Chapter 1

Sergeant Gedd was back from Guelessar, a fortnight past all expectation and after they had all but given him up for lost. “And glad to be here, m’lord,” Gedd said fervently, reporting to Tristen in the privacy of his apartments. Gedd had surely come straight up from the stables, stopping only to wash the dust from face and hands, for the fair hair about his face was wet, his beard, ordinarily carefully trimmed, had stubble about the sides, and his clothes were spattered with two colors of mud different than any in the stable yard.

In such guise, too, of dirt and disrepute, Gedd handed him a precious and very belated letter. Stripped of coverings of dirty cloth, it emerged cleanly, resplendent with red ribbon and the royal seal. “Forgive me that I’m so late. Word directly from the Lord Commander, too, m’lord, that I have in memory.”

“Tell it to me,” Tristen said. He laid the letter on the desk before him, as Uwen stood near his chair, silent as the brazen dragons. “What happened?”

“Respects first, m’lord, from the Lord Commander, and then this, which is weeks late: that the guardsmen who left the Amefin garrison by your leave have gone to the Quinalt for protection and so has the patriarch of Amefel. The Lord Commander says to tell Your Grace kindly give him no more such gifts. His words, my lord, as he said them, forgive me.”

He could all but hear Idrys say it, and he was glad it was no sharper barb. He knew he deserved one.

But weeks late. He had no more recent news and had feared to send.

“And from His Majesty,” Gedd said, “who says to tell Your Grace that the patriarch of Amefel put the Holy Father in a difficult position, and that there’s trouble in the Quinaltine. Those were His Majesty’s words. Trouble in the Quinaltine. He said tell Your Grace that His Reverence has friends in Ryssand.”

“Was that all?”

“Yes, my lord. He gave me the letter with his own hand, and I was straight off and away.”

“But late.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Why?” Uwen asked, from the side and behind, and Gedd cast an anxious look in his direction.

“I had someone on my trail. I took up to the hills. But… Your Grace might want to hear… talk started about the tavern…”

“Tell me everything,” Tristen said. “Don’t hurry.”

Gedd drew a breath. He was a strong man and a good soldier: it was from exhaustion, surely, that his hand shook as he raked back the damp hair. “Priests are going about the town preaching, talking against wizards and Bryaltines and generally against the war, that’s one thing. There’s talk among the people against Amefel and Her Grace as a bad influence on the king, and the war as costing too much, being too dangerous, and bringing honest Guelenmen among wizards and heretics. That’s everywhere.”

It was dire news. And unjust. Cefwyn was good. What he did was good, and they said as unkind things about him as they said about Heryn Aswydd.

“Everyone says so?” he asked.

“Say that it’s safer to say that than to praise His Majesty,” the sergeant said, “on account of His Majesty’s friends don’t damn you to hell or look at you as would curdle milk. There’s ugliness in the town, and it’s got knives, m’lord.”

“He’s in danger.”

“As I’d say, and as the Lord Commander knows, and I think His Majesty knows. But,” Gedd said, “His Majesty rode against the dark at Lewen field, such as none of the layabouts complaining never had to face, and if a common man can say, m’lord, there’s a king.”

“He is that,” Tristen said, and added, half to convince himself, “and if he knows, then he’ll deal with it.”

“Only so’s he guards ’is back,” Uwen said, “against Ryssand.”

“And you were attacked?” Tristen asked.

“Not as it were attacked,” Gedd said, “only there were men after me that I knew was the Lord Commander’s, and then they weren’t there, and these were, and they weren’t his. And right or wrong I decided a late message was better than no message and went to ground. There’s a nasty mood even to the villages, such as I was glad I wasn’t wearing Amefin colors on the way in. Safer to be a common traveler, out of Llymaryn, says I, as I came into Guelessar: they’re pious down there, left and right, and I know the brogue. And being Guelen,” Gedd added, “I could get through. On the way back, I gave up being Llymarish and in the open and just hid and moved as I could… I let my horse go. Master Haman says he’s not made it here; he might have run for his old pastures, up by Guelemara. And the one the Lord Commander’s men gave me… no telling where he is. I walked.”

“Well ye did,” Uwen said, “by that account.”

“The other news—” Something came to Gedd, on a deep breath. “The other news, which may not be news, now: Murandys’ daughter’s to marry Panys’ son, by the by. She’s come back to court, and she’s betrothed to Rusyn of Panys.”

“Luriel?” He had heard of the lady in his days in Guelessar, and that she had been Cefwyn’s almost-betrothed, and had left to something like exile.

That she had come back to court was surely no good news.

“Come on His Majesty’s invitation,” Gedd went on, “as had to be, of course. Her Grace met her in the face of all the court and took her amongst her women. This isn’t what His Majesty told me, but it’s what I heard in the town, and I heard it in more than one place, so I take it for true. And the Lord Commander isn’t himself daunted, but it was his instruction to wrap the message up in rags and shove it deep in the rocks or heave it down a well if I thought I was followed. And I thought of that. But I thought I could get it through.”

“Well-done in that,” Uwen said, “too. —Ye were careful what ye said, yourself, I wager. Was it in Guelessar ye picked up these followers?”

