Текст книги "Fortress of Ice"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 25 (всего у книги 32 страниц)

And if it had any power, he should try to use it. Shivering and blasted by the wind, he tried to marshal his thoughts, and to tell the friendly powers of the world, as best he could, that he was no thief: he muttered into the wind, “Lord Tristen, can you hear me? Can you find us? We can’t see, we can’t find our way, and my mother wants this thing I have. I think it belongs to you. Maybe I should never have taken it, but now it has to come to you. Please answer me.”

But no answer came.

Maybe, he thought, he should just have left a note in his room, explaining all he could. But he had thought only of running. He had left the key, of all things, but never a word to explain himself. It was too late for all second choices. And it was wizard writing in the book. And hadn’t Gran always said that such things had a mind of their own, a way of getting where they wanted to be, when they wanted to go? There was his mother’s will, and there might be the book’s own inclination, this thingthat rode against his heart, urgently needing to be somewhere else, perhaps back with Tristen.

Are we so sure? a voice said to him. Is this thing leading us to him, or wide astray in this storm? Has it urged us to honesty? Has it led us to any good act?

Maybe he could have stayed where he was and sent Paisi with the book. He could lie to Crissand. He could even tell the truth. But the book would be away from his mother.

No. He would not have sent Paisi alone with this thing. Paisi had always taken care of him, but now, all of a sudden, he found himself trying to protect Paisi, and taking care of him, and he could never ask Paisi to take on his mother, which was what it would amount to. His mother might try to stop him, might try to kill him, for all he knew, but she would not come at Paisi—he would not let her come at Paisi, come what might.

A blast of sleet-edged wind came right in their faces. It made Feiny veer. He fought the horse full circle, then reined back the way he thought they had been going, and kicked him into motion in the direction he felt was west. Then he looked back to be sure he and Paisi kept the same course.

With a chill straight to his heart, he saw nothing but snowy murk, not even the ground he was riding over.

“Paisi?” he called out into the night. And shouted, over the blast of the wind, “Paisi!”

The wind howled, and skirled sharp-edged sleet around them. There was neither up nor down in the murk, and no answer came to him, none at all.

v

HOURS ON THE SEARCH, AND NO TRACES IN THE WIND-DRIVEN SNOW. THE STORM had blown past, but covered all tracks. Crissand was chilled through, his men likewise. A flask went the rounds, but it lent only false warmth, a comfort for the moment, and a cure for raw throats.

There had been three choices, the ruins of the farm; the highroad back to Guelessar, toward Cefwyn, which seemed unlikely for a boy running from theft; or the way west, the way that Tristen would come, and Crissand’s every impulse, every wondering about the ring, the boy, and his reasons, had laid his wager firmly on the latter, not even stopping to investigate the ruin.

Now, however, the surety he had felt in his choice of directions abruptly faded, leaving, like most magical touches, only a vague conviction that one’s reason had been unreasonably overset, and that choices previously made were all folly and unproven. Before, the fact that there had been no tracks could be blamed on the wind; afterward, Crissand could only wish he had in fact investigated the farm before leading four good men out into a driving snow.

But he knew the tendencies of things magical, and since they had come this far, he told his men they should press on as far at least as Wye Crossing—this to encourage them that there was a sure limit to his madness, and that they would get back to warm quarters before they froze.

But when the snow turned out to have made drifts across the road short of their mark, and chilled and weary men, however brave, hesitated and reined about in dismay, it seemed time to reconsider even that. Nothing had broken those drifts, not since they had begun to form.

Folly, Crissand thought now. He had made the wrong choice. The ring had misled him. It meant the boy to escape. It might even be Tristen’s doing. He hoped that it was. He refused to think any magic could overwhelm what had been his own guide and talisman all these years.

But he felt a little less safe in his long-held assumptions, where he sat, on a cold and unwilling horse.

Then from across the snowy flat of the surrounding meadows, out of a little spit and flurry of snow in the dark, a rider appeared and advanced steadily toward them.

“It could be a haunt,” one of his guard said, and his captain: “Hush, man. Don’t be a fool. We’re out here searchin’ for riders, aren’t we?”

A figure muffled in a cloak and atop a winter-coated, snow-caked, and piebald horse, as if he had ridden straight out of the blizzard of several hours ago. There was reason his guard viewed this arrival in alarm. It wasn’t ordinary, that rider. It looked white in patches, itself, in the ambient snow light.

And it kept coming toward them, not down the road, as they believed the road to lie, but from across the fields.

