Текст книги "Fortress of Eagles"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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“And if we have the north opposed, that slaughter will go on. There will be other provocations. There will be other chances for war. We can both foresee them. We must have war stopped, crow. We must fight a little war acrossthe river to avoid a more grievous war here, among our own barons. We must have no more, no more fighting to give wizards a foothold in our lands. No more, crow.”

“Then remember you sent your royal father advisement regarding the lord of Ynefel. Did you not, my lord, advise your father regarding him and the Elwynim prophecy? And if to your father, thento your father’s intimates, andto Lord Brysaulin?”

Dire thought. Chilling thought. “Brysaulin is an honorable man.”

“For the welfare of the realm… to what other guides would an honorable man resort with his king dead and the Prince consorting with wizards? My lord king will have to inform me. As we all know, I am from time to time uninformed on points of honor.”

To the Quinalt, to Murandys, to Llymaryn, to Efanor, if Lord Brysaulin had ever relied on anyone. And Efanor had been choleric and convinced of perfidy in the days after their father’s death.

“Remember that Lord Heryn Aswydd was the purveyor of truths to your royal father,” Idrys said, “and I would not begin to imagine the fervid imagination of Heryn Aswydd.”

“Or the scope of his lying tongue.”

“Nor all imaginings. He had substance on which to practice, my lord king. And you yourself sent that message, which your father’s natural suspicion would have taken for ten times less than Heryn’s loyaltruth.”

“And thus my father relied on Heryn, and thus died. Add to it the work of wizards, the work of priests, which I count little different…”

“Oh, never say thatin council.”

“There are many truths I don’t say in council, crow.”

“And to me?”

He gave a bitter laugh. “Perhaps I have a secret. Perhaps not. If I answered that you’d know, would you not?”

“If I answered that, my lord king, I would serve my lord king less well than I do. Tristen of Ynefel is far too potent a wizard to loose in this war of petticoats and pennies. He cannot become Quinalt.”

“Yet he must appear, must appearin public. The more he stays hidden the more rumors fly about him, and better him now than Her Grace. That… that, I cannot allow.”

“It is a risk.”

“All things are a risk, master crow. Let my brother practice persuasion on him. Let the Quinalt do its best. Efanor is not a fool… he if anyone knows what was said that provoked my father to ride to Amefel, into Heryn’s trap, and all he will say to me is that Father distrusted me and Heryn fed the fire. Efanor himself burnsto atone for believing it and for not dissuading our father; that compels him. He isfaithful to me. Say that he’s faithful, master crow.“

“To my observation, he is.”

Cefwyn let go a heavy breath. “There is no great love, now, in our brotherhood; but guilt, that we have, each of us, each for not loving the other, I suspect. He loves the notion of loving me. But Tristen ismy brother. And that galls him. Is he jealous?”

“Jealousy is a sin, Your Majesty. And His Highness hates his sins, every time he does them.”

“Someday I must make peace with him. Inform him. Inform him he will inform Tristen on the Quinalt, make a godly man of him…”

“A Man, you say.”

“Close as he maydo, damn your wit. Mine’s fled.” He set the cup down emptied, resisting the impulse to fling it at the wall. “Hates his sins, does he? So do I. So do I, crow. And my father’s sins, how do I number them?”

“I left your father’s service,” Idrys said. “He no longer liked my reports regarding you. So I ceased to make them. It seemed a fair arrangement.”

Uwen went off to his small nook to sleep and Tristen let his servants put him to bed, his very comfortable bed in an apartment far finer than he had had in Amefel, rooms on the highest level of the Guelesfort. The bedchamber had evening stars painted on the ceiling, and white clouds against a dark sky. The glow from the newly banked fire in the fireplace showed him just a little of that paintwork, a shadowy view sparked with the silver inlay of a star catching the firelight.

A sword stood sheathed beside the fireplace. He had had master Peygan forge him a blade after Lewenbrook. Truthwas the symbol on one side of it; Illusionwas written on the other. But it had gone unused in Guelessar. Now he asked himself where he might write Appearances, which had been Cefwyn’s word tonight. He would become friendly to the Quinalt, for Appearances. He would join the barons, for Appearances. He would avoid magic, for Appearances.

The sword stood in the corner, in disuse. Other men practiced. Uwen practiced. He did not, hating the feeling that came on him when he took up the thing. It was another kind of Unfolding, a terrible one, sure of its power and uncaring.