“Captain, I swear to you, my tavern-going was discreet. Between talking to the Lord Commander immediately as I reached the town and being called to His Majesty the same night, in secret, in all that time I had the Lord Commander’s men close by. I gave out freely that I was a courier, but I said I was from Llymaryn, and hoped I didn’t meet a Llymarishman, which I didn’t. After I had my meeting with His Majesty and left the Guelesfort, I had the Lord Commander’s men in the street, them as I knew were his, while I nabbed my gear and my horse from the tavern where I’d left him. And I had the Lord Commander’s men on the street, too, and out past the gate, where they gave me a horse besides my own that they’d brought. That was how they watched over me, and I took the warning, m’lord, and was watching my back, when one hour they were there and the next was a pair of riders coming up on me. That morning was when I saw a third show up, and I ran hard and sent my horses one way and I went to ground, right then. The rest was walking, mostly at night.”

“And gettin’ the better of the Lord Commander’s men,” Uwen said with a shake of his head. “That ain’t ordinary bandits. And from the town. I’d almost say there’s a man amongst ’em as ain’t on the straight. That’s too damn quick.”

“We can’t warn him,” Tristen said in distress, “except by another messenger.”

“I’d trust the Lord Commander to figure it. His men ain’t fools, but I’d lay to it one’s a scoundrel.”

“I wish he may find out,” Tristen said, with all intent, such that the gray space shivered.

“And you an’ I’ll have a talk,” Uwen said to Sergeant Gedd, “an’ a healthy sup of ale, an’ see what little things ye might know else, if there’s any ye’ve forgot. Besides which, ye’re due the cup, and a good horse, as I’m sure His Grace will say.”

“I do,” Tristen said, his thoughts meanwhile ranging to Guelen hills, and ambushes, and Idrys, with Ryssand’s men insinuated into every council, in among the priests, likely; and now spying on Idrys’ spies.

“Thank you, Captain. My lord.”

“Thank you,” Tristen said fervently, and as Uwen gathered up the sergeant and showed him out, he uneasily cracked the seal with a small knife, and spread out the letter that had been so long in coming.

My dear friend, it began, which he heard as warmly as if Cefwyn had said it aloud.

The weather has held remarkably well. We are now moving supply.

The good sergeant who carries this letter will have other, more common news for you. I should say that Her Grace is well and sends you her love and her great thanks for your rescue of her subjects, and I send also my approval of all you have done.

Yet I pray you recall the Quinalt steps and the means by which a very little thing became a great controversy. You must know that various persons returning from Amefel have spread rumors concerning the people’s regard for you, and the open display of Sihh"e symbols in the market, which I am sure is true. They were doing it this summer. But remember that certain men hold all that is Amefin in great fear, and the tale of strange doings on your riding out to meet Ivanor has reached the Quinaltine, although it is possible that the story has grown in the telling.

Grown and grown, Tristen thought. He was part of the discontent among Cefwyn’s subjects, and the source of trouble with the Quinalt, and now a messenger going to the king went in fear for his life. He did not know how to mend it.

Her Grace takes great encouragement in your support of Elwynim women and children. I find encouragement knowing you are doing as you have always done in defending them, and I give you all authority you may require to secure them a safe haven.

There are many things I would write, but the messenger is waiting.

We hope that Emuin is well. This cold damp always makes his joints ache, and we hope he is keeping himself well and warm.

This, in full knowledge of Emuin’s habits with the shutters.

We are close now to the Midwinter and wait for spring. You, not being Aswydd, I hold not therefore bound by the prohibitions laid on the Aswydds. I hold that your preparations against incursions from the north are in accordance with your oath to defend the land. To this I set my seal, below, with all love and confidence in your just use of that authority.

Cefwyn gave him liberty then to defend the helpless, clearly aware of disaffection in his own Guelenfolk on his account, and still adding to his authority… but it was not alone Aeself and his men, but enough scattered bands to double the settlement at Althalen… so Drusenan had sent word two days ago. Bands of Elwynim loyal to the lady Regent or opposed to Tasm^orden—they were not quite the same—had avoided the bridge that had stood open with Guelen and Ivanim forces on the watch, as a potential trap. Women and children and the old and lame had come that way as the only way they knew how to take, but the fugitives from the lines at Ilef'inian were veteran men and wary of what seemed too easy. They had crossed the icy waters at other points, however great the effort; they had kept their weapons and sought refuge with sympathetic Amefin, who had sent them to Drusenan, and Drusenan had directed them to Althalen—for they refused to go to the Guelen camp and turn in their weapons to Guelenmen: Drusenan had sent an anxious message, but the accommodation had been peaceful, even counting two different loyalties amid the armed bands… their situation was so desperate, fearing Tasm^orden and with their own lord lost, they declined to fight each other.

Walls were up at Althalen, so Drusenan had also said in his report, and two roofed halls stood, built of the tumbled rubble and the still-standing ruin, one hall for the women and children and one for the men, dividing some households in the need for quick and snug shelter, and flinging Nin'evris"e’s men in with those who were otherwise minded. The Elwynim doubtless wished better, but they had not yet built better, and had to work together to have the roofs they did have.