“Halt there!” his captain called out. “This is His Grace the duke of Amefel! Who are you?”

“Paisi, Elfwyn Aswydd’s man,” the answer came strongly enough, then, distressedly: “Your Grace, Your Grace, gods save me, I’ve lost ’im. An’ all the food is with me!”

CHAPTER SEVEN

i

THEY HAD HASTENED ALL THE WAY, HAD PRESSED THE HORSES HARD. THEY HAD looked to stop at Gran’s for the night—but the closer they rode, the more stranger and more ominous things seemed. Gran’s chimney did not appear at the turning where it ought.

And when Cefwyn rode past that turning, with his son and his guard, the house was all ashes and timbers, its yard gate open to the road.

Aewyn rode ahead, plunged off his horse, and had gotten to a dangerous place among the timbers before the guards overtook him, and Cefwyn had.

“His dreams!” Aewyn cried. “Papa, his dreams!”

“Hush,” Cefwyn said, laying a hand on his son’s back. “Hush. They may have escaped.”

“Here’s horse tracks, Your Majesty,” a man said, back by the shed, which had survived half-burned. The ashes, the burned beams, cool now, supported a load of new snow. But Cefwyn went out, taking Aewyn with him, and sure enough, where the remnant of a roof had partially sheltered the ground, tracks showed. At least one man had walked here. So had a horse. And there were no remains—there was evidence of horses in the shed, but no remains.

“They may well have gotten out,” Cefwyn said. And, squeezing Aewyn’s shoulder: “They would have gone to the town for help. Let us go.”

Aewyn ran back to his horse and climbed into the saddle, impatient until they were under way, jaw clenched, trying to hold his distress like a man. He spoke hardly a word—no one did, until they came within sight of the town.

The day’s sun was sinking fast and the horses were hard-used before the walls of Henas’amef rose distinct above the snowy fields—only one gate was open, and men were out with shovels, digging clear a path for the gates to swing. The odd, west-sweeping storm that had made yesterday’s travel a trial had unloaded about walls and gates, reason enough for a crew to be out shoveling.

The gate-guards had joined the work party, and at first stood stiff with alarm as they spied a determined party of riders flattening a broader track through the snow, but Cefwyn had ordered the banners out, and the gate-guards no more than stood to attention, and laborers swept off their hats and cowls, Amefin folk, but never in these years hostile to their king. Cefwyn had no hesitation in riding close by these men with his son. A bell started to toll, the gate bell, advising the town and the hill above of arrivals worth attention.

“We shall have a hot drink with my brother,” Aewyn said doggedly. His son was white about the lips and cold-stung, ruddy above—a weary, desperate boy who nevertheless had endured a ride hard even for well-exercised guardsmen, with bad news at the end of it. Cefwyn found he had been far too long in chairs instead of the saddle, and far too long eating too much fine food, and he was glad enough to think of shelter over their heads tonight, where he hoped to find at least some good news. But there was that tall, ghostly tower, which vanished behind brick and stone as they rode through the gates. It loomed above them, like a living presence.

An unannounced royal visit had a certain bitter history in this province– people who stopped their late business on the street stared not only with astonishment, but in stark dismay. It was a very different feeling than they had had coming here in summer, well heralded and with Lord Crissand to meet them at the gates in festivity, with Gran’s place safe and welcoming. This was a suspicious town, an Amefin, Bryalt town, where loyalty to the Marhanen ran only so deep, and once Guelen riders passed the walls, they were scrutinized… particularly if things had gone wrong here.

He didn’t think his son had ever encountered that sort of examination from anyone, let alone found it meeting them up and down the street. Aewyn had fallen grimly silent, and looked anxiously to left and right of them as they rode up the hill, past shuttered windows and occasional spying from the narrowest crack.

The gate-guards above, however, those at the Zeide gate, were instant to open and clear their way in complete compliance, and the ringing of a bell at that gate brought not only servants, but Lord Crissand himself, running out cloakless, despite the snow.

“Your Majesty,” Crissand said, starting to kneel below Cefwyn’s stirrup, but Cefwyn dropped down to his feet and snatched him up by the arms before he could do it. “Your Majesty,” Crissand said, out of breath, “your son was here. He has left.”

“Gran’s farm was burned.”

“Burned, yes. And Gran is dead. But your son, and his man, they came here for shelter. They werehere. Then your son left, in the middle of the storm.”

“Yesterday.”

“Yesterday, Your Majesty.”