To secure peace with Elwynor, to end the war that had existed through the reigns of Cefwyn’s grandfather and father… dared he hope now that Mauryl’s purpose for him extended that far? He would, in the spring, cross the river into Elwynor for Ninévrisë’s sake, and there deal death with that sword, but he would not win, because it would offend the barons.

There was so much temptation to know, to reach back, and to bend his life backward, backward, backward, until it met itself on the Road.

And he knew the way back to that Road. He had found it today, on the hilltop. But it was a terrible way, fraught with dangers. He perceived that if he truly used it he risked his own existence. A young man sitting against a tree in Marna Wood perceived a terrible presence, like a shadow in the woods… and he had been both young man and shadow. Dared he be a third presence? Dared he reach toward Ynefel again by that Road, to see whether it was still safe? The young man had seen nothing. The shadow had fought shadows, and Hasufin had ruled that Road.

He dared not venture that way again. His heart beat hard at the very thought.

Lying on his back, his hands on the fine, thick, comfortable bedclothes, he reached out, instead, all forbidden, for Emuin, and found the two presences he knew well in the Guelesfort, one on the floor just below him: Ninévrisë was unaware of him, was thinking instead of Cefwyn, all warm and full of love. He skimmed away, and above him, aloft, up in the dark, found Emuin in his tower, Emuin, whom he trusted would answer him, call him a fool, tell him when he was right and wrong and whether he dared even contemplate gods.

— Master Emuin.

The old man was not quite startled, but disapproved his intrusion, a chill wind in the gray space that wavered and then paid attention.

– Idrys will come tomorrow to ask you, Tristen said. Cefwyn says Efanor will tell me about the Quinalt if you approve, sir. I know you disapprove my venturing here, but Cefwyn says I must visit the Quinalt with the court in two days. He believes it’s a question of appearances, and it will please the Patriarch. Dare I?

– It seems you have already agreed and I have little to do with it. The old man was still shadowy and faint to him, tattering in the pearl-gray winds of the place. Why? Why have you agreed to this?

He could not lie in the world of Men with any great skill at all. Here, it was far more difficult. And he knew in his heart he had agreed. Because I want to be free, master Emuin. And because I think Cefwyn is in danger of these barons as much as of the rebels across the river.

– Free. free. What does that mean, free… do you at all know? Free of what? Free from what? And what more could you do for Cefwyn than you have done?

Hard questions. Fearsome questions. Free to help my friends. Free to defend Cefwyn. Free to ride through Wys village and have the children not take alarm. And what I might do stands in the corner yonder. By my own will I would never touch it. But I will, for Cefwyn’s sake, when I must. These men that press Cefwyn with their wants, they are not his friends. Never were they mine, nor will ever be. I could win Cevulim, even Lord Pelumer. Never these men.

The gray space shadowed, showed clouds, rare detail, in this place that teased the eye with no shapes at all.

– Beware of anger, Emuin said, and the clouds grew lighter. Anger and folly walk arm in arm, young lord. Enough that Cefwyn dallies with them, do not you join him.

– I shall meet with Efanor, by your leave, sir. Idrys is on his way to ask you. He counseled caution. But Cefwyn said… Cefwyn said if the Quinalt could shape a way for me to enter, it would shape a place where all Elwynor could fit.

– Revising their doctrine to accommodate Mauryl’s heir, is it? And so master crow will consult me. A wonder in itself. Master crow will consult. Most often things are already settled and have grandchildren, before master crow consults. Gods save the king, I say.

– Can they? Save the king, that is? What are the gods, sir? Are they shadows?

– I’m sure I don’t know. I leave that knotty matter to His Highness. I leave him heaven and hell and all blessedness. I made that choice for good and all when I took up wizardry again. And what I gave up, the gods know that, too.

– Is Efanor wise, sir?

– Ah, now you ask me.

– Shall I rely on him for truth, sir?He perceived master Emuin retreating from him, growing more distant, and more distant again, and he erased a little of that distance, enough to make himself heard without shouting… erased a little of that distance, because he could do such things here. He could do more than master Emuin in this place, truth be told; but he knew his own ignorance, too. I ask your advice, master Emuin. I ask you plainly, are there gods, master Emuin? And are they as Efanor will tell me?

– There is a greedy, conniving man in Murandys, the answer came back to him, troubling, at the edge of sleep. There is the love of comforts in Llymaryn. There is a frightened man in the Quinaltine. Those three things and those three men move half the court. Ryssand’s malice would be powerless without Murandys’ greed. As for gods, there may be. Go to sleep. Do what I cannot prevent you from doing.

