Текст книги "Fortress of Ice"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 32 страниц)

There was far too much commotion to get past Paisi’s hearing. He heard the front door open, as Paisi had done before.

“It’s me!” he called out, to forestall any caution. “Paisi?”

“M’lord,” Paisi cried, coming into the shed, and shoving two sleepy goats out of his path. “Ye silly lad—ye could ha’ rapped at the front door an’ had help.”

“I was trying not to wake Gran.”

“Who’s wide-awake, an’ who knew you were comin’, as was! We waited supper a while, an’ then so as not to waste lights, we went on to bed.” Paisi flung arms about him, slapped him on the back, and hugged him hard. “Gods, ye silly boy, ye’re safe. Did ye even get there?”

“I saw him,” he said, in his own defense.

“Gran thought so,” Paisi said. He found the grain bin and the bowl they used to dip it up, and poured a measure into the trough, to Feiny’s immediate preoccupation. “He’s fine, he’s fine. You just come inside, lad. Get yourself warm and fed, an’ I’ll come back an’ tend the horse.”

Warmth and food came very welcome. He went in by the back door, out of the shed, blinking in the dim light of the banked fire. Gran was indeed out of her bed, using the pothook to swing the pot over the coals, but it had become too heavy for her in recent years. He gave it a shove, his hands still gloved, and hugged Gran gently, wanting to stand there a good long while, just in that comfort.

“I saw him,” he said. “He was very kind. He was younger than Paisi,” he added. That never ceased to amaze him.

“His years ain’t ours,” Gran said, as Paisi came in and shut the door behind them. “Nor ever shall be.” She made him stand back and took his cold face in her two warm, age-smooth hands, making him look into her eyes. “Aye, ye seen him, hain’t ye, lad?”

“He said I was Elfwyn. He said that was my name.”

“Then it has to be, now, don’t it? Come, sit on the bench. Paisi’ll dip ye up a bowl.”

He did. He took what he was given, ever so grateful to be home, and safe. There was fine bread and butter, good potato-and-cabbage soup with a bit of pork besides.

“His Grace sent it,” Gran said.

“The King’s Guard came by,” Paisi said, having a bit of soup himself, as Gran had some of the broth. “An’ then His Grace of Amefel’s men, wi’ a right sensible Bryaltine father, wi’ some good aromatics for Gran.”

If Paisi thought a Bryalt father was sensible, that was a wonder in itself.

“So we ain’t wanted for a thing,” Paisi said. “How was it, wi’ Lord Tristen?”

“He remembered you and Gran very kindly,” Elfwyn said. “He invited me to dinner, and to sleep the night in Ynefel.”

Gran nodded solemnly. “Ain’t surprised,” Gran said.

“And he said the king was worried about me, and he showed me wards, Gran. And mine glowed!”

“Ain’t surprised for that, neither,” Gran said.

“And then he said he would come to Henas’amef. I don’t know whether only to Amefel, but he gave me a letter for Lord Crissand. And I lost it, Gran! I fell in the brook, and I lost it!”

There was a small silence. “Did ye, then?”

“Well, what shall I do?”

“What do ye incline to do?” Gran asked him.

“Go to Lord Crissand first thing tomorrow and tell him as much as I know.”

Gran nodded. “That ye must do, then. Paisi told the king’s men you’d gone an’ where you’d gone, and they didn’t follow. An’ Lord Crissand knows where ye were, o’ consequence, so he’ll be wonderin’.”

“First thing in the morning,” he said. He was melting a puddle onto the floor, off his boots, and it had become muddy from dirt in the shed. He put the bowl down, having eaten as much as he could, and the bowl clattered against the stones as he set it down, his hand was shaking so. “I think I’m a little tired, Gran.”

“That ye be,” Gran said. “Paisi, get ’im to bed. Is that horse settled?”

“They’re settled.”

“Great hungry horses—thank the gods ’Is Grace is feedin’ ’em. The goats is gettin’ fat off just the grain an’ hay they spill. Go to bed, Elfwyn, lad.”

Gran called him that name, as if that name was his even here, but in spite of everything, welcome had settled all around him, warm and good as Gran’s house always was. He gathered himself up, and sat down again on the bed he shared with Paisi, and managed to get his boots off, and his stockings, which had holes in them, and had worn bloody blisters. There was mending and washing to do, when there was light enough. He took off his belt and fell into bed, which still seemed to move with Feiny’s weary gait, and that was that—he managed to lift his head only when Paisi came to bed.