“Where did he go?” Aewyn asked, entirely out of turn, and Cefwyn drew a deep, carefully patient breath and asked the same question, in more courtesy.

“Do you know, my friend?”

“West,” Crissand said with conviction. “His man Paisi came back. They were parted in the storm. Your son carried my ring. I gave him that… I wrote to Your Majesty…”

“Best discuss it inside,” Cefwyn said. Crissand was freezing, shivering in the cold wind, clearly full of news they needed, and much as his heart wanted to go chasing off after the boy, the horses were done. He was done. Certainly Aewyn must be. And even if they were to leave on a further search tonight, they would have to supply themselves off Crissand’s resources, saddle new horses, and perhaps go out with Paisi to guide them. If the boy had been gone a day, there was no chasing him. Tracks would be covered.

“Your Majesty,” Crissand said, and led them up into the fortress itself by the side entry, up steps made both foul and passable by ash and sand, a black area that had frozen into ice all about the steps. It had the feeling of times past, of another winter when the snow had kept coming, and things had gone vastly awry.

Tristen was coming. He believed it. He cast Otter’s welfare on it… perhaps more than one Otter’s welfare, counting the boy’s connections to that tower above them. He did not want Aewyn exposed to risk, and the more calmly they dealt with this, the more he could settle his son to calm and reason.

They entered the lower hall, right beneath his old rooms, when he had been viceroy here, and walked down the hall to the little audience chamber, an intimate room with a good fireplace. Heat inside met them like a wall after so long in the cold.

“Find Paisi,” Crissand said to one of his guards. “He’s up in the boy’s rooms. And get mulled wine up here. Tea, with it.”

The man hastened, all but running back down the hall, shouting indecorously for servants and for a man to go find the witch’s grandson; but before they had even shed their cloaks, Paisi himself showed up at the door.

“Come in, man,” Crissand said. “Come in. You’re wanted.”

“M’lord,” Paisi said, in a quiet, miserable voice.

“Your Majesty,” Crissand said, and offered Cefwyn the seat from which Crissand himself would hold audiences in this room.

Cefwyn sat. He pointed Aewyn to the chair nearest, Crissand to a lordly seat opposite, and said to Crissand, “No ceremony, man, just the news, from the start. What happened here? Where did he go? Have you still got his mother?”

“Her, I have, Your Majesty,” Crissand said, settling into a plain chair, and proceeded to tell him that Paisi’s gran was dead in the fire, that Otter had violated the library and destroyed a wall, finding a book, to which Paisi could attest. Then Otter had taken off ahead of all inquiry, with Crissand’s ring to ease the way, convinced that this newfound treasure should go to Lord Tristen.

“We met Paisi, coming back,” Crissand said. “Paisi had lost him in the blizzard, and all my sense of where the ring was, had faded at what must have been the same time. I had no more indication where he might be, nor have, to this hour. I fear he might have traveled some distance, but I have no more sense where he is.”

“Paisi,” Cefwyn said. Paisi waited, standing, hands clasped, gripped on each other until the knuckles were white. “Have you anything to contribute?”

“Nothin’, Your Majesty, only I’d ha’ died before I’d ha’ left ’im. He were goin’ t’ find Lord Tristen, was all he said. He said what he had, had to go to him.”

“Not the worst notion,” Cefwyn said, as much to comfort Aewyn as because he needed to say it to Crissand or to Paisi. “How did he find this thing?”

“One hardly knows,” Crissand said, and Paisi, when Cefwyn looked at him:

“He was uneasy wi’ his ma,” Paisi said. “He was thinkin’ because he’d told her Lord Tristen was comin’, she’d took it out on Gran an’ burned the house down, an’ he said’t was his fault, which I said not, but he weren’t easy in his mind. They was goin’ to send the horses down t’ winter pasture,” Paisi added, apparently extraneously, “an’ I ask’t him, an’ he said no, right sharp, then again, no, you was comin’ an’ Lord Tristen was comin’ and there might be cause to need ’em, so I told the stablemaster to keep ’em here.”

“When was this?”

“The day before. The day before that night.”

“That night,” Cefwyn said.

“He had a key to the library,” Crissand said, “which the librarian gave him, because he identified himself as Elfwyn Aswydd and had my ring for authority. He read the History of Amefel. He was there all that day and stayed after the librarian left.”

