Mauryl dead. And this, this vacant-eyed youth come in his place ... one could hear the rumors starting. One could hear the gate-guards gossip to their Amefin cohorts, and the lower town guards to the baker and the butcher, and them to the miller and the pigherds, and from there, gods knew, over the fields to the villages, to the hills, to the Elwynim across the river and the Olmern who supplied the old tower with flour, and back again. By the time it had made three trips, Mauryl would have perished in fire and sorceries. Mauryl would have cast himself in stone. Mauryl would have set a curse on the precinct of the tower to entrap any fool who ventured there, Mauryl would have raised cohorts of the dead—  Mauryl would have sent this young man-    For what? For what purpose, in the gods’ good name, did Mauryl send this innocent-seeming creature, and to him? To him, when all Mauryl’s legendary interventions had been to the ruin of kings Mauryl served?

The candle began to drown and sputter in its own wax, the ceiling to dim at the corners. Cefwyn rolled aside and rescued the flame, tipped the wax out, let the candle flare and the wax puddle and dry on the marble tabletop. He did not trust his reason in the dark, and sleep, as he had foreknown, was entirely eluding him.

In the small, secret shrine contained within the Bryaltine lane, Emuin sat on a low bench, hands locked upon each other, and the sweat stood on his face.

His thoughts strayed persistently from the meditations he attempted and other thoughts crept in like hunting wolves, in a darkness that pressed upon the light of the candles. It was a nook of solid stone, all about it thick stone containing other nooks dedicated to other gods, a place permeated with diverse beliefs. It was isolate, it was silent, it was surrounded by other prayers that should have made him immune to fear or to sorcerous intrusion. He clenched his hands and muttered the ancient ritual aloud, trying to prevent the wit-wandering that was suddenly so dangerous, so permissive of fatal indiscretion.

Mauryl, Mauryl, Mauryl, his thoughts ran, with more grief than he had ever remotely thought he would feel for the old reprobate; and for a moment despite the candles blazing at arm’s length on the altar in front of his face the darkness in the shrine felt almost complete. Such was the distress in his soul.

I am the last of us, he thought, trying to foresee the personal, moral import of Mauryl’s passing; and in doing that, met another realization, inevitably that other name: Hasufin.

The sweat broke and trickled down his temples, and his hand moved to the Teranthine sigil at his breast, silver that—whether chill, whether hot—seemed to burn his hands. He opened his eyes on the candles he had lit and set in a pattern about this private shrine, a pattern itself of obscure significance even in Amefel, whose ancestral roots went deep.

There were thirty-eight candles that burned hot and bright, that drowned in light the memory of murder, that drowned in their heavy scent of incensed wax the remembered stink of blood.

But the years ran like water. They trickled through the fingers when a young man shut his fist, and then he was old, and men were knocking at his door at night and showing him a young man whose mere existence told him the extreme, the consummate skill which Mauryl had reached-a knowledge which no wizard before him had attained, not counting Hasufin’s abomination at Althalen. Mauryl had done this—created this—Summoned this.

Without telling him what he planned. Without asking help.

But did Mauryl Gestaurien ever ask help of him?

Only once.

Damn him! Emuin thought, and caught a breath and smothered his anger in prudent, clammy-handed terror. Even yet, he felt fear of the old man’s cruel rages. Fear of the old man’s skill. Fear of the old man’s deep and mazelike secrecies about his past, his present, his ambitions.

Fear ... counting the state of young Tristen’s wits, or lack of them. Fear of his innocence, his unwise trust. Fear that Mauryl might have fallen short of his ultimate, perhaps killing effort, to Shape this creature, then, and last and cruelly cynical act, passed the flawed gift to him.  Damn him twice.

Mauryl gone from the world. It was thoroughly incredible to him.

It must be done, Mauryl had whispered that night, three generations ago, as men reckoned years. Destroy his body. Trap him where he wanders.

Leave him stranded forever. It’s our only chance against him.

Gods, how had he listened to Mauryl? How had he broken through the spells that ringed that chamber and that sleeping child, and carrying silvered steel, which should have blasted the hand that wielded it?

I will hold him a time elsewhere, Mauryl had said. Only be swift, and do not flinch. He is not the child he seems. He is not a child, mark me. Not for nine hundred years. Hasufin is the spirit’s name. The child died—fourteen years ago. At its birth.

The body had had so much blood, so much blood. He had never imagined that blood would strike the walls, his robe, his face—he had never imagined the feeling of it drying on his skin when for the entire night of fire and murder he was waiting for Mauryl to rescue him from the collapsing wards, an entire night not knowing whether that eldritch soul was indeed banished or loosed within the chamber with him.

Go, get you away, Mauryl had said to him, after. Man of doubts, get you away from this business. Doubt elsewhere. Doubt for those with too much confidence. You will never want for usefulness.

That spirit had, Mauryl swore, gone back to a very ancient grave, dispelled, dispersed—discomfited, but not, it had become very clear, destroyed. Mauryl had taken the tower of lost souls and Sihhé magics, had held the line for decades against that baneful, outraged soul.

It had seemed it would hold forever. That no more would ever be required—of him, at least. Mauryl had not entrusted the dreadful tower to him, nor offered to. Mauryl had not called him to further study. After his obedience, after his survival where all others perished, Mauryl had harshly dismissed him, bidden him live his life in modest quiet afterward and to barrier his soul by whatever means he could.

I shall not call you, Mauryl had said. An end of us. I take no more students. An end of folly, for this generation.

For this generation. For this generation and two more. He had held the truth from two Marhanen kings—and taught their heir.., at once more and less than he wished.

Emuin thrust himself to his feet, limping in the aches and stiffness of old age he had, for a dozen heartbeats and in the grip of potent memory, forgotten. He wiped a gnarled hand across his lips, cast his thoughts this way and that from the path his devotions and his conscience directed as his personal salvation.

I cannot manage this, he thought, refusing this new thing as he had tried to refuse new things the night Althalen fell. Mauryl had chided him for his trepidations. Called him coward. And relied on him because Mauryl had no one else fool enough—wizard enough—to attempt that warded chamber while Mauryl fought by less physical means.

And now that Mauryl had attempted this Shaping without advising him and without seeking help from him—now that Mauryl was dead and his work came down to a feckless, hapless youth, at risk and unguarded,

—now did Mauryl have the audacity to send the unformed and vulnerable issue of his folly to him to guard?

Where was Emuin the coward in that reckoning? Where was the contemptuous advice to defend his own soul and renounce wizardry favor of pious self-defense?

Save himself for this moment? Was that Mauryl’s reasoning?

Unnoticed, out of the fray, moldering his youth and his time away might have been, losing the years he might have added to his life—all the while waiting for Mauryl’s hour of decision?  And Mauryl never telling him?