“Good to have you back,” Paisi said.

“Good to be back,” he murmured into the crook of his arm, head down again, nose buried. Gran’s amulets were all about the bedstead and under the mattress, which was goose feathers, and ever so comfortable, especially with Paisi’s warmth by him. The snow could fall tonight. He was warm and back to his beginnings, as if his soaring rise to princedom and his passage through Ynefel had never happened. He was only Gran’s boy again, more than a little lonely, but protected.

Vision, Tristen had said. He had that scored onto his hand. And now he saw Gran’s place as safety in a cold, dangerous world, and the humble beginnings he had longed to escape. Gran’s love, and Paisi’s—those were, he thought, his first and greatest treasures, those he never had valued enough. He lay with Paisi’s warmth next to him, and the cottage snug against the wind, no matter how hard it blew.

That was the way Paisi kept things. He hoped to be as clever with his hands. It was a Gift, potent unto itself.

Vision. Seeing things for what they were and what they could be.

What was that other word? It still eluded him.

ii

OWL WAS BACK IN THE KEEP, DISAGREEABLE AND PEEVISH. HE HAD LOST A FEW feathers, and sat puffed and mad-eyed on the newel post upstairs.

It had not gone well. Luck had not run the boy’s way, and a good deal of his path had become obscure, deeply shadowed.

Perhaps, Tristen thought, he should have ridden out with him and conveyed him home. He had foreseen trouble. But the world had been shadowed these last few days, and it would have meant, had he gone out from Ynefel and devoted himself to one boy, on one solitary track through the woods, that he would lose track of other things, to the peril of all.

More, his presence risked drawing more attention than the boy already had on him. The boy had fallen into a dark place, one of those shadows Marna had within it, where even Owl had had trouble finding him. Likely the boy had not known that old stones lay near, likely had never even felt the gap in the earth, but he had gotten out of the trap and away, and come out of shadow unscathed, at least.

Leaving the keep now, abandoning his vantage at Ynefel, meant he would suffer a degree of blindness during the boy’s passage, which would have brought the boy into greater danger. He would suffer a degree of blindness to movements in the land when he did ride to Henas’amef—the balances there had already shifted, tipped, trembled on the edge, and if he moved, he sensed, he would tip them right over.

None of what had happened in Henas’amef of late was what he wanted. If he went there, when he went there, it would shake the world and the world beyond it. But what had been gnawing away at the peace all these years had its own intentions, and undermined, and shifted, and would have its way, sooner or later. The boy was the lever that moved things. He had been born for that.

The boy, however, had gotten safely as far as Gran’s house, and slept inside her wards tonight. It was Cefwyn and Crissand who had their troubles at this hour. Those did not grow quieter. Peace might last a little longer.

Perhaps he should still delay going, and only see whether things settled now that the boy himself had settled to rest for a time. The intervention of a Sihhe-Iord in the affairs of Men had rippled the calm surface of ordinary years, and he had seen how his withdrawing to Ynefel had smoothed things out for a time: things that ought to sleep slept more deeply, the longer he kept his distance. The whole world drew an easier breath.

And should he go now, hastening everything, to divert this boy? He was a good lad. Gran had made him that.

Uwen came and went among Men much more frequently, usually with Cook: the two of them had gone, generally as plain travelers, into villages, and now and again as far Henas’amef itself to consult with Lord Crissand, or to exchange messages—oh, with far less fuss than the lord of Ynefel would generate, and very little ripple in the peace. They were quiet, and clever, and came back full of news and gossip—news he would not have thought to ask, names that quickened fond memory—servants he had known, and minor lords, and sometimes they brought news from Guelessar, or down the river: familiar names, like Sovrag, and Cevulirn, that conjured warm evenings and happy moments as well as dreadful. The two of them had ridden out, and came back bringing him the oddest trinkets, a curious tin box, a fine pair of gloves, packets of spices from the southern trade… all these things he valued, but the things he most longed for no one could bring him in a bag of trinkets. A quiet supper with Lord Crissand was what he wanted, or rarest and dearest desire, with the friend of his heart, with Cefwyn himself.

Oh, he had made ventures, but never since the boy had grown old enough to ask questions.

He had met with Paisi, oh, at least half a dozen times, at the edge of Marna Wood: if not for Gran and the boy, Paisi would have gladly ridden into Marna and begged to stay.

He remembered a dirty-faced boy, who had also been Paisi, in the streets of Henas’amef, the day he was lost. Paisi running errands for Master Emuin. Or holding a baby who could not go back to its mother.