“An’ he come home, he drank wine, he didn’t eat more ’n a bird, an’ woke out of bed,” Paisi said, “whilst I was sleepin’. He went down there, and they say he made a hole in the wall under a counter, and there was plaster all over. All I know is, he come back wi’ a book an’ sayin’ the guards was after him. An’ I should ha’ done better, I know I should, Your Majesty, but ’e were scairt, and sayin’ that book had to get away from ’is ma, fast as it could.”

“From his mother,” Cefwyn said. “Was this what he said?”

“Aye, Your Majesty. An’ bein’ as I served Lord Tristen an’ Master Emuin, meself, I weren’t inclined to ask too deep where it was any wizard writing– if his ma wanted that thing and he wanted to go to Lord Tristen with it, says I, better run for Lord Tristen. So we did. But we didn’t never get there.” Paisi was, in his way, a hard man, from a hard life, and it was something that his chin trembled when he said it. “The wind come between us, an’ the snow blew, and then he weren’t there. I searched and searched, and I couldn’t find ’im, an’ I suppose he couldn’t find me, neither, Your Majesty, because I know he’d ha’ tried.”

“I’ve sent men to Marna today,” Lord Crissand said, “attempting to get through. As yet there’s been no report, but there’s not been time for it.”

“You’ve done the best anyone could,” Cefwyn said. A slow chill ran through him when he contemplated the several branches of the facts at hand. He sat in a room he well knew, in a seat he had occupied when he first laid eyes on Tristen. In that hour he had looked into eyes that knew absolutely nothing of the world of Men, the innocence, the absolute innocence he had never met in man or child since. That gaze had challenged the validity of everything he believed, made him question what he knew for real and just, all those things, in the very hour he was warm and guilty from the Aswydd women’s bed—because Mauryl Gestaurien had called up a soul from out of the dark, and clothed it in flesh, and sent Tristen into the world to confront his enemy.

Mauryl’s enemy, certainly. Mankind’s enemy, by complete inconsequence, he feared, to that entity—individual Men, that force swept aside as casually as sweeping dust off the step. It was beyond dangerous, Tristen’s enemy. It was absolutely inimical to everything he loved, and he, and his, had been in the way of it—it had tried to lay hands on the stolen books, he much suspected—and the Aswydd woman, Elfwyn’s mother, was only its hands remaining in the world.

He’d never been as afraid as he had been in those days. He’d stared it down, on a battlefield in Elwynor. He’d risked everything on that field, and the next, and he’d won, instead, against all expectation, thanks to Tristen.

He had a lifelong friend in Tristen, a friend who’d been unable to stay in the world of Men simply because, in some ways, Tristen was still that innocent, that bewildered by petty wickedness, although he had been reborn to face something very, very dangerously wicked, supposing wickedness was even a word it understood.

Gran was dead, her protections evidently inadequate. And a book had gone missing, from a hiding place they had supposed empty, the books in question either destroyed or in Tristen’s possession, at Ynefel. The boy was right: if, all protections fallen, he had found something of the sort, that was exactly where it belonged.

Breath in the room seemed very close at the moment. He looked into Paisi’s eyes, and into Crissand’s, no king in that moment, but a Man with other Men who’d seen the same improbable things he’d seen and carried the scars of it.

The amulet he wore gave no clue, no hint of a clue what was happening in the world, or where Tristen was.

Find him, he wished his old friend. Find my son. Keep him safe. A book is loose in the world.

And nothing answered that plea, not a whisper or a sensation.

“Your men will not arrest Otter, will they?” Aewyn asked, breaking the spell.

“By no means,” Crissand said earnestly. “But persuade him to come back, that, if they can.”

“I could persuade him,” Aewyn said. “He would believe me.”

“No,” Cefwyn said, more sharply than he intended. He softened it immediately, seeing the shock on his son’s face. “No. For his sake and yours.” The thought of what they might be dealing with turned him cold as ice, and he reached a hand to his son’s arm, wondering what he might do to occupy his son and keep him safe and busy, this close to Tarien Aswydd and without Tristen or Elfwyn to protect him. “Best you go to Captain Awen and get down to the kitchens: there’s a good warm spot, and you can do as I used to do, nip a late meal from the cooks. See the men are fed. That’s the job you can do for me.”

“I don’t want to be down in the kitchen! I want them to find my brother!”

“Well, they can’t do it on empty stomachs and no rest, young sir, and don’t dispute me in front of another lord, even if he is an old friend.”

“Father,” Aewyn said, looking quite undone, and having just let fly, when very good behavior had been the rule for two whole days, even when they had come on the ruin of Gran’s farm. “Forgive me, sir.” This last to Lord Crissand.

