“And not after?”

“I couldn’t stay with him.” Emuin shook his head, and fingered that silver circle that he wore. “We differed. I walked the same sort of Road that you walked, my boy, the Road back into the world. Don’t be frightened here; this is a far less dangerous place than Ynefel.”  “I was never in danger there.”

“Truth, lad, you were in most dreadful danger. As was Mauryl. As events proved, I fear. Mauryl protected you. Mauryl saw to your escape.

Mauryl could do no more for you, and less for himself.”

Memory of that place was all he owned and Emuin’s words threatened to change it. “I was happy there. I want to be back there, master Emuin.”

“He was a demanding master, and he could be a terrible man. And well you should love him, if only that you never saw that other side of him. Patience never came easy for him.”  “He was good to me.”

“Tristen, you will hear hard things of him; they are many of them true.

He was feared; he was hated; and most of the ill that men say of him is true. But so, I very much believe, are all the things you remember. I tell you this because you will surely hear the ill that men do speak of him, and I would not have you confused by it. Hold to the truth you know of him; it is as true as any other truth, as whole as any truth men know, and I am vastly encouraged that you reflect a far gentler man than the master I knew.”

It was the same as when he had touched the hearthstones. The hand that had met the fire was never the same as it had gone in, having knowledge but never again the same joy of the light. That hand had been burned. The pain had entered his mind. And a little smooth scar remained of that moment, despite Mauryl’s comfort. In the same way he heard the truth about Mauryl, that Mauryl had existed before him, and outside him, and had had other students, who liked Mauryl less. He had no reason to think Emuin lied in his harsh judgment of Mauryl, who was his arbiter of all past right and wrong-as Emuin was his present master.

“Tristen,” Emuin said, “you say that you sat outside on the step the day Mauryl left you.”

“Yes, sir.” The sunlight turned colder. “I did.”

“What did you see there? What did you hear? What did you feel?”

“Dust. Wind. The wind took shape. It broke and became leaves. And the wind blew through the keep, and stones began to fall.”

“The wind took shape. What manner of shape?”

“It was a man.”

Emuin said nothing, then. Emuin’s face seemed more lined with age, more somber, more pale than he had been. He knew Emuin had not liked to hear what he had said. But it was the truth.

“It is too much to ask,” Emuin said, “that Mauryl in any sense prevailed; but he sheltered you, and I trust guided you to reach this shelter.

Do not think of going from this place. Whatever happens, do not you imagine going from here. I believe everything you say is the truth. I do not see falsehoods in you. Will you do as I say? Will you take my judgments in Mauryl’s place?”

“Yes, sir.” Tristen gazed at him, waiting for explanation, or instruction, and hardly felt the old man’s grip. The bearded face so like Mauryl’s swam in his eyes and confounded all memory. “Will you teach me as

Mauryl did?”

Emuin held his arms and drew him to his feet. “You and I should not stand in the same room. Not now.” With reluctance, the old man embraced him, then embraced him tightly. Tristen held to his frail body, not knowing why Emuin said what he said, but knowing Emuin’s embrace was unwilling until the very last, and knowing now that desertion was imminent.

Emuin set him back again, and for a moment there seemed both stern ness and anger in Emuin’s eyes. “Cefwyn will care for you.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. He could think of nothing worse than being abandoned to Cefwyn’s keeping, not even wandering in the woods. He looked down and Emuin shook at him gently, as Mauryl would.

“There is a good heart in Cefwyn, Tristen. He was my student, and I know his heart—which is a fair one, and a guarded one. Many people try to gain his favor, not always for good or wise intentions, so he makes the way to his favor full of twists and turns, but there is, once you have overcome all barriers, a good heart in him. He is also a prince of Ylesuin and his father’s right hand in this region, and you must respect him as a lord and prince, but mind, mind, too, —now that I think on it, —never take all that Cefwyn says for divine truth, either. He will be honest, as it seems to him at the moment, but his mind may change with better thought. Like you, he is young. Like you, he makes mistakes. And like you, he is in danger. Learn caution from him. Don’t learn his bad habits, mind! —but expect him to be fair. Even generous. As I cannot be to you.

As I dare not be.”

“Yes, sir.”

The place they stood grew brighter and brighter, until it was all white and gray, like pearl; and the light came out of Emuin, or was all through Emuin, and through him.

—You are indeed, Emuin said, seeming, finally well-pleased in him.

You are indeed his work, young Tristen. Hold my band. Keep bolding it.

Keep on.

He could scarcely get a breath, then, and was standing on the pondside beside the bench. But Emuin was far away from him, halfway to the door; and with his back to him, walking away down the flagstone path.

—There is no leaving, young sir. You cannot find Mauryl again. But you can find me, at your need. Do not come here oftener than you must.

I strictly forbid it. So can your Enemy reach this place. Do not bring him here. And do not linger in the light. At your urgent need only, Tristen. To do otherwise will put us both in danger.

It was like a brush of Emuin’s hand across his face. Like a kindly touch, as Mauryl had touched him. And a warning of an Enemy that frightened him with scarcely more than that fleeting Word. He knew that Emuin was going away, but not as Mauryl had gone—there was a Place that Emuin would go to, and it was measured across the land and down the Road, and was not here—but it was not death.

He knew that something had happened to Mauryl, and that there was a danger, and that it dwelled in the light as well as in Ynefel, rendering that gray space dangerous for him to linger in.

Emuin vanished within a distant doorway, rimmed with vines, a green arch above the path.

And a gust of wind skirled along the gravel, kicking up dust. There was a fluttering sound, as the wind went ruffling callously through the pages of his abandoned books.

He had been careless. He did not like such breezes. He went and gathered up Mauryl’s Book and the Philosophy both from the bench, closed and pressed the precious pages together, under the watch of his patient guards.

But he had nowhere he had to go, nothing now that he was bound to do but what Emuin had bidden him do. He sat on the stone bench and thought about that, watching the fish come and go under the reflections on the surface until the shadow from the wall made the water clear, and he knew his guards, who had no interest of their own in books or birds or fish, were restless, if only to walk somewhere else for the hour.

Chapter 11

He heard a clatter in the yard in the morning, and a great deal of it. It brought him from his bed and sent him to the door to ask the guards, who, in their way, knew most things that went on.

“We ain’t to talk,” the one named Syllan chided him, “m’lord.’

“Master Emuin,” said Aren, the one who would talk, sometimes, in single words and with his head ducked. “Leaving.”

“Leaving,” Tristen echoed, distraught, and flew inside to dress without the servants, without his breakfast, without attention to his person.

He was in his clothes and out the door, as quickly as ever he had dressed in his life, in Ynefel or in Henas’amef. “I wish to go downstairs, sirs.”