The birth of a child in the camp, Drusenan had written, seemed to have brought men to some better sense.

But Drusenan had sent word, too, written for him, for Drusenan was better at building than at writing:

Some of Her Grace’s men ask to settle a camp on the river and attack Tasm^orden from there, but I have not agreed, believing Your Grace to hold a contrary opinion. What shall I say to them?

Refuse them, he had sent back that same day, and urgently. They will have their day, and justice done, but not yet.

There were more men now than women in Althalen, with horses, and grain was now a matter of critical need. Cevulirn’s men had ridden home after their seven days of watch at the bridge, with the lives of fifty-eight women, old men, wounded, and children saved at that crossing and now settled at Althalen; Drusenan’s men at least now had the help of the Elwynim who were whole of body, who carried supply on their backs, and who hewed wood and raised their walls with little grumbling and in decent gratitude.

Gratitude flourished far better there, it seemed, than in the streets of Guelemara.

We have missed you, Cefwyn’s letter said, a postscript, below the. seal.

The pigeons are in deep mourning. I have taken to feeding them myself. I have become superstitious on their account.

He could scarcely imagine. Cefwyn had so many important other concerns.

The weather continues to amaze me. I think of your urging after Lewenbrook and yet I know well the hazards if we had proceeded.

Below the seal Cefwyn the king had fallen silent and at that point his friend had begun to write to him, a hasty scrawl, an outpouring of the heart after he had said everything so carefully, so discreetly. What followed was not discreet.

In some measure I trusted your urgings then and wished to go on across the river, and yet I see around me the disaffections and distrust that would have rendered all we might do ineffectual to assure a just and true peace. Talk to Emuin. I would that I could. Consult with Cevulirn. I recommend him as a friend and a wise man.

Then the handwriting changed, and grew more careful.

I add one other thing: some see in you the fulfillment of Elwynim prophecy. I have been aware of this from the start. If you are the one I think you are, no matter how dark, you have no less of my love and regard, which I hope you have in kind for me. This Emuin advised me to win for myself, and it was the wisest advice and best he ever gave me.

Cefwyn knew it all, and trusted him, and was not angry.

It was a precious letter, and Tristen sat with his hands on it as if that in itself could bridge the distance and place his hands in Cefwyn’s hands. His heart beat hard, a knot stopped his throat, and he heard again the bells that had rung the hour they had parted, the wild pealing, so joyous, when there was nothing of joy for either of them in the hour, but only for their enemies.

His pigeons had sprung aloft, the banners had flown bravely on the wind, but in that hollow pealing of bronze, the warmest thing in the world had been Cefwyn’s embrace, and the look Cefwyn had flung him eye-to-eye before the Quinaltine steps.

You have no less of my love, Cefwyn wrote now.

And the world became warm and safe for a heartbeat.

Win Cefwyn’s friendship, Emuin said, but he did not take Cefwyn’s reassurance to fulfill that, not entirely, not truly, in the magical sense. Emuin had given his advice, and like Mauryl’s advice, it struck at the root of intentions, not at the flower.

And both root and the flower were important to him, one having to do with what one meant to do… and the other, most fearsome, with the outcome of it.

With all his heart he wished to write back to Cefwyn… but considering the message within Idrys’ message, the way he had protected Gedd, and the danger Gedd had run to reach him, the exchange they had already had exposed not only the messenger but Cefwyn and Nin'evris"e to danger. If their enemies did not know the content of the message, at least they knew a message had come and gone, and at such a time.

He had no news worth the risk of the bearer’s life. The business with the bridge was done: in spite of Idrys’ urgent message to send him no more gifts… he had to fear he had: all the discontent carters who had labored in one service after another, who might even as he sat here be telling theit tale of Elwynim and walls and settlements at Althalen in every tavern in Guelemara.

There was nothing he could do but wish Cefwyn’s people to see the truth, and to know their welfare lay more with their king who wished an honest, lasting peace, than with Ryssand, whose wishes were tangled and dark with hatred, some for Cefwyn, but far, far more of it for the Bryaltines and the Teranthines and everything southern… himself not least or last in that reckoning. There was fertile ground for hostile wizardry, or ambitious, or greedy, or any that did not scruple to use a hateful, hating man.

Ryssand’s son was dead. He had a daughter for his heir… which the Quinaltines, ironically, would not allow, and he the greatest supporter of the strict Quinaltines. What was he to do?

Something to save himself, that would somehow twist and turn until it came out profitable to himself, that was more than likely.

And meanwhile he could get no message to Idrys to tell him there was a traitor within his ranks, no message to Cefwyn to assure him of better news from the south—not without risking a life and possibly putting a dangerous letter in the hands of Lord Ryssand.

He had now only boats to look for… Sovrag lord of Olmern’s boats, and the grain they carried. The storm surge had gone down the Len'ualim, the river ran calmly now at its ordinary level, by the reports he had from Anwyll, and there was no reason for delay, unless Sovrag’s boats had suffered—

Or unless Sovrag had doubts or fears of aiding him, considering the storm brewing in the heart of Ylesuin. Any of the lords who had awareness of the situation Gedd had reported might well think twice about joining their Midwinter feast… and Sovrag’s grain had to be here to avoid famine.