Time ran back and forward for him when he let his mind wander. He had visions at times… he had been a dragon once—he had felt his own power increase beyond all bounds, had felt the earth shake, seen men cast to ruin in a breath. He had drawn apart, to keep his influence out of the world, but, oh, he was so tempted to go into Guelessar, and to turn up in his old friend’s path, and just to say, as Cefwyn had used to say to him, “Shall we go riding?”

Those had been the best times of all.

And when, since that day, he did go out into the world, when the poor or the desperate begged for health, for fortune, for justice—he had been the Dragon, and the power was always there. Oh, indeed, the touch of a Sihhë hand could work such magic… the people knew it. Some, if they knew the price, would pay it…

And whenever he worked, he knew. The smallest magic could just as easily, and not by his intent, bind an unwarded soul to his own life, as Paisi was bound, as Gran was. Healing could just as easily make some desperate man an open gateway to things that man would never expect to meet. Men prayed to their gods. They prayed by their own understanding, reckless of what they invoked, and wanted things, wanted so very much—and sometimes with such complete justice and need—

Some things he granted. But some things he never would. He would not, for instance, raise the dead. Mauryl had done that, had clothed a soul long in the dark.

Had good ever come of that?

Mauryl had never said—but then, the final word was not written, and Mauryl himself had never known the outcome of his Shaping. That was all he dared say of himself, that he tried to do the best he could, which was as little as possible.

He would not, for instance, deal with children, or try to bend them one way or the other. Childhood baffled him. He hadn’t grown that way. He had simply stepped into the world as he was and learned it as he could. He understood that, in Elfwyn, he dealt with a creature not yet a Man, but something nearly a Man, a creature with a Man’s passions, but not quite a Man’s desires; a Man’s yearning, but not a Man’s self-restraint. That would come. And when it came, there would be another new creature, one which had not existed in the world until Cefwyn had engendered that life in Tarien Aswydd’s womb. Elfwyn Aswydd was notTarien’s remote kin, long dead, or Cefwyn’s grandfather, also dead. He was something of both, and neither. He was a wild force, a power unto himself, and most unpredictable of all, he was still in that stage of things Unfolding within himself—not as things had to him, out of a mature knowledge and the distant past, but taking shape out of bits and scraps of what other people showed him and what his intellect could make of it. There was, in fact, no knowing which way Elfwyn Aswydd would turn.

His mother had her own plans for him; but worse, she had made herself a window through which other things could look, and her plans, set into motion, had never been all her own. Her time had run, irrevocable in the world of Men. Threads had come together in a design that wove through and through this boy’s existence. Hasufin Heltain was one thread. Heryn Aswydd was one. Orien was. And Tarien Aswydd.

Stubborn he was—and what else? He was Cefwyn’s son, equally.

He sat thinking until the sun rose, trying to ponder what this boy was.

And in the morning he walked into Uwen’s cottage. There he found that Uwen was sharpening his sword, tending his own weapons for the first time in a long time.

He sat down by Uwen on the bench and took a cup of tea from Cook.

“Ye’re thinkin’ about the outside, are ye, m’lord?” Uwen asked him.

“That I am,” he said quietly, aware that Cook was listening with one ear, while putting bread to bake.

“Is it the old enemy, m’lord?” Uwen asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “How could you suspect?”

Uwen shrugged while the whetstone kept moving. “The boy. The Aswydd woman. An’ the king. Things is come together lately.”

“That they have,” Tristen admitted.

“An’ last night ye had the whole hall lit.”

The candles came and went. He rarely thought about them. “I suppose I did.”

“So,” Uwen said. “Ye ain’t slept much since the boy went out.”

“I often don’t.”

“Ye ain’t, ’cept Owl is back, so the boy’s got where he’s goin’. An’ Dys, he come in on ’is own from pasture this mornin’. Ye called him.”

“Did I?” He was amazed. He’d wanted the horse. He’d wanted Uwen. Both knew that without his saying so.

“So,” Uwen said, looking up and down the gray-sheened edge of the metal. “So, well, the bones is some older, but these hands ain’t forgot.”

He’d worked his little magics to keep Uwen hale and strong, and Cook and Cook’s son, too, since Cook made Uwen happy… it was his little secret, a furtive and quiet magic, worked within the walls, and this without polite asking. Dys didn’t age, nor Petelly, nor any of the horses. Cadun grew up, but never older, and if there was wrong in that, he only hoped Uwen forgave him, if Cook and Cadun did not. This morning was as close as Uwen had ever come to remarking on his own long good health.

