Emuin, he claimed to be. And if he was that famous wizard, he might indeed raise a storm if he really wanted to. And there were not that many wizards, ever, more powerful than his mother. Emuin was indeed one possible answer to the riddle, if he was not a haunt.
Haunts, however, were not in the habit of coming up with bowls and grain.
“Maybe you could conjure us some cakes to finish with,” he said, and the old man tilted back his head.
“Cakes, is it?”
“Well, if you looked for them… and expected them…”
“Impertinent boy!”
“Well, but you can do that, can’t you?”
“Wishing for more than one needs is wasteful.”
“Wasteful of what?”
A forefinger lifted. “Now thereis a wise question. Of what? Of what indeed? Of effort, of soul, of spirit, of thought and life itself. Needing what one wants—now there’s a wicked trap. Wanting what one needs, that can be a trap, too. Poverty can lead a lad from despair to envy, from envy to bad behavior. Knowing exactly what one needs, and workingto get it, there’s the wisdom. Your gran taught you that.”
Gran would use plainer words. “Wishes won’t draw flies. Sweat will.” It had made him laugh, then. Now it reminded him of her, and of her old eyes, far kinder than these. This man, he thought, if living man he is, has seen hard things. He is harder. And far more dangerous.
“I’m still cold,” he said.
“Then move nearer the fire, fool,” the old man said. “Don’t be afraid.”
It set him nearer the old man, who had the best spot, but he did, easing up onto the hearthstones, which had grown warm. The heat comforted his ankles and his feet.
“There,” the old man said. “Is that better?”
“Better, yes.” But he had a greater tremor in his limbs. It was fear, and he liked that less than the cold.
“Let me see the book.”
His heart gave a thump. For the first time he was sure they were trapped here, that he was outmatched by far, and that this man knew exactly what he was looking for.
“Book?” he asked blankly, and the old man sadly shook his head.
“Oh, I had so hoped for more cleverness.”
He had a knife. He knew how to lay wards, too, but had he done that? He had not, despite the night and the storm and them sleeping in a place not his own. He felt the fool. “Maybe I left it somewhere.”
“Maybe you didn’t.”
“I mean to give it to Lord Tristen, and sooner or later he will know about it, if he doesn’t right now. And if hewants it, he could take it whenever he wants. So I suppose it really doesn’t matter if you should take it. It’s his, and you ought to be very careful.”
“It’s certainly not yours, fool. And if he could have taken it, he would have done so, long since. Whence came it, and who gave it to you?”
From underneath a table, in a wall in the library, he recalled, as vividly as if he were in that place, under the very fear and the suffocating compulsion he had had in that moment. It was dreams, again, dreams, that had made him find it…
“ Wheredid you find it?”
“Why should it matter?” he asked, and the old man looked at him from under his eyebrows in a way that made his hands sweat despite the cold.
“Who gave it to you?” the old man asked again.
“I don’t know. I found it.”
“Found it! Are you a fool?”
“No, sir.” His jaw set. “I hope I am not.”
“Lady Tarien. Does that name touch you?”
“My mother.”
“She’s no longer a prisoner. Do you know that?”
He didn’t. He didn’t truly believe it. He didn’t know what to believe tonight.
“I’ll give you another name. Orien Aswydd. Does that mean anything to you?”
An Aswydd name he had heard a handful of times, but it told him nothing in particular. He shook his head.
“Your mother’s twin sister,” the old man said. “Entombed below the lower hall, near the haunt, right beneath her prison.”
Now the fire could not help the cold. He thought about the bad feeling in that little stairway that went nowhere, the place the haunt had flung him.
“She’s gone, too, right along with your mother. Her tomb burst open and there was nothing inside, not even bones. They’re both fled to the winds.”
“Why should I believe you?” he cried, moving away and scrambling to his feet, and Emuin unwound like a serpent, rising like a much younger man and towering over him like a shadow before the fire, between him and his sleeping brother.
“Because I am your friend, boy, and that book in your hands is deadly dangerous.”
Breath seemed short.
“Would it be better in yours?” he asked, and saw, for the first time, the least doubt—the same doubt he felt about having the book. That alone made him think this terrible man might be telling him the truth, and that shook him as deeply as any threat to their lives.
“If I have such a thing,” he said, “don’t take it. Help me give it to Lord Tristen myself. Then I’ll know you areMaster Emuin.”
“A dire thing, for a boy’s hands.”
“Almost a man.”
“A very young man, then, who forgets to lay his wards.”
That stung. “I forgot. But I’m no wizard.”
“No,” the old man said—Emuin, if it was Emuin. “You are not. You’re something else.”
“I don’t want my mother’s Gift.” It blurted out of him, without his willing it. “I don’t want it at all!”
“No,” the old man said sharply, cutting him off. “You don’t want your mother’s Gift, your mother’s foolishness, or your mother’s greed. But the Gift you already have, you might manage better—far better than you have. Can you read the book?”
“No.”
“Not surprising. You won’t, until you want to, though doing so lies within your Gift.”
“It makes no sense to me! I tried. The letters move.”
“They evade you. But not for long. You have very little time to be innocent, boy, because what you guard is not innocent. It’s a handbook, Mauryl Gestaurien’s darkest work, Mauryl, who Shaped Tristen himself, and whose magic keeps him here, for all I can tell. The secret of it may lie in that book. Do you guess how very many forces in this world would like to lay hands on it?”
“Then help me! If it’s so dangerous, then maybe you shouldn’t take it either. I won’t let you have it. I’ll fight you, if I have to.”
“Oh, lad.” The forbidding shadow shifted, and became an old man leaning on his staff and looking down pensively at the floor. “Lad. Ninévrisë Syrillas held you in her arms sixteen years ago, and wished you your father’s grace.”
“Her Majesty.”
“The same woman. While she carried Aewyn within her, she wished you well. Lord Tristen himself laid hands on you and wished you well. These are strong bonds, perhaps the stronger now that you know them.” Emuin settled to the floor with a sigh, leaning heavily on the staff. “Ignorance is never safe.”
“The queen. And Lord Tristen.”
“And Gran, an excellent woman. She has not faded. Believe me, she is in good company.”
Elfwyn sat down again, refusing belief, refusing anything that touched what he so wanted to believe… but unwilling to lose that thread, either.
“She wouldn’t become a haunt.”
“No, no.” The old man sank down and leaned his staff against the fireside. “Not the sort of haunt that’s within the Zeide, that much is certain. She was never discontent; but protective of her boys, oh, that she is.”
“She’s dead.”
“Indisputably.”
“I don’t believe you even knew her! I never saw you there.”
“I never came under Gran’s roof,” the old man said. “But meet her, yes, more often than any other in these years. I came to consult with her, oh, many times at the fence, when she was weeding the herb garden, or out in the meadow, when she was herding goats. I came until you started to grow inquisitive. You don’t remember that, do you?”