“Because it’s cold.”

“But why?” Tristen asked.

“I can’t say as I can answer,” Uwen said. “I can’t say as I ever asked anybody as would know. That’s a wizard-question. Breath’s warm.

Horses do that when they’re hot.”

“Give off steam?”

“They can.”

“That’s very odd,” Tristen said, and blew more steam at the glass and watched the magic instead of dressing in time for breakfast. He would have liked to ask master Emuin further about the ice and the steam, but Emuin did not wake much, except to eat, even yet, and then he had so fierce a headache Tristen wanted not to be near him. Emuin was angry at him, and upset, and would not see anyone. The priests kept praying in the shrine and called Emuin’s getting well a miracle of the gods, but Emuin called himself damned now and said it was his own fault for coming near him again.

That stung. But he told himself Emuin didn’t mean it that strongly, and that once Emuin was well, which Emuin would be, Emuin would be in a much better frame of mind. Meanwhile Emuin had confided in him that he was mending himself, far more slowly than he might—and that such strength as he had to spare at all, he gave to the King.

And Cefwyn was on his feet. Cefwyn was inquiring, Annas said, about the kitchens, the boys that were burned, and the whereabouts of Orien Aswydd, Idrys having told him that troubling matter and the reason of his wound not healing. Cefwyn came down the hall to visit master Emuin, using the hated stick the way Emuin peevishly said, lifting one blackened eyelid, that His Majesty should have done in the first place and not fallen down the stairs like a damned fool.

More kindly spoken, Ninévrisé came downstairs, made Cefwyn tea and fussed over him, Idrys fussed over him, Annas fussed over him-Tristen did the same, such as the others left him room: he brought Cefwyn reports from the pastures and the armory; he had done that yesterday. And he thought, in his collecting of cheerful things to tell Cefwyn, about telling him about people’s breaths steaming and the air turning cold, but he thought that it was probably much too commonplace a miracle to entertain Cefwyn.

Annas and Idrys gave orders and kept the household in order; servants were lugging water up the stairs and washing everything the smoke had smudged, and it turned out to have coated even walls that looked clean.

Cook had the courtyard full of tubs and fires going, while servants brought out the blackened pots and tables to scrub, and a master builder had taken a look at the timbers and masonry of the kitchen and given orders to a number of workmen. A pile of charcoaled pieces from the kitchen timbers fed the fires in the courtyard, and the smell of cooking vied with the lingering smell of smoke.

Wind bore down on the citadel that night, a noisy, cold wind, that had every fire lit and that rattled doors and windowpanes, but it seemed innocent. Cefwyn invited him, among others, and sat in front of the fireplace, in a comfortable chair, with his leg propped up, a quilt about him, a cup of wine in his hand, and his friends, as he said, around him:

Ninévrisé and Margolis came down, and he and Idrys and Annas were there. Efanor, more quiet than Tristen had ever seen him, came in while Ninévrisé was reading poetry aloud, and sat and listened, before he came and rested his hand on Cefwyn’s arm and in a quiet voice asked him how he fared and wished him and his lady well. The harper entertained them.

No one argued. No one mentioned Orien Aswydd. Efanor did not seem comfortable the entire evening, but he was there, and he was resolutely gracious to the lady, who, when he took his leave, early, seized his hands, looked at him and said quite gravely, and in everyone’s hearing, “Thank you.”

Efanor did not seem to know how to answer. He turned very red, and held the lady’s hands a moment looking at the floor as if he were trying to say something and could not decide what.  Then he said, “My lady,” and left.

Idrys cocked his head with a look at Cefwyn. Cefwyn was looking toward the door—or at Ninévrisé who was looking at the door. Tristen wondered what Efanor had thought of saying, and realized he had held his breath.

On the next day leaves lay thick about the land. Tristen rode Dys out and about the meadows, through an orchard bare-branched and piled with leaves that scattered under Dys’ huge feet. He on Dys and Uwen on Cass had chased a hare through the meadow and into the brush, and came back with the horses blowing steam into the chilly afternoon air.

And to his surprise and the guards’ distress, Cefwyn had come down to the pasture stables. He had ridden Danvy down, followed by a mounted guard. The chill had stung his face, and he was pale, but red-cheeked, and cheerful. “There you are,” he said, and rubbed his leg, if lightly. “Danvy does the walking, fairly sedately, thank you, but far, far less difficult than a sennight ago. I waked this morning feeling very little pain. I won’t attempt Kanwy—but I’d take a turn out and back with you.”

“Gladly,” Tristen said, and Cefwyn and he and Uwen and the guard rode out a good distance across the sheep-meadow.

“How do you find the young lad?” Cefwyn asked, and Tristen perceived he meant the horse under him.

“Very fine.” He slapped Dys on the neck, and, in truth, if one had asked which was which horse, he could have told Dys from Kanwy, but most could not, he thought. “I do like him. And I do thank you.”

Cefwyn talked to him then about Dys’ breeding and his line, and how Dys had been foaled on a bitter cold morning. Their breath made clouds.

Cefwyn tired quickly, but it seemed to him that Cefwyn was very much better very quickly.

“His Majesty looked good,” Uwen said later, “almost so’s you’d say he didn’t need that stick.”

He was glad of it. But not glad when he visited Emuin directly on his return to the Zeide, and found Emuin scarcely able to wake. He took Emuin’s hand, and knelt down by him, and said, into Emuin’s ear, so the good brothers who tended him should not hear: “I know what you did, master Emuin. Cefwyn is mending ever so fast. But you must do something for yourself now. Do you hear me, sir?”

Emuin gave no sign of hearing him. He was very frightened. He thought he ought to be able to do more. He wanted both of them,

Cefwyn and Emuin, to be well. Emuin had grown so thin, and his hair was all white now, so that he looked very much like Mauryl. The faces were different, but there was something in him that touched those memories and said, though it was not exactly, every-day true, that there had always been something about Mauryl that shone, and that Emuin had that quality, now.

“Master Emuin,” he said. Emuin’s hand was very frail, very smooth in his, as if it were becoming like fine silk, like dust on old boards, the way home had felt under his hands, in Ynefel. “Master Emuin. I am here. If there is anything in me that you can use, if there’s anything I can give or you can take, and it won’t prevent me from what Mauryl sent me to do- I am here. Do you hear me, sir? I want you to mend yourself!”

—Easier said than done, the answer came to him. But it seemed to him then that things grew dimmer, and the lines of the Zeide showed around them, blue, and faint, and brighter, then. He still wants in.

—Inside? he asked. Why inside, sir? Why not do harm to us outside? It was so reasonable a question he wondered he had never asked Mauryl.

And why, he wondered, at evening? And why indoors?

—Curious question, Emuin said. What is there about buildings?

About houses? Dwellings?

—That people live in them. It was like sitting with Mauryl, the question, the answer. Foolish boy, Mauryl would say. But perhaps his questions had gotten wiser, if not his answers.

—That people live in them, Emuin said ever so faintly, and the lines glowed bright. That we invest something here. That it becomes a Place for us. And we cannot be harmed.., in certain ways.., while that Place exists for us, even in our dreams. We must violate our own sanctuary, to be harmed.., in those ways. But your Place is also his. And his is also yours.