Meanwhile there was hope: the Regent was old. If the Sihhé prophecy were the substance behind this uneasiness and this resurgency in wizards, if the Elwynim knew the Sihhé standard was brought to light in Henas’amef, and that a Sihhé lord stood high in council, something might well begin to change on the Elwynim side of the river, and peace that had been impossible for two generations might be possible in the third.
Give me opportunity, he asked privately of the gods he privately doubted—because in two generations of Marhanen rule no King of Ylesuin had had sure command of the western marches.
In two generations of Marhanen rule no