He all but dropped the reins, and caught his breath as Cefwyn said sharply, “Tristen!” and Gery bumped Cefwyn’s horse—his fault, he knew. His knee in Gery’s ribs had caused Gery to drift; the uneven hand, the uneven seat—he suddenly knew with exquisite precision where his hands were and where his knees were, and how Gery had understood every move, every shift of weight he made. He straightened around, found his balance, found the right stress on the reins that made Gery know where to be and Gery at once struck a different, confident stride.

Gery looked to him, he thought, as he looked to his teachers; Gery, like him, wanted to do right, and wanted to understand, and he was talking to her with his knees and the reins alike as they went clattering at a fair speed through the streets, past all the buildings, all the scaffoldings and the shuttered windows and the fine buildings and the less fine, all the way down to the level courtyard by the main town gate, which he had once passed behind an idle cart, slipping past the guards.

But the gates stood wide for them and the guards there stood to attention as they went out with a rush onto the open and dusty road, out through the fields, toward his Road—

But not onto it. They went along the wall, and they went past the town, toward the horizon of rolling fields.

Then Idrys and the men in front slacked their pace, and Cefwyn did, and all the column behind.

Men outside the walls were already at work, already walking the roads, carrying hoes or mattocks or other such. The countryside was awake far and wide as the light came stealing over the fields.

“You ride well,” Cefwyn said, “Tristen.”

“Sir?” He shook off the haze that had come on him, blinked and brought the morning into clarity again, the fields, the creak of leather and the ring of harness—the give and substance of mail that surrounded him.

“You ride well. In the streets, you rode well. And you say you have never sat a horse.”

“Some things come to me.” He patted Gery’s neck, overwhelmed with the feel of her, with the smells and the sounds around him. He was trembling. He wished to make little of it, but Cefwyn cast him such a look that he knew he had not succeeded in indifference; and he feared that calculation in Cefwyn’s eyes.

“Mauryl’s doing,” Cefwyn said. “Is it?”

“I know things. I read and write. I—ride.” Gery’s warmth comforted him. He kept his hand on her. He felt her strength and good will under him. “I didn’t know I knew, m’lord Prince.”

Cefwyn frowned. The horses kept their steady pace and if Idrys or Uwen heard what passed between them, they gave no sign of it.

“You know it very damned well,” Cefwyn said. “For down a hill and out a gate.”

“It’s like Words. I know them, sir. I know things.”

“Am I to believe you?” Cefwyn said at last.

“Yes, sir,” he said faintly, fearing to look at Cefwyn. Good things seemed always balanced on edge, always ready to leave. He did look, finally, as they rode, and Cefwyn stared at him in a way different from other people, even Mauryl, even Emuin—afraid of him; but not angry with him, he thought, nor willing to abandon him.

He knew not what to do or say. He looked away, embarrassed, not knowing whether he should have perceived this fact of Cefwyn. They rode in silence a time, well past the walls, now, and out along a narrow track where men rode two by two as the road went around the west side of the town and toward the rolling fields and pastures. The Dragon banners fluttered and snapped ahead of them, carried by young men. The morning sun glanced silver off a small brook in the valley. Hills rose on the eastern horizon, just past their shoulders, and beyond them—perhaps the Shadow Hills, perhaps even the mountains Mauryl had named to him, Ilen61uin, drifted in morning haze.

In the west were lower hills. The forest was that way. Marna Wood lay that way, and south. He knew. He gazed in that direction, remembering that dark path, remembering the wind in the leaves.

“A long walk.” Cefwyn’s voice startled him.

“Yes, m’lord.”

“A fearsome walk.”

“It was, m’lord.”

“Would it fright you now?”

“Yes, m’lord.” He did not think they would ride that way. He hoped they had no such plans. “The horses could not cross the bridge.” That thought came to him.

“Bridges can be mended.”

“The stones are old.”

“Wizardry raised them. Wizardry could mend them, could it not?”

“I don’t know, sir. Mauryl would have known. Emuin might know.

We never saw any men, ever.”

“Elwynim press at us. The skulls above the gate? Those are Elwynim.”

“Did those men steal sheep from Emwy?”

“They came to kill me.”

He found it shocking. “I don’t know about that, sir.”

“Don’t you?”

“No, sir. M’lord Prince. I don’t at all.”

“Mauryl knew. Mauryl assuredly knew.”

“He didn’t tell me, sir. He didn’t tell me everything.” He became afraid, here, riding alone with Cefwyn, with no advice from anyone, and with the talk drifting to killing and stealing. “What should I know?”  “Uleman.”

“Is that a name, sir?”

“One might say,” Cefwyn said, seeming in ill humor. Then Ce00vyn said:

“The Regent of Elwynor. That must mean something to you.”

Names, again. Words. Tristen shut his eyes a moment, and there was nothing in his thoughts, only confusion, Words that would not, this morning, take shape. “I don’t know. I don’t know, sir.”  “I thought you just—knew things.”

“Reading. Writing. Riding. Words. Names. But I don’t know anyone in Elwynor, sir. Nothing comes to me.”

He was afraid to have failed the test. For a time Cefwyn looked at him in that hard and puzzled way, but, unable to answer, he found interest in Gery’s mane. It was coarser than a man’s hair. It was clipped short, and stood up straight. He liked to touch it. It was something to do.

“Tristen,” Cefwyn said sharply.

“Sir.” His heart jumped. He looked to find what his fault was. Perhaps even his respectful silence. Cefwyn kept staring at him as they rode side by side. He was afraid of Cefwyn when Cefwyn looked like that.

“Ninévrisé. Does that name come to you? Does Ilefinian, perchance?”

“Ilefinian is the fortress of the Elwynim.”

“And? What does that name conjure?”

He shook his head. “I have no idea, m’lord. Nothing.”

“Such names don’t come to you.”

“No, m’lord.”

“Do you take me for a fool?”

“No, sir. I don’t think you are at all.”

“And where do you find your truths? Do they come to you—” Cefwyn waved his hand. “—out of the air? The pigeons tell you, perhaps.”  “My teachers do.”

“Your teacher is dead, man. Emuin is gone. He fled to holy sanctuary.

Who teaches you now?”  “You, m’lord.”

“I? I am many things—but no teacher, I assure you. And damned certainly no moral guide.”

“But I have to believe you, my lord. I have no other means to know.”

He was afraid, and shaken by Cefwyn’s rough insistence on what he knew must be the truth. “The philosophy I read makes no sense of Names. Rarely of Words.”

“Gods witness,” Cefwyn said after a moment, “gods witness I am a man, not a cursed priest. Choose some other. At large and random you could fare better.”

“Emuin said to listen to you.”

“Then damn Emuin! I am not your guide, man. Moral or otherwise.

—Would you believe anything I told you?”

“I believe everything you’ve told me, m’lord Prince.” The prospect of doubt in things he had taken for true was sufficient to send sweat coursing over his skin. “I must believe you, sir. I have no other judgment, except to judge the people that tell me.”

“Gods.” Cefwyn slumped in his saddle, then suddenly took up the reins. “Follow me!” he said, and spurred around Idrys and past the van-  guard.

Tristen followed; Idrys and Uwen would have, but Cefwyn turned and shouted, ordering their separate guards back. Their lead widened until they two rode alone with the escort far too distant to hear.