“M’lord, I don’t know what ye dare.”

“Is it wrong for me to have?”

“I don’t know any harm to Your Grace’s having it,” Uwen said slowly. “But that’s a relic he give ye. That’s a holy thing. The Quinalt fathers is a flighty lot.”

“They fear me.”

“That they do.”

“ Youpray to the gods. Do they hear you?”

“I pray to the gods, on holidays. On a battlefield. Truth be known, that’s the way of most men.”

He knew that answer. He wanted more. “And do the gods talk to you, Uwen?”

Uwen laughed, of gentle startlement, Tristen thought. And shrugged. “No, m’lord, nor does I look to hear ’em.”

“Do you think priests hear?”

“I leave priests entirely to their business. And rightly you should, m’lord. The gods speakin’, m’lord, it’s just a way of sayin’ folk get notions in their heads and it seems like they come from somewheres beyond ’em.”

“Wizards cause that. The notion to leave a latch undone, a moment of forgetfulness… that is wizardry.”

“So ye warned me, m’lord. And so I take great care, and keep strongly to my habits. But that’s what folk say is the gods speakin’, too. And for the gods’ sake don’t ask a priest, m’lord. Never ask a priest.”

“I thought all along praying might be like going to the gray place.”

“Gods save us, lad, ye didn’t tell about that.”

“No. I didn’t. Not to anyone but you, who can’t go there. I thought priests might have a place, too. I’ve never met a priest there, except Emuin, who’s not to count—yet they seem to try very hard to go there. Efanor tries. I felt it once or twice, and yet I never saw him there, not truly, so I thought there might be some other place. But I dared not ask him. And Emuin never will answer me. He simply will not say.”

Uwen made that sign again. He knew he baffled Uwen, and worried him, and sometimes made him go off and think for a while without saying a word.

“Well, you was right to keep quiet about it wi’ His Highness,” Uwen said. “And I’d go on keeping quiet about it wi’ His Majesty, though I don’t think ye’d daunt himat all. I just think His Majesty’s happier sayin’ he don’t rightly know what ye do when ye just stand here starin’. If His Holiness asks, so to say.”

“Or what dothey think?”

Uwen thought about that. “They ain’t never mentioned it that I ever heard, nor could I ask a priest, so I wouldn’t know. Master Emuin might know, but I don’t. Isthere harm in the gray place?”

“Yes. But I would never let harm come out of that place, Uwen. I would never let it near you, or Cefwyn, nor even Lord Prichwarrin, who has never done me good at all. The harm isn’t always there. It isn’t there now, but it might come, and it might come seeking me, my friends and all that help me. But believe I will not allow it. I shall never allow it, Uwen. And there is no harm that I do by any magic there, except against the harm that comes at me, and that I fight with all my strength. There is all the truth about the gray place.”

“M’lord, I have no doubt. An’ if I could go to that wizard-place there and stand by ye, I would.”

“You do. You do, Uwen, simply by being by me, and with me. You lend me strength. As Cefwyn does. As Emuin does—Most of all you make me wise.”

“Oh, I hope wiser ’n that, m’lord! But what I think, it’s a good thing there’s you and master Emuin to see what they’re up to in that magic place, since it don’t seem a lot of the things there is ever up to good to us common folk. —But for gods’ sake don’t ever be hinting about that place to His Highness. Not ever. Ye was very wise not to say so. And I’d think twice and three times afore I said a careless word to him on deep matters no matter he’s a good man. There’s that priest o’ his giving His Highness advice.”

“I shall be very careful,” he promised Uwen, hoping that he had been as careful as he thought. “On penny day I shall be particularly careful. Though it doesn’t seem difficult, what they wish me to do.”

“Babes do it,” Uwen said. “Ye get blessed, ye walks by the altar, ye drops the penny, ye bows to His Holiness, ye get blessed again… ye walks down the middle aisle to the doors and out again. The king goes first, and ye stands near him and then the whole lot walks back to the Guelesfort, that’s all ye do. Ye’re supposed to be prayin’ the day long, but the most don’t. Mostly folk drinks too much and eats too much and they dance at the harvest fire till it’s down to ashes and the drums and the pipers is too tired to go on.”

“The children in Wys fear me less now. Though after all this long they still run.”

“Youngsters always run. They’re a silly, giddy lot, like sheep. Same wi’ townsfolk. They ain’t no wiser ’n Wys. But best ye stay indoors. There’s too much ale flowing at the feast. There’s some as might be fools, and then ye’d have to turn ’em to toads and that’d do fair for it all.”

Uwen was joking with him. He was glad Uwen would. He treasured it above any silver or gold. “I think you’re right,” he said.

CHAPTER 6

The doors of houses and shops had been hung with wreaths of barley-straw for days. Now straw wreaths bedecked the ironbound oak of the Guelesfort gates, and straw covered the cobbles ahead of the court procession. The whole court walked this pathway, the king and the Regent foremost, and then Prince Efanor, Duke of Guelessar. After him came Lord Brysaulin, the Lord Chancellor, all the lords in their precedence, and attending each, their ladies and their families and their sworn men. The King’s Guard formed an aisle on either hand along the short distance from the gate to the Quinaltine precinct, and beyond them common people stood to watch.

But other common folk beyond the barrier of guardsmen bore unlikely burdens toward the square. A man had a basket of sticks on his shoulder, another a broken wheel—for the bonfire, Tristen guessed, townsfolk bringing wood, straw, all manner of fuel for the great fire that was laid and ready for the public celebration across the open square from the Quinaltine steps. The pile of wood must be very high by now— and indeed, when the line wended within sight of the square, in their view past the line of the Guard, the pile had doubled its size from yesterday. It towered in front of the Quinalt, a bonfire to burn up all the year’s scrap and chaff and prepare for Wintertide, besides taking away sins and bad memories.

So Uwen had said last night at supper… that the common folk wished for luck by building it. They wished to burn up all the bad memories and keep only the good. He meditated on that as they walked in the procession, himself in his black-and-silver holiday finery and Uwen in his finest black velvet, a lord’s man, and entitled to walk and stand among the highest in the land.

But within the courtly precedences, the fortresshold of Ynefel and the ruins of the old capital ranked—so they argued—last in the procession of the lords, behind the position that Amefel, least of the provinces of Ylesuin, would have held, had it had a lord to walk in the ceremony at all. But the order of their proceedings did not admit him as a king’s officer, though he suspected that best described the office of Lord Warden of Ynefel, a defender of the marches, a power without a province.

They could not rank him, as Ynefel, beforethe duke of Murandys; they could not rank him before any of the northern barons without ruffling their feathers; and certainly they could not admit any importance to a wizard’s tower.

But as it happened, once the column formed, Tristen found himself not utterly hindmost. Behind him came the banner-bearers of the notables of the town, the great silken billow of the red banner of the town of Guelemara, with its golden Castle. In front of him and Uwen, his banner, flew the silver Star and Tower of Althalen, and the Sihhë Star of Ynefel, remade.