“We can bring horses up,” Crissand said, “and supplies for the road.” Every horse they had in stable but three were road-weary and incapable of a chase. “What shall I do?”
“Do it,” he said. It would take well over an hour to send down the hill, get horses from pasture, and get them up here and saddled and a search underway. But Crissand gave those orders.
He gave others, to the Dragon Guard captain. “Find out exactly what the kitchen staff told him,” he said to that man, reaching the inner hall, while resisting the notion to let his temper fly: it never had done him good, and would not now, to strike out at the inept, to race off on impulse into the dark and miss some clue as to what precise impulse might have sent his son out looking for his brother. He went down the hall, past the grand stairs, with the far hall and the tower guard in his view, and wanted, oh, so much, to walk up those stairs and ask the one person who might have an answer—but she would not be inclined to tell him the truth, not for threats, not for pain. She would gloat to see him come up her stairs.
Worse than that—Tristen wasn’t here, she was, and if she had gotten strong enough to cause this—dared he meddle with the wards on that tower, which were Tristen’s, and which might be failing?
Not tonight, not in the dark, and not with his sons at issue. If she was nudging this and that, outside her tower, let her think she was safe in her mischief—so long as Tristen was on his way here to deal with her.
He went instead into the greater audience hall, servants scurrying about him to bring candles, small frantic lights that flared past gilt columns and figures and ledges. He settled onto the ducal throne of Amefel, once the throne of Amefin kings. He had used it before. It was his right, and no discourtesy to Crissand, who arrived with his own guard, bringing a white-aproned, white-bearded man, the cook.
The old man was terrified, and could only wring his hands and say he had talked to the Prince about what everybody knew, the old murder, and the books gone missing…
“Book,” Cefwyn said curtly. “Book. One book.” The legend had already multiplied the theft. And the cook had apparently said nothing to give Aewyn any notion he hadn’t had before.
“Did he take food with him?” Cefwyn asked.
“No, Your Majesty. Not that I saw.”
“His cloak and a bridle,” Cefwyn muttered. “So he doesn’t think he’s going far.”
“Perhaps he won’t try to go far,” Crissand said, standing near him.
“I can’t say.” He was at a loss, and the sun was going down outside, setting on a road that had taken his sons away from him—the one by a road that might not even lie in the world of Men and the other trying, the young fool, to follow him… all with the highest and best intentions, to be sure.
“Have you any sense at all from the ring?”
“None,” Crissand said miserably. “None at all. As if he’d vanished from the land.”
He laid a hand on his chest, where Tristen’s amulet rested, and it—it tingled, like something alive against his skin. For one blessed moment it seemed he did feel something of direction. It tingled. It burned.
And there was a commotion in the hall, an expostulation from the guards, and a loud and impatient voice that tugged hard at memory. The chamber door burst open, banged back, and of all things, a bearded old man in voluminous gray robes stalked into the audience hall and walked straight up the center of the room.
Emuin. Who had been dead for ten years. Cefwyn sat stock-still, watching this apparition of his old tutor, the master wizard who had been at his side through all the wars and the troubles.
He had snow on his cloak, snow in his hair and beard, and clenched a staff in a hand quite blue with cold. He stamped that staff three times on the pavings.
“Well,” he said. “Well! And in trouble again, are you?”
“Emuin?” Cefwyn asked, far from certain of what he saw. The place was given to haunts and apparitions, but of all of them, this one was welcome, more than welcome at the moment. And he was dripping water onto the pavings. “My son is in trouble.”
“Which son? You have two.”
“That I do. And both. Both are in trouble.”
“Not surprising, given their heritage.” Emuin leaned on his staff with both hands. “A long trek, a damned long trek, this. I am quite undone.”
“Bring a chair,” Cefwyn said, with a wave to the servants, who stood gawking.
“No time for sitting,” Emuin said, and turned and waved his arm and his staff aloft. “Get that damned woman out of my workshop, that for a beginning.”
Histower. His place, before they had imprisoned Tarien Aswydd in it.
It was so exactly what Emuin would say.
“Not so easy,” Cefwyn said. “Not so easy a matter to dislodge her, my old friend. Tristen put her there.”
“Well, then where is he?”
“That’s very much in question,” Cefwyn said, and had his own inquiry to make in the general madness of the moment. “Where have you been, the last ten years, Master Grayrobe?”
“Where have I been?” Emuin repeated, blinking and looking a little confused for the moment. He looked about the hall, as if he might find an answer there, or somewhere about the cornices. “I suppose I’ve been busy,” he said, and swung about to look squarely at him. “Busy. Busy, until it became clear there was no peace to be had.” He stalked forward, to the disquiet of the guards, and flung the staff rattling onto the floor right at the dais steps. “I’ll have that chair. I’ll have it here right now, if you please.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
i
SNOW HAD GIVEN WAY TO NIGHTBOUND MIST, ALL-ENVELOPING MIST, SO THICK Elfwyn could not even see the ground under Feiny’s hooves. He had searched and called until he was hoarse, looking for Paisi, and now that it was this ghostly mist, he decided that Paisi, having better sense, and if he had lost him, would either wait for the fog to clear and track him by his trail through the snow, or he would have gone back to town, giving up altogether, and perhaps concluding that he wasn’t meant to go to Ynefel with him this time, either.
“Please,” he asked the gathering dark, in hope that he would cross Lord Tristen’s path. “I have something I must give you. Please find me. Please keep Paisi safe.”
The ring that he had hoped would inform him of Lord Tristen told him nothing. At this point, he only hoped he was headed aright, that Owl would come sweeping out of the fog and guide him… Owl had seen him safely both ways, and this time his journey was for Lord Tristen’s benefit, and for Paisi’s, none of his own, that he knew… because the very last person his mother would destroy would be him, if only because a fool might still be useful to her. He had no wish to be a fool, but he began to think he was not clever enough to do otherwise where his mother was concerned.
Speed, tonight—speed. As much as he could manage and keep Feiny from going down under him.
The wind picked up. He thought it might sweep away the fog and give him and Paisi a means to find each other, but the wind became a stinging gale and the fog was no less at all. It sighed, it moaned—
And then he thought he heard a voice within it, faint and far, something trying to get his attention.
It might be Tristen—but there was no reason for Tristen’s voice to be so soft, that he knew. He began to think it came from his left, then from his right and again, behind him, as if it sported like the wind, and mocked him, as he was sure Lord Tristen never would. It wanted his attention, and now he began to believe it was his mother. He reached a sheltered place, beside a tree-capped and cup-shaped ridge, and for the first time he could see the snow underfoot.
Now the one voice began to be many voices, and streaks appeared in the snow, deep gouges, one and four and six and more in the bank beside him, then underfoot, as the horse jumped forward as if something had touched him with a whip.