I gave it to him, Cefwyn said sharply, and whatever sectarian debate the physician was about to raise died unsaid. Holy candles, is it?
He needs a priest.
He needs a physician! Cefwyn snapped. I engaged you from the capital because I was assured of your skill. Was I misinformed, sir?
Your Highness, there are A clearing of the throat. rumors of his unwholesome provenance. And if it is true that he came from Ynefel, I understand why you have engaged no priest. Yet I have risked the inquiry, Your Highness, and made the recommendation. Perhaps a lay member
A plague on your candles. What in the godsʼ name ails him?
Not a bodily ill.
A priest, you say.
I would not for my own soul stay an hour in Althalen; the feverous humors of that place, particularly at evening
Out on you! Youʼve never come near Althalen!
Nor ever hope to, Your Highness. Secure in his physicianʼs robes, his officerships in the guild, and in his doddering age, the man gathered up his medications, restored each vial, each mirror, each arcane instrument to its place, while the patient slept unimproved and an unlettered soldier did the only things that seemed effective, kneeling by the bedside and talking, simply talking.
Baggage packed, the dotard pattered to the door and opened it.
Guards closed it after him. They were Guelen men, of the Princeʼs Guard, men he trusted as he would have thought he could have trusted the Guelen physician not to be affrighted by the unorthodox goings-on of a largely heretic province.
But Uwen stayed, on his knees, arms on the bedside, pouring into the sleeperʼs ear how red Gery was to be let out to pasture tomorrow with his own horse for a well-earned rest, how sheʼd taken no great harm of the run Tristen had put her to, and how he was very sorry to have left Tristen in the woods, but heʼd had the princeʼs orders to ride to town and he had done that.
Uwen had indeed done that. With two of Uwenʼs comrades dead and Uwen himself struck on the head with a sling-stone that might have cracked a less stubborn skull, Uwen Lewenʼs-son had ridden his own horse to the limit and roused Lord Captain Kerdin and a squad of the regular Guard in an amazingly short time. Then, instead of pleading off as he well might have done with his injury, Uwen had changed horses and ridden with the rescue, joined of course by His Grace Heryn Aswyddʼs oh-so-earnest self.
Uwen Lewenʼs-son had stayed with his charge all day and night after, besides his breakneck ride and a lump on his skull the size of an egg. Uwen had bathed the man, warmed the man from the chill that possessed him, and talked to an apparently unhearing ear until he was hoarse. Uwen had hovered and worried without the least regard to his captainʼs casually permissive order to retire, and not expected a princeʼs reward for his staying on duty, either.
Youʼve done him more good all along than that learned foolʼs advice, Cefwyn said. But thereʼs no change. Iʼll have reliable men watch him. Do go to bed, man.
By your leave, Uwen said in his thread of a voice. By your leave, Your Highness, I had to leave him in the woods. Iʼd not leave him to no priest who wonʼt stir for thunder. Iʼd rather stay.
So Uwen Lewenʼs-son had looked Maurylʼs work in the eyes, too, poor ensorcelled fool. Idrys had called Uwen a longtime veteran of the borders, a man of the villages, not of the Guelen court, but long enough about the borders to know wizard tricks and sleight-of-hand; and to know now a shiver went through his stomach what the hedge-wizards only counterfeited to do.
He recalled the gust of wind that had skirled around the old woman in Emwy. That was either a timely piece of luck, or it was something entirely different. Tristen had been involved. Therefore Mauryl had. Kerdin, in a moment out of Herynʼs hearing, had wanted to send a force of Guelen men to occupy Emwy and poke and pry into local secrets; Idrys, having seen the area himself, had wagered privately that such a force would find bridges as well as witches, and advised them, in colder counsel and with his prince safe in retreat, that they ought well to consider how much they wished to discover, and when.
Heryn, during that ride home, had said the horsemen whose sign they had seen near Ravenʼs Knob might have been nothing more sinister than his own rangers, going about their ordinary business and keeping out of sight.
Then where are Emwyʼs young men? he had asked Heryn plainly, himself, and Heryn, always ready with an answer, had said they were in fact hunting outlaws, that Emwy district had indeed lost numerous sheep, and that the prince was entirely mistaken and misled if he thought there was possibly aught amiss in Emwy.
That meant that the prince, the Lord Commander, and his company had foolishly panicked at the sign of friendly Amefin rangers, that they had fled those friendly forces in confusion, and outlaws outlaws, where supposedly Herynʼs rangers were thick! had shot and slung from ambush, killing the princeʼs men, for which they would pay so Heryn Aswydd swore.
The bedside candle, aromatic with herbs, not holy oil, broke a waxen dam at its crest and sent a puddle down the candlestick and down again to the catch-pan beneath it. The puddle glowed like the sleeperʼs skin, pale, damp, flawless.
Heryn had implied, by what he had said, that the prince and the Lord Commander of the Princeʼs Guard, who, himself, had led His Majestyʼs forces in border skirmishes before this, were fools, starting at shadows.
Or Heryn thought to this very moment that the prince and his Lord Commander were fools to be tricked by shadows.
Shadows of which Amefel had many, many, in its secret nooks and clandestine observances and in its ancient alliance with the Silver Tower. Maurylʼs tower, as men had called it since the Sihh kings died.
Heryn thought the prince did not delve into such secrets. Heryn thought the Marhanen prince, out of Guelen territory, sanctified by the Quinalt, had no conduit to such strange wells as Heryn Aswydd drank from in his countryish meanderings. But the prince had had Emuin for a tutor, the prince had learned enough to safeguard himself from pretenders to Emuinʼs craft and the prince, more lettered in many respects than Heryn Aswydd, he would wager, was not complacent or blind.
The prince wondered, for instance, considering the luxury hereabouts which did not find its way to royal coffers, where Heryn had found the means. The polished stone oh, well, there were quarries. The carvings, to be sure the artisans of Amefel were skilled, if heretic, and the patterns traditional to the region wereornate, and devoid of symbols nowadays that might offend the Quinalt, whose local patriarch had such carvings in his own residence, set in gold and pearls, of course. One wondered with what hire Heryn bought them, or where the gold flowed before and after.
The Sihh kings had hoards unfound they said. The Sihh kings had had means to call it out of the sea or less savory places.
The Sihh kings had had such wealth as Heryn used Heryn, who might, like the Elwynim, have a little of that ancient, chancy blood in his veins, as he had such ancient, chancy connections to various villages of Emwyʼs sort, hung about with curious charms and observing strange festivals regarding straw men and old stones.
Heryn appeared to tax the villages white and a Marhanen prince was not certain, with all the work of his accountants, whether that appearance was as simple as even the second set of accounts showed, or whether there was a reason villagers were to this day more ready to cut the throat of the hated Marhanen than they were to overthrow Aswydd taxes. Treasure trove was due the Crown but one could prove nothing in the damned books. Heryn appeared to pay his taxes. Amefel appeared to be richer than its fields.