He gave it another day and then he must send a messenger south to Olmern, a far safer direction to ask reasons; and he had to send another rider to Cevulirn to inform him of the delay in supply for the horses.

Midwinter was coming on apace, and the needs of the province were absolute. If Sovrag for some reason failed them, then they still must obtain the grain, all the same… if not from Sovrag, then they might appeal next to his constant enemy among the allies of Lewen field, the lord of Imor Len'ualim, dour, Quinalt Umanon.

Umanon might or might not favor their enterprise, might or might not be keenly aware of the sentiment against him, and might or might not answer Cevulirn’s invitation—and if he came, might or might not tell everything he learned to friends to the north. The plain fact was that Umanon was a Guelen, different from all the other southern lords, associated with Lewenbrook only because Cefwyn as a Guelen prince had brought him in to have the heavy cavalry Cefwyn relied on.

Now a southern call had gone out, furtive and hoping for secrecy… and yet they had not omitted Umanon, who had been one of them, whatever else he was.

And would he answer the call, or betray them?

A gathering of all the south was a difficult secret to keep… and the more difficult as the time drew closer and all the staff down to Cook and her crew assembled the makings of a great holiday.

The best news in recent days was the assembling of young men of Amefel, earnest young men… feckless boys, Uwen called most of them, but well-meaning, with some experienced veterans in the number. It was a good lot. But they were far from the Amefin guard that was yet to be… that must exist by the time the buds broke on the trees.

The Guelen Guard, at Uwen’s order, had undertaken to show the men the use of the long Guelen lance and the small sword, and that the training and short tempers and stung pride failed to provoke Amefin and Guelenmen to open warfare, it was itself a wonder… but that was the regiment they had at hand, and that was what had to be.

The southern longbow many already knew; and perhaps half had horsemanship enough, but those were green youths on the edge of nobility, accustomed to ride to the hunt, vying with one another to be first to the quarry—not to make an iron front against an enemy. The lads, as Uwen called them, were in great earnest for their lords’ pride and their own, but there were two sent home with broken bones, and one all but died of Maudbrook’s icy water on a windy day— his horse had sent him there.

But in recent days the recruits had gone out about the land, faring out toward the remote villages to parade their weapons and make known the authority that sent them.

More, even given the chance there were enemies in the land, they practiced ambushes on one another in the bitter cold and the winter-barren land, merry as otters, Uwen called them. They were noisy, determined, and since the Guelenmen teaching them had not killed them, they had necessarily improved in the lance and the sword.

Tomorrow, orders which also lay on Tristen’s desk, under his hand as he read, they were to ride east to Assurnbrook, as far west as the limits of Marna Wood; they had already ridden down to Modeyneth and to Anwyll’s camp, to Trys Ceyl in the south and Sagany and Emwysbrook, to Dor Elen, Anas Mallorn, and Levey, displaying the banners, answering questions, bearing news.

That was one thing he wished he could tell Cefwyn. And, aside from the want of grain, stores had turned up, out of cellars in town, out of caves and cists in the hills: reserves of grain, preserved meat, gold and silver which the lords had held secret, and, mysteriously, too, but from different sources, a number of weapons which had not been in the armory since Lewenbrook had shown up in the hands of these young men.

“As they ain’t fools,” Uwen had said wryly, “an’ now they know they have a lord who ain’t Guelen, why, back the gear comes from under their beds.”

Over all, while the news from Guelemara chilled Tristen’s heart, there was reason to think the south was safer than it had been. If Tasm^orden intruded into his lands at this very hour he would meet both an armed and organized band of Elwynim veterans… and the otters, those small, scattered squads of an Amefin cavalry he would not expect, on horses that were increasingly fit.

And that Amefin cavalry was armed with both bow and lance, for harrying an enemy and making his foraging impossible: such were their orders—no all-out engagement, but a deliberate harrying, keeping contact with an enemy band while they sent a series of messengers with word to Henas’amef, to bring in the heavier-armed Guelens.

There was that force out and about.

Modeyneth and Anas Mallorn, which lay near the sites of likely crossings, had built stout shutters and towers for archers.

The old wall beyond Modeyneth was now, by work proceeding by day and night, man-high across the road, with a stout gate, braces, and an archer’s tower. The men who built there, both of Modeyneth and other villages of Bryn, built in weather which never mired the roads, and built with the advantage of stones already cut.

Not least, Anwyll and the Dragon Guard at the river maintained close, fierce guard over sections of decking which could again be laid rapidly over the bridge frameworks, and which were stout enough to support even wheeled traffic—once his Midwinter gathering determined to secure the other bridgehead as theirs, and set up a camp inside Elwynor.

They were as near ready as he could hope… save only the grain to feed all these men. And the fear, now made clear in Gedd’s report, that he might have taken far too much for granted, regarding the Guelen and Ryssandish fear of him and the south. Talk to Emuin, Cefwyn had written him.

Paisi, hair disheveled, roused from the diurnal night of the shuttered tower, made tea. Emuin read Cefwyn’s letter atop the clutter of charts, then nodded soberly as Tristen meanwhile relayed Gedd’s report in all its alarming substance.