“Your Highness,” Crissand said, with a sober nod of his head, and a very weary prince got up from a hard chair and limped on out the door, collecting his cloak as he left.

“The boys got on well,” Cefwyn said, an understatement, in the boy’s departure. “He’s had a long, hard ride, he’s seen unpleasant sights, and he’s chilled through.”

“Understandable in a grown man,” Crissand said, formality gone.

“Paisi, sit down.”

“Your Majesty.” Paisi made that diffident little protest, but he sat down on the raised hearth of the fireside, without fuss or ceremony.

There were matters to discuss: old murders, old wars, in which they all three had had their part. An absent friend, who should have arrived much before this, if things were ordinary. Magic had that way about it: ordinary Men might be diverted by a stray breeze or a whim, but when the real storms of magic raged, determined Men, being blind to it, could sometimes blunder on by sheer will through forces that would stop a wizard cold.

Had he blundered through such opposition, he and his ungifted son, in getting here at all? Gran was dead. Crissand had had to turn back. Paisi, trying to track Elfwyn, had simply blinked and lost him into the night. And after, Crissand had lost all awareness where Elfwyn was. Crissand knew that situation, when magic moved things where they had never intended to be.

A Man fell right on through the sieve of magic and stood staring and wondering what was happening, when the shadow-ways were at issue. And gods knew where Elfwyn was now, or who had moved him. He only hoped it was Tristen himself; but Tristen, years ago, had not found the book his sorcerous-born son had found, despite his searching, and Tristen had greatly desired to find anything left of that cache, which no one had ever explained being there in the first place—not to mention the murder of one elderly librarian by another.

A book had been left, after all the murder and connivance. A book had been overlooked, forgotten, missed, even by Tristen himself.

That was not a good thing, either, not at all.

ii

CAST OUT, AFTER A REASONABLE OBJECTION, WAS AEWYN’S VIEW. OF COURSE HE knew the men were tired and his father was tired—and cross. He was tired and disappointed and vastly upset, and he had been a little forward, but he would go on and look for his brother, if anybody listened to him, and all that his father and Crissand were doing up there they could do on horseback, out looking in the meanwhile. This was a town. There were other horses. He was tired, but he could keep going. He hadn’t meant to be disrespectful to his father, who often talked to Lord Crissand as if he were family… but he was right, and they weren’t finding his brother, and he certainly didn’t deserve to be sent down to the kitchens and shut out of any news they might get.

But his father being king, everyone had to obey him even if they didn’t like it, and if his father said he was to see the men were fed, nobody else was going to do it if he didn’t, and they would all suffer for it. So he walked on to the guard station where all the soldiers gathered—there were enough inside that they were spilling out into the hall and hanging in the doorway, exchanging rumors. They stood up straighter when he walked up.

“I’m to go with you to the kitchen and be sure you have your suppers,” Aewyn said.

“Your Highness.” There was complete attention from his father’s guard.

“And sometimes staff knows things the lords don’t,” Aewyn added, “so we may learn something while we’re there.” He had learned that wisdom from Paisi, who despite his scruffy appearance and his southern speech, was a very wise and clever man. He had been a thief, and knew all sorts of ways to get past precautions and locks, and to go unseen.

And that thought put an idea in his head, a wicked and desperate idea, and one he knew would upset his father, but things were more desperate than anyone seemed willing to say. Paisi’s gran was not just sick, as Otter– Elfwyn—had thought; she turned out to be dead in a fire, and Elfwyn had run off from Paisi, or Paisi hadn’t been able to keep up with him, which was the same, so things couldn’t wait until morning. Elfwyn never would part from Paisi, especially if something had happened to Gran… Elfwyn hadn’t stolen any book because he was naturally a thief, or because Paisi was; he’d stolen it either because it was his, or because it was important for him to do that, and maybe even Lord Crissand wasn’t supposed to have it in his possession.

Otter had gone to Lord Tristen and come back again, and maybe it was Lord Tristen who had wanted him to do what he’d done and sent him here to do it. Wizards… and Lord Tristen was something more than a wizard… did things for reasons nobody could understand at the time, but it was for the good, if it was a good wizard doing it. The things Lord Tristen did were good things, white magic, hadn’t his father told him that, and told him never to say that to the Quinalt brothers?

