Poor creatures, he thought, seeing a hawk stoop beyond a leafless copse of trees. He forever pitied the hunted, and thought of Owl, and wondered where he laired, nowadays, whether he had gone back to Ynefel now that it was free of threat.
He was thinking like a boy again, and making wild and foolish conjecture, as he had done on the hilltop. But, oh, he could dare more. He could draw the gray light to the sunlit world, he could do battle with shadows if he found them—
But he had far rather simply be aware of the lives, the living, the loyal and the loved. He had proposed to sleep in the saddle, but unexpectedly found his thoughts too rapid, racing ahead of the slow wagons. He was unavoidably morose at the thought of leaving Cefwyn and Ninévrisë, but he breathed with increasing anticipation of the road and the freedom ahead.
The sun was warm enough to raise a slight sweat on his shoulders when the wind slacked, and the wind did fall and stayed still in late afternoon. They rested from time to time, changed horses, for the horses’ ease; and Uwen, trading Liss for Gia again, looked well content, a man with an old friend and a new and trying to assure one of his affection without slighting the other: all at once it Unfolded what Uwen was doing, and how he loved both, but Gia more, the other being all to discover. Was not a king much the same, when he had to consider who sat next him at table?
And the world, in widening, slowly widened behind them, too, to the subtle feeling of cold water, the smell of sweat, the shapes of stones.
“Master Emuin is finally on his way,” Tristen said, drawing Uwen’s curious glance.
“He’s leavin’the gate?”
“Oh, farther. By the little stream we crossed, the one near the rocks, with the old tree with the hole in it.”
“Does he come so far on the road and ye not see?”
“He can slip about when he wishes,” Tristen said, “better than I, I think. He’s quite clever. I think it comes of being old.”
“And what does he say?” Uwen asked, and Tristen wondered that at once. A sting of displeasure came back.
“He bids me mind my business,” Tristen said, laughing.
Uwen cast him a sidelong glance. His gray hair blew in rising wind as the sunlight found it, all against a blue sky. Light touched Uwen’s weathered, cold-stung face with perfect cheerfulness.
This is where I must be, Tristen thought then, absolutely certain of it, for no reason. This is where Uwen must be, with me. We belong on this road… and all is well.
Other men are where they needto be. But Uwen and I are where we mustbe… there is a difference.
Then came, with the cold chill of water, with that clarity of sun on stones, the uncertainty of certainties that seeped out of the gray place, but it was Emuin’s troubled doubt that owned this fear. Come rain, come lightning, come spells or wizards’ wishes, this muddy road was a thread stretched out strongly toward Ynefel… it ran there, Tristen thought, and thought of his window at night, the rain crawling across the horn panes. But that was but one place of all the places it led.
Ink followed the goose-quill tip, red wax dripped onto parchment under a window full of sunset. The royal seal made a scant, a listless imprint.
Cefwyn fixed the duke of Ryssand with a cold stare then and did not himself pick up the parchment, or invite the duke to do so. An anxious page fidgeted and failed to move.
The Patriarch himself slipped in and did the deed, picked up the rattling document and bowed without quite looking Cefwyn in the eye.
A disappointment.
I am coming to hate this man, Cefwyn thought of Corswyndam, Lord Ryssand. Corswyndam was a lank, hawk-nosed, wet rag of a man, the sort that smothered any enthusiasm, disapproved anything not to his advantage, used the Quinalt as sword and shield and purse of pennies, and had interest in nothing that did not serve his own interests.
He had not the luxury, now, to hate the Patriarch. The Patriarch was thus far too useful. Why, if there were no Patriarch, then that parchment might have rested on the table until the page called a servant to move it. As it was, the Patriarch clutched it in reward of services rendered and no one present mentioned exactly what those services were.
But the king met with the duke of Ryssand and the duke of Murandys, and officially settled the matter of Sulriggan’s return on the very evening the king’s friend was on his way to Amefel… and the king had the small satisfaction of seeing no triumph on any face exceptthe Patriarch’s.
The two lords had looked to enjoy this evening. They had looked, perhaps, to accusations of sorcery, and expected better of the Patriarch than they had gotten. But the Patriarch knew on what table his meals were served henceforth and forevermore, and knew that the two lords at his back felt betrayed, and therefore he had double reason to stand close by his king.
Sulriggan would return to court, the Patriarch’s cousin; and gods send the duke of Llymaryn would be prudent, now, having coasted so close to royal anger. Ironic, that the king’s two best allies in the troublesome north might turn out to be the Patriarch and his cousin Sulriggan. He never would have seen that as likely. But Emuin had left him in order to advise and restrain Tristen, a far chancier element. That left, of royal intimates, only Efanor, only the Regent, only the Lord Commander, several other officers, and Cevulirn—a gray, often silent presence.
So at present, in the court as it was now and for time foreseeable, yes, the Patriarch was his ally and Sulriggan was the Patriarch’s man… such as he was.
He smiled on the Patriarch, a warm, a proprietary sort of smile, the sort he denied the two lords. He meditated on the rewards of piety, on his new use of the gods, from a perspective he had not had until his enemies hewed down the tall tree that was Tristen… or at least, until he lengthened his view of the realm not as protecting a small, threatened circle of intimates but as reaching to his good neighbor Amefel, his good neighbor Cevulirn of Ivanor, his dearest love the Regent from across the river, and hell take these two barons. He had the Patriarch, and soon he would have Sulriggan, both in the center of his hand, clever as they had thought they were, and neither would be anxious to see that hand ever become a fist.
“I add,” he said to the Holy Father, “I add the welcome of the Marhanen house, and the use of the bedchamber lately in use by the duke of Amefel, for residence within the Guelesfort.” He said nothing about the cook, that unholy power in Sulriggan’s household. Within the Guelesfort, the lord of Llymaryn had to rely on the Guelesfort kitchens, and be damned to Sulriggan’s culinary tastes. There was a second thorn in that royal rose, too, that Sulriggan would not be guesting with, say, Ryssand or Murandys.
“Your Majesty,” the Patriarch said. And the dukes of Ryssand and Murandys looked out of countenance. Supper was preparing, and they all were invited, in a court composed exactly as they had wished, purifiedof wizards and their conjuring.
Barley soup tonight and so long as the harvest held out. Plain Amefin fare. The royal cook might rebel, but it would be barley soup every evening, not a Ryssand leek in evidence, Amefin venison and Llymarish beef, and not a fish, not a one, from Murandys’ weirs.
A taste for plain fare gave him an excuse for sending wagons and messages to Amefel. He was writing a letter in request of sausages and the state of affairs in a province that had never concerned his father except as a source of wool, taxes, and rural discontent mediated by a lord he had trusted far too much.
He recalled an Amefin tailor, a chandler, even the mason who had repaired the stable wall. Perhaps there were walls about the Guelesfort that wanted patching, or perhaps the king needed a winter cloak of fine Amefin wool. Oh, there might be spells sewn into it: the whole province of Amefel was rife with heresy.