“Well, well,” Emuin said, and bit his lip then, shaking his head. “What Cefwyn wishes me to explain when he says consult me, is the Quinalt, and its distaste for things Amefin. I think you know that.”

“I know the guardsmen I sent and the patriarch all went to Cefwyn’s enemies. And the drivers of the carts I sent back will talk.”

“The carters you sent back will talk, and the soldiers that went without leave have talked, and the Amefin patriarch has certainly had words to say within those walls, all manner of words about the grandmothers in the market, and about me, and any other sign of wizardry. That’s nothing we can prevent now.”

“As for the other, sir… the prophecy…” He disliked even to think about it, but it was there, part of the letter, with Cefwyn’s assurances.

“It’s all one.”

“It is not one, sir. I fear it’s not. The carters will talk about the same things the patriarch complained of, charms in the market, and about the Elwynim at Althalen—”

“No small matter.”

“But the greater is, Nin'evris"e’s father called me young king. Auld Syes did much the same. The Elwynim wait for a King To Come, and Tasm^orden flies the banner of the King of Althalen above Ilef'inian.”

“Does he?”

“Yes!”

“What will you do about it?”

I won’t allow it, he almost said. But he thought then of the disparate elements he had just set forth to Emuin, and found in them subtle connections to events around him that frightened him to silence.

“Tea, sir, m’lord.” Taking advantage of the silence, Paisi desperately set the tray down and poured. It was bitter cold in the tower, and Paisi’s hands trembled, hands as grimy as ever they had been in the street.

“Wash,” Emuin said. “Treat my potions as you treat common mud, boy, and you’ll poison both of us.”

“It’s only pitch, sir.”

“Dirt,” said Emuin. “Scrub. You shouldn’t sleep dirty, boy. Gods!”

“Sir,” Paisi whispered, and effaced himself.

Emuin took up a teacup. “What will you do about it?” Emuin asked again.

“I don’t know, sir,” Tristen said, turning his own in his fingers. “I think the first is coming here and asking you what I ought to do. And I earnestly pray you answer me. This is beyond lessons. I can’t take lessons any longer. What I do may harm Cefwyn.”

There was long silence, long, long silence, and Emuin took a studied sip of the tea, but Tristen never looked away or touched his cup.

“So you will not let me escape this time,” Emuin said.

“I ask, sir. I don’t demand. I ask for Cefwyn’s sake.”

“And with all your heart.”

“And with all my heart, sir.”

“Do you think you are the King To Come? Does that Unfold to you, as some things do?”

He asked Emuin to give up his secrets—and his question to Emuin turned back at him like a sword point, direct and sharp and simple.

“No,” he said from the heart. “I’ve no desire to be a king or the High King or any king. If I could have Cefwyn back as Prince Cefwyn and his father alive so he didn’t have to work so, and all of us here at Amefel, that’s what I would most wish, for everything to be what it was this summer… but I can’t have that, and I could only do him harm if I wished it, so I don’t. I won’t. You say I must win Cefwyn’s friendship… and that doesn’t come of anything I’ve done that I can see. Everything I’ve done has turned his own people against him!”

“Young lord,” Emuin said, “you’ve gained very many things, and know far more, and now you’ve almost become honest.”

“I have never lied, sir!”

Emuin fixed him with a direct and challenging stare. “Have you not?”

“Not often. —Not lately.”

“Ah. And have you often told the truth?”

“Have you told it yourself, sir. Forgive me, but is this not the lesson you showed me, to keep silent, to leave and not answer questions. I keep quiet the things I fear could do harm, and the things I don’t understand!”

“Exactly as I do.”

The anger fell, left him nothing, and still no answer.

“Is that all you learned of me?” Emuin asked. “Silence?”

“No, sir, there were very many good lessons.”

“And do you not, as you say, count it good, to keep silent when speaking might work harm?”

“What harm would it have worked, for you to have stayed by me this summer? What harm would it work now, for you to tell me the dangers ahead, if I swear to take your advice?”

“Harm that I might do? Oh, much. Much, if I interfere—”

“—If you interfere with Mauryl’s working. But do you say, then, sir, that you can interfere with Mauryl’s working? Or can anyone? Are you that great a wizard?”

“Who are you?”

Back to wizard-questions, the quick reverse, the subtle attack, and that one went straight as a sword to the heart.

“Who are you?” Emuin repeated. “This time I require an answer.”

Tristen drew a deep breath, laid his hands on the solid table surface, on the charts, the evidence and record of the heavens, for something solid to grasp… for very nearly he had said, defiantly, out of temper, and only to confound the old man,

I am Barrakk^eth.

So close he had come, so disastrously close it chilled him.

“I am Tristen,” he said calmly, lifting his head and staring straight into Emuin’s measuring eyes. “I am Mauryl’s Shaping. I am Cefwyn’s friend and your student. I am the lord of Althalen and Ynefel. Tristen says all, sir, and all these other things are appurtenances.”

“Not lord of Amefel?” Emuin asked with that same measuring look, and his heart beat hard.

Crissand, he thought.

Crissand, Crissand, Crissand.

