Uwen was with him as he walked up the steps. They had already gone inside. He heaved an aching sigh, found tears almost escaping him, and realized how tired he truly was. He was foolish to expect a welcome after he had stolen Petelly, lied to the guards, and sent six squads of Cevulirn’s horsemen out looking for him. Well that Cefwyn had been as pleasant and glad to see him as he was. He had not at all deserved well of Cefwyn for what he had done.

He had not deserved, either, to have Uwen still faithful to him, and forgiving of a soaking and a long, long ride and a chase through very very dangerous places. But Uwen did forgive him. He supposed that Cefwyn did; and the lady, after all, owed him nothing.

He followed the lords inside, and while they went down the corridor to one of the halls of state, he went upstairs, and down toward his apartments, where his guards, to his chagrin, were still patiently standing, as if he were still there.

Had they never left? he wondered. He saw their faces lighten as he came, and, “M’lord,” one said, and they were glad to see him, which he did not at all deserve.

It made him ashamed.

“You go fetch His Lordship’s servants,” Uwen said to the youngest.

“You tell them he’s here and wanting to rest and they should be quick.”

“Yes, sir,” the guard said, and hurried to do that as the others let him in and wished him well.

Every detail of the rooms, the very fact of coming home, when he had not been sure he would ever see any of it again—filled up his senses to a dizzying fullness. He stood in the middle of the room just looking at the furniture and finding somewhere he had, wonderful to say, come back to and found again.

He heard a step behind him and thought it was the servants. But a brush of gray as soft as the footsteps told him a further amazing thing before he even turned around.  “Master Emuin!”

“Tristen.” Emuin came and set his hands on his shoulders. “I wish I had foreseen more than I did.”

He had done badly, Emuin meant, on his own. He found himself facing the judgment of the only teacher he had alive, and found it a hard judgment of his choices. “I did what I knew, sir,” he said. “I tried to reach you.”

“You have met so much. A great deal of changes. A great deal. You’ve had to find your own way, young lord. And not done so badly, perhaps.

Tell me, tell me what you did, and saw, and how you found your way.”

Emuin held out hope of approval, which he was all too ready to grasp: but Emuin began to draw him into the gray space—which he feared since last night, and with the Regent dying, and with Ninévrisé—and the Shadows, and their Enemy. He refused; and Emuin stepped back of a sudden, ceasing to touch him.

He had not remembered Emuin’s face seeming so old, or so drawn, and Emuin, who had at first seemed so wise and calm, looked haggard and afraid. “I see,” Emuin murmured faintly, “I see, young lord.”

“Do you know all that’s happened? Hasufin was reaching out of Ynefel. But the lord Regent said he shouldn’t have Althalen, and wanted to be buried there—” Things made far better sense, telling them to Emuin, than they had to the lady, or than they would when he told them to

Cefwyn. “He said he’d listened to Hasufin too long. He came to Althalen to be buried because he feared he would be a bridge for Hasufin if he was buried anywhere else. And I brought the lady here, sir: her father wanted to talk to Cefwyn, and Cefwyn says he wants to marry her.”  “Merciful gods. Marry her.”

“I think—” he said, because he had had all the ride home to reason it out, “I think that the people of Emwy village were hiding the lord Regent. I think they knew he was there all along, and they protected him.

He was a good man. But now all the houses are burned and the people are Shadows. Idrys might have done it; he was going to burn the haystacks; but I think it was a man named Caswyddian, looking for the Regent. He found us—but the Shadows caught him. I don’t think he followed us out of Althalen. I heard the trees breaking.”

Emuin passed a hand over his face and went over to the table and sat down as if there were much more to hear. There was not. But Tristen went, too, and sat, feeling the weariness of what seemed now days in the saddle, Cefwyn’s father’s murder, and now this ride to and from the Regent’s death—there was so, so much in turmoil around him, and too many dying, whatever it meant to die—he could not puzzle it out. And he wanted to have Emuin tell him he had not been mistaken, and that he had not brought Cefwyn worse trouble.

“I should have been there,” Emuin said.

“Have I done wrong, sir?”

“It remains to see.”

“I’ve killed people. I fought Cefwyn’s enemies. But I—knew how, sir. It came to me—as other things do.”  “Did you do unjustly?”

“No, sir. I don’t think that I did.” It was a question the like of which Mauryl would have asked. It showed him a path down which he could think. “But is this what I was meant to do? Is fighting Cefwyn’s enemies what Mauryl wanted me to do? I thought by going on the Road I might find the answer, and I found the lady and the lord Regent. I think this was where I was supposed to go. But I can’t tell if this was what Mauryl wanted. How am I to know such things?”

“Gods, lad, if I only knew, myself. But you did very bravely.”

“Hasufin still has the tower, sir. He has that, and he might have Althalen, now. I don’t know. The old man, the lord Regent, was fighting to stop him. —He was a wizard. I think he was, at least.”

“The lord Regent?” Emuin sounded surprised. “Why so?”

“Because he went to the gray place. So did his daughter, but she didn’t know she could do it. Can only wizards go there?”

“The daughter can?”

“Yes, sir.”

Emuin drew a long, slow breath.

“Is it wrong to do?” Tristen asked, not understanding Emuin’s troubled expression.

“No. Not wrong. But dangerous—especially in that place. I have always told you it was dangerous.”

“Because of Hasufin.”

“Because of him, yes.”

“Could you have defeated him, if you were there?”

“Where Mauryl failed? I am not confident. I am far from confident.

And you must stay out of that place! You and she both must.”

“The lord Regent said—” He tried to follow the tangled reasoning that the lord Regent had told him, how it was easy to slip into Hasufin’s trickery, but all thinking was becoming a maze for him, like the dazedness that came with too much, too fast. His tongue forgot the words. His eyes were open, but they were ceasing to see things clearly. He was all of a sudden profoundly, helplessly weary, and knew he was where he could trust, and that there was his own bed very near him, which he wanted more than he wanted anything in the world.

“Poor lad,” Emuin said, as Mauryl would have said; or he dreamed, and rested his head on his hands. He heard the scrape of the chair as Mauryl rose, and he tried to wake. He felt the touch of a kindly hand on his back. He might have been in Ynefel again. He might have begun to dream.

“Poor m’lord,” someone said, and he heard someone say, “Put him to bed. He needs that most of all.”

He felt someone at his shoulder, heard Uwen’s voice then, saying, “On your feet, m’lord.”  “Emuin, —”

“Master Emuin’s gone to his supper, lad.” Uwen set an arm about him, and he waked enough to help Uwen, and to get his feet under him.

“Servants has got hot towels, m’lord, and your own bed is waitin’.”

He could walk for that. He let Uwen guide him to his own bedroom and set him down on a bench by the window. Uwen helped him off with the coat, and with the mail shirt, and with the boots, and then he sat and shivered in clothing that never had dried.

But the servants came with stacks of hot, wet towels, and he shed his clothing and let them comb his hair and shave him and warm him with the towels, until his eyes were shutting simply with the comfort, and he was near to falling asleep where he sat.