the boy's bead turned, the hand dropped. The name that was not the boy's Name echoed again in the nameless light and the dark hand seized on the youth's shoulder.
And in the very teeth of the gale Tristen called a third time, the magical time: Elfwyn!
The boy looked at him in startlement and the dark eyes turned cornflower blue, pale and with a hint of gray, until there was nothing of the darkness in them. The boy's hand touched his.
The Wind raged and tore at them. Needles of ice and pain lanced through flesh and bone, and the gulf gaped under them.
Then Owl flashed between, bound away, and with that guidance Tristen turned toward what he knew was home, with the boy in his grasp. They traveled toward the darkness beyond the rows of birds on their perches, and constantly Owl flew ahead of him. Tristen gripped the boy's shoulder, then his hand, and increasingly as he walked the hand he held was smaller and smaller, and the steps faltered, until he must sweep the child up within his arms, and hold him fast as he walked toward the dark circle.
He saw candlelight. He stepped into it…
And drew a great, deep breath, flavored with the cold of the downstairs hall at the site of the haunt, that stretch of odd flooring that fronted the old mews. He found himself with a newborn baby in his arms, a wizened, bloody creature with tight-clenched eyes and clenched fists, a babe that suddenly drew breath and let it out in a loud and lusty wail.
He slipped the pin of his cloak, the blood red of Amefel, and wrapped the baby in it against the chill… he walked, and guards posted at the stairs stared with misgivings as he passed with the small bundle in his arms.
He climbed the west steps, and passed guards he had not passed going out of Tarien's apartment, men struck with consternation and surely wondering where he had been.
He did not venture the gray space now. He had no idea where that shortcut might send him and the babe both. He had no idea where Owl had gone, but when he reached Tarien's apartment the guards opened the door for him. He carried his small angry charge through the outer chambers into the one where Tarien lay, and Emuin watched, and Gran Sedlyn met him with a face astonished and distraught.
" Youtook it!" Gran Sedlyn said, and behind her, Paisi stared, round-eyed.
He said not a word, but took the baby to Emuin, who sat by Tarien's bedside, holding her hand, and she all disheveled and with her red hair pasted about her temples.
"We took out the sheets," Gran Sedlyn was saying, a noise in his ears, "an't was as if maybe we took out the babby amongst 'em by mistake. We couldn't find 'im, we couldn't find 'im, and Your Grace had 'im all the time… and where was Your Grace?" the confused woman asked. "Sittin' here, as I thought, and then…"
"He's safe," Tristen said.
"Safe," Emuin echoed him, with meaning, and maintained a fierce ward over the place, over the woman who rested, pale and shrunken, amid the pillows. Only as Tristen unwrapped his small burden and showed her the baby's face did her eyes open wide, and go from grief to wonder. Her hands reached, not as Orien's had reached, but with an urgent, tender desire. He laid the baby on her breast, and Tarien folded her arms around her child, and looked at him as if the very sight poured strength and life into her.
"His name is Elfwyn," Tristen said, and Tarien's eyes flashed wide, lips parted, perhaps to protest she wanted some other name. But she said not a word. Emuin looked at him, too, and with a sharper, worried expression, but without dispute.
"Elfwyn," Emuin said.
"My baby prince," Tarien murmured, with her lips against the infant's pale and matted hair.
"Let's wash 'im," Gran Sedlyn said. "Let's 'ave a look 'ere, m'lady."
"No," Tarien said. "No one will take my baby. No one will take him!"
"Hear me, woman," Emuin said harshly, and with a hand on the child and Tarien's arm. "He has his right soul in him. This is truly Cefwyn's child. That isn'twhat your sister wanted. Do you understand?"
"She's dead," Tarien said. Her lips faltered as if they were frozen. "She's dead. She can't have him. My prince loved me, and she'll never have him!"
Emuin looked at Tristen, and Tristen at him, with the feeling in his heart that Tarien was not mistaken. He left the room, unwashed and exhausted, and suddenly aware that Uwen was not there, and Uwen would never have left his heels. Gweyl and all his new guards were gone somewhere, but Lusin and Tawwys had come in, among the silent wardens of the Zeide, and Syllan and Aran were outside as if they had never left their former duty to him.
"There was fire," Lusin said, and had no sooner said, than Uwen came through the door, soot smeared about him, and with Gweyl close behind.
"Thank the gods," Uwen said. "They said ye'd come downstairs, an' the fire, an' all—"
"Orien burned," Tristen surmised.
"In her cell," Uwen said, and held his hands as if he wanted a place to wipe them, in this prince's apartment. "Set the pallet alight, the candle to the straw, an' the chokin' smoke afore the flame: it were like an oven in that cell, an' the guards up above didn't know't till the smoke come up the stairs."
That flaring strength in the gray space… Orien's attempt to drive Tarien to birth: in death she had reached for freedom and bound herself to the stones of the Zeide.
"Where was ye, m'lord? Where'd ye go?—An' what's this wi' the babe?"
"In there," Tristen said, still unsure he should have given the child to Tarien, but compelled to it by a magic that spoke to him as strongly as the wind and the earth themselves. "With Lady Tarien."
"Gods bless," Uwen said, and raked his hair back with a sooted hand, leaving streaks on his brow. "Gods bless. An' 'Er Grace dead an 'er ladyship wi' the baby. An' what's to be wi' him?"
"He's Cefwyn's," Tristen said. "And Emuin's there. Emuin won't leave him." He felt that as surely as he had felt the strength and the will in Tarien's arms. "He's Cefwyn's son, his name is Elfwyn, and Hasufin won't have him."
There was a new Shadow loose within the wards downstairs. He was sure of that. It was bound to the stones of the place, exactly as he had once feared would happen when he had advised Cefwyn to exile all the Aswydds and not to execute them. An iron door had not been enough to hold Orien Aswydd prisoner: she had proved that well enough.
But in the purpose she held worth her life, she had failed. She was not done with trying for wizardry, perhaps, and Hasufin himself could not fault her effort or her courage… but she had failed.
He went back to the door to reassure himself all was well within the room, and saw Emuin and Lady Tarien and the babe, all in the light of a single candle.
He saw a life that had not existed before now. He found that, amid all else, the most remarkable thought, and he took with him the remembrance of the boy and the youth who might someday remember meeting him, in the maze of the mews.
Owl joined them as he and Uwen left the apartment, and banked away down the stairs, to the startlement of the guards below, he was sure. Whether Owl was satisfied he had no idea.
But on the precise day on which Emuin calculated Mauryl had Summoned him to life, at the very first light of dawn, an entirely new soul had drawn a first breath, and Cefwyn had a son.
CHAPTER 4
Rain and thunder above canvas brought dreams of campaigns past, recollections of mud and hard living far to the south—of days spent waiting and nights spent in far less luxury than a royal pavilion, two cots made into one, and warmth against one's side.