A shadow with a stick in hand demanded:
“Who goes there? Who’s in our shed?”
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“Paisi!” he exclaimed.
The stick lowered. “Otter? Is it our Otter?” The shadow rushed forward bearlike to embrace him, thump him about the arms and back and smother him in an embrace. “Otter, me lad!”
“How’s Gran?”
“Oh, a little soup and she’s fine, she’s fine, lad, despite she complains.
Come on, I’ll see ye in.”
“I have to rub your horse down.”
“The hell ye do. I’ll see to ’im. Just you go inside and ’splain to Gran why ye left a warm spot to come home.”
“I had a message,” he said. He wanted to tell all of it, the sanctuary, the bad dreams, the way the king his father had tried to advise him, then meant to send him off in the dark of night. “A priest dropped a pot and it scorched the floor and nothing was right after. Nothing was right before, for that matter.” Tears welled up, as if he were a child, and he had stopped being that. “I came home, Paisi. I just came home, was all. It was time.”
“Poor Otter.” Paisi hugged him tight, a warm, homey - smelling refuge against the dark and the cold and the confusion of priests and royalty. Paisi tousled his hair, faced him about, and slapped him on the rump. “Go in the front. I barred the shed door. All’s well. Gran’ll skin ye.”
He had to laugh, though his eyes still watered, half from the cold and the pungent dust of the shed. He found the door— Paisi had flanked him by coming around from the front, barring the shed - side door for Gran’s protection, and he trudged through the shin - deep snow in Paisi’s tracks, right around to the front door.
It opened before he got there, and Gran was on the other side of it, skinny Gran, in her ragged old robe and her layers of many - colored skirts, with her white braids done back in a tail as she wore them at night— she was set for bed, or had risen from it. She had her stick in hand and a worried frown on her face.
“Well, ye do smell different,” she said, hugging him and not minding his snowy feet on the floor. “Ye don’t smell like my Otter.”
“I’m so tired, Gran.”
She kissed him on the cheek and immediately began saying there was soup on— there was always soup on, and Gran added whatever came in, day by day, with more water. The smell of it mixed with the smells of old cloth, and moldy wood, and goats and horse. The drying herbs that hung from the dusty rafters over their heads sifted bits and fragments down onto the wooden floor, along with snowmelt.
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She set him down on the bed he shared with Paisi, dipped up soup, wiped the rim of the bowl with a much- used cloth, and handed the bowl to him with a chunk of bread to sop in it.
“The young duke’s men came an’ ask’t after us,” she said. Lord Crissand was the only duke he’d ever known, but to Gran he was forever the young duke. “They give us a whole sack of flour an’ another of baked bread, besides sausages an’ cheese and several venison pies. An’ then they come back with grain. What’s this o’ bad dreams, lad? Ha’ ye done somethin’ silly?”
He had drunk a little broth from the rim of the bowl and had the warmth flowing down into him. Her question caught him with his mouth full, and he swallowed hard, burning himself. “We both dreamed, Gran.”
“Paisi said the same, the fool. Ain’t no trouble ’cept the old joints.”
“She’s lying,” came from the door, as Paisi opened it and stamped off snow on the mat. A cold gust came in with him and ceased as he shut the door behind him. Paisi’s hands were all over horsehair and mud, and he wiped them on a rag that hung with the cloaks, by the door, before he splashed up water from the little washing basin to finish the job.
“Ain’t,” Gran said meanwhile.
“Is,” Paisi said, toweling off. “I found ’er abed an’ fussin’.”
“Oh, well,” Otter said, “if she was fussing, then she was fi ne.”
“See?” Gran said.
“The duke’s men was here,” Paisi said. “Yesterday. Your da sent food an’
blankets by way of the duke, so we knew you was all right with him. And here ye come, saying all’s wrong. What happened?”
“I tried to see home. And spilled the water and oil, and got caught, and that was the start of it, but it only got worse.” He had the soup and the bread in hand and could not let it cool. He dipped the bread and ate, explaining as he went. “The king wasn’t angry, but it upset the priests. And the Quinaltine . . . the Lines . . . they were breaking.”
