Текст книги "Fortress of Ice"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 32 страниц)

More, he knew where Marna began, and he knew the shortest way, and if his brother had gone that way, he would at least spur his father and the duke into tracking him, since they wouldn’t listen to him or even admit him to their councils. He would lead them the right way, and if he had to go all the way to Lord Tristen’s keep, he had the map’s best notion where that was, too. If Gran was dead, if Otter’s sorceress-mother had cast a spell of blindness over the duke and everyone in the keep, then maybe he was the only one in the whole keep who hadn’t fallen under that spell and who didn’t think they could find his brother by sitting and talking about things from before he and Otter were even born.

Elfwyn. Otter didn’t like that name, but he’d taken it for his. Why? Because it washostile to his family?

What was his brother thinking of, except that he was outcast from Guelemara and now had stolen from Duke Crissand. So Otter was running from him, and had lost Gran and now Paisi, in weather like this? He must be afraid, by now, and cold and desperate, and probably lost, not having committed a map to memory.

So Aewyn couldn’t sit there and talk and drink and discuss old crimes in the kitchen. His mother and his father hadn’t brought up a boy who could be patient when one of his own was threatened, and if the family’s other son didn’t merit a search out into the night, if his father thought the Guard was too tired to go on, Aewyn would see to it.

iii

IT WAS A METICULOUS BUSINESS, GETTING DOWN TO THE TRUTH–TRUTH FROM Paisi, who begged nothing more than for them to be out searching for the boy as soon as possible, and from Crissand, who had talked with Elfwyn at some length, with the librarian who had given him the key, the guard, who had reported the matter, and the officer of the special guard who watched over Tarien: no, the boy had not visited his mother since the day Gran’s house burned, nor had he passed that guard station the night he had gotten into the library and vanished: clearly, then, Cefwyn said to himself, regarding a place where he had lived and ruled for a year, clearly, then, the boy had used the servants’ passages—Paisi said he had had nothing to do with it, nor had guided the boy, who, it turned out, was as slippery as his namesake.

A knock came at the door, and an Amefin guardsman put his head in to beg pardon, but there was the Dragon Guard captain wanting to speak with His Majesty, urgently.

No deference to their host: Cefwyn gave a peremptory wave, beckoning the man in, and the captain slipped in, looking decidedly worried. “Begging Your Majesty’s pardon,” he said, and came close for a confidence as private as might be, in so small a chamber, “The Prince isn’t downstairs or up.”

“Where is he?” Cefwyn asked, with a sudden chill.

“We don’t know, Your Majesty. He was in the kitchens with us, questioning the cooks, about the theft in the library, as was, and we looked around, and he wasn’t there.”

“Good loving gods!” He flung himself out of his chair.

“The Guard is searching, Your Majesty. The Amefin, too.”

“He’s gone,” Paisi said, and immediately put a hand over his mouth, having talked out of turn; but it drew Cefwyn’s attention:

“What do youknow about it?”

“Majesty, forgive me, but if ’e’s gone, he’s followed my lord, is all.”

“More sense than the whole damned passel of you,” Cefwyn said to the mortified captain, the Marhanen temper getting well to the fore—which was not good. He drew a deep breath and reined it back. “There are a thousand nooks a boy could get into. Ask the Amefin. But assume he went to the gate.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

He snatched his cloak off the peg, marking how his son had taken his own with him—ordinary in a boy being sent off for good, but likewise sensible in a boy who firmly intended to go outdoors.

“May I assist, Your Majesty?” Crissand asked.

“Not yourfault,” Cefwyn said shortly. “But come along to the stables. I want to know from the gate-guards up and down if any boy went out, for the gods’ sake. He’s been gone long enough to be out and away.”

He left, walked down the hall—a king could not run—and walked down the sooty and well-trafficked steps and out to the stables in the dark. The sun had set.

No, there was no horse missing. That was good news.

“There’s the horses down to pasture,” Paisi said, unasked. “He’d ha’ had to have a bridle or halter.”

“Count them,” Cefwyn said.

The report came flying back that there was one fewer bridle than horses that had come in.

Clever lad, Cefwyn thought distressedly.

“He might have gone back to the witch’s farm,” Crissand said.

“Follow his tracks at the town gate and at the pastures. And my guess is to search west. West. He knows where Marna is.”

