadun tagging behind, for a warm breakfast at a cozy table—not that he hadn’t had a slice of bread, but warm porridge and blackberry honey was not to turn down. He sat with the little family—they had become his family as well—at a years-worn table, on a bench Uwen had cut and shaped with his axe—carpentry was not Uwen’s first trade, but one he did well, as he did anything he set his hand to. Above them on the rafters hung bunches of herbs. A winter bouquet of dried flowers sat in an old jam jar on the table—the flowers themselves, out in the garden, were well buried, asleep. Cook had persisted in making a good deep, stone-rimmed bed, bringing in soil from the water-meadow and mulching and composting, and the years had rewarded her with abundant tame flowers and herbs, some of which survived the winters.

Their living here had gentled the old fortress somewhat and brought a little warmth even beyond its courtyard. Green leaves had appeared here and there in Marna Wood in the last few springs and summers. Trees that had seemed dead, right at the old bridge, had leafed out in their uppermost branches, whispering to the winds again, last summer, as they had in Tristen’s earliest memory. The warmth of the house spread outward from the cottage, and from its hearth, and outside—

Outside, now, however, all was cold, in the breath of winter, and the threat of coming snow.

Outside was a life within that shadow, but not quite as fragile a life as seemed.

“M’lord?” Uwen asked him, porridge standing on his spoon. Someone was coming, Tristen was well sure, now.

And up in the heights of Ynefel keep, in the loft where dust and old feathers blew in the winds, Owl opened his eyes and turned his head about as Owl could.

Go, Tristen told Owl silently, and Owl, that recalcitrant bird, spread blunt, broad wings and with two great flaps and a tilt of his wings, went out through the gap in the boards.

ii

THE DAY HAD BEEN HALF-KIND, HALF-CRUEL—A LITTLE WARMTH IN the morning, but by afternoon a wicked wind kicked up, rattled through the bare, black branches, and suddenly, with a whirl of old snow off the limbs of Marna’s trees, bit to the bone. Otter kept his hands inside his cloak as much as he could, except as now, when he had to get off Feiny’s back and lead him over uncertain ground, down the slope of a little hillock and around a deadfall too big to move and too bristly to jump.

He had exhausted the grain, and Gran’s provisions. He had spent two cold, cold nights in this treacherous place, but he persevered, calmly, surely. Paisi had always told him the woods had its tricky ways, and that it would mislead a traveler if he tried to turn around and get out. So he refused to change his mind and refused to be scared back, no matter the sounds in the dark, no matter the solitude of the place. He was sure he had come about in a circle once—but he was not to be caught by the old woods again: he had taken careful note of certain trees and looked at their shapes from more than one side, the way Paisi had taught him, so he could not be tricked unless the trees themselves changed shape.

But with the wind rising and the snow sifting down like a veil, he found it harder and harder to be sure what he saw, and once the dark began to come down, he had no choice but to stop and wrap himself in his cloak. He had brought himself and the horse up against an icy lump of an outcrop, with icicle-dripping rock between them and the gusts, to wait through the spate of snow. There was not a thing to eat. In that fact, he was more than worried.

Something pale sailed through the falling snow, sailed, and turned, and settled on a branch overhead. He looked up at it.

“Who?” it asked him; and he knew it was no natural bird. He got up on cold-stiff legs, and it flew off a little distance.

“Who?” it asked again.

Otter trembled, knowing the reputation of that bird, and whence it came—Paisi had said so, and Gran had nodded, confirming the story. He could see the fireside that night, when Paisi had told him how that creature had come into the Zeide and stayed with Lord Tristen. “It weren’t no bird as ever was,” Paisi had said. “An’ it weren’t friendly. It’d bite soon as look at ye. But it turned up where he did.”

“My name is Otter!” he called out to the woods, the owl, and any listener. “I’ve come to see Lord Tristen!”

The owl spread its wings and flew to another, farther tree, veiled in snowfall.

Otter took the reins and clambered up on a rock to get to Feiny’s saddle, fearful that the owl would move again and vanish into the woods. He urged Feiny onward, and the owl took wing, never minding that brush barred his way, and he had to fight past low, clawing branches.

“Owl,” he called to it, “good Owl. Be patient. Stay for me.”

“Who?” it asked, and perversely took flight.

The brush was too thick. He had to get down and lead the horse, tugged him along when the horse had as soon stopped altogether, finally having to take him close by the bit to keep him moving at all, and going near hip deep through a drift.

