Time was when he would fall sound asleep at moments of revelation, at any moment when new things poured in on him so fiercely and so fast that his wits failed to keep up. For hours and hours he would sleep afterward, no physician availing to wake him, and when he would wake—when he would wake, then he would have remembered something he never knew.
But such sound sleeps no longer happened, not since the summer, when War had Unfolded to him in all its terror. He no longer had that grace, nor dared leave his servants and his men a day and more unadvised. He fought to wake, and make his limbs answer him— and yet it was so much effort. If he could only sit by the fire, he thought, and see the light, then he would not fall asleep.
"Will ye take food, lad?" Uwen asked.
"Hot tea," he said.
"Tea an' honey," Uwen said, and a distant murmur went on a time, then a small, distant clatter of cups until one arrived in Tristen's hand.
He drank, and the fragile cup weighed like iron, an effort even to lift. There was no strength in him, and he supported one hand with the other to have a sip without spilling it.
Uwen hovered, waiting for him, perhaps expecting to drop it. Uwen had ridden through drifts the same as he—but was not half so tired.
"Petelly," Tristen said. He did not remember now where he had left his horse. His last memory of Petelly was of his shaggy coat snow-plastered and his head hanging.
"Havin' all the grooms make over 'im," Uwen said, "an' 'e's sleepin' by now, as you should be doin', m'lord."
He gave a small shake of his head. "Not now. I daren't, now. pve things to do."
He failed to remember where Owl had gone… Owl had gone off to kill mice, perhaps, or flown off to some place more ominous, but at least Owl had gone, and nothing worse would come tonight.
"What d' ye wish, m'lord?"
That was a fair question, one to which he as yet had no answer.
"Ye want to post a guard up there wi' the ladies," Uwen reminded him. "There's servants in this house that served the Aswydds."
"Do that," he said, and then heard, in the great distance, Uwen naming names to Lusin, choosing Guelenmen, Quinalt men, men least likely to listen to the Aswydds' requests or to flee their threats.
He had another sip of honeyed tea, sitting before a fire that had been Orien's, in an apartment that had been Orien's, green velvet and bronze dragons and all. It had been Orien's apartment, and Lord Heryn's before her, and on the best of nights he never felt quite safe here. He watched it, guarded it as much as lived in it, and of all places in the Zeide where he could bestow the twins, he would not cede this one to Lady Orien.
The old mews was virtually under his feet here, that rift in the wards out of which Owl had come, and which he had not been able to shut, since.
"Tassand's gone to see to the guests," the next-senior of his servants came to report to him… Drys, the man's name was. "Your Grace, would you have another cup? Or will you have the armor off?"
He had lost his cloak somewhere, or Uwen had taken it. The brigandine's metal joinings scarred the chair, and the padding beneath it was much too warm.
He must have assented. Drys knelt and began to undo buckles about his person, and two others helped him from the boots. He stood, then, with Uwen's help, and shed the brigandine, piece by piece. It was light armor, and lighter still the padding beneath, but the very absence of its weight was enough to send him asleep on his feet.
" 'Ere, m'lord," Uwen said. "You ain't stayin' awake. Best ye go on to your bed an' sleep. The ladies is under guard an' dawn's comin' afore ye know it. Ain't a thing in the wide world ye can do else for anyone, but to sleep."
He was defeated. Drys set a cup of mulled wine in his hand, and the mere pungent smell of it sent his thoughts reeling toward the pillows and the warmed soft covers. Whatever he had tried to think of before he stood up to shed the armor went fleeting into the dark.
" 'At's good," he heard Uwen say, realized he was abed, and felt Uwen draw the coverlet up over his shoulder.
Mauryl had used to do that small kindness for him. Uwen had done it most nights, from the time Uwen had begun his service… only this summer. So quickly he had sped from youth to manhood— and missed so much, never having the ordinary things a man might know. Summer seemed long ago, an autumn ago, a winter ago. He was wiser now, and knew there were dangers in the world he had never reckoned in the summer.
But he was not unguarded. He had Uwen. Owl was somewhere about. Emuin was awake and wary. Even knowing the quality of the guests he had brought beneath his roof he could draw himself smaller and smaller and smaller, until he could finally wrap himself up in a small dark ball of awareness, and gather to him his hard-won memories.
For memories he did have now, not many, but vivid ones that spread themselves like shadowy curtains. He saw visions of battlefields and forest, he smelled the stone of Ynefel's rain-swept tower, and faced Mauryl's rain-soaked indignation.
He met Uwen's gray-stubbled face by evening candlelight, saying to him, "Lad, ye mean well. 'At's worth somethin'."
And Emuin's face, gray-streaked beard gone whiter and whiter at the roots, and eyes sunk deep in wells of shadow: " Meanwell, young lord? Do well, there's the challenge!"
He saw Owl, sitting in a leafless, ghostly tree in Marna Wood. Owl dived away and flew before him through the night, his self-appointed guide, above a white stone path that was the Road into the world.
He saw Owl, shining with wizard-light, fly before him through an unnatural night of sorcery, amid the clash of iron and the cries of dying men.
He saw Cefwyn, standing by a tattered banner, saying to him, 'We've won!" as if it were true for all time.
He curled tight against the dark, holding fast to these things that bounded the spring and summer of his single year of life, too weary to be as afraid as he ought.
He sank so deep he saw the dark before him.
Then, not in fear, but in sober realization of his danger, he began to travel away from that Edge, resolute instead on reaching the world, determinedly gathering up his resources. He bent all his will on opening his eyes, and on being alive.
He lay still a moment, counting what he had brought back with him, for his dreams were not like Uwen's dreams. Where he went in his dreams was not, perhaps, memory: he had begun to fear so, at least. He remembered not dreams, but efforts; and what he remembered of his ventures told him things.
It told him that all the books in the archive of Henas'amef, all the accumulated wisdom of the kings and dukes of Amefel arrayed on those dusty shelves, was less knowledge of time past than what he could draw to the surface, if the Unfolding came on him again.
But he resisted it. Perhaps that was the reason the Unfolding happened less often now… he feared to know. He wished not to know. Men said that he was Barrakketh, first of the warlords of the Sihhë. But he did not know it. He refused to know it. The Book of that knowledge he had burned in fire, the night before the battle at Lewen field, but the knowledge of the Book that Barrakketh had written he had stored away as too fearsome, too inimical to all he wished to know. Waking, he tucked that away, and carefully remade his world without that knowlege, testing every part of it, renewing his ties to those he loved. He slept seldom, and waked relieved to remember he did have Uwen, who always slept near him.
He had Emuin. Not Mauryl. Emuin… though the width of the fortress lay between them.
He had Cefwyn, who was his friend, though the width of a province and the distrust of all the court lay between them.
He waked by dim daylight cast from outer windows through the archway of his bedchamber. He waked in the great bed beneath the brazen dragons of Aswydd heraldry, and recalled that these things were so.