Fear could close in about even a sensible boy, magnifying his doubts and moving him wherever a damned witch wanted. Fear—or overweening determination—could magnify itself, if a boy was particularly vulnerable to magic. And the boy was half-Syrillas.

“I’ll go,” Paisi said to Crissand. “If I could borrow me horse again, m’lord.”

“No!” Cefwyn said, and stormed back across the yard and up the torchlit steps, Crissand struggling to stay beside him, with an accompanying straggle of guards, and Paisi.

“We can bring horses up,” Crissand said, “and supplies for the road.” Every horse they had in stable but three were road-weary and incapable of a chase. “What shall I do?”

“Do it,” he said. It would take well over an hour to send down the hill, get horses from pasture, and get them up here and saddled and a search underway. But Crissand gave those orders.

He gave others, to the Dragon Guard captain. “Find out exactly what the kitchen staff told him,” he said to that man, reaching the inner hall, while resisting the notion to let his temper fly: it never had done him good, and would not now, to strike out at the inept, to race off on impulse into the dark and miss some clue as to what precise impulse might have sent his son out looking for his brother. He went down the hall, past the grand stairs, with the far hall and the tower guard in his view, and wanted, oh, so much, to walk up those stairs and ask the one person who might have an answer—but she would not be inclined to tell him the truth, not for threats, not for pain. She would gloat to see him come up her stairs.

Worse than that—Tristen wasn’t here, she was, and if she had gotten strong enough to cause this—dared he meddle with the wards on that tower, which were Tristen’s, and which might be failing?

Not tonight, not in the dark, and not with his sons at issue. If she was nudging this and that, outside her tower, let her think she was safe in her mischief—so long as Tristen was on his way here to deal with her.

He went instead into the greater audience hall, servants scurrying about him to bring candles, small frantic lights that flared past gilt columns and figures and ledges. He settled onto the ducal throne of Amefel, once the throne of Amefin kings. He had used it before. It was his right, and no discourtesy to Crissand, who arrived with his own guard, bringing a white-aproned, white-bearded man, the cook.

The old man was terrified, and could only wring his hands and say he had talked to the Prince about what everybody knew, the old murder, and the books gone missing…

“Book,” Cefwyn said curtly. “Book. One book.” The legend had already multiplied the theft. And the cook had apparently said nothing to give Aewyn any notion he hadn’t had before.

“Did he take food with him?” Cefwyn asked.

“No, Your Majesty. Not that I saw.”

“His cloak and a bridle,” Cefwyn muttered. “So he doesn’t think he’s going far.”

“Perhaps he won’t try to go far,” Crissand said, standing near him.

“I can’t say.” He was at a loss, and the sun was going down outside, setting on a road that had taken his sons away from him—the one by a road that might not even lie in the world of Men and the other trying, the young fool, to follow him… all with the highest and best intentions, to be sure.

“Have you any sense at all from the ring?”

“None,” Crissand said miserably. “None at all. As if he’d vanished from the land.”

He laid a hand on his chest, where Tristen’s amulet rested, and it—it tingled, like something alive against his skin. For one blessed moment it seemed he did feel something of direction. It tingled. It burned.

And there was a commotion in the hall, an expostulation from the guards, and a loud and impatient voice that tugged hard at memory. The chamber door burst open, banged back, and of all things, a bearded old man in voluminous gray robes stalked into the audience hall and walked straight up the center of the room.

Emuin. Who had been dead for ten years. Cefwyn sat stock-still, watching this apparition of his old tutor, the master wizard who had been at his side through all the wars and the troubles.

He had snow on his cloak, snow in his hair and beard, and clenched a staff in a hand quite blue with cold. He stamped that staff three times on the pavings.

“Well,” he said. “Well! And in trouble again, are you?”

“Emuin?” Cefwyn asked, far from certain of what he saw. The place was given to haunts and apparitions, but of all of them, this one was welcome, more than welcome at the moment. And he was dripping water onto the pavings. “My son is in trouble.”

“Which son? You have two.”

“That I do. And both. Both are in trouble.”

“Not surprising, given their heritage.” Emuin leaned on his staff with both hands. “A long trek, a damned long trek, this. I am quite undone.”

“Bring a chair,” Cefwyn said, with a wave to the servants, who stood gawking.

“No time for sitting,” Emuin said, and turned and waved his arm and his staff aloft. “Get that damned woman out of my workshop, that for a beginning.”

Histower. His place, before they had imprisoned Tarien Aswydd in it.

It was so exactly what Emuin would say.