“Who?” Owl said, mocking him, and flew on through the snow, vanishing almost—but it seemed a bluish light outlined his wings and ran after him, like troubled water. Otter stared into the falling snow, his very eyes chilled, and kept going. Breath hissed between his teeth as he tried to warm it before taking it down. At times he lost Owl altogether, but then a passing shape brushed his hair and startled the horse as Owl winged ahead of him, glowing in the overcast.

His feet were already numb. That numbness crept from his feet to his legs and made him stumble in the snow as they left all semblance of a trail and followed a weaving course through a darker and darker forest. Feiny stumbled, and went down to his knees, and Otter pulled on the bridle, trying to help the horse up, all the while keeping his eyes on Owl, who vanished among the dark trunks and snowy branches.

Feiny gained his feet and followed, as numb and as miserable as he, Otter was sure, and Owl showing no mercy at all. He had sped through the darkest of the woods, where there was no light to be seen. The horse struggled and stumbled on hidden roots, and Otter feared he would go down and not get up: he had brought the heavy caparison, but even that was not enough. He took off his own cloak and flung it over the horse, saddle and all. Wind cut like a knife.

“Owl?” he called out desperately, casting about.

A pale shape sailed over his head and on through the trees, and he followed, stumbling, himself, on the uneven ground, and leading Feiny carefully, trying to keep them both on their feet. Ahead, a seam of twilight opened up between the trees, and Owl flew into it. They went after, passing under a network of bare branches, seeing that seam widen. It became a path, and, it seemed, a bridge, on the end post of which Owl sat, turning his face away.

Otter tugged at the bridle and brought Feiny along.

Owl spread his wings and flew as they passed the last screen of branches.

A fortress sat across that bridge, a place so overgrown and age-eaten it seemed a part of the rocks. The fortress gate cut off all view beyond the wall, except a little scrap of river and the top of a ruined tower.

Owl sailed up and up over that wall, and toward that ruined height, and vanished.

He had no choice now. He trusted himself to the old stones and the timbers and led Feiny across what might be a rubble pile or a bridge, on timbers with no few gaps. The ancient gates rose higher and higher, until they blotted out the sky. He stood and hammered them with his fist, which made little sound at all.

“Lord Tristen!” he called out to the heights. “Lord Tristen, can you hear me?”

Even his voice seemed lost, swallowed by the deep sound of the moving river under him, and he stood alone in the dark, beyond shivering in the cold. Twice more he shouted out and beat at the gate, waiting each time, in fading hope of an answer.

He had been a fool, he thought. He had come uninvited. He might die out here, no one knowing until spring and snowmelt.

Then a door opened and shut, somewhere beyond the wall, and he called out again, desperately: “Lord Tristen! It’s Otter! Gran and Paisi’s Otter! Can you hear me?”

Footsteps came, faintly in the distance beyond the gate, and then closer and closer, muffled by new snow, crunch, crunch, crunch. An inner bar grated and thumped back, and the gate swung and creaked inward, just enough to let him and the horse pass through.

He eased through the gap, seeing first a snowy courtyard, and the black bulk of the keep, and then, right by him, a grim man in a cloak and gloves.

“Sir,” he said respectfully, though he knew this thickset man could not be the lord himself, and he found his teeth chattering when he did it. “I’ve come, I’ve come—”

“Ye’re here,” the man said. “Ye’ll come in and have a warm bowl and a cup o’ tea.” The man took the reins from his fingers and patted Feiny’s snowy neck. “A horse in a cloak, is it? My son’ll see to ’im. Ye’ll come along.”

“You’re Uwen Lewen’s-son.”

“That I am,” the man said, and led him and the horse toward a low, ramshackle, and snowy cottage, with a long stable beside it, and other horses. That pricked Feiny’s interest, and drew a soft, low grunt, and an answering restlessness from the stable.

“He kicks,” Otter said, warning Master Uwen as the horsemaster had warned him, but now a young man had come out of the cottage, the open door of which shed a momentary rectangle of light onto the snow. He shut it, walked out, and that young man received his orders from Master Uwen.

“A good rub and a careful feed,” Uwen said. “He’s been without, summat, hain’t he, lad, an’ ain’t ye, both?”

“There was grain yesterday,” Otter said, “but not much.”

“Good lad.” Uwen’s heavy arm landed about his shoulders and swept him on, irresistibly, into the light of the door and up the steps into the cottage.

