“Even my father dying?”
It was a thought on which he had spent no little pain, and no little doubt.
“It might have been…because you have to be where you are. It’s nothing I willed or intended. It’s nothing you willed. That’s the point. Orien wanted to be here, I very much believe it. Cuthan wished harm; both of them have the gift. Most of all Mauryl Gestaurien did, and he set me on the Road I followed. The pattern sent me here. Do you see? I wished nothing but my safety and Cefwyn’s friendship. Nothing was intended. But your father was in the pattern, and when it moved…he drank from Lady Orien’s cup. There’s danger in my company. There’s danger in my wishes. And because you stand near me—with the gift—there’s danger in what you do, and danger in what you wish.”
Crissand left his seat as if the vicinity had grown too close, action preferable to the pain his wound cost him. Or perhaps it was the distraction of the pain he sought.
“Parsynan killing my men and my cousins, and Orien’s cup poisoning my father…and Cuthan betraying him…these were all foredoomed?”
“No. Nothing was foredoomed. But we two have to be here, as we are right now, in this room.” It was a terrible truth that he had to tell, but he trusted Crissand to withstand it, as he trusted only his closest and dearest friends. “Emuin says that what I will and will not is dangerous. It took me a long while to understand that, but I do. He’s very much afraid of me, and he ought to be. He tells me very little, I suspect so I won’t make up my mind too early. He says I don’t have wizard-gift, but magic. And that means I don’t depend on times and seasons: I can wish at any time, for anything. And that’s terrible. That is terrible, do you see? No seasons govern me. No times limit me. I learn wizardry not because I have those limits, but because I want to learn what those limits are—of my friends, and of my enemies. You are the Aswydd, and you will be the Aswydd, no matter Lady Orien’s demands. Auld Syes said it; and you are my ally.”
“Beyond a doubt in that, my lord.”
“Yet everyone I love, everyone who loves me, is in danger…from my wishes, my mistakes, my idlest thoughts…and most of all, in danger from my enemies, especially when they venture outside the bounds. Tasmôrden has the gift. If he can’t strike me, the wizard-gift that helps him will try to harm something dear to me. I can protect only what’s close to me. Like warding a window. Like making the Lines on the earth. Inside is safe. Outside is dangerous.—Don’t leave me again.”
In the world of Men the things he tried to explain were all but inexplicable, difficult even for a man with his wits about him. Crissand trembled with exhaustion, and his fear of the gray space and what was Unfolding within him even now kept him balled and silent there…small wonder he had a distracted look, and seemed lost.
Tristen reached to the tea tray and moved one cup, which nudged the pot, the other cups, and the spirit bottle.
“Move this, it moves that. That’s wizardry. It’s that simple.”
“It’s mad!” Crissand protested. “How do you know what moves the right thing? How does anyone deal with it?”
“I left on such a ride as yours,” Tristen said, “and came back with Ninévrisë. I didn’t know she was there. But someone had to bring her to Cefwyn. I was able to, and I was there. But she would have come, by one way or another. When things need to happen, they happen.”
“Yet you say it’s not foredoomed.”
“It’s not. She would have come not because it was foredoomed, but because wizards wished her to be with Cefwyn. Even I, perhaps, since I wished Cefwyn well, and certainly he’s happiest with Ninévrisë. The wishes of all those with the gift wishing at once shape patterns, and within those patterns we can move. Within the design, we can choose what we do, and by our choices, shift the pattern that is and change the choices of what can be.” So he hoped, who had met himself in Marna Wood, and again at Ynefel, or at least had come fearfully close to it: how mutable time-to-come might be was of vital interest to him. “Only, being Sihhë, as Emuin supposes, it seems I can go counter to that pattern and throw it all into confusion again. I can change what wizards have set and I can do it even contrary to the pattern of the world itself. That’s magic, as best I understand it. Magic, as opposed to wizardry. And I think that frightens wizards most of all. Ask Emuin. He explained these things to me. I learn wizardry, because it shows me how to work within the patterns Emuin sees, and not overthrow things. It’s hard to be patient. But it’s safest for everyone.”