“Not so easy,” Cefwyn said. “Not so easy a matter to dislodge her, my old friend. Tristen put her there.”

“Well, then where is he?”

“That’s very much in question,” Cefwyn said, and had his own inquiry to make in the general madness of the moment. “Where have you been, the last ten years, Master Grayrobe?”

“Where have I been?” Emuin repeated, blinking and looking a little confused for the moment. He looked about the hall, as if he might find an answer there, or somewhere about the cornices. “I suppose I’ve been busy,” he said, and swung about to look squarely at him. “Busy. Busy, until it became clear there was no peace to be had.” He stalked forward, to the disquiet of the guards, and flung the staff rattling onto the floor right at the dais steps. “I’ll have that chair. I’ll have it here right now, if you please.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

i

SNOW HAD GIVEN WAY TO NIGHTBOUND MIST, ALL-ENVELOPING MIST, SO THICK Elfwyn could not even see the ground under Feiny’s hooves. He had searched and called until he was hoarse, looking for Paisi, and now that it was this ghostly mist, he decided that Paisi, having better sense, and if he had lost him, would either wait for the fog to clear and track him by his trail through the snow, or he would have gone back to town, giving up altogether, and perhaps concluding that he wasn’t meant to go to Ynefel with him this time, either.

“Please,” he asked the gathering dark, in hope that he would cross Lord Tristen’s path. “I have something I must give you. Please find me. Please keep Paisi safe.”

The ring that he had hoped would inform him of Lord Tristen told him nothing. At this point, he only hoped he was headed aright, that Owl would come sweeping out of the fog and guide him… Owl had seen him safely both ways, and this time his journey was for Lord Tristen’s benefit, and for Paisi’s, none of his own, that he knew… because the very last person his mother would destroy would be him, if only because a fool might still be useful to her. He had no wish to be a fool, but he began to think he was not clever enough to do otherwise where his mother was concerned.

Speed, tonight—speed. As much as he could manage and keep Feiny from going down under him.

The wind picked up. He thought it might sweep away the fog and give him and Paisi a means to find each other, but the wind became a stinging gale and the fog was no less at all. It sighed, it moaned—

And then he thought he heard a voice within it, faint and far, something trying to get his attention.

It might be Tristen—but there was no reason for Tristen’s voice to be so soft, that he knew. He began to think it came from his left, then from his right and again, behind him, as if it sported like the wind, and mocked him, as he was sure Lord Tristen never would. It wanted his attention, and now he began to believe it was his mother. He reached a sheltered place, beside a tree-capped and cup-shaped ridge, and for the first time he could see the snow underfoot.

Now the one voice began to be many voices, and streaks appeared in the snow, deep gouges, one and four and six and more in the bank beside him, then underfoot, as the horse jumped forward as if something had touched him with a whip.

He patted Feiny’s neck with a gloved hand, trying to keep both of them from panic, and he began to wonder distractedly if he had heard Paisi hunting him, and mistaken his voice for a haunt. He grew so fearful that he kept Feiny still, still as he could, cold, now, so very cold.

Here, however, seemed safer than going on with the voices in the wind, and he turned the horse full about, walking a line, a circle, and doing it three times, and wishing his little Line to hold fast, such as it was.

Streaks ran across the snow as far as his Line, and stopped. Then he knew what he heard was no trick of the wind. He got down from the saddle and held the reins close under Feiny’s jaw, where he could get good leverage. He wished them safe, wishes such as Gran would make when they slept at night, and wished the same for Paisi, wherever he was.

Nothing was going right. He was exhausted, and wanted just to sit down, but he feared doing that—he saw the streaks scarring the snow all about his Line, like some ravening beast trying to get in, and he dared not relax a moment.

“Lord Tristen,” he whispered, carrying the ring to his lips. “Lord Tristen, help us.”

But it was as if, as the haunt battered the Line he had drawn, he himself grew wearier and wearier. Feiny, too, drooped, and his head sank, tail tucked for warmth. He opened his cloak and pressed it across the horse and his body against it, and stood there, growing more confused by the moment and no longer certain of the world beyond. He’d lost Gran, lost Paisi, lost everything—

Everything but one. For some reason he began to think of Aewyn with a vividness that overwhelmed the snow—there was one warm presence in the world, one point of warmth in all this storm. He began to believe there was, and that they could reach each other no matter the distance.