– Ought I not, sir? Ought I to do what Cefwyn wishes, and lie, as he wishes– or not?

– Ah, now the second true question. Now that it ’s far too late, the question none of us can answer. Go, do as you can do. If Idrys comes tomorrow to consult me, probably I shall agree. Cefwyn held you out of all questions and now he places you in the heart of them. That will have consequences, young lord, and predicting these things might change them. You will do as you will. Efanor seeks gods. Let Efanor beware lest he find one he does not expect.

Emuin was fading, and slid away from him. Perhaps, Tristen thought with a chill, priests or gods could hear them. But he had seen no one else in the gray space. That Ninévrisë was so close and he had not heard or seen her during his converse with Emuin meant they had been more subtle than her near and sleeping presence could detect. She was in a way their sentry, and never knew.

He lay in his bed, beneath the painted sky. A staff faithful to him was sleeping all around. Uwen was there, his day guards, too, asleep, while the night guards stood their posts. He felt the presence of a full score lives, knew their solid, mortal faithfulness to him, a precious attendance, and frail, and protecting all he was. He could fight battles and lead armies. But the simplest of his servants was wiser in the world than he, and understood, perhaps, the questions he would never answer.

In bestowing Ynefel on him and not on Emuin, who would have been the more reasoned choice, Cefwyn had cast far too much on his understanding, and it still was so scant. Emuin would say, always, Judge for yourself, young sir.

Or, Gods know.

Did they, indeed?

CHAPTER 5

Dry leaves wandered, amazingly so, and flew even over the walls of the Guelesfort, stark, stone precinct that it was, lodging in such unlikely places as against the little ledge of the study window where the disapproved pigeons gathered. Through the open side pane, Tristen plucked a leaf from its resting place, and fed breakfast crumbs to the birds that crowded up at the little window, careful to see they each had their share. They fluttered and they flapped. They were greedy birds, and could be unintentionally cruel to the weakest.

They had no respect of the Quinalt porch, or the Five Gods, and he tried to think what to do about it. The pigeons had no respect of him, either, not a bit. That was why he courted their presence, because for all their sudden fears and frights, they had no respect for him. They or their cousins had been at Ynefel and at Henas’amef, doing no worse than here. But the Quinalt’s dignity was too frail for them, so now he must send them away, if he could find the means. He wished he knew how to tell them he was sorry. He would wish them home, if any had come from Ynefel. He would wish them a safe flight over Marna, and safe lodgings in the loft.

But would a boy bring them the stale bread, and sit in the loft and try to read?

Perhaps he still would. Or did. Or they would find their way to that place and those days. He was far from certain. He only wished them safety, and if he might draw a little of the light of the gray place out to touch them, and protect them—

“His Highness Prince Efanor,” a servant darted near to say, and startled the pigeons into a cloud of cold, sunlight-silvered wings. Magic unraveled.

He had not expected Efanor so early in the day. Uwen had waked red-eyed and looking miserable this morning and at his behest had gone back to bed… rather too much of autumn ale last night, Uwen had said, greatly begging his pardon. Uwen would be chagrined when he knew their visitor had come and his guard still abed.

He had forewarned Tassand, his chief of household, that Efanor might come… he had not, however, imagined that Efanor would arrive on the clearing of breakfast from the table. He had not yet heard from Idrys… though Emuin had said he would say yes when Idrys asked. And had Cefwyn made a special point of telling Efanor beforeIdrys had roused master Emuin? Efanor was a great deal easier to set in motion than was master Emuin.

It was unkind to think so. But Cefwyn did have such ways. It went with being king, he supposed, and with being sometimes too clever for his own good.

So here was Efanor, early, and after a late evening when any man might be excused a certain sluggishness, Efanor’s face shone with a daunting cheerfulness.

“Good morning to Your Highness,” Tristen said.

“Good morning to you, Your Grace.” Efanor had brought with him, Tristen saw, a small book, the contents of which he suspected. Efanor had given such a gift to Ninévrisë.

“If it please Your Highness,” he said. Everyone observed formality, with Efanor, as if he were somehow fragile. “I’m sure there’s tea, easily, and I think there might be cakes. The fireside is the most comfortable place. The red chair is the best one.”