Inside, the warmth was thick and all-enveloping, and a red-faced, gray-haired woman bent by the hearth, ladling up a bowl as Uwen shut the door. The latch dropped. The woman set the bowl on the table, with a spoon and a piece of bread.

“Sit,” the woman said, no more to be questioned than Gran, and Otter eased his numb feet past the bench and sat down.

“The silly lad let the horse wear ’is cloak,” Uwen said. “Which is a good lad, by me. Kick the boots off, boy. Warm those feet. Floor’s warmer ’n that frozen leather.”

He had a piece of bread in hand, dipped in the good thick soup, which was hot, and good, and the wonderful bread was fresh-baked. He obeyed, however, using one foot to shove off the other boot, and ate and struggled with the second boot at the same time.

“That’s a boy,” Uwen said, and bent down by the table and pulled the boot off himself, and rubbed his icy feet with large, warm hands. “Half-froze, is what. Best is warming from the inside. Where’s that tea, wife?”

“Here,” the woman said, and set a mug down by the bowl, which was just in time to wash down a bite. Otter did that, and felt his throat overheat all the way down. It made his eyes water, and Uwen tugged the hood back off his head and felt of his ears, which were cold and sore.

“Well, well,” Uwen said, “he’ll be well enough.” As if he were a sheep they were looking over; and mannerless as a sheep, he’d devoured the bread and sat with spoon in hand to get the substance of it, the best soup he’d ever had, even better than Gran’s.

“It’s so good.”

That pleased the woman.

“Welcome here,” Uwen said. Hoodless himself, he proved crowned with grizzled stubble, and had an old scar on his cheek that ran right back into his hair, a soldier’s kind of mark, and that fit with what he knew of Uwen Lewen’s-son. “My wife’s Mirien, but ye can call ’er Cook, which is what she likes to be. The boy, he’s her nephew, truth be told, but son he is to me, and good as, ain’t he?”

“A good boy, Cadun is,” Cook agreed. “A hard worker. Another bowl, young lad?”

“Otter. Otter is my name. And just the tea, please, good mistress.”

“Oh, courtly, ’e is,” Cook said, setting her hands on her hips. “And well-spoke, and wanderin’ in the woods in the dead o’ winter.”

“And callin’ on names we know,” Uwen said. “Gran an’ Paisi’s boy, he is. Ain’t that what ye said?”

“Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I am. I came to see Lord Tristen, if you please.”

“And that ye shall,” Uwen said, “when m’lord calls ye, when he calls ye, but meantime ye’re fed, an’ your horse is fed, and ye can sleep right by the warm fire if ye like. Belike ye could do with warm sleep.”

He wanted to see Lord Tristen. He had come all this way, at such hardship, and wanted what he had come for, immediately, if he possibly could. But when Uwen offered a hand to help him up, and with the warmth of the room and the weight of the food and drink in his stomach, he suddenly found it was all he could do to step over the bench end and totter to the fireside.

The boy had come in from tending the horse, meanwhile. Cook chided him to shut the door and bring the cloak over, and Uwen spread two thick blankets by the fireside. Otter sank down, and Uwen spread his cloak over him, horsey as it still was, and still chill from outside. In a moment more the fireward side of it was warm, and Otter shut his eyes.

Another blanket came atop him, heavy and pressing him down, down and down where it was safe and the storm could never reach.

iii

HE STIRRED FROM TIME TO TIME DURING THE NIGHT, CONFUSED MOMENTARILY not to be at home at Gran’s, in his own bed, or asleep under the carved-wood ceiling of the Guelesfort, or freezing under snowy branches. But there was the homey fire to tell him where he was, and from time to time Uwen, in his shirt, came and put another small log on, just to keep it going through the cold of the night.

After a time the wind stopped howling, like a dog that had given up bad behavior, and the beams of the house popped and creaked in the cold, but Otter rested snug where he was, and slept, and slept, until all the aches melted out of him.

He began to be aware in the morning that the house had begun to stir, that, in fact, Cook was up. She had her hair in a long gray braid. She cleaned the table and set out bowls, then swung the pothook out and poured in cracked grain and a small kettle of water right at Otter’s feet.

“Not so’s ye need stir out,” she said, swinging it back over the heat. “Water’s set to boil. Sleep a bit more.”

He did. And waked again when Uwen’s son lifted the pot off with a wooden hook and carried it to the table.

“Porridge is in the pot,” Cook announced. “Go get Uwen.”

The boy went outside, and Otter sat up and raked his hair into something like order, still in his clothes, and finding the air warm and his bones bruised slightly from the fireplace stones, which he knew intimately, down to the one that jutted up a little, right where his shoulder wanted to be. But oh, he had slept, and he had been warm.

