“You doubt my claim?” the old man asked, with the arch of a brow.
“I’d heard you were dead.”
A chuckle now, gentle and distant, as the old man gazed into the fire and grew somber. “I had heard you had gone to Guelemara. And then you came home to Amefel. Or did you? Didn’t you run from Guelemara? I think you’re given to running before the fact.”
Straight to the heart, which beat hard, like a trapped thing. “How did you hear, sir?”
“Oh, a wayward bird.” A light and careless answer, to a question carefully guarded. “And directly from your father, who arranged a message you weren’t in any wise supposed to act on.”
“He didn’t.”
“Oh, but he did. He wanted to get the Quinalt fellow out of your way and get you home to Gran before there was more trouble of a magical sort. And he ever so greatly regrets that letter.”
“ Wheredid you meet my father?”
“Oh, here and there, through the years, on the stairs, in the hall, in the scullery and the courtyard…”
“Just last. Where did you meet him, sir?”
A slow smile moved amid the mustaches, a darting look of very thoughtful eyes.
“Cautious lad.”
“I must be, sir. I have to be. People I would believe have lied to me.”
“Elfwyn. Elfwyn. Elfwyn,” the old man said, and Elfwyn felt a band close about his chest, and loose again. “A fey name. The name of an ancient king, a dead and betrayed ancient king. But you, who bear that name, play at stableboy in a cottage.”
“I’m not meant to be a king,” he said. “I’m illegitimate.” That wasn’t the word he’d used all his life. He’d learned illegitimatein Guelemara. “I don’t want to be a king.”
“Do you say so?” The old man reached a straw into the fire and let it burn, delicately. A draft wafted the little flame toward the fire as it consumed the straw. It burned right to the old man’s fingers.
And died with a little curl of smoke that flowed away as the flame had bent away from his hand.
“Do you say so?” the old man asked again.
“Where did you meet my father recently?”
A little frown knit white brows. The old man said, faintly, a wisp of a sound: “In the Zeide, in the Zeide just now. But I didn’t stay for Tristen—the fool boy. The whole world is astir, and he’s lost himself somewhere, and here you go trudging off through the snow. For what purpose?”
“To find Lord Tristen.”
“To find Tristen, is it? Why?”
He had not thought of the reason of his quest in hours. He had struggled so to live he had not thought until that exact instant of the book he carried next to his skin, and now it seemed the most dangerous thing in the world to have in this man’s close presence. He felt it tingle, like the ring. And he wanted to take Aewyn, ride to Ynefel, and put that terrible thing somewhere safe and never touch it again.
“Why should a boy search for Tristen, at peril of his life?”
He looked away. He had no wish to meet the old man’s eyes: guilt for theft and folly overwhelmed him. He looked into the fire, and saw the ruin of old wood: he saw castles and fortifications of fire, crumbling in the heat.
“He will be by now where you were,” the old man said. “Where I had rather be, this chilly night, instead of this place. Dash off into the dark, indeed. Dash off into storms the like of which your little wisp of a life has never seen. Have you ever seen the like of this weather?”
“No, sir,” he said, bewildered into a glance toward the old man, which caught him, snared him, held him. “I never have.”
“I have seen worse. Do you think it natural, this storm, the storms of this whole winter?”
“I think it very bitter cold.”
“And yet you risked it. You fled. For what?”
He could not but think of the thing against his ribs. He didn’t want to think about it.
“I know,” the old man said. “Do you think I do not? What would your gran say? Why didn’t you take it home?”
He was shaken. And angry. “If you’re Master Emuin, you know my gran is dead. I have no home.”
“Otter,” the old man said, surprising him. “Slippery as an otter. Diving into dark places. Being the fool only for others’ amusement.”
That drew a frown. “I may be. But I look for advice from people I trust, not from strangers who may not be who they say they are.”
“And you have very sharp teeth.”
“Only if someone comes at me.”
“Otter… or Spider? Which had you rather be?”
“Otter, thank you. Spiders live in nasty holes.”
“Fastidious, then. You have a prince’s tastes.”
“No prince. A bastard, is all.”
“His brother.” This, the old man said with a gesture at Aewyn, whose fair hair curled in grimy ringlets about his unconscious face.
It was not a notice he wished to bring on Aewyn. If he could humor the old man until his bones warmed, until the horses were recovered, until the sun rose and dispelled this wizardous haunt, he would do that, and hope to keep Aewyn out of the old man’s thoughts entirely until he waked. This man could conjure: he had seen that, and it was beyond him to deal with such a man, a wizard, who might have been drawn to them by what he had stolen and what he carried…
“A true prince of Ylesuin,” the old man said. “ Theprince of Ylesuin. His father fears for him. And fears for you.”
The first saying he easily accepted, that his father feared for Aewyn, though he by no means took for granted that this old man was his father’s old tutor, or even his father’s friend. The second thing stung. If his situation had risen to any care of his father’s, it could never match his father’s love for Aewyn, and he knew his brother’s danger was all of his making. He was being led, and if he made a mistake in judgment of this old man and grew softheaded in his desire to hear what he wanted to hear, it could be his last mistake.
“You doubt your father loves you?”
“He has no particular reason to love me,” Elfwyn said, every word like broken glass. “I’ve stolen. I’ve run away. As you say—I’m good at it. Slippery. The rest, you know nothing about.”
“I know your begetting and your birth, your upbringing—and your talents.”
“I have no talents except for getting in trouble.”
“You are Aswydd.”
“Not on the right side of the blanket.”
“Born to a sorceress and a king and nurtured by a witch. But none of these is the source of your Gift.”
“I’ve no Gift at all,” he said, wanting to veer away from this topic. He shivered, cold despite the fire. “Nor wish to have. What times I’ve tried to do wizardry, I’ve failed. Do you think this storm will be done by morning?”
“Shoving at the world again. Tristen, now, Tristencould budge the weather.”
“Can youstop the wind?”
The ancient fingers stirred, a ripple of a dismissive gesture. “I’m a wizard. That means a wise man. I never try.”
It answered his secret question, the one he feared to ask: did you raise this storm? But he grew bold enough to challenge what he saw. “There weren’t any bowls, before,” he said. “I’d have seen them.”
“Did you expect to find any?” the old man asked.
“No,” he said.
“I did.” A shrug, the ghost of a smile. “Best expect, if you spend the effort of looking. But do it sparingly. I assure you, the joy of some surprises isn’t worth the risk of others.”
Riddles with Gran’s kind of sense at the core. Wizard, indeed, and by that advice, what answers did he reasonably expect to find in this old man?
Vision, Lord Tristen had said. Vision was one of his two words, and what did he see with a close look at this suddenly immaculate stranger?
Danger.
Power beyond what Gran had had. Even, perhaps, more power than his mother’s.