“I don’t understand,” Crissand said earnestly. “But I do hear, my lord, with all my heart, and I do know I do my lord no service by acting the fool—least of all by flinging myself into Tasmôrden’s hands. But—”
“But?”
“I thought I was right!”
“Within the pattern, you were.”
“But how—if these fits come on blindly…how can I know what’s truly right? How can I say no to them?”
It was a question, one he had had to answer for himself, by having Emuin in his tower, and always within reach.
“Come to me. Not to Uwen, not to Tassand, no messages by way of Lusin. Come to me and tell me what you feel in the least moved to do, at whatever hour. That’s the only way.”
He had flaws of his own, he knew: latest of them, he had brought the Aswyddim into Henas’ amef, endangering people who loved and trusted him, and never consulted Emuin. It was much the same as Crissand’s riding off to the river. He found no difference, at least.
But Crissand was too weary to reason further. The ball that he had made of himself stayed tightly furled. There was only hope he would remember it.
“Go home,” Tristen said, “sleep. Come back. I need you.”
It echoed through the gray space, that truth that overrode all others. In the Pattern magic made, Crissand’s presence was no matter of chance: it was a necessity to him, and Crissand did not remotely comprehend his danger.
—Crissand! he said, and startled that knot into unfurling, at least a little. Crissand! he said again, and this time the knot came undone.
—My lord! Crissand said, and faced him uncertainly. But the gray winds blew and blew, and that grayness about him whitened to pearl, if not to the sun of his presence before.
—Wake! Tristen said, and the light shone through, and Crissand shone in the gray space, clear and pale as the morning sun. There you are, Tristen said then. There you are. Look at me. Keep looking at me, he said as Crissand began to cast a look over his shoulder. Here is where you need to be.
The Edge was beyond them, that dangerous slide into dark. He knew, and perhaps Crissand had seen it, but Crissand had his bearings now, and stood beside him and turned a calm face outward, toward the deeper shadows.
—Don’t go there alone, Tristen said to him. Promise me.
—I swear it, Crissand said to him, and drew another, a whole breath. The things he could not learn in the world of Men he seemed to learn by seeing, and feeling the currents of the wind, where it blew, and where it tried to take him.
So Tristen led him out of the gray and into the candlelight of the room in which they sat.
And a small portion of the light Tristen kept with him, and held in his hand, and let it slowly fade.
“Gods,” Crissand said.
“So you know it’s not that far,” Tristen said. “So you know I can always reach that place, wherever I am. And you can. You don’t need to ride to the river to find it, or to inquire what our enemy is doing. Go home. Go to bed.”
“My lord.” Crissand was at the end of his strength, and yet moved to the wish he made: he rose, and took his leave, regretting what he had done…but the need to have done it was stronger than all regret, as if a fire burned, and only going and moving could extinguish it: and it was a true fire. Tristen knew it, as he knew the Aswydd, and only hoped to govern it, for Crissand’s sake.
But as Crissand stumbled home, safe in the hands of his own guard, the gray space was clear at last, the tie that was between them was saf
e, and the warmth that was Crissand shone again on his right hand.
He had gotten Crissand back—in spite of the weather and in spite of all ill wishes to the contrary, he had recovered Crissand, in all senses, and that was a victory.
As for what Crissand had learned at such risk—he already knew. Tasmôrden feared what was going on at his southern frontier, and hoped to slip his own men in among the Amefin, where they could mingle with like speech and stature and coloring.
And now that Tasmôrden knew about Aeself’s band of expatriates at Althalen, he surely hoped to lodge his own men among them, to betray them at some advantageous moment. That was the risk inherent in mercy: he read it in his books, but had no need to read it: common sense advised him that he had run that risk in allowing the fugitives to cross and to establish a force there.