“I have a gift for you,” Efanor said just before they settled, and presented him the tiny book, an exquisitely bound and jeweled little book with the Quinalt sigil worked in gold.

“This is beautiful,” Tristen said with sincerity. He was very fond of books of all sorts, and it was one of the prettiest he had ever seen. The writing inside was that intricate sort priests favored, but which he had learned to read. “Thank you very much, Your Highness.”

“A book of devotions,” Efanor said. They sat down next the moderate warmth of the fire, Efanor in the red chair. “I hope Your Grace will consider them as more than a convenience of state. I know my royal brother’s notions. He bids me show you the forms and he cautions me against confusing you, intending of course that I teach you nothing. But I will give you honest, earnest answers, Your Grace, if you wish the honest truth. I would be pleased to give you honest answers.”

“I would be interested in the truth, sir, thank you.” He felt awkward in the extreme, though he was relieved to know Cefwyn had been honest with Efanor. “What do the priests know about gods? That seems a place to begin.”

“May I ask… Your Grace.” A clearing of the throat. “Tell me. To begin. —What do you yourself hold about the gods?”

“I wish to see one.”

“One would hardly expect to see one, Your Grace. That is, ordinary men would hardly see them.”

“Perhaps, however, I might.” He had already resolved not to tell His Highness about the gray place. Emuin had always held that secret. So had everyone who could go there… unless praying sent one to some special place he failed to go.

Efanor’s troubled countenance, however, said that he might have misspoken even this early in their dealing. “That you are Sihhë would be no advantage at all in seeing them, I fear.”

“I may be Sihhë,” he corrected Efanor gently. “I am almost certain and everyone says so, but there are other possibilities.”

“As—”

“Galasieni, perhaps.” He named Mauryl’s lost people. “It’s possible. Though I think Sihhë is more likely.”

“Neither would make it easy for you to approach the gods. Nor the chance that you may be Barrakketh, and an enchanted soul, a despiser of the gods.”

“Perhaps,” he said. It might be true. It was more likely than other origins. He himself concluded nothing, accepted no past name, and perhaps by that refusal made his own essence chancier in the world, more difficult to seize on. “But I am Tristen. Mauryl named me when he Called me, and I should not say differently, Your Highness. Knowing less than Mauryl knew, I should never change my name.”

Efanor seemed more and more distressed. “Tristen, then. But magic is not your way to the gods. Believe me that it opposes your salvation.”

Was there indeed a way to leap over his origins and seize on a life such as other men had? And were gods the way to live past the spring? Emuin had complained he had lost his salvation, taking up wizardry again. But he would not discuss Emuin’s affairs, told to him in confidence, with Efanor. “And what would favor it?” he asked Efanor.

“Faith. Good deeds. Prayer. The gods’ good grace and mercy.”

None of that seemed difficult, or even daunting. “It hardly seems difficult. Except finding the gods.”

“You cannot do it by wizardry.”

“I understand so.”

“Nor by magic.”

“How, then?”

“Pray and listen. Pray and listen. One hears them in one’s heart.”

There at last was a hint. Magic needed the heart and the will and the inborn gift. “So one need not be bornhearing them.”

Efanor hesitated. “Men can learn. Whether their power could extend to a Sihhë, no one knows. I asked my priest what I should say to you, and he was entirely at a loss. A very learned man. A very fine scholar. But he knows nothing, nothing that he finds of help. There is a chance, a chance that His Holiness may receive a word, and find a blessing especially for the Warden of Ynefel, considering Your Grace’s office and goodwill to the kingdom. There is no question of your being malevolent, none, sir. Even His Holiness admits your services to the realm, as indicating a type of divine calling.”

“It was Mauryl who Called me.”

Efanor seemed to think the matter over for some few moments.

“But the gods will all that’s good,” Efanor said finally. “Harm never comes from them. Magic can harm.”

“Against the gods’ will? Is magic more powerful?”

“For a time. Only for a time. The gods set all things right.”

“Then the gods would have defeated Mauryl’s enemy without Mauryl?”

“Perhaps not in a time convenient for us,” Efanor said.

“But if they can prevent harm and will not to do that, then is that justice?”

Efanor stopped a second time, and now he was frowning. “The Brisin Heresy holds so. A wrong view. The gods cannot be unjust.”

“But if so many died and the gods might prevent it—”

“Perhaps we should go to the book,” Efanor said, in that way Emuin had with him, too, when he had persisted too long in a question. “Read the first devotion. Aloud. Let us begin on firmer ground.”

