Cefwyn set his foot in the seat of the chair, dragged the great codex up on his knee and inclined the whole face of the page to the light of the same dusty window. “The account of the taking of Althalen by the Marhanens.”
He looked up to see Tristen, whether that face was contrite, puzzled, angry, or any other readable expression. Window light made it still a white, forbidding mask. He took a loose parchment from the table and laid it on that open page for a marker, closed the codex and gave the massive volume into Idrys’ keeping, dust and all.
He looked at Tristen to see what Tristen thought of that—which seemed no more than Tristen thought of his intervention here at all. The frightened Amefin chief archivist stood in the shadow of the stacks by the other archway.
“How did he find this book?” Cefwyn asked, fixing that man with his stare. “Did he ask? Did you suggest it him?”
“He—asked for a history of Althalen, Your Highness.”
Cefwyn cast a look about the other volumes stacked high on the tables all around him: census files, tax records, deeds of sale, meager books of poetics, science, and philosophy. And history. Oh, indeed, Amefel had history.
He looked toward Idrys’ black shape and frowning countenance.
“There are witnesses,” Idrys cautioned him, meaning that his questions were already too full of particulars and betrayed too much. “Tristen,” Cefwyn said mildly, “walk with me.”
“Yes, m’lord,” Tristen said meekly. He looked into light as he bowed and the gray eyes seemed as naked as ever they had been. Fear was there.
Cefwyn thought so, at least. Bewilderment. All the things that might placate an angry prince.
Tristen turned, started to pass Idrys on his way to the door, but Idrys, unbidden, set down the book, laid a hand on Tristen’s arm, and roughly searched him for weapons. Tristen endured it, stone-still, in midstep.
It was carrying matters too far, unordered: a protest leapt to Cefwyn’s lips, in Tristen’s defense, this time; but on a morning like this, in a hostile hall, a prince was a fool who blunted his guards’ attention to his protection. When it was done, Tristen continued down the aisle of the library,
20O seeming only mildly disturbed by an indignity that would have racketed to the King’s ear had Idrys inflicted it on Heryn or Heryn’s familiars. He walked behind with Idrys while Tristen walked ahead in a downcast privacy and careless dignity that, had Idrys stripped him naked, he did not think Idrys could have breached. It was no astonished, defenseless youth such as Emuin had brought him that night in the lesser hall. This morning the jaw was set. The broad shoulders, in velvet and silk, declared a restraint of self, emanating not from fear but from fearlessness, and he did not think Idrys failed to be aware of whether a man feared or disregarded an outrageous interference in his affairs.
Tristen walked down the aisle of cluttered tables, past the business of account-gathering and agitated archivists, and the guards joined them at the door, escorting them down the corridor and up the stairs.
Anger blinded him, Cefwyn saw that in himself now, anger he had not let break. Anger had gathered in his chest and dammed up his reason; and now came a strange sense of grief, of betrayal, if he could lay a word on it: loss—of some rare and precious treasure that he had briefly seen, desperately longed for in this man.
Mauryl’s gift, he reminded himself, in a morning fraught with dealings with traitors, in a morning after breakfast with Heryn Aswydd. It was Mauryl’s Shaping of present flesh and something other; and, given he had adequate wit to rule a province, he should have seen hazard in Tristen’s fecklessness toward all and sundry threats; he should have seen it did not come of helplessness, but of Mauryl’s work. He should have armored himself and steeled his heart.
And had not, had not. Had not.
Upstairs, safe behind the doors of his apartment, he looked again into that too-clear gaze and met the absolute challenge to trust that Tristen posed.
“Out,” he said to the guards, but Idrys did not budge. “Out, Idrys.”
“In this alone I am your father’s man, my lord Prince. I will stay.”
Tristen stood alone by the table. The book lay beside him. Cefwyn sat down by it, laid his arm on the leather, fingered the edges of it.
“Why,” he asked, looking up at Tristen, “why did Mauryl send you to me?”
“He did not send me to you, sir, not in anything he told me.”
“One forgets. The road brought you.”
“The road did, yes, m’lord.”
“Did you sleep well last night?”
“I slept, yes, m’lord.”
“Rather long, as happened.”
“Uwen says I did, sir.” There was the least edge of distress, now. “I had no knowledge of it.”
“What happened in Althalen? What did you see? Ghosts?”
“No, m’lord.” Wariness crept in. “Nothing happened.”
“You rode with the devil on your heels. You rode such a course as I’ve scarcely seen and none including myself could overtake. And you never having ridden. How did you manage?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Wizardry?”
“No, sir.” The voice was faint. Respectful. Convincing, if less in the province were amiss. “I was afraid.”
Tristen had a faculty for adding the unexpected, the ridiculous, that tempted a man even in the heat of temper to burst out in laughter.
“Afraid.”
“There was something very bad there, m’lord Prince.”
“Something bad,” he echoed. A child’s word. A child’s look in eyes gray as a boundless sea. He refused to be turned from anger this time. “So you broke from the company, you risked lives, you deserted me, you deserted the men guarding you, and rushed onto the road into the hands of you knew not whom, because something bad frightened you.” “Yes, sir.”
“‘Yes, sir.’ Say something more than ‘yes, sir,’ ‘yes, m’lord,’ ‘beg your grace, m’lord Prince.’ These are serious matters, Tristen, and I refuse to be set aside with ‘yes, m’lord.’ If I ask you, I want a full and considered answer in this matter. What frightened you? Something bad? Good living gods, man, credit me for good will, and tell me what you saw.”
A breath. A settling. “I don’t know, sir. I don’t remember all that I saw or all that I did, or where I was. I thought I was doing what I ought. But I thought you and the soldiers were behind me. I thought you were there.”
“Damn you! you knew. You knew where we were!”
“No, sir. I did not.”
“Men die for such mistakes, Tristen.”
“Yes, sir,” the answer came faintly.
“You damned near killed your horse, damned near killed me, and half the men with us. If it wasn’t wizardry that carried you safe over those jumps, I should assess that mare’s foals for wings. —And, damn you, don’t look at me like a simpleton! You say you’re not simple. You claim Mauryl for your teacher. You say there’s nothing unnatural about your riding, your appearance, or your coming here. You say there was nothing unnatural in your sleep nor in your waking. What do you think me? A fool?”
“No, sir.”
Fainter still. More contrite. Cefwyn averted his eyes from that look that compelled belief. He opened the huge book and turned to the place the loose parchment marked.
“What did you seek in this book?” he asked Tristen without looking up. “What do you seek in the one Mauryl gave you? —Who were you before Mauryl set hand to you?”
There was no answer. He looked up and saw Tristen’s face had turned quite, quite pale.
“I don’t know, sir.”
“What did he send you to do?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“I want more answer than that. I want your honest, considerate opinion.”
“I know, sir. But I don’t—I don’t understand—what I was to do. I don’t even understand—what I am. I think—I think—”
Finish it, Cefwyn thought, his own heart beating in terror, because Tristen had gone beyond what he asked, went beyond, in his wondering, what he would ever want to know of wizard-work—because there were answers, and there was, he suddenly realized it in the context of Tristen’s vacillations between feckless acceptance and that severe, terrible self-confrontation, —there was somewhere a truth. He was Emuin’s student as Tristen was Mauryl’s. He had learned no wizardry but he had learned its peculiar logic. There was a reason Tristen had not read Mauryl’s strange book. There was a reason Tristen had gotten onto the red mare uncertain of the reins and hours later terrified him in a hellbent rush he could not match with a better horse.