The laughter of children came down the wind. He blinked, his lashes frozen half-shut, and he saw a strange, sober little girl peering at him from among the rocks.

The girl faded suddenly, gasping in alarm, and the wind blew a blinding gust into his eyes, making him blink.

But his brother wanted him. That, above all things.

His brother needed him.

Knew everything he had done, and still loved him.

He thought about that, as his knees went, and pitched him down into the snow. He didn’t stay there. He found purchase on the rock, then on the horse’s stirrup, and levered himself back up.

“Aewyn!” he shouted against the wind. “Aewyn! Do you hear me?”

ii

AEWYN!” THE SHOUT CAME DOWN THE WIND, AND AEWYN KEPT ON, KEPT ON, though the borrowed horse fought to turn and take them away from the blasts, and, riding bareback and with just a halter, he fought to keep the horse going. It might be the wind itself that made that sound. It might be a trick of his ears. In the blowing snow and the dark he had lost all referents. He had no notion at all where the town was, or where he was. He had been foolish—when was that a novelty?—and now he had lost himself so thoroughly in the dark that if he did turn back, he could only hope the honest Amefin horse could find his way home and let some horseboy know there was trouble. He had studied his map. He knew every detail of the land. He had had every confidence in his knowledge; but the dark and the snow took all that away from him, and there had been a fog, of all things, a fog with a blasting wind. He had no recourse now but to go as near west as he could imagine, to keep on the horse’s back, and keep the horse moving, by little increments, until the dawn could warm them.

Then came that voice, not on the course he chose, but over to the right, and far away. And did he then take himself off what he thought was the right direction, and go aside for a ghost of a voice on the wind? He would be a fool.

“Aewyn!” it said, and he was all but certain he heard it.

There were haunts in these places. It was far from safe to listen to voices. But hadn’t his father said to him that his deafness to magic was a defense?

He turned the horse off toward that sound, and called out, “I’m here! Do you hear me?”

He didn’t know if he heard an answer. He thought he did. The blowing snow completely obscured what, by the horse’s lurching and stumbling, was rough ground, and he and the horse together could as likely drop off an edge into a snowbank without warning.

But a shadow appeared in the white, the shadow of a horse, and the shadow of a rock, and a strange border of snow, streaked and gashed as if a whole herd of cattle had tramped it. He was uncertain of that ground, but his horse headed for the shadow-one willingly enough, and having reached that horse, Aewyn slid down beside an object mostly plastered over with snow. It was a body. It was a smallish body. He tugged and heaved, and saw it was his brother.

“Get up,” he cried, hoarse from his shouting. “Get up, damn it!”

His brother flung his arms about him and struggled to get up, holding to him as if he were a rock or a tree, and managed to stand. The horses on either side of them cut off the wind, blessed relief, but his brother seemed to drink the warmth away from him; Aewyn began to shiver, and tried to get his brother to his horse, and held the stirrup, but his brother had no strength to hold on and help himself.

“Damn,” he said, shaking at him. “Otter, you have to. You have to, is all. Hold on to the cursed saddle.”

“I lost Paisi.”

“Paisi’s safe. He’s with our father. Just get up!”

His brother took a grip and tried to lift himself by the saddle straps, and the horse stood still, at least. Aewyn bent and shoved and lifted from below for all he was worth, and Otter hauled himself the last bit into the saddle, belly-down and exhausted. Aewyn got to the other side of the horse and hauled at his arm, then his knee to pull him across, while Otter struggled to help. Aewyn pulled hard, despite the horse starting off, and between his efforts and Otter’s, the leg came across, stiff and cold as it was, while the beast tried to turn a circle.

“Father’s waiting for you,” he shouted at Otter, to make him hear, and hanging on to the bridle to stop the animal. “We came all the way here to find you. You have to stay on the horse! I’ll guide us! I can find our way!”

He feared Otter would fall off at the first jolt. He was that weak. But he took Otter’s reins, and got on his own horse, who, in the company of another horse, had not wandered off, and began to lead them back toward what his sense of direction told him would be the highroad.

After a time of riding, he was no longer sure where that was, and he had not found the landmark of a market road he thought he would find. He was fiercely proud of his skill with maps, and he was utterly confounded. Luck had brought him to his brother, luck that had nothing to do with his skill; he had—the priests would never approve—hoped for that kind of luck, on his mother’s side of his heritage, and gotten it, or at least he had linked up with his brother’s own sort of luck. If they weren’t guiding themselves, now, then happenstance was, and happenstance, where magic was concerned—so his father had always told him—had a mind and an intent of its own. Sometimes– his father had told him—its intent was not quite what one would like.