He was slightly dubious, unsatisfied in his suspicion that, if the gods were greater than magic, then they might have prevented Hasufin altogether, saved very many lives and set the kingdoms in the very peace they were seeking through war with Tasmôrden. But perhaps it was deeper than that. And on any account he was not willing to offend Efanor, who was here for his good, and for Cefwyn’s. He was anxious about reading the book, as Efanor wished him to do: he feared Words far more than he feared knives on any ordinary day, but he opened the little book to its first page, and read: “ Blessed are the Five Gods by whom all the earth is blessed. Blessed is the man who hears their voice…” So it wasa voice, he thought. That was what he should be hearing. “ Blessed is the man who does their will…” That made Blessed clearer. He read, and heard no god’s voice, nor even Emuin’s or Ninévrisë’s, only the crackle of the fire. The text went on some little time regarding Blessedness, which seemed to bear on the gods and their approval, and probably on having the gods for allies. It seemed desirable, if the gods wanted safety for his friends, and if they could be trusted.

“Are the Teranthine gods the same?” he asked, interrupting his reading.

“Mostly,” Efanor said. “Except the Teranthines believe in indulgence for sins. And allow”—Efanor hesitated and seemed to choose a word carefully– “master Emuin’s curiosities. You might be Teranthine, easier. It has a much wider gate—Yet it seems you refuse it.”

“Not refuse. Master Emuin has never offered to teach me.”

“Read the devotionals. Practice the things I will show you, merely the forms, merely the show of respect. Read that each day. If you fail the Quinalt, there may be hope in the Teranthines. You could do worse than that for your soul. And pray the gods send you understanding.”

“Read until the Words Unfold to me? Like that?”

“Gods forfend.” Efanor knew about the Unfolding, if not the gray place. Whether a godly man ever experienced that Unfolding or not was a question. “It’s not magic. Remember that. Use no conjury—I charge you, no conjury.”

“But the Words will Unfold, all the same?” A wizard’s book held dangers and knowledge. He had lost Mauryl, who had used to explain things to him, and since in large part lately he had lost Emuin, Unfolding had replaced those guides, an understanding that had arrived continually, sometimes with a chill and a fear and sometimes with delight, all paths down which he sometimes began to suspect Emuin himself could not follow. “Your Highness, with all my heart, I thank you for coming here.”

“Love the gods,” Efanor said. “Love those who made the earth and everything in it.”

“Do they make the seasons and the forests?”

“The mountains and the sky, the rivers and the sunsets and all.”

It had never occurred to him to wonder how the mountains and the forests came to be. He thought rather that the forests grew from acorns and such, and that mountains simply were. Nothing greater Unfolded, nothing in fact Unfolded at all, so perhaps he had found no key to it yet. It caught his curiosity but offered no answers.

But where hadthe world and the mountains come from?

Darkness gaped around that wondering. He saw looming ahead of his inquiry that Edge the gray place could make, the place toward which he had no wish at all to go. He all but dropped the book, and came back to himself with a skip of his heart, sweating, finding himself all too close to wizardry.

But Efanor had never stopped talking. Efanor rattled on about the gods’ making of the world, and how the Five Gods had shaped the hills and made the rain come at their whim, pouring water down from the fountains of heaven.

Fountains of heaven, Tristen said to himself distressedly. Were there discrete sources of water aloft? None of that agreed with the gathering in the air that he felt as the rain and the clouds, on which he was sure Emuin could call at need: which he supposed that he could call on, too, though he had never tried. Everything Efanor said should have excited his heart; but none of what Efanor said now about making all the world perfect explained the weather or a forest in all its changes.

“If the world is perfect, why should there be seasons?” he asked before he thought.

“Because the gods will that there should be seasons,” Efanor said.

“But if they made it perfect,” he began, venturing just a step further, Efanor seeming so sure on that point; and Efanor interrupted him:

“Perfect in its changes.”

That was indeed like Mauryl when he asked too much, not to hear the question.

Why should there be seasons? he still asked himself. What good were they? But nothing leapt into his imagination. Nothing even came to him with the unsettling surety that Mauryl’s enemy had had for him. Nothing at all Unfolded to him except the sole, troubling idea that the world had had a beginning.

Of course it might reasonably have had a beginning. Hehad had a beginning, at some time. He had had twobeginnings, if he counted a birth he believed lay somewhere between Mauryl’s own origin and a second wakening at Mauryl’s fireside.