“Cefwyn must grant me Amefel,” he said to the wall, the wind, the fire in the hearth, not to the boy sitting silent or the wizard gazing at his back. “Cefwyn must grant me this one thing.”

“Has he not? It seems to me he granted you Amefel.”

“No. He made me lord of Amefel, in fealty to him. He hasn’t given it to me. And that he must do, for his own safety.”

There was a long, a very long silence.

“You know,” said Emuin, “if other things have disturbed Ryssand and Murandys, this one will hardly calm their fears.”

“Crissand Adiran is lord of Amefel. He is a king, master Emuin, he is the Aswydd that should rule, and if I set him here, on this hill, and see him crowned, I would think I had done well, and that I had done Cefwyn no disservice at all.”

There was long silence, a direct stare from Emuin and Paisi’s eyes as large as saucers.

“The next question. What are you?”

“Mauryl’s Shaping, sir. Cefwyn’s friend, and your student, lord of Ynefel, lord of Althalen.”

“And of those folk there settled?”

“If they remain there.”

“And this is your firm will.”

“I am Mauryl’s Shaping.”

“What we say three times gathers force, and what you say three times has uncommon force, lord of Althalen.”

“I’ve told you all I know, sir, and beyond, into things I hope. So what do you advise me to say? More, what to do, sir? Idrys has a liar in his service, and Cefwyn is in danger.”

“If I knew that, young lord, I’d sleep of nights.” Emuin moved the letter aside and moved one of his charts to the surface, a dry, stiff, and much-scraped parchment. He looked at it one way and another, and then cast it toward him, atop a stack of equally confused parchments.

“This, this, young lord, is as much as I do know. This is the reckoning that Mauryl himself would have seen coming, that once in sixty-two years these portents recur in the heavens, and where they occur at the Midwinter, there is the Great Year begun, that is, the time until the wandering stars hold court together and move apart again. This is the season of uncommon change… but this is nothing to you, I suspect.” Emuin’s tone took on a forlorn exasperation, much like Mauryl’s when confronting his helplessness. “Nothing Unfolds. No great revelation.”

“No, sir.” He looked at the parchment, and considered the things Emuin said and cast it down again, unenlightened. “I don’t know what you’re saying. About the stars, I gather, but nothing more. I know Mauryl studied them. And you do. But I’ve never understood the things you find.”

“Magic is an unfettered thing. You… are an unfettered thing. But wizardry, wizardry, young lord, is a matter of numbers… patterns, as nature itself is patterns, and the gathering of forces. Think you that winter happens by magic? No. Everything in nature, young lord, is a march of patterns, the chill in the air, the sleep of the trees, the waning of the summer stars and the rise of the winter ones, that in their turn will set…”

“These things I see, and you tell me they recur.”

“Yes! So if you would work a great work of wizardry, do you see, there’s no sense doing hard things, only the easy ones. Do you want a snow? Ask for it in winter! Much easier. Find patterns in nature and lay your own Lines where they go, much as you set the Lines of a great house, observing doors and windows where they want to be.”

Emuin seemed to expect agreement, understanding—something.

“Yes, sir.”

“But you don’t! All this is frivolous to you! You treat patterns the way a young horse treats fences, to have the fine green grass at your pleasure. And gods save us on the day you treat natural laws as that great dark stallion of yours treats stall slats, and simply kick them down.”

“I trust I’m never so inconsiderate of your work, sir, as Dys of master Haman’s boards.”

Emuin grunted, then gave a breath of a laugh, and at last chuckled and for the first time in a long time truly did regard him kindly. “Good lad. Good lad. When I fear you most, you have your ways to remind me you are Tristen.”

“I am. And shall be, sir. And never would treat your patterns carelessly. I have more understanding than my horse.”

Emuin did laugh, and wiped an eye with a gnarled finger, and wiped both, then his nose. “Oh, lad. Oh, young lord. We’re in great danger.”

“But we are friends, sir, and I’m yours, as I am Cefwyn’s.”

“That, too, is a snare, young lord, and one I avoid very zealously: we must both look at one another without trust, assuming nothing, as we love one another, as we love that rascal Cefwyn. Fear friendship with me! Avoid it! Examine my actions, as I do yours, and let us save one another.—But you asked, and I answered, and let me answer, again, such as I can. Hasufin—”

“Hasufin!”

“Regarding this matter of the Great Year, I say, sixty-two years of the ordinary sort, and Hasufin Heltain, who was a wizard, and who bound his life to the cycle of the Great Year. Great works need great patterns. And his was the most ambitious: to use the Great Year itself would have given him more than one opportunity for a long, difficult magic, at long intervals. But there is more: there’s a Year of Years, a pattern of patterns that only the longest-lived can see, let alone use. Do you guess? Hasufin is old, as Mauryl was old. And the dawn of the last Year of Years was the hour of Hasufin’s first seizure of Ynefel, when he drove Mauryl Gestaurien to seek help in the north. But before it was done… the Sihh"e came down. And that was the pattern of that beginning. That was what Mauryl did to Hasufin Heltain: he wrought the Sihh"e-lords into Hasufin’s rise, so he could never be free of them—and the Sihh"e-lords, like your horse, respect no boundaries and kick down the bars. He lost. Mauryl rose… and the Sihh"e-lords reigned.”

“And fell.”

“Ah, and the dawn of the last cycle, the second such time, you may well suspect, sixty-two years ago… was Hasufin’s second rise. We are in the last of the sixty-two years of the Great Year that marks the Year of Years. The spring solstice, last spring, when Hasufin overthrew Mauryl the second time… Mauryl knew his peril; and chose his moment: the time of rebirth, your birth, young lord. Now that Great Year closes and a new Great Year begins the next Year of Years in the season of the deepest dark. At Midwinter the last element of the heavenly court will enter the House in which all the others stand. This movement marks the dawn, at midnight, of that new Year of Years. At Midwinter the moon stands, changeable queen that she is, at the darkest of the dark. By the time the sun rises, either the elements of the Great Year favor Hasufin… or something stands in opposition to him. What is, at that dawn, will be, for centuries of years as Men reckon time.”

“So Mauryl never sent me to Lewenbrook. That wasn’t what he wanted of me.”

“Oh, it was certainly part of it. But Cefwyn opposed Hasufin. Cefwyn opposed him, and opposes him now, and there’s that damned Elwynim prophecy of a King To Come. It’s probably true, more’s the pity. Uleman was a good wizard, but he talked too much, and now everyone expects there to be a new High King. It doesn’t serve Cefwyn well at all… and by chance it doesn’t help Uleman’s daughter, either.”

Here was truth, so much truth it was hard to know what part of it to seize and question, but he found one question salient and unavoidable.

“And is Hasufin our enemy still?” Tristen asked. “And shall I fight him again? And where?”

“I can’t say,” Emuin answered him with a shake of his head. “Above all, Midwinter Eve is perilous to us, and of all damned days you might have chosen to assemble the lords… that one you never asked me.”

“I had no knowledge. Now I do. What other times shall I fear?”

“The spring solstice… evidently,” Emuin said. “But what more may happen I don’t know. I haven’t lived through a Year of Years. You have.”

“I haven’t lived.”

“As much as Hasufin. Mauryl’s the only one who’s lasted one in the flesh, as it were. And now is stone, in his own walls, so you say.”

He shivered, not wishing to recall that day of waiting, that terrible hour, when he knew the enchantment of the faces was not the ordinary course of the world, and that there was something dreadful about Ynefel, where the Sihh"e had ruled, where the Lord Barrakk^eth had maintained a dreaded fortress… where at last only Mauryl had lived, alone, in solitary correspondence with the latter generations of Men, at Althalen, and what Men had used to call Hen Amas, and now Henas’amef.

“So Mauryl did the best he could: sent you, without warning, without guidance, without instruction… lord of Althalen. That you surely are. Lord of Ynefel… I would never dispute. That you are Tristen… I leave that to you, and would never say otherwise. This I do tell you: the stars point to Midwinter. The hinge of the year. The hinge of many years, this time, when all things reach an end, and a beginning, and when patterns begin for the next Year of Years. Against your years, I am a youth.” Emuin reached across the table to lay his gnarled hand on his young one, a touch like Mauryl’s, half-remembered, touching his very heart. “Tristen is your name. So be it. Have a sip of tea. It’s grown cold, boy. Boy!”

“Sir!” said Paisi, scrambling up.

“Tea. Cakes if they’ve escaped your avarice.”

“Avarice, sir?”

“Things don’t Unfold to him,” Emuin said, aside, “and, thief that he was, he has no notion what avarice is. A fine boy. A discreet boy, who has no desire to become a toad. Where are the cakes, Paisi?”

“I’ll ask Cook,” Paisi said, swinging the kettle over the fire and poking up the heat. “I’ll be back, I’ll be right back, sir. I di’n’t hear a thing, I di’n’t.”

“Toads,” Emuin said, and Paisi adjusted the kettle and fled, banging the door, or the wind did it, seeping in from the cracks in the shutters.

Quiet occupied the tower, then, only the slight whistle of the wind.

“He’s no trouble, is he?” Tristen asked, hoping he had not inconvenienced master Emuin.

Emuin gathered up a handful of beads, a collection of knots and strings and feathers, beads and bits of metal. “A grandmother’s spell, a protection. He came back clattering with it, a thing of moderate potency, in very fact. Do you see the Sihh"e coin?”

“Yes,” he said, curious, for just such a coin had banished him from Guelessar. “And you keep it?”

“The wretch gave it to me,” Emuin said, “saying I surely needed protection. And he had bought it with coin your Uwen gave him.”

“There’s no harm in it,” Tristen said, lifting it in his fingers. “Is there, master Emuin?”

“You see nothing amiss in it, do you?”

“No, sir. I don’t.”

“A grandmother’s spell, cast on me, if you please, and bought with Uwen’s spare pennies, from the rise of his good fortunes.” Emuin shook his head, and cast a pinch of powder into the fire. It burst in a shower of smoke, and a smell that would banish vermin. “Boys,” Emuin said. “He takes greatly to the powders and smokes. They make him sure I’m a wizard.”

“Yet so is he.”

“And steals cakes, the wretch!” Emuin laid aside the cords and trinkets, and dusted off his hands. “When a request would obtain them, he steals.”

“As you say, he is a thief. That’s his trade.”

“Out on it! But he must not curse. I fear that in him, above all else. I’ve told him so, in no uncertain terms.”

“Accept his gift,” Tristen said. “His stealth is a skill.”

Emuin lifted a white brow. “That it is, in its good time.” There was a riffle of touch in the gray place, an overwhelming sight of Emuin as a presence there, and the place they occupied was small and furtive in itself, their visits there few, these days, and now, after so much of shared confidences, they sat, touched and touching, only for comfort.

A little removed was a little mouse of a presence, visible, if one knew to look for it. Paisi the Gray, Tristen thought. Paisi the Mouse.

Above them the day, and before them the night and the ominous stars. He had a question and wrenched himself out of the comfort of the gray space and into the clutter of Emuin’s tower, where the old man sat, far less imposing than in that other place, with tea stains on his robe and ink on his fingers.

“What were the stars when Mauryl Summoned me, sir? Tell me something else. Am I bound to one year? Or to this Great Year of yours?”

“Gods know what you are bound to. Or… being Sihh"e, gods know.”

A horse, running in the field. In his heart he had not known there was a boundary, a place, a fence, a limit to freedom, until Emuin and Uwen had begun to make him know the seasons, and the Year had unfolded to him, in its immutable cycles. He had viewed it with some dismay, to know such repetitions existed.

On such things Men pinned their memories. Uwen would say, in the winter of the great snow, or in the spring I was fighting in the south, and such wizardry did Men practice, fencing things in, establishing patterns as they made Lines on the earth.

“Is it wizards who made years?” he asked. Questions still came to him, though few there were he dared ask, these days.

“I believe it was,” Emuin said. “For so much of the craft relies on it. Yet we have no constraint on the moon, which observes its own cycles.”

“And what have you bound to this Year of Years? And what have you wrought, regarding me, sir?”

There was a smail silence, and Emuin turned as furtive as Paisi, and did not look him in the eyes at once.

“I’ve chosen to do very little.”

“Keeping an eye on me, as Uwen puts it.”

“So to say. And I can’t fault you, beyond your disposition to raise walls and give away provinces.”

He laughed, obediently, but his heart still labored under all that Emuin had said.

“Gods know what you are,” Emuin said then, “but I know what I am, which is an old wizard who has seen the largest pattern he knows reach its end and swing round again… or it will do so, on Midwinter, when my young lord is holding feast with the lords of the south. Then’s the hour to keep the wards tight and the fires lit. —After that, I’ll breathe more easily.”

“The wards.” He had forgotten their strange behavior, in that way wizardry slipped past one’s attention. “Do you remember that night, sir? Did you see it, the night when all the town stood in light?”

Emuin gazed at him curiously, as if struggling to recall. “Yes. That night. And I wondered was it you.”

Tristen shook his head. “Not that I was aware. I thought of you, sir. Or even Paisi. It wasn’t so much that something tried the wards. It was as if the town waked. As if the building did.”

Something happened then in the gray space, perhaps a subtle inquiry. And a two-footed mouse skipped on the stairs, fearing shadows and sounds in a hall gone strange to his eyes.

—Get up the stairs, young fool!

Emuin was stern and protective at once, and there was a rapid running on the steps from the scullery, and a rapid passage through the lower hall, wherein there was special danger, to a boy with a tray of cakes and a pot of jam.

—I’m coming, sir. I’m coming.

So Ynefel had seemed at times to live, and what he knew now for ghosts to haunt the stairs and trip an unwary lad.

In a strange way he felt grieved not to be Paisi, with no danger apparent to him but his own wise fear of shadows and cold spots on the stairs.

Had he not learned theft himself, and stealth, and known all the nooks and crannies of the old fortress at Ynefel?

And had he not gone as oblivious of its wards and its terrible secrets?

“Silly boy.” Emuin sighed. “He’s learned to hear us, you can tell, and we have few secrets. Now if he only learns a bit more, and respects the wards, we’ll have something in him.”

The grandmother’s cords and charms seemed peculiarly potent, almost a point of light in the gray space. Elsewhere in the town, an old woman had wished well, and now stopped in her weaving, and held a hand to her heart, for that wish might require a strength she had never had called. That heart all but burst with the shock, the life all but fled, before Tristen realized the outpouring of it and closed the gap with his own hand as he touched the cords of the charm.

He gathered them up, held them in both hands, and drew a bright, burning line from the Zeide to the roof of a house near the wall, and an old, old woman who had nearly died.

“Rash,” said Emuin. “Rash. You’ve made that woman a target.”

“I’ve given her a shield. So with all the town.”

There was a clatter on the stairs, a crash and a rattle just outside the door, a rush of wind as Paisi struggled to open it, wide-eyed and sweating from his haste.

“I di’n’t break the pot,” said Paisi, but edged a cake back from among the rest. “This ’un fell. I’ll eat it.”

“Nobly offered,” Emuin said. “Take two. Go, the water’s long since boiled, and His Grace is patient. Don’t offend him. He’s terribly dangerous when offended.”

“Aye,” said Paisi faintly, scrambling for the cups. “Aye, an’ I washed, sir! Cook made me.”