But Lord Tristen was involved. If Otter—his father had said he wanted to be Elfwyn now—had gotten to him once, all he had to do was attach himself, and they would both come through this together. Was that not the way magic worked?

And sure enough, when they were the most desperate, a wall appeared before them, a shelter from the wind, and when they came up against it, much more than that: their wall had a door, and windows. It was a little fieldstone cottage, its walls so plastered with snow, and it all shuttered, it looked a great deal like the hill against which it was built.

“Otter!” Aewyn cried, getting down, his voice shredding in the cold and the wind. “We’ve reached somewhere, I don’t know where. But it’s a place!”

He knocked at the door, and, getting no answer, tried it, whether it was latched or not. The latch gave. The door opened outward a little, and when he kicked the snow away, he gained enough to get the door open halfway. That was enough for them, but not for the horses: he kept digging and shoving and heaving at the door until he had deep snow rammed up beside the door track. It was utterly dark inside the cottage, darker than the night, and he envisioned some previous owner dead inside, gone to horrid bones.

But whatever was in there, it offered walls and a roof. He ventured inside, and scuffed the floor, and he was glad to find it was earth, nothing of rotten boards that might entrap the horses: it would be cold, but not as cold as the howling wind outside. He went out again and led his brother’s horse in, heard the crash of something as the beast swung his hindquarters about in the dark: the horse shied, and he hauled down on the reins and used all his strength to stop the stupid beast from bolting out the door.

His brother moaned and tried to get down before disaster happened. But Aewyn steadfastly held the horse, soothed him with a gloved hand, and Otter—Elfwyn—got down to him, clinging to the horse. His own borrowed horse had put her head into the dark, snuffing the air of this strange stable, then balked.

“I can manage him,” Elfwyn said in a thread of a voice, holding to the bridle, and he let his brother go to grab the Amefin mare and get her in, all the while prepared to block his brother’s horse in any rush for the door.

Something else crashed, and wood broke, Elfwyn’s cursed horse finding, evidently, some remnant of furniture to back into, but the Amefin horse came in meekly enough. They had no light. The horses were both unhappy with the place, and both apt to bolt for the door and the far hills if Elfwyn’s horse went. He shut it, made sure of the latch, and stood in the utter dark with his heart thumping. There was a little more shifting about, but the horses slowly grew quieter, deprived of all light, and deprived of a way out.

“Elfwyn?” he asked into the dark.

“I hear,” Elfwyn said.

“I don’t know where we are,” Aewyn said, overwhelmed by shivers, not least from the hard battle with Elfwyn’s horse, and the prospect of being left afoot. “I’m afraid to open the door. I’m afraid the horses will bolt for home. I’m going to move around a little and see what’s here.” The thought of bones made it far, far worse. “I’m following the wall. There’s the window, the shutters, but they must open right out into the wind out there.”

“I’m by a wall,” Elfwyn said. “There’s stone walls. Some pots. Did you bring any food?”

“No,” Aewyn admitted. He had been in the kitchens and had taken not a thing when he ran. “I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

“I did,” Elfwyn said, “but Paisi had it. And I lost him in the fog, like a complete fool. You say he’s with our father—where is he?”

“Back in Henas’amef. I came after you. They were still talking.” Aewyn kept moving, cautiously. He found a table, and a fireplace, and he felt into it, finding only soft, old ash, which told him nothing of how long ago this place had been occupied. Beyond that, however, was a woodpile. The bark of the logs crumbled under his grip, but the logs were solid, and the better for age.

“There’s wood,” he said. “There’s a fireplace. I don’t suppose you can enchant us up a fire if I pile up the logs.”

“Conjure,” Elfwyn said hoarsely. “I don’t know the first thing about it. I saw Gran try once. She couldn’t. I don’t think I can.”

“Well, try, all the same.” He dragged small wood loose, working utterly blind, and shoved the pieces into the fireplace, in as orderly a structure as he could make, blind. “There’s kindling. It’s in the fireplace. The flue has to be open. I feel the draft. Just do it.”

“I’ll do my best,” Elfwyn said, and came over near him, edging over on the ground. He sat there a moment, making no sound.

“Nothing?” Aewyn asked after a moment, and put his own hand into the wood. There was no warmth to it, none at all. “It’s still ice-cold.”