“Was they?” Gran settled on the other end of the bed, a slight weight.
“Breakin’?”
“And the spot on the stones, and the priests upset.” He dipped another bite of bread and ate it, desperately, even if it tasted like ashes. “And I’d made trouble for everybody. And I kept dreaming. I kept on dreaming, and I didn’t know if Paisi had made it. And then I had a message.”
“A message, was it? The duke must ha’ sent, before ever he brung the food out. But that were fast travelin’, that message, boy.”
“It must have come from Lord Crissand,” he said. It seemed to him, too, 1 7 1
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that it had been fast traveling, and he had passed no courier coming back.
But perhaps the duke had been beforehand with everything and already intended to help Gran.
Paisi said: “But ye can’t ride, Otter. Ye was mad to take out like that, wi’
no food, nor shelter, nor yet a saddle nor proper bridle, good gods! What if the horse had throwed ye?”
“Well, he did, a few times.” He’d landed, fortunately, in snow, and not on his head. “But I got back on.”
“Lucky he didn’t run off,” Paisi said, laying a hand on his shoulder.
“Gods, ye’re still cold. Ye shouldn’t have.”
“They were going to send me in the dark, with soldiers. I didn’t want to go with soldiers, Paisi. I just wanted to be here.” His jaw clenched without his wanting it. A muscle jumped, and his heart beat harder. “I did everything the king asked of me. But I’m sure he thought I was a fool.”
“Ye ain’t a fool, and he didn’t think any such thing,” Gran said. “I ain’t feelin’ he’s angry, to this hour.”
Gran’s feelings were not to disregard. It comforted him to think that. It was as warm as the food in his belly, and brighter thoughts occurred to him, now that the adventure was over.
“Prince Aewyn has become my friend,” he said. “We’ll always be friends.
And Her Majesty wasn’t angry at my being there.”
“That ’un, she wouldn’t be,” Gran said.
He got several more bites down, the two of them just staring at him as if they could hardly believe he was there, and Paisi got up and put a small log on the dying fire. It was late. They ought all to be going to bed, but Gran got him another bowl of soup, and he began, finally, to be warm inside.
“The horse,” he said, on another mouthful.
“The horses is both fine,” Paisi said, but it came from a far distance. He was home, but he wasn’t. He had gotten where he had to go, but he hadn’t.
He had found out who he was, but he didn’t know why it had failed to satisfy his questions. He was back at his starting place, and everything was to do again, all the questions to ask again, all the mistakes to make again . . . trying to find out where he should be.
“Boy?” Gran asked him, and he couldn’t even look at her. He just sat, with the bowl in one hand and the bread in the other, and stared away at white, white snow and dead branches, as if the journey had never ended at all, and he wasn’t fi nished.
He wasn’t finished. He couldn’t be home yet.
“Otter, lad.” Paisi took the bowl and the bread from him and set it aside, 1 7 2
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then tipped him right over onto the bed and started pulling his
boots off, then threw covers over him. “There’s a lad. Just too tired, ain’t we?”
“Not finished,” he said. His teeth were chattering as he pulled his own belt off. “Not fi nished yet.”
“Well, no, I don’t suppose.” Paisi was humoring him, tucking him in like a child. “We’re all right, here. Don’t you fret.”
He shut his eyes, still seeing snow, and dead branches. It was like that, as if he couldn’t finish his journey at all, nor come home until he’d done something very important, something that had only started in Guelemara, when the shadows, the horrid shadows, had started running between the stones.
He was aware when Paisi came to bed, warmth and weight beside him under the covers.
“Are ye asleep, Otter?”
“I dream, Paisi. I dream of snow.”
“Well, sma’ wonder, that.”
“You’ve got to take care,” he said, then slipped away. If Paisi said anything or asked anything after that, he didn’t know.
But when he waked, Gran was up, and stirring about breakfast, making porridge in the small pot, and Paisi was lifting his head from the mattress.
“There’s breakfast about to go to waste,” Gran said, as she said most mornings, if they were still abed. Paisi got up, and Otter got up and huddled near the newly fed fire, both of them to take warm bowls in hand. Otter filled his belly with warm porridge and a bit of toasted bread.