He wished he dared ask Efanor whether shadows had been part of the world when the gods made it, or whether they had come later; or whether the gods themselves were a form of shadow. Sometimes the dead were.

But Efanor urged him to go on to the second devotion in the book. He trusted Efanor, and with none of his questions answered he began to read.

“ The works of Men are evil in their inception. The works of the gods are blessed. Lean not to the counsel of Men but to the word of the gods…”

Some men maintained he was not a Man, so leaning elsewhere might be to his good. He had never truly considered Men to be Evil, however. He had generally avoided considering Evil at all, even the shadows. They were not evil. Some were even kind. One was a little girl who played skip in the grass near Althalen. Could that be evil?

Then all at once the word Evil tried to Unfold, spread itself in such darkness he flung away, stood on his feet and faced the slanting pale sunlight of the window some distance removed from them, trembling. The fireside flung warmth at his back in a chill otherwise all-encompassing.

“Your Grace?” Efanor’s voice came faintly from behind him. “Lord Warden? Gods bless, evil avert. The good gods bless and preserve us from evil and all its works… are you having a taking, Your Grace? Should I call your servants? —Should I send for Emuin?”

He had frightened Efanor. He was sorry. As for him, he was able to see the floor now, and mark a place beneath the chairs, in the stark sunlight, where the servants had not been attentive in their dusting. He was able to see the minute imperfections that clouded the window glass, and made ridges on the surface that caught the light differently; he could see the bubbles within that the glass, that, if one looked at them very, very closely, seemed to reflect everything around them… but he had never been sure that there was not something living inside, as harm or hope could lurk in imperfections of a wizard’s construction.

All these things. The carved back of a chair, with each imprecision of a carver’s art, the small ripples against the grain where the intent had clearly been a smooth line, but the natural wood had thwarted it: he had watched carvers at work, how the sweet, pungent curls of wood flew so thick and fast it was a wonder, and the smell was heady as wine. An oak grew in the forest, keeping its inner heart secret, for very many years; and a man thought of a horse as he carved and that horse in a man’s mind added itself to the secrets of the oak’s heart and made something that was neither horse nor oak. In such a way the world of Men grew. His fingers traced the carver’s work, and his own skin was a miracle of subtle color, the working of bone and sinew was a miracle as his hand found the imperfections in the representation… itself a sort of spell.

“Lord Warden?”

Dared a man force an oak into such a pattern?

Dared a wizard force a soul into a new shape? Or, direr question, couldone do it?

And was it a horse in essence, shaped by man, or was it an oak? Was it a Man’s thought of a horse, potent with freedom, rendered substantial, or was it in its true, its wizardous essence, still a tree, responsive to all that a tree was, aged and steady and deep? When one enchanted such a thing, to which did the wizard appeal?

He trembled, in that thought. What had Mauryl wrought, in him… what had Mauryl changed, and not changed? Yes, men said he was Barrakkêth, first of the Sihhë-lords, who had warred against Men and had no mercy. So Hasufin had said, too, and even Mauryl had called him flawed. But, following Mauryl’s example, hesaid that he was Tristen, and that the sum of him was changed, whatever the grain of the wood from which Mauryl had wrought.

“Lord Warden.” Efanor had risen and stood beside him, and pressed some small object into his hand.

He lifted it, saw his own flesh and the Quinaltine emblem alike pale with the morning sunlight or with the burning intensity of his seeing. The medallion was a disk about the size of a large coin and wrought into it was a lump of glass with something curious and dark inside.

“It doesn’t burn you, thank the gods. Keep that with you.” Efanor made his fingers close on it. “Put it about your neck, in the gods’ good name, and let all men see it. Gods forfend you fall in such a fit in the Quinaltine. You have had none of your falling fits for months. Gods save us from the hour.”

“I had a Teranthine medal,” he said faintly, for it was true. “I still have it, forged to my sword, now, when master Peygan remade it. Cefwyn gave it to me. I value it extremely.”

“Keep it. Add this to its blessing and wear it day and night. Gods save us, put it over your head, so—if one protection serves, two may be stronger, in the gods’ name…”

Efanor’s speech had grown distracted, fervid, and frightening to him as he slipped the chain over his head, settled it beneath his hair and outside the small folded ruff of his shirt which rose above the doublet. The medallion rested on his chest, doing him no harm, but no good either, as far as he could tell.