“I’m not Gran,” Elfwyn said faintly. “And she couldn’t do it. Gran’s dead. Just like in my dream.”

“I know that. We passed there. I’m sorry. I’m ever so sorry, Otter.”

“Well, she couldn’t conjure. And I—I’m just not a wizard. I’m not, at all. And I’m afraid to conjure fire. The only fire I’m apt to get is sorcerous, like my mother, isn’t it? I don’t know what it might do… burn us all, like as not!”

Elfwyn’s voice grew ragged, near to tears. Aewyn closed a hand on his shoulder and shook at him gently.

“Well, but we still have the horses, don’t we? They’ll warm the place just with their heat. We have to rub them down and be sure they don’t chill. Then we can sit on your saddle and wrap in the horse gear. That will warm us.”

They managed that, utterly in the dark, and piled the horse blanket and tack near the dead fireside, and snuggled down with that and their cloaks to provide the warmth it could against the drafts that were constant in the room, from little seams that equally well let in the storm light from outside. For a time their arrangement seemed warm and snug enough to sleep a little, leaning on each other.

But warmth slowly faded from their bodies.

“There’s a draft on my arm,” Aewyn complained, shivering, once when they both waked, “no matter how I turn.”

“At least we’re all out of the wind,” Elfwyn said. “And it’s only a draft.”

They were at least partly warm, close together. The horses shifted about and bickered, occasionally treading on something broken in that end of the single room, and the wind raged outside, a wind that pried at edges and whipped to this side and that of the little cottage looking for ways inside. Something thumped. A shingle might have just flown off: a new draft started, right above them.

“It’s wicked out there,” Aewyn said.

“It’s bad. But morning will be warmer. We can look around for a flint or something when it gets light enough.”

“I hope it doesn’t snow us in,” Aewyn said. “The door opens out, remember.”

“There is the window,” his brother said. “We can get out that way if it comes to that: we wouldn’t be the first. And I’m sure there’s a roof trap if that gets covered, or we can just knock some shingles off: there’s one gone already, I’m quite sure.”

His brother wasn’t afraid of the storm. Otter—Elfwyn—had spent all his winters in a cottage like this, where the door could be snowed shut. Probably it happened every winter, and the wind howled and rattled shutters, beyond windows with goatskin panes, and all his winter nights must have been this long and dark.

Elfwyn had grown up with no servants, no guards, nobody but Gran and Paisi to see him fed and keep him out of trouble, and for protection against things that might threaten a remote cottage, only Paisi’s dagger and a stick from the woodpile. He had sounded weak and foolish, he decided. His father’s son should not be either weak or a fool. He had found Elfwyn, had he not, and Elfwyn had been in dire trouble until he had found this place, so he had saved both of them, had he not? He had not lost his way, even when the fog had closed in around him and he had been utterly without landmarks: a sense had guided him. He had not lost the horses, when that kind of accident might have doomed them both.

So when his father found them, his father might even say he hadn’t done too badly, except not bringing food and blankets along; and neither, really, had Elfwyn done badly, for a boy who had never ridden a horse until this winter. His father would be so glad to see them, he would gloss over the part about stealing the mare, and the mare would come back sound: he was absolutely determined on that.

In all their other troubles, he hadn’t even asked about the book Elfwyn was supposed to have stolen from the library. He didn’t truly care about that. He supposed Elfwyn had it, and had a good reason to have gotten it, and they would settle that: Elfwyn probably thought he was going to get into dire trouble—Elfwyn was always convinced trouble would fall on him—and once they settled things with Lord Crissand (and he knew his father could), then his brother would be back in Henas’amef, and the book would be put wherever it needed to be, and Lord Tristen would come, and they would both have days to spend without worrying about anything. When he had had his few annual hours to spend with Otter—who was Elfwyn, now—Elfwyn had led him to all sorts of wonderful places to investigate. If they were going about on horseback, they could range much farther in their adventures.

When his father forgave them both, they could figure out how to get Elfwyn safely back to Guelemara, since he had no Gran to go to any longer. Paisi would come, too, and maybe be a man-at-arms, or an almost-prince’s bodyguard, in which case he would wear fine clothes and carry a sword, which would get Paisi out and about the country on horseback, wherever Elfwyn went: he was a much more inventive companion than his own bodyguards, and he could think of nobody better for Elfwyn’s protection.