But he needed Uwen. This was the truth inside the truth: he knew that time ran too fast for his liking, and that Men faded. With them, with this one comfort, he was content; and without them, he was alone.

Since the day he became a Dragon, he held in his heart a vision of a place frozen in ice, remote from all Men—a place before Men, and before love, and before everything. He couldn’t quite remember a time he had been there, but he feared it more than anything. It was that place where the Enemy had been, and yet it seemed to him that he had been there before he knew Mauryl, that he had watched Mauryl arrive at those gates, oh, long before many other things had happened, and long before there was Uwen, to tie him to thisplace and thistime. Tristen had lived his first year in the world of Men less than two decades ago; lived that year, and the next, and many after it. But the cold place was there, always, in the back of his fears, an icy fastness where nothing he loved had yet existed. It had been so easy to spread anger out onto the winds, like the Dragon, and be there again; but once he was there, he might not remember how to get back.

Uwen was his strength, but also his weakness. His Enemy would ever so quickly exploit that weakness if he entered the world again; and his need for Uwen would bring Uwen grief if ever his care had a lapse. He knew it. So did Uwen know it, wise man that he was. He became sure this morning that Uwen knew his somewhat guilty secret, counted the years he had spent here, and did forgive him.

“So,” Uwen said, “do I go, or do we go together this time, m’lord? Ye’ve waited for the boy. Now he’s gone where he’s goin’, or Owl ain’t a prophet.”

“Brave Uwen. We shall both go, and go soon, I think we must. But something is moving, and if I leave the tower, I shall not have the vantage to see where it goes. The wind is up this morning. Do you hear it?”

Uwen looked up, on blue sky and a clear day. “Is it that, m’lord? Is it woke again?”

“I don’t know. Put our packs together. We shan’t take a great deal with us when we go, and we may go at any hour, day or night.”

“Aye, m’lord. Just my gear, an’ yours. As used t’ be.”

iii

THE GOOD CLOAK FROM GUELESSAR HAD FARED THE WORST—IT WOULD NEED mending as well as washing, and there was no time for either. Elfwyn put on Paisi’s best—Paisi insisted; and the two of them kissed Gran and took the horses the king had given them, and rode out to the highway, himself on Feiny, with his saddle, and Paisi on Tammis, with nothing but his halter.

It was a brisk, snowy ride to the gates of Henas’amef, under a blue bright sky at first, then under the frowning shadow of the battlement. They rode cautiously, climbing an icy street they had never before traversed on horseback. And the people of the town, who would never have looked twice at two walkers, looked up at them curiously and suspiciously as they passed like lord and man. Some might know Paisi, who came and went in the town, and if they did, they knew who they might be, though they might wonder greatly that they now came in on horseback. One or two such made the sign against evil, but only one or two, likely more piously Bryalt than the rest—in the main, the townsfolk hung charms about their houses and had no fear of witches or their cures: oh, no, it was the taint of sorcery that drew the ward signs, and the looks askance.

Overall, the town was in a fading holiday mood—the last vestiges of tattered dead evergreen festooned housefronts and shops, the Bryalt holiday having come and gone and lingered during his venture west, and people were likely in the very last throes of too much drink and leftover holiday cakes. The shops were still mostly shut, this early in the morning. The evergreen dripped with icicles here and there, shed needles, or hung haphazardly tattered, ruined by days of wind and weather.

Paisi had not come into town for holiday, so he said. He had been just off a long ride, had been too busy mending leaks and repairing the goat-shed fence for Gran, and besides, as Paisi had said, he had been too worried about a certain fool for a number of days after.

“I was never in danger,” Elfwyn said, and knew that he lied, and wasn’t sure why, except he had no desire yet to tell Paisi what Paisi was so curious to learn—what Tristen had said, or what he had said to Lord Tristen.

He wanted to have the visit to Lord Crissand behind him, that, before anything else, and he didn’t want to think about where he had been, or about Lord Tristen at all until he had to. There was, besides Paisi’s completely reasonable desire to know, that presence that loomed above the town, less so, ironically, as they were nearest to it: the houses cut off all view of the Zeide and its tower, and seemed to cut off all sense of it as well. Elfwyn had ridden out from Gran’s place refusing to look toward the town, and refusing to look up when they drew close to it: he chattered with Paisi or minded the frozen mud, or anything at all he could contrive to keep his mind off that place—he so dreaded coming into town.