“That’s better than the king’s table,” he said to Gran, who grinned at him, pleased, but not believing him in the least.
And the snow came back while he ate the bread. It came back into his heart and into his vision, and he never wanted it, but nothing was fi nished. It began to grow in him, the notion, then, for the first time, that there was one other person than Gran and Paisi and the king and queen who’d had something to do with his mother and his birth, and that he’d never seen him, nor had to do with him, and that there were things he could learn nowhere else.
Ill luck had dogged him every step of his visit to Guelemara, and the source of it was not his father, not Gran, nor Paisi, nor even Brother Trassin. He had brought it there with him, in what he was, and who he was born. Those who loved him most would never tell him there was no hope. They would go on trying to make him better than he was born.
But one person had no reason to lie to him, and one person in the world might see him for what he was.
He felt at that very moment that feeling of eyes at his back, that feeling 1 7 3
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that the tower, so faint and minute on its hill, was nearer to him and more real than the walls about him, when ordinarily Gran’s walls could keep that attention away from him. Now they were failing. He didn’t want to think about his mother. Gran’s walls were near, and strong, stone and wood and wattle, and potent with Gran’s magic, and at that very moment he saw Gran look very sharply toward the north and say,
“Stop that!”
The feeling of being watched went away then, like a candle going out, so that he could breathe again. Gran hadn’t troubled about the snow; but the tower she rebuked, and wove her magic about him, like warm winds.
But it was not warm enough to stop the snow. It drifted through a forest, all winter- bare, and lay trackless and unvisited in his inner vision.
“Otter?” Paisi asked.
“I’m not done,” he said, and set the porridge bowl down and stood up, aches and all. “It’s not fi nished.”
Paisi laid a hand on his arm, but Gran motioned him not to, and Paisi let him go. After that, he felt as if he had been set free, even blessed. He looked at Gran and saw no forbidding, no disapproval of him.
“I have to go,” he said.
“Not to her!” Paisi exclaimed.
“No. West. I have to ask him— I have questions to ask.”
“Of ’Im?” Gran asked. “What will ye ask ’Im, lad?”
“I have no notion yet. But he was there when I was born, wasn’t he? And when I went to Guelemara, where I thought all my life I was supposed to go, it wasn’t where I was supposed to be. I was wrong to go there. I didn’t like it, Gran. I liked Aewyn, and the king was good to me. And Prince Efanor was.
And the queen. I liked them all. But Guelemara didn’t fit me, and now, all the way home, I kept thinking I had to be sure you were safe; but now that you are, I don’t know what to do. I can’t go ask—” He made the slightest nod of his head toward Henas’amef, toward the tower, and felt a shiver, even so, as if a tiny chink were opened in Gran’s spells, exposing them to a very persistent force. He tried not to pay attention to it. All his safety seemed elsewhere. Westward. “He’s what’s left to ask, isn’t he? I have to go and ask him— whatever occurs to me to ask.”
“Then ye’re right. Ye should go there,” Gran said. “I’d never stop ye.”
“Can’t it wait,” Paisi asked, “at least until the snow melts?”
“No,” he said. “No. I can’t wait. Soldiers will be here.” A shiver came over him, a terrible sense of urgency. “I’m sure they were behind me on the road. They will come, and I have to go. I have to go today.”
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“It ain’t fair to leave Gran!” Paisi said. “She’s lyin’ when she says she ain’t that sickly. She was sick when I come here. An’ we can’t go off an’ leave her.”
“Then don’t think of leaving her alone, Paisi. I’ll go.”
“M’lord!”
“We’re home, and I’m not ‘m’lord’ here, and I can do for myself. I’ll take my own horse. He’s had food and shelter for days. Now yours can rest.
There’s only one horse fit to go, anyway.”
“It ain’t right!” Paisi protested. “I’m not to leave ye! Himself said I wasn’t to leave ye!”
He set his hand on Paisi’s shoulder. A year ago, he’d not been tall enough.