It was a wonderful place to be, and still felt as if he had waked inside a dream. The porridge went into bowls, there was honey for it, and he scrambled up and folded up the cloak and the blankets, to clear space around the fire.

“Yesterday’s bread,” Cook said. “An’ today’s porridge. And blackberry honey, which goes right well.” Uwen came through the door, snowy-booted, with the boy coming after. “Sit down, sit down, all.”

“Horses is fed,” Uwen remarked, taking his place on the bench. Otter slipped onto the end of the bench, not to take up more than his share of room, and not knowing which side of the table he should use. “Ain’t heard from m’lord this mornin’. He don’t always stir out. He’ll send when he takes a notion. Or maybe he’ll drop in for breakfast, who knows?”

“Does he know I’m here, sir?”

“Likely. Likely he does.” Uwen held his bowl as Cook dropped honey in. “Thank ye, wife.”

Cook went about her business, feeding them all, and there was tea, and all the porridge they could possibly eat, and a great deal left over. Uwen said: “Never you mind about what’s left. The horses’ll be right happy to clean it up.”

The cottage was tidy, though pots and horse harness and farm tools hung from the rafters, along with herbs and dried flowers, though there was not a straight beam in the place, and there no few patches in the daub—it was a lot like Gran’s place, except the harness and except a rack that held a soldier’s armor. A sword and shield stood in the shadows on the other side, in the corner, and his heart thumped when he saw it—a black shield with the white Sihhë Star in the center, arms still hung as a banner in the hall at Henas’amef. But here it wasn’t a dusty banner. It was what Uwen Lewen’s-son had carried in war. It, as nothing else, seized Otter’s attention and held it, in little glances sideways, as if it, and all it stood for, would vanish from the mortal world at any moment. It couldn’t be part of the world any longer. It couldn’t go where ordinary people lived their lives. It was exactly as Paisi told him in stories, but the last trace of it in the world of Men was that banner in Lord Crissand’s hall, that no one ever carried in the festivals and processions.

He finished his porridge. He offered, as he did at home with Gran, to wash the dishes.

“I do for Gran,” he said.

“Aye, well,” Cook said, “d’ye hear that, Cadun? Here’s a guest offerin’ to wash the dishes, an’ is that right?”

“No,” Cadun said, well taught, “no, it ain’t, aunt.”

“Well, so, get to it. An’ our guest may sit, or walk about as he will.”

He wasn’t sure what to do with himself. “I’ll go see to my horse,” he said. That at least was his to do, and no one objected, so he got up, put on his cloak, and slipped out the door.

The snow had drifted deep in a curving line across the courtyard, a ridge waist high, distant. The brown tops of dead flowers stuck above the snow where it had blown thin, right along the cottage wall. A row of horses stood snug in their stalls, with a line of snow behind them where it had drifted against rolls of straw.

And above all, undeniable, the dark mass of the fortress rose up and up, towered and cracked and showing jagged edges here and there where there should have been more of a roof. He looked, and realized there was a face in the masonry of the nearer tower, a face that seemed to stare right at him. But that was a trick of his cold-stung eyes. He blinked, and when his eyes cleared, its eyes were shut.

The whole world was quiet, quiet enough that he could hear the rush of air when a shadow passed him, the wind of blunt wings brushing his hair.

Owl swept upward then, into the morning sun, up and up until he had to squint to follow him.

When he looked down again, a set of footsteps led from his own feet to a small set of steps, and a humble side door to the keep, as if he had walked that way, when he had never moved.

That little door stood open, dark inside the keep.

He caught his breath, stood doubting a moment, then walked over those tracks, and up those stairs, and entered that doorway.

It was a scullery all in disarray, pots lying on their sides, a beam fallen down right onto the grating of what had been a fireplace, long, long ago. Dust covered everything but the very center of the keep, beyond the arch, where the outside sunlight fell on an often-walked track across old stones.

He followed that track. He hadn’t seen Owl. He didn’t know if Owl had come into this place. But Owl leapt up from a rafter near the door and dived down and through the open doorway ahead of him.

Owl had led him this far safely. He took the guidance offered and followed, out into a wider room, where was a stairs, and at the bottom of those stairs a newel post on which Owl settled. He went that way, ignoring all else, as close to Owl as he had ever come. Above, around him, as he looked up, a webwork of stairs led to crazed balconies and ledges, up and up, again, to places where the wall was rent and sunlight came in, shafting through the dusty heights. A wayward sunbeam let in a flock of winter sparrows that circled confusedly in the tower, and that same light fell on faces in the surrounding walls, faces like those outside, some shocked, some somnolent, some seeming to cry out.