But here, in that strange absence of notice from the tower, they rode calmly up the street, and quietly up to the Zeide gates, where gatekeepers, respecting anyone who came on horseback, made haste to open them.

Things came suddenly uncommonly clear, details of the iron gates, of the stones themselves—of that tower, when they had come through the gates and into the broad courtyard of the keep. He wanted to look up. He had the most dire urge to look up. And didn’t.

Vision, Lord Tristen had said. Vision was what he needed, but his Vision of that high window was not with his eyes. He knew what it looked like. He knew every detail of that window, its stone ledge that ran all the way about the tower, the dark birds that sometimes congregated there. He knew the window was vacant at the moment. She didn’t need to look. Her Vision existed whether or not she looked—was that possibly what Lord Tristen meant, that he needed that kind of wizardry, his mother’s Gift, that was always aware? He wanted nothing of his mother, not a whisper of her talent. When he had approached Lord Tristen about wizardry, he had been thinking of himself and Gran, and the things she had shown him, not—not his mother’s sort. Not sorcery.

Gods, had the Sihhë-lord seen something else hiding in him?

He felt an unease at the very pit of his stomach when he thought that. He had not been ambitious. He had not even thought of thatGift. He had wanted something he didn’t think he owned, not really. Wizard-gift. Not sorcery.

He almost did look up.

But Paisi rode toward the stables, where strange horses had to stay, and Feiny turned that way, too, away from the tower, and a wall curtained the sight of it. Elfwyn got down where Paisi had and turned Feiny over to the stableboy, too, while Paisi informed the boy the horses should have water but needed no grain.

“As we ain’t stayin’ long, that we know,” Paisi said.

Elfwyn flung his cloak off his arm as they approached the side of the keep, so as to show the door guards he carried no weapon, only the knife he used for meals, and Paisi flung his all the way back. The guards did challenge them at the side door, atop the stairs, but only for a moment, and one of the men walked with them down the hall inside, as far as his captain, in a little office.

“The boy’s come in,” Elfwyn heard that man say, as if it were evident to all the world which boy, and the answer he didn’t hear, but the same man came out again and led them down the lower corridor to the great audience hall, beyond the central stairs.

He had hoped for something quieter than a public audience. It was early in the morning. Was it court day, with all the town coming in? That was the very last thing he wanted.

The man ushered him through, stopping Paisi at the door with a gesture, and at that Elfwyn looked back.

“It’s proper, m’lord,” Paisi said. M’lord again. The king’s son, again.

There had been a time Gran’s foster grandson would never have found his way into an audience, and he wished now he were bidden, like any ordinary countryman, wait until and if summoned.

As it was, he was bidden straight inside, his father’s son, into an echoing great hall, and he had to find a place for himself along the wall and stay quiet, while the guard went and added him, he supposed, to the official list a man kept at a table.

As if he were a man. A lord. At least of a rank with the angry merchant who was pressing his case with Duke Crissand at the moment. Crissand questioned the man patiently and quietly, from his chair at the head of the hall, being advised by various persons concerned in some way—Elfwyn understood, at least, that it involved the recent holidays, and a drunken brawl, and broken tables. The man was a tavern keeper, perhaps, not so high-flown as the list of people who came in with petitions for his father, over boundaries and marriages and blood feuds.

His was, it might be, the highest business, after all. He had to report to the duke that he visited Tristen with no leave to do so. He had to report that he had left the king’s palace, too, without leave—the soldiers had been here, telling as much as theyknew, and maybe making demands he be brought back again, for all heknew. And here he stood, a subject of Amefel again, wanting grain for two horses. He had no idea whether it was good or bad, from Lord Crissand’s view, that Lord Tristen was arriving soon: fool that he was, he had come here to confess the lost letter—it was not the happiest of appearances before this man, who generally had done very well for Gran and deserved better than a boy’s lame excuses.

He didn’t know what ground was under his feet, if he wondered about such matters: he didn’t know, he didn’t understand the business that had always flown over his head, or why bad dreams, which had turned out false, had drawn him back here, and sent him to Lord Tristen, where he had outright failed to ask clearly whose were the dreams, or why had he dreamed, or were they possibly a warning?

Fool, he said to himself, not to have asked, not to have put the letter where it wouldn’t drop away from him, not to have thought of it when he had taken his shirt off. He had probably flung it right into the brook, to boot.