Now he could, and looked at Paisi almost eye to eye. “But I’m going to him, Paisi. That makes it different. And I can ride. I fell off often enough on the way home, I learned, didn’t I? This time I’ll even have a saddle.”
“ ’Tain’t a joke, m’lord.”
“No,” he said, “it isn’t, Paisi. Just take care of Gran.”
“I’ll fit Feiny out for ye,” Paisi muttered. “An’ ye ride slow on ’im, and ye mind your way. That’s a treacherous, wicked horse, I had me fill of his manners on the way here. An’ ’at’s a dire, dark wood, Marna is. Sensible people don’t go in there. Not even bandits go in. Or if they do, they don’t last long.”
He had seen the borders of Marna Wood when he was a young boy. He had gone that far, with Paisi. He had seen the dark, dead trees, and Paisi had told him then that things died, that went under those branches. The trees there never leafed, except a little straggle of branches, and never died, either.
It was magical, in itself. And Ynefel lay beyond that boundary, across the river. That was where Lord Tristen lived.
So it was the way he had to go, and when he knew that, he could breathe again. It was not that he wanted to go at all. He had changed since he had last ridden out from Gran’s yard. He had learned to live in the king’s household. He had learned to stand straight and speak up when asked; he had learned to say m’lord this and m’lady that, and how to hold a knife and spoon— all useful things, but none useful in the world now. He knew how to tend goats and make cheese, and these were skills that would feed his body, but never his soul: not for him, to live in this little house. He suddenly knew that, and it was a lonely feeling, but it was at least a peaceful feeling. It was not that he meant to leave forever. But he had to leave, for now, for as long as he had to. And Gran had Paisi. That meant everything was as it ought to be. The world was astonishingly simple, when he removed himself from Guelemara, and from here.
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So he put on his boots and his cloak, while Paisi, who had shoved his feet into work boots, had gone out to see to Feiny. Meanwhile Gran made up a pack
et of food for him.
“An’ there’s ample grain for the horse in the shed,” Gran said as she tied up the bundle, “as the young duke has sent, an’ gods, we’ve had a wicked time keepin’ the goats from it, ha’n’t we?”
“I’m glad His Grace has taken good care of you,” he said. He was done.
He took the packet, and by that time Paisi had come in, saying Feiny was saddled, and had his gear, and had a pack of grain besides a blanket Paisi had used.
“Which ain’t as clean as it was,” Paisi said, “but it ain’t the Guelesfort, an’ the washin’ ’ll freeze like planks in this weather, won’t it? You got to watch Feiny, now, I’m tellin’ ye. Don’t you get too confident with ’im. He’s feistier ’n Tammis, tricksy as a downriver peddlar. You got to do with him the way ye do with ol’ Crook - horn, an’ slap ’is jaw if he offers to bite.”
“I will,” Otter said, and hugged Paisi and hugged Gran last. “You take care, most of all. You take great care, Gran.”
“Go on wi’ ye, flit here, flit there, home again an’ gone. Give ’Im our respects, hear? Say I said so. Mind—” Here Gran seized him by the arm with more strength than seemed likely in her hand. “Mind ye skirt Althalen, and leave the highroad there. Don’t ye stray into the old ruin, and above all don’t go so far as the ford at Lewenbrook, where the old battlefield is: that ain’t the way. The old places has their ways of drawin’ a body in, if a body has the Sight, as you do, and they don’t let go if they lay hands on ye. The gray lady ain’t no harm at all, nor’s her daughter. But don’t gawk about and don’t poke into any old stones.”
“I won’t. I won’t, Gran.” The stinging in his eyes was not the smoky chimney’s fault. It was his own, for standing there too long, with Gran pouring every warning in Amefel into his head, all in a rush. He kissed her, then ducked out the shed - side door, and found Feiny waiting for him out in the daylight, all saddled and caparisoned, ready and fretting. He had learned, however, on the road, not to dawdle about any business with horses, and after giving Feiny a rub on the nose and a pat on the neck to let him know who he was dealing with, he gave a little hop to get a grip on the saddle and get his toe in the stirrup. Then he rose, high as the shed, able to look down on the thatched eaves, Feiny dancing under him.