He looked down again at Owl’s amber eyes and reached out for comfort, to offer Owl a perch on his arm if he wanted.

Owl struck like a serpent, and he snatched a bleeding hand to his mouth as Owl leapt up and flew off, spiraling up and up into the dizzy heights. Sparrows fled, fluttering and diving in terror, escaping every way they could find, but Owl lost himself in the heights, leaving him with the taste of blood in his mouth.

“Owl is not a grateful bird,” a voice said, a young voice, a calm, still voice that resonated off every stone of the keep, as if it came from everywhere at once. “You came to see me?”

The voice settled to his right hand, and came from there, and when he looked beyond the bright light of the center of the hall, he saw a dim nook and a table, where a young man in dark colors stood by a fireside.

“To see you.” This young man could not be a man present at his birth. Lord Tristen should be older than Paisi. But nothing seemed sure at the moment, and he walked aside, sucking the wounded hand to stop the blood. “Perhaps. If you are Lord Tristen.”

“Come,” the young man said, and he walked close, even yet seeing none of those signs of age he expected. “I am Tristen Sihhë.”

“Lord Tristen,” he amended himself, finding his manners, and thought he should bow—but this was not just a duke of Ylesuin: this was the High King himself, the king above even his father, if he ever cared to go out of Ynefel. He thought he should kneel, but there was no convenient place, in the little nook next to the chairs, and he was caught, snared, the while, in a gray, pale stare like his own. The Sihhë-lord’s hair was as dark as his own, and his face might have been a brother’s. “My lord.” He hadn’t intended to call him that, of all things, as if Lord Tristen were hislord, but there it was: it fell out of his mouth all in a rush, and it was, after all, true, from the hour of his birth. He managed to say: “Otter is my name.”

“No,” Tristen said casually. “Otter is not your name.”

It was as if someone had stripped his cloak away and left him in the wind, not knowing where shelter was.

“You are Elfwyn,” Tristen said. That was the name his mother had given him, and now the Sihhë-lord gave him, and it was his, and he had no wish at all to wrap that dark name around his soul. “Elfwyn Aswydd.”

“My lord,” he said again, and felt the world sliding. He had called him that twice now. What had Gran always said, about three times fixing a charm?

Breath came difficult. This was the lord who had permitted him to live. And who might as easily unsay that gift. “I came to ask,” he began.

“Candles are precious this season,” Tristen interrupted him. “The boat from the south won’t come until snowmelt. There is breakfast, if you have slipped Cook’s hands.”

“My lord,” he began, intending to say he had had breakfast, and there that word had slipped his lips the third time, and this time felt strangely comfortable, like long-forgotten old clothes. “I’ve eaten already, thank you. But I came—I came—”

“At least for tea,” Tristen said. “You are shivering.” He turned, this power not of the world, and sifted tea into a pot, then took the kettle from its hook, poured, and hung it back in its place. He set two cups on the table, besides, with a honey pot, a spoon, and a plate with half a dozen small cakes, the provenance of which Otter had missed in the shadows. “Sit down, Elfwyn Aswydd.”

He sat, obediently. Tristen set a cup before him and sat down across the table from him. Firelight flickered on those gray eyes. Tristen took a sip of tea. He took a sip, too, using the cup to warm his hands.

“Will you have a cake?” Tristen asked.

“No, thank you very much, my lord.”

“So why have you come?”

“My lord, I—” The size of the question appalled him, and he didn’t know where to begin, without wasting the Sihhë-lord’s patience, and losing his only chance. “I was in Guelemara. The king—my father—” He was always uncertain with that word.

“How isCefwyn?”

“Oh, well.” As he would have answered Gran about a neighbor. “He’s well. The queen and the baby. And Aewyn. They all are well.”

“Go on.”

The interruption had driven all sense of order out of his mind. “I was there, with Paisi.”

“Paisi and Gran. Are they well, too?”

“Yes, my lord, very well. I just left them.” He attempted desperately to find his thread again, trying not to shiver, and could not look away from those eyes. “But while we were there, in Guelemara, I mean, Paisi and I, we dreamed Gran was sick, so Paisi came home. I tried to stay for Festival, and I—” He was hurrying, and wasn’t sounding sensible at all. “A priest dropped the smoke-pot in the sanctuary, and the floor took a mark, and the Lines, my lord—the Lines—”

“You saw them.”

