Crissand looked at him, questioning that, hoping for respect perhaps.
"Too," Tristen said, "you were amazingly quiet. Master Emuin is no quieter. I never heard you, and I hear most things."
"I don't know about that," Crissand said. "But I took care you didn't hear, my lord. I stole away like a thief in the night and without a word, and I take no honor from that."
"Yet it's a skill."
"None I can claim for an honor, my lord. And if things were going wrong, I failed to ask those who might know." Crissand held the teacup still in both hands, his fingers white on its curve. "I feared being here, I feared going, and I was on the road before I though my way through it. Then I could have come back, but I hadn't a thought in my head until morning. I don't to this hour know why I went in the first place."
"I do," Tristen said quietly. "That's the simplest thing of all to answer."
"My lord?"
"Danger entered the house—and having the gift, you moved. The gift moves you. It's wizardry. That's what it is."
"To be on the road to Bryn before I had my wits clear? To be such a fool? Is that wizardry?"
"Yes."
"Master Emuin didn't take horse in the middle of the night."
"He might have, once, when he was new to it. I've been such a fool," Tristen said, "very often, in the beginning. At times I found myself in very unlikely places… the guardhouse at the stable-court gate, for one: Her Grace's camp for another, and in the next moment surrounded by her soldiers, which led me to think I'd been a very great fool. Things Unfold. Wizardry moved you, beyond your thinking about it. My wish brought you back, perhaps, and not against your will, but perhaps faster than you needed come. Perhaps it governed your choice which way to ride and when to leave. I wished you safe at the same time I wished you back, and then I feared— too late—that my very wish might put you in danger. You see? You aren't the only fool. I regret Lord Drusenan's horse. I wish the horse well, with all my might."
"Thank you for that, my lord. I'll return him with one of my father's best mares, and my utmost gratitude; but if you have a hand in it, then he'll mend better than he was foaled."
"I hope that's so," he said. "I hope the arrow troubles you little. I wish you might let Emuin see it."
"It's nothing," Crissand said, and flushed, even while he put a hand to the wound. "It's nothing at all."
Yet the fear persisted, the retreat within the gray space. Nothing they had said had drawn Crissand out of it.
"Yet it is something," Tristen said. "It's a warning. But don't think it was all Orien's doing. Wizardry isn't anyone's. It's patterns. There and here are the same thing. Now and then are the same thing—left and right to the same design."
"I don't understand."
"Why did you go to Drusenan?"
Crissand blinked.
"Why to Drusenan," Tristen asked, "and not to, say, Levey, or somewhere within your own lands?"
Crissand shook his head slowly. "It seemed that was where I had to go."
'So we look instead for those who might have sent you there." listen said. "Emuin might have had something to do with your going there. I might. For that matter, Paisi has the gift, and Cevulirn.
Even Drusenan himself does, though very little; and certainly Lady
Orien and Lady Tarien have gift enough, but I doubt Drusenan was in their thoughts at all. You didn't fall in a ditch in the drifts and you escaped alive, and you come back with news about Tasmôrden's movements, which is something we all desire. So however it was— it wasn't that bad a venture."
A wry smile touched Crissand's mouth, and that knot in the gray eased the slightest hint. "As always, my lord sees the pure snow, not the mire."
"I see the mud, too. But it's the snow that's marvelous. Isn't it? I see the mud, and the ill my wishes can cause; but I wish better than that.—Yet leave wishing to me. I ask you believe me in this, and think about it at your leisure: what brought me to Henas'amef isn't a little pattern, and that means a great many men move to it. All the lords camped outside the walls, and Lady Orien in her nunnery before it burned, and Cuthan and all the rest… Everything. Everything is in the pattern around me, for good for ill, help or harm. My coming here—harmed your household. It was nothing I wished. But it happened."
"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 youhave 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 dangerin 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 timeslimit 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 aremy 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. Cris-sand 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 someonehad 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."