Or—failing that—the burning of blessed candles. The Teranthine medal—is that his choice?”

“I gave it to him,” Cefwyn said sharply, and whatever sectarian debate the physician was about to raise died unsaid. “Holy candles, is  it?”

“He needs a priest.”

“He needs a physician!” Cefwyn snapped. “I engaged you from the capital because I was assured of your skill. Was I misinformed, sir?”

“Your Highness, there are—” A clearing of the throat. “—rumors of his unwholesome provenance. —And if it is true that he came from Ynefel, I understand why you have engaged no priest. Yet I have risked the inquiry, Your Highness, and made the recommendation. Perhaps a lay member—”

“A plague on your candles. What in the gods’ name ails him?”

“Not a bodily ill.”

“A priest, you say.”

“I would not for my own soul stay an hour in Althalen; the feverous humors of that place, particularly at evening—”

“Out on you! You’ve never come near Althalen!”

“Nor ever hope to, Your Highness.” Secure in his physician’s robes, his officerships in the guild, and in his doddering age, the man gathered up his medications, restored each vial, each mirror, each arcane instrument to its place, while the patient slept unimproved and an unlettered soldier did the only things that seemed effective, kneeling by the bedside and talking, simply talking.

Baggage packed, the dotard pattered to the door and opened it.

Guards closed it after him. They were Guelen men, of the Prince’s Guard, men he trusted—as he would have thought he could have trusted the Guelen physician not to be affrighted by the unorthodox goings-on of a largely heretic province.

But Uwen stayed, on his knees, arms on the bedside, pouring into the sleeper’s ear how red Gery was to be let out to pasture tomorrow with his own horse for a well-earned rest, how she’d taken no great harm of the run Tristen had put her to, and how he was very sorry to have left Tristen in the woods, but he’d had the prince’s orders to ride to town and he had done that.

Uwen had indeed done that. With two of Uwen’s comrades dead and Uwen himself struck on the head with a sling-stone that might have cracked a less stubborn skull, Uwen Lewen’s-son had ridden his own horse to the limit and roused Lord Captain Kerdin and a squad of the regular Guard in an amazingly short time. Then, instead of pleading off as he well might have done with his injury, Uwen had changed horses and ridden with the rescue, joined of course by His Grace Heryn Aswydd’s oh-so-earnest self.

Uwen Lewen’s-son had stayed with his charge all day and night after, besides his breakneck ride and a lump on his skull the size of an egg.

Uwen had bathed the man, warmed the man from the chill that possessed him, and talked to an apparently unhearing ear until he was hoarse.

Uwen had hovered and worried without the least regard to his captain’s casually permissive order to retire, and not expected a prince’s reward for his staying on duty, either.

“You’ve done him more good all along than that learned fool’s advice,” Cefwyn said. “But there’s no change. I’ll have reliable men watch him. Do go to bed, man.”

“By your leave,” Uwen said in his thread of a voice. “By your leave, Your Highness, I had to leave him in the woods. I’d not leave him to no priest who won’t stir for thunder. I’d rather stay.”

So Uwen Lewen’s-son had looked Mauryl’s work in the eyes, too, poor ensorcelled fool. Idrys had called Uwen a longtime veteran of the borders, a man of the villages, not of the Guelen court, but long enough about the borders to know wizard tricks and sleight-of-hand; and to know now—a shiver went through his stomach—what the hedge-wizards only counterfeited to do.

He recalled the gust of wind that had skirled around the old woman in Emwy. That was either a timely piece of luck, or it was something entirely different. Tristen had been involved. Therefore Mauryl had.

Kerdin, in a moment out of Heryn’s hearing, had wanted to send a force of Guelen men to occupy Emwy and poke and pry into local secrets; Idrys, having seen the area himself, had wagered privately that such a force would find bridges as well as witches, and advised them, in colder counsel and with his prince safe in retreat, that they ought well to consider how much they wished to discover, and when.

Heryn, during that ride home, had said the horsemen whose sign they had seen near Raven’s Knob might have been nothing more sinister than his own rangers, going about their ordinary business and keeping out of sight.

Then where are Emwy’s young men? he had asked Heryn plainly, himself, and Heryn, always ready with an answer, had said they were in fact hunting outlaws, that Emwy district had indeed lost numerous sheep, and that the prince was entirely mistaken and misled if he thought there was possibly aught amiss in Emwy.

That meant that the prince, the Lord Commander, and his company had foolishly panicked at the sign of friendly Amefin rangers, that they had fled those friendly forces in confusion, and outlaws—outlaws, where supposedly Heryn’s rangers were thick!—had shot and slung from ambush, killing the prince’s men, for which they would pay—so Heryn Aswydd swore.

The bedside candle, aromatic with herbs, not holy oil, broke a waxen dam at its crest and sent a puddle down the candlestick and down again to the catch-pan beneath it. The puddle glowed like the sleeper’s skin, pale, damp, flawless.

Heryn had implied, by what he had said, that the prince and the Lord Commander of the Prince’s Guard, who, himself, had led His Majesty’s forces in border skirmishes before this, were fools, starting at shadows.

Or Heryn thought to this very moment that the prince and his Lord Commander were fools to be tricked by shadows.

Shadows of which Amefel had many, many, in its secret nooks and

Missing stuff

“Yes?”

“The physician didn’t hint at any cause, Your Highness? I seen men hit on the head, m’lord, or knocked in the gut, and I seen ’em sleep like this.” Uwen’s scarred chin wobbled. “I didn’t think he’d fallen, Your Highness, and I couldn’t feel aught amiss, but maybe he sort of cracked his head, or one of them slingers—”

“He had a good soldier’s helm till he lost it, Lewen’s-son. Where was yours?”

“I guess I give it him, Your Highness.”

“So your own head is the chancy one, isn’t it? No, Lewen’s-son. This is Mauryl’s working, and by Mauryl’s working he lives or not.”  “They say Mauryl’s dead, Your Highness.”

“That they do. And perhaps the old man’s work is unraveling. Or maybe it isn’t. If we knew, then we’d be wizards and our own souls would be in danger, so I’d not ask, man. I’d just keep the fool covered and pour a little brandy wine down him if he wakes. You could bake bread in this room, gods, and it won’t warm him.”

“I been thinkin’ of warming stones. Summer ’n all, Your Highness, if we could once get ’im warm ...”

“It could do no worse. Tell the servants.” He gave a shake of his head and walked out, through the anteroom where Lewen’s-son had a bed he refused to use, and across the hall where Guelenmen stood guard over his own quarters. It was a larger room he’d allotted Tristen. It was a finer room, but that was beside the point for a man who might not wake. It was—the holy gods knew, a twinge of conscience, that he’d so failed Emuin’s simple behest to take care of their visitor.

He’d sent to Emuin, last night, post-haste, a royal courier, one of twelve such silver tags which the King in his expectations of calamity had allotted his son and heir. They allowed a courier anything he needed anywhere along his route, under extreme penalty for refusal of his demands.

He’d not used a one, before last night.

He’d not needed one before last night. Or had, counting what had been quietly going amiss over in Emwy district, and he had failed to see it growing.