He felt the currents Crissand had felt without ever going to the river, as he had said. And for Aeself’s sake, for so many other reasons he yearned to draw the main attack south, where he could reach it. But Cefwyn had expressly forbidden him to do that, saying that the northern barons of Ylesuin must have their moment of glory—the very barons that betrayed their king. Yet Cefwyn’s orders stood, and the situation within Ylesuin had reached a complexity which had somehow to reach its own resolution: when the south was part of the action, then the northern barons acted together, jealously, against the south. Whenever they had to act together, they also acted separately, jealously, against one another. It was Cefwyn’s attempt to make them act together that had done this—and bringing the south in to steal their war and present them a victory could never do what Cefwyn dreamed of doing: that was the difficulty in all this, and considering the attack on his messenger and the attack on the nuns at Anwyfar, he saw the state of affairs in Ylesuin, as clearly as if it, too, were within the gray space.
Tasmôrden’s ventures south, this arrow launched at Crissand, offered him an excuse: he might strike back, within the scope of Cefwyn’s orders. But if he did move, no small strike would serve any purpose but to draw another small assault, and more harm. What would deal with Tasmôrden’s incursions was a hammerblow; no mere chase from a border camp and back, but an answering presence at the edge of Elwynor, on Elwynim soil. That he could construe as within his orders…while Cefwyn was in danger from within his own kingdom.
His message regarding Tarien had sped, but other messages might have gone astray.
And what then? What then, when the north divided itself again into quarreling factions?
What when the news broke, that Cefwyn had, not an Elwynim heir, but an Aswydd son—a southern heir, and a wizard to boot?
Tasmôrden likely knew: Cuthan would have told him. And he would hear about the arrival of Orien and Tarien: it was in the gray space, as the child was, once one knew to look; and would the birth of such a child be silent? Tristen thought not.
Captain Anwyll, wintered in at the riverside garrison, would know once the rumor limped its narrow channels to reach him.
And then what must Anwyll think, a Guelenman, loyal to his king?
Why should Tasmôrden move east, against the heart of Ylesuin, where scandal might do the work of armies, dividing his enemies?
No. It was Amefel Tasmôrden had to fear, where he knew walls were going up and fortifications were rising despite the bitter weather. Tasmôrden was not blind, Tristen was sure, nor ignorant of both trouble in Guelessar and threat to the south. If anything drove Tasmôrden east—it would not be Tasmôrden’s own interests.
Did Tasmôrden know that?
Or would Tasmôrden go east, like Crissand toward the river, because irresistible currents moved him?
Tristen sat, the cup cooled in his hand.
Outside the windows, for some reason beyond his wishes, the snow continued to fall.
CHAPTER 6
A gentle snow veiled the banners, snow falling on snow, cooling the passions, hiding the blackened beams of the Bryalt shrine across the square from the Quinalt, so that Luriel’s second wedding processional had no such ill-omened sight as it wended its way to the steps of the Quinaltine. Lay brothers swept the steps, which in Cefwyn’s estimation only made them chancier, and he held his consort’s hand with attentive caution on the climb. Trumpets blared about them, all the bright display of the houses of Panys and Murandys, colors of gold and green and blue and white billowing out in streamers from the drafty doorway above.
The choir began, eerie echoing of voices within the stone sanctuary. Cefwyn had always found it unnervingly evocative of funerals, of souls trapped in the shrine that was the holiest of all Quinalt shrines, all the dead buried in the vaults below. He had seen more funerals than festivals when he was a boy: the old guard of the Marhanen court had been dying; then his cousins dying; his mother and then Efanor’s mother dying. He had come to detest the Quinalt liturgy, as he had come to detest the Quinalt’s influence over his father. From boyhood he had far preferred the Teranthines…partly since it was his grandfather’s choice and annoyed his father; but mostly because the Teranthines had more cheerful music and talked less about sin.
But that alliance had been a boy’s liberty to choose. The man was king of Ylesuin, the Quinalt was the order that dominated the court and held most power in the kingdom, and to that faith the king must show due and solemn observance.