“Yes, my lord. I saw them.” He suddenly lost himself, trapped in the fire-changed gray of those eyes and remembering the acute fear he had felt then. “I saw them. And Prince Efanor gave me a Quinalt charm, and took away Gran’s, but that didn’t help. Then I had a message from Gran that she was sick and needed me, or I thought it was from Gran, but it was probably from Lord Crissand. So I left.”

“So Guelemara was no good place for you,” Tristen summarized, tucking in all the loose ends, and his voice was quiet, weaving its own spell of calm, and attention. “It was inevitable you should try, less inevitable you should fail, perhaps, but there, the course is set. You’ve chosen to leave.”

“To come here,” he said, hoping he understood.

Tristen shook his head. “Here is only part of it. If I changed what happened, it wouldn’t altogether change what willhappen. Cefwyn is well. You are. That’s to the good. And you say you left Gran and Paisi well?”

“Very well, my lord. But my father’s soldiers were after me.”

“Your father’s soldiers. You know they’d never harm you.”

“But they’d bring me back. And I was making trouble for everyone, where I was.”

“You weren’t the trouble,” Tristen said. “You are who you are.”

“ Whatam I?”

“Not what,” Tristen corrected him, “ who. You’re Elfwyn Aswydd. That was always your name, but you never owned up to it. Now you have to be both Elfwyn and Aswydd, before you can be your father’s son.”

“I tried to be his son,” he said. And added, which made sense to him, but not, he feared, otherwise: “Prince Aewyn is my friend.”

Tristen nodded, as if he did indeed understand how two difficult matters tied together. “So he should be,” Tristen said. “You are his brother.”

“I want to be. I never want to be a trouble to him. I don’t want to be a trouble to anyone.”

“You are who you are,” Tristen said again. “Do you understand yet how Elfwyn Aswydd can be Aewyn’s brother?”

It wasn’t the same as Otter being Aewyn’s brother. He finally saw that, at least glimpsed the edges of what Lord Tristen was telling him.

“You should have carried your real name before you went to Guelemara,” Tristen said. “The name Otter misled you. It misled all expectation around you. People were careless. Drink your tea. It’s cooling.”

He drank it. He tried to take in the deeper sense of what Lord Tristen was telling him. He had come for counsel. He had expected to ask sane questions about where to go next and what to do next, and have a plain answer—not to find himself led this way and that and questioned repeatedly about various people’s welfare. Should have carried your real name, Lord Tristen said. Should he have gone there as Elfwyn Aswydd?

Should he, then, have come to Guelemara as part of Lord Crissand’s household, and tried to be Lord Crissand’s relative, somehow, when Crissand had two sons of his own who had every right he did not?

“What should I do now?” he asked. “I shouldn’t go back to Guelemara, should I?”

Tristen sipped at his own cup. “That would be one course. But that won’t happen now.”

“Do you know that?” He hadn’t felt magic moving, not at that instant, but now he did, the prickly sensation he got when Gran was working, and he kept his hands about his cup to keep from shivering. He daren’t look aside from this young man. He feared what he might see behind him. “I’m afraid to go to Lord Crissand. It’s not that I’m afraid of him. He’s always been kind. But if I go to him, it means going near my mother.”

Tristen didn’t answer immediately. He stared past him into the fire. Then he said, looking straight at him: “You took the name of Otter. That made you someone else and kept you safe from her as long as you were Otter. Now things are different. You’ve chosen to come back, and you have to make your own safety.”

“I can’t,” he said, and when Lord Tristen gave him a misgiving look: “I don’t think I can, my lord.”

“That’s the difficulty, isn’t it?”

Whatwas the difficulty? He had known Gran to speak in riddles, but Lord Tristen didn’t make clear sense to him at all.

“I don’t understand, my lord.”

“What do you think you ought to do? Why did you come here?”

“To find out if I’ve done the right things. To find out what’s happening. The dream about Gran being sick wasn’t really so, not as bad as seemed when Paisi and I dreamed it. And then I dreamed of fire.” He’d forgotten that, until just that instant, how profoundly that dream had scared him. “And if it wasn’t Gran, it was my mother that made us dream, wasn’t it, my lord? She didn’t want me to leave Henas’amef. She didn’t want me to go away from her. But I did. What if she’s making all this happen, and it’s not just me? I hate her!”