Dreams. His mother’s work, he became more and more convinced. He’d believed what he’d seen and hadn’t looked past his initial fear.

Vision, Lord Tristen had said. Looking at things. Seeing what was. Seeing through things. Seeing through his mother’s wiles and the web of fear she flung up. Here he stood, terrified of her, while thinking she was the likely source of trouble that had separated him from his father and brought him here.

So who had gotten exactly what she wanted, after all?

And he still trembled at the thought that she was just upstairs. She was probably laughing, right now, probably delighted with her work, and no one challenged her. If he had the least smidge of Gift, himself, he would use it to face her and make her know the day was coming when she wouldn’t be so pleased with her son.

Children had come in, while the merchants were arguing, two curly-headed children and a third, in the arms of a lady, who sat down by Crissand’s side—his wife, his children, two boys and a little girl, happy children. The men fought, and the children sat and played quietly on the steps, the model of a family, such as he had almost had, in his father’s household—his father had bent every law to try to give him that.

While his mother—

He hadn’t Seen, had he? He hadn’t even thought about her, except to know he was escaping and going to Guelessar, and he had thought, when the tower set behind the hills, that her gaze was off him, for the first time in his life.

He had a sudden notion that even losing the letter might be his mother’s doing, his mother, wanting to prevent whatever Lord Tristen wanted, wanting to make all the trouble she could, and striking just as soon as he was far enough from Ynefel.

She had a habit of making the most trouble she could. He was here, within easy cast of her tower, and all of a sudden a great many things came clear to him, that it hadn’tbeen Gran’s worry, and it hadn’t been simple bad luck in the woods, and it was his mother’s great pleasure that he’d had to come here to take the blame for everything. That was the love she showed him.

Crissand served judgment on the tavern dispute, in a loud voice.

The baby began to cry at that, and the duke softened his face and his voice, and took the baby from his lady, kissing her and holding her in his arms until she quieted. “Clear the hall,” he said, which Elfwyn took for a general dismissal.

“Not you, lad.”

He turned. He saw Crissand beckon, one crooked finger beside the baby’s arm.

“Come here.”

He came down the long aisle. He presented himself and bowed deeply. “My lord duke.”

“Cakes and cream for the children,” Crissand said, with a snap of his fingers, and gave the baby back to his wife. “Otter, lad, I’m very glad to see you back.”

“I’m ever so sorry, m’lord. I came and I went, and I had a letter for you…”

“Your father sent letters,” Crissand said, “in great concern.”

“I—” He didn’t know what to say. “I’m very sorry. Lord Tristen sent, and I lost the letter.”

“Lost it?”

“In a brook,” he said, to have it done with. “But he says he’s coming here. Or at least, that he’s coming to Henas’amef.”

“Indeed,” Duke Crissand said, and got up and came down the steps to set a hand on his shoulder. He was a young man, for his office, and had a gentle face, a kindly manner. “Why, did he say?”

“I think—I think—I don’t know,” he finished in a rush, uncomfortable to have the duke treat him kindly, after all the trouble. “I wouldn’t venture to say. I told him what had happened—” No, that wasn’t quite true. “I asked him—I asked him to tell me what to do, because things hadn’t worked in Guelemara, and the Guelen priests were upset, m’lord, and I had your message about Gran being sick—”

“I sent no message.”

He was confused, confused, and a little dismayed, then limped on with his news. “I left, then. I came home. But I thought with all that’s wrong—I thought I should go to Lord Tristen. And Lord Tristen said he’d take a look at things, and after that, he wrote you a letter for me to carry, and said he’d come soon. But I lost it. I’m very sorry.”

“His messages are not easily lost.”

“I don’t know, m’lord. I don’t know. I fell in the brook, and I was freezing. And when I thought again, it was gone.”

“Well, well… you’ve no idea what it said.”

“It was under seal, my lord.”

“So. And what matters did you discuss with him, if you can say?”

“Myself,” he said. “My troubles.” His face went hot. “It was time I left, m’lord. There was all kinds of trouble. I kept dreaming about Gran. I’d sent Paisi back. I tried to See home, a maid saw me, and the priests were all upset.”

“Ah,” Crissand said, as if this time he’d reached the sense of it. “Well, well, the Quinalt is upset often enough. Your father sent his love, that first.”

“Did he?” He was ever so desirous to hear that.

“In no uncertain terms. When I should be able to lay hands on you, he asked I give you my protection as before—this, mind you, has never been a burden; and he wishes you very well, very well indeed.”