Especially that was so since he had appointed the new Patriarch, and had to uphold the man in his office. But on the brighter side, he had very good cause to expect cooperation: Father Jormys, now Patriarch of the Holy Quinalt, was a devout religionist, but no fool, and not unaccustomed to politics, having been Efanor’s spiritual advisor since Efanor had left the Teranthines. He had encouraged a little too much devotion on Efanor’s part, perhaps, but that had been the extravagance of green youth—Efanor’s—and the enthusiasm of a young priest with a willing hearer; and that, too, was settling to sober good sense as the boy became a man courted by dangerous men, and as the priest found himself enmeshed in the court.
And if there was a miracle to be had, some divine blessing to mark the accession of Jormys and the confirming vote in the Quinaltine, it was…thank the gods of both faiths…the snow. Riots and murder were far less likely when the weather closed in like this. Snow was more efficient than troops of the Guard in dispersing the crowds and lowering the voices that had lately cried out in anger. Men drunk on wine and the last Patriarch’s murder had burned and looted the Bryaltines just across the square, convinced that the Bryaltines had sheltered assassins and wizards.
But now the populace had seen a body displayed as evidence of the king’s justice on the impious—not that the man was guilty, to be sure. His sole recommendation was that he was already dead, unidentifiable, and a convenient recourse when the mob demanded justice. They had hung the unfortunate posthumously…and in that very hour the snow had started to fall, and fall, and fall with no letup.
Hard to maintain the will to riot when fingers and toes were numb. Hard to gather in great drunken numbers when the streets were slippery with ice.
Today, even for a court wedding, he had provided no unbounded largesse of ale in the square, and consequently the majority of those onlookers who came to watch this processional were sober, intent on the spectacle, not the excess of good cheer flowing in the Quinaltine square, which had been the most grievous mistake of the last attempt at this wedding.
And without the drunken crowd, the troublemakers in the town who had escaped having their crowns cracked by the Guard were lying low and quiet. The ordinary folk of the capital who were not standing to cheer the procession were busy sweeping the snow off their steps or struggling with frozen cisterns and ice dams on their roofs.
So in the safety of the snow Lady Luriel of Murandys could attempt again to be married. It was an indecently short time after the murder of the Patriarch to be holding a state wedding, but the affairs of state rushed on: the last Patriarch was three days in the vaults beneath the Quinaltine following a fortnight of extravagant ritual, the blood
was cleared off the stones, the shrine was purified, and Lady Luriel and the second son of Panys were back for another attempt at married bliss.
The banners swept in, the procession followed, and in the pageantry of the banners and the trumpets to either hand, Cefwyn marched down the aisle and took his place in the first row of seats, standing with the Royal Consort to await the rest of the court.
His brother Efanor arrived next, and Lord Murandys and Lord Panys…the Lord Commander should have been there, too, but Idrys, he noted, had disappeared.
“Where is Idrys?” Ninévrisë whispered in some concern. When Idrys was not punctual, there was a reason, and Cefwyn’s confidence in the safety of the place was just a little undermined, the sound of the trumpets gone just a little thin in his hearing.
“Seeing to the Guard,” Cefwyn guessed, whispering, and thought to himself, I hope so.
The recent upheaval left all the land uneasy. Only yesterday came word of a Teranthine shrine attacked, plundered by bandits, rapine and murder on innocent nuns—disturbing enough in itself until he heard the name of the place so afflicted. Anwyfar was also where he had lodged the Aswydd women, and there was no especial word on their fate. He had the least uncomfortable suspicion it might not have been bandits, rather the actions of someone bent on causing trouble. Idrys had sent men to find out. That report might have come in, among other matters Idrys saw to.
The murder of the Patriarch had not settled the struggle inside the Quinalt, between the orthodoxy, and the moderate wing. Far from it. The orthodoxy, which was almost certainly to blame for the death of the Patriarch, had tried to set the blame on the hapless Bryaltines, since the murder had left the Patriarch’s murdered body in a room filled with heretic Bryaltine charms and imagery—it was far too obvious a lie, but not for the mob: the mob had set fire to the sole Bryaltine shrine in Guelessar, and hung its priest…bad enough if that were the end of it. But it was Ninévrisë’s priest.