“It was Mauryl who Called me.”

Efanor seemed to think the matter over for some few moments.

“But the gods will all that’s good,” Efanor said finally. “Harm never comes from them. Magic can harm.”

“Against the gods’ will? Is magic more powerful?”

“For a time. Only for a time. The gods set all things right.”

“Then the gods would have defeated Mauryl’s enemy without Mauryl?”

“Perhaps not in a time convenient for us,” Efanor said.

“But if they can prevent harm and will not to do that, then is that justice?”

Efanor stopped a second time, and now he was frowning. “The Brisin Heresy holds so. A wrong view. The gods cannot be unjust.”

“But if so many died and the gods might prevent it—”

“Perhaps we should go to the book,” Efanor said, in that way Emuin had with him, too, when he had persisted too long in a question. “Read the first devotion. Aloud. Let us begin on firmer ground.”

He was slightly dubious, unsatisfied in his suspicion that, if the gods were greater than magic, then they might have prevented Hasufin altogether, saved very many lives and set the kingdoms in the very peace they were seeking through war with Tasmôrden. But perhaps it was deeper than that. And on any account he was not willing to offend Efanor, who was here for his good, and for Cefwyn’s. He was anxious about reading the book, as Efanor wished him to do: he feared Words far more than he feared knives on any ordinary day, but he opened the little book to its first page, and read: “ Blessed are the Five Gods by whom all the earth is blessed. Blessed is the man who hears their voice…” So it wasa voice, he thought. That was what he should be hearing. “ Blessed is the man who does their will…” That made Blessed clearer. He read, and heard no god’s voice, nor even Emuin’s or Ninévrisë’s, only the crackle of the fire. The text went on some little time regarding Blessedness, which seemed to bear on the gods and their approval, and probably on having the gods for allies. It seemed desirable, if the gods wanted safety for his friends, and if they could be trusted.

“Are the Teranthine gods the same?” he asked, interrupting his reading.

“Mostly,” Efanor said. “Except the Teranthines believe in indulgence for sins. And allow”—Efanor hesitated and seemed to choose a word carefully— “master Emuin’s curiosities. You might be Teranthine, easier. It has a much wider gate—Yet it seems you refuse it.”

“Not refuse. Master Emuin has never offered to teach me.”

“Read the devotionals. Practice the things I will show you, merely the forms, merely the show of respect. Read that each day. If you fail the Quinalt, there may be hope in the Teranthines. You could do worse than that for your soul. And pray the gods send you understanding.”

“Read until the Words Unfold to me? Like that?”

“Gods forfend.” Efanor knew about the Unfolding, if not the gray place. Whether a godly man ever experienced that Unfolding or not was a question. “It’s not magic. Remember that. Use no conjury—I charge you, no conjury.”

“But the Words will Unfold, all the same?” A wizard’s book held dangers and knowledge. He had lost Mauryl, who had used to explain things to him, and since in large part lately he had lost Emuin, Unfolding had replaced those guides, an understanding that had arrived continually, sometimes with a chill and a fear and sometimes with delight, all paths down which he sometimes began to suspect Emuin himself could not follow. “Your Highness, with all my heart, I thank you for coming here.”

“Love the gods,” Efanor said. “Love those who made the earth and everything in it.”

“Do they make the seasons and the forests?”

“The mountains and the sky, the rivers and the sunsets and all.”

It had never occurred to him to wonder how the mountains and the forests came to be. He thought rather that the forests grew from acorns and such, and that mountains simply were. Nothing greater Unfolded, nothing in fact Unfolded at all, so perhaps he had found no key to it yet. It caught his curiosity but offered no answers.

But where hadthe world and the mountains come from?

Darkness gaped around that wondering. He saw looming ahead of his inquiry that Edge the gray place could make, the place toward which he had no wish at all to go. He all but dropped the book, and came back to himself with a skip of his heart, sweating, finding himself all too close to wizardry.

But Efanor had never stopped talking. Efanor rattled on about the gods’ making of the world, and how the Five Gods had shaped the hills and made the rain come at their whim, pouring water down from the fountains of heaven.

Fountains of heaven, Tristen said to himself distressedly. Were there discrete sources of water aloft? None of that agreed with the gathering in the air that he felt as the rain and the clouds, on which he was sure Emuin could call at need: which he supposed that he could call on, too, though he had never tried. Everything Efanor said should have excited his heart; but none of what Efanor said now about making all the world perfect explained the weather or a forest in all its changes.

“If the world is perfect, why should there be seasons?” he asked before he thought.

“Because the gods will that there should be seasons,” Efanor said.

“But if they made it perfect,” he began, venturing just a step further, Efanor seeming so sure on that point; and Efanor interrupted him:

“Perfect in its changes.”

That was indeed like Mauryl when he asked too much, not to hear the question.

Why should there be seasons? he still asked himself. What good were they? But nothing leapt into his imagination. Nothing even came to him with the unsettling surety that Mauryl’s enemy had had for him. Nothing at all Unfolded to him except the sole, troubling idea that the world had had a beginning.

Of course it might reasonably have had a beginning. Hehad had a beginning, at some time. He had had twobeginnings, if he counted a birth he believed lay somewhere between Mauryl’s own origin and a second wakening at Mauryl’s fireside.

He wished he dared ask Efanor whether shadows had been part of the world when the gods made it, or whether they had come later; or whether the gods themselves were a form of shadow. Sometimes the dead were.

But Efanor urged him to go on to the second devotion in the book. He trusted Efanor, and with none of his questions answered he began to read.

“ The works of Men are evil in their inception. The works of the gods are blessed. Lean not to the counsel of Men but to the word of the gods…”

Some men maintained he was not a Man, so leaning elsewhere might be to his good. He had never truly considered Men to be Evil, however. He had generally avoided considering Evil at all, even the shadows. They were not evil. Some were even kind. One was a little girl who played skip in the grass near Althalen. Could that be evil?

Then all at once the word Evil tried to Unfold, spread itself in such darkness he flung away, stood on his feet and faced the slanting pale sunlight of the window some distance removed from them, trembling. The fireside flung warmth at his back in a chill otherwise all-encompassing.

“Your Grace?” Efanor’s voice came faintly from behind him. “Lord Warden? Gods bless, evil avert. The good gods bless and preserve us from evil and all its works… are you having a taking, Your Grace? Should I call your servants? —Should I send for Emuin?”

He had frightened Efanor. He was sorry. As for him, he was able to see the floor now, and mark a place beneath the chairs, in the stark sunlight, where the servants had not been attentive in their dusting. He was able to see the minute imperfections that clouded the window glass, and made ridges on the surface that caught the light differently; he could see the bubbles within that the glass, that, if one looked at them very, very closely, seemed to reflect everything around them… but he had never been sure that there was not something living inside, as harm or hope could lurk in imperfections of a wizard’s construction.