That was because Amefin folk and Elwynim did things differently from the start: they respected witches like Gran, they hung charms in their windows, which no Guelen dared do, and they danced at festival—altogether a wilder, freer folk than Guelens, in his estimation, and maybe one reason why he had always liked his brother, who was ever so ready to enter into a bit of mischief and never really feared any rebuke but Gran’s. Who was dead. And it was very sure that whatever had caused that fire was not Lord Tristen, and was not friendly to his brother, who was alone out there.

He walked down the kitchen steps at the head of his father’s towering, armored guard, and presented himself to the kitchen staff. “My father’s guard wants supper, if you please, and hot tea and mulled ale.” It was what they had ordered upstairs, and he knew the guardsmen would gladly agree to that. “And who is the chief cook?”

A white-bearded man came forward and bowed. “Prince Aewyn? May I serve?”

“That I am,” he said. “And you may. My father and the duke are in conference upstairs, and my father wishes his men fed and comfortable.”

“Your Highness.” A gratifying bow, and a wave of his hand sent the staff into motion.

“And I personally wish to ask, sir, if you know why there would be a book in the wall of the library?”

The cook looked confused, entirely, and guiltily distressed. “Perhaps you could ask the librarian, Your Highness.”

“I may. I wonder if you’ve heard anything about it. What arethe rumors?”

“The rumors, now.” The man wiped flour onto his apron, looking worried. “The rumors, Your Highness.” He lowered his voice considerably, and took on a secretive look. “As there was a murder there, back in the last duke’s time. One librarian killed the other, both old men, and books was missing, which never was found… except…”

“Except, sir?”

The man hesitated, and hesitated twice. “They was found last night, or at least… the boy, the Aswydd boy…”

“My half brother,” Aewyn said, to help the narrative along.

“Yes, Your Highness. Rumor is he took ’em, and fled the town. His Grace went after, but only him an’ the man came back, the witch’s grandson.”

“Paisi.”

“Aye, Your Highness, Paisi. And neither hide nor hair of the Aswydd– your half brother, begging your pardon, Your Highness.”

“No, no. I’m very anxious to hear every bit you know. Which way did he ride off?”

“West, as seems. Thinkin’ is, with herup there—” The cook gave an uneasy glance over his shoulder and up, as if the tower threatened above him. “Whatever it was, he went west, and maybe south, too, maybe to Marna, as nobody can guess. Things finds their way to Marna, if they have to. That’s the rumor, that.”

“Very good,” he said, as if he were his uncle hearing a case: he was disappointed that it was no more than his father had found out upstairs. “Very well.” He nodded, to send the man off, then, seeing that the men were entirely interested in the pouring of ale and the heating of an iron, over at the side of the little kitchen, he simply went back up the stairs, put on his cloak, and took his gloves from his belt.

The kitchen stairs led up right near the western door of the fortress, the little, informal door that led to the sooted steps that led down to the stable, and many people might come and go by it. He put the hood up as he left the bottom of the steps and crossed the yard, taking advantage of the weather, and he moved as Elfwyn had shown him how to move, not like a hunter, darting and stopping, but like a person on perfectly ordinary and lawful business. Paisi had taught Elfwyn, and Elfwyn had taught him, and now it became useful.

He slipped into the stable yard, where the stablemaster and his boys were tending the Guard horses, and on inside, where his and his father’s fine horses were afforded stalls and special care.

The horses they had come on were much too tired to go on, and only great good luck would get him through the Zeide gate and through the gate below on horseback at all, so it was no good taking one of the others. He simply took one of the guardsmen’s bridles, as an inconspicuous and average sort of bridle, with enough adjustment for whatever he might catch down in the fields. He took bait, a little worn sacking from a peg, with several dippers full of grain, and stuffed it into his coat, then simply slipped out the lesser front door of the stable and walked to the gate, where he had to have his best lie ready. He was carrying a message to a cobbler, to arrange mending for the visitors’ boots… none of the guards might recognize him, if he kept his hood on, covering fair Guelen hair.

But a handbarrow was coming in, it seemed, and the guards were engaged with the man bringing it. So he took his luck as a good sign and slipped past and down, unremarked, just a servant from the hill on late business headed down to the lower town.

He had no food for himself, except to eat a little of the raw grain, if it came to that. That was a difficulty. But it would not, he was sure, take him that long to find his half brother, the same as it hadn’t in the Guelesfort, after no less than the Dragon Guard had searched for hours. He knew his routes. He had had the map of Amefel in his room, and he had studied it and knew the highways and the byways and every farm and field that had ever been taxed in the history of Amefel.