When his father forgave them both, they could figure out how to get Elfwyn safely back to Guelemara, since he had no Gran to go to any longer. Paisi would come, too, and maybe be a man-at-arms, or an almost-prince’s bodyguard, in which case he would wear fine clothes and carry a sword, which would get Paisi out and about the country on horseback, wherever Elfwyn went: he was a much more inventive companion than his own bodyguards, and he could think of nobody better for Elfwyn’s protection.
They would be safe forever after, he and his brother, coming back to holds and keeps and well-fortified places after their rides, to safe, warm places, where the wind didn’t ever sound like that.
iii
WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN THE LAST FIFTEEN YEARS, MASTER EMUIN?” CEFWYN asked, and the old man, strengthened by ale and two rapidly vanishing seed cakes, wiped a few crumbs from his mustache and blinked, looking very real, indeed, and a little confused by the question.
“That long, has it been?”
“The boys are mostly grown, old master. They’re in dire danger out in the storm.” Fear and desperation made him ever so anxious to trust this apparition; experience with mysterious appearances—and he had seen them— warned him to be very cautious. “How can you have arrived here out of the dark in our hour of trouble and have no inkling what’s gone on?”
“That, yes,” Emuin said. “Didn’t I come for that? I think I did.”
“Then do it!” Cefwyn said. In every particular this old man was the man Cefwyn remembered, the man that Crissand, too, would remember, down to the freckles on Emuin’s high brow and the length of his snowy beard. The ring on his hand was the same—Cefwyn remembered that well, too, a plain silver ring with a black stone; and given the character of the jewelry wizards and the like had passed around, Cefwyn no longer looked on it as personal adornment. He reached a hand to the amulet he himself wore, took it off and held it out, risking he knew not what. “This is Tristen’s. Can youget his attention, pray?”
Emuin held up his hand, preventing him, refusing quite to touch the amulet. “One of his, it certainly is. But may we not just trust to his intentions, and not be shouting to each other all we know through chancy passages? I think waiting is far the wiser course.”
“Shouting down chancy passages, is it?” He didn’t like what he heard— but he did understand that reference to wizardly ways of getting one another’s attention. “My sons are out there freezing to death in a storm at this moment, Master Grayfrock. Risks, I am willing to take, I assure you, and let Tristen handle whatever comes galloping through after such a message.”
“Your son has carried something perilous, carries it right through the shadow.” Emuin gave a wave of his hand, and it trembled. “For that, I would be ever glad to reach for him and drag him here by the hair of the head—but so would she reach after him! Have a care, and put that damned thing back about your neck, boy! For the gods’ sake bring it not so near me! It could happen without our willing it!”
Boy, it was, and him having boys of his own, both older than he had been when Emuin had taken a sullen, wayward young prince in hand and taught him to dread that voice raised in reprimand. He dropped the chain back about his neck and wore his amulet openly, not caring to conceal it in this hall where wizardry and magic had honor. “Is it his mother who’s done this?”
“Certainly she has her fingers well into it,” Emuin said, and took a drink of ale that left beads standing on his mustaches. He wiped his mouth. “She is dangerous.”
“My sons,” Cefwyn said, vexed and worried. “And Tristen, for that matter. Where is he?”
“A serious matter,” Emuin said, and shut his eyes, and went thin-lipped for the moment. “The boys… the boys have the book… they are alive. They’re together.”
“ Together!” He knew not whether to be angry with his wayward heir or overjoyed to hear that he had succeeded against all odds. “Aewyn foundhim!”
“It was inevitable,” Emuin said, “or close to it. Both your sons have the Gift, but not the same gift, have you discovered it?”
“Aewyn? He’s as blind as I am!”
Emuin shook his head. “No. He is not blind, nor helpless. Nor are you quite as blind as you wish to think. The younger of your sons—has the Syrillas Gift.”
Aewyn? “Has he? He has the Sight?”
“He has it in a peculiar way. I’d judge that he Sees, and has no idea that he does. Finding things is an untaught skill with him.”
“His damned maps…”
“The whole world is a map to him. He Sees, I say, but will never quite know when he does, and his scope may widen with age.”
“I’ve gotten twowizards?” It was not completely good news, except as related to his boys’ safety, out in a driving blizzard. “Then help them wizard their way back here, for the gods’ sake. If they have the Gift, then”—he made a vague, descriptive gesture—“slip them through the passages you use and get them here!”
“Hush. Hush.” A look aloft. “If your older boy hadn’t found what he found, the other would have come on it with hisGift, and the worse for him if he had: the one is at least cognizant of wizardry and wary of his mother’s influence. Listen to me. The Gift is not the same in them, nor ever was, but they may link hands.”
“You’re riddling again, Master Grayfrock.”
“The one is no wizard.”
“You said they both—”
“The one is no wizard. The elder of your boys—is no wizard.”
“ Elfwyn? What is he, if not—” A most horrid notion came to him, things at which Tristen had only hinted. “He ismy son, isn’t he?”
“In the flesh, yes, I have no doubt that he is. But there is a hollow spot in him, right about the heart. There always was, from birth.”
“No.” He got up from his chair, to distance himself from such a claim. “A hollow spot? He’s a Summoning, like Tristen? Is that what you’re saying to me?”
“Tristen is not a Summoning. He’s a Shaping, quite a different—”
“Damn it, Master Grayfrock, don’t mince words. Is my son my son?”
“Oh, very much your son. But he’s gone straight where his mother bade him go, and done everything she wanted him to do—up to a point. He has self-will. Hard-won, and hard-held, he has your self-will and your stubborn nature.”
“He has a heart!” Cefwyn declared, outraged. “He has a good heart, not any hollow spot, and if you had been here where you were needed, Master Grayrobe, when you were needed, then you would have had the teaching of him as I asked you from the start, and we wouldn’t be at this pass!”
“Gran did quite well. Admirably well, as happened. So has Paisi.”
Paisi had stood, silent and stricken, at the side of the room the while. But now he took a step forward. “Ye’re sayin’ he ain’t what he seems,” Paisi said angrily, “but I can say there ain’t a bad bone in that lad’s body. He’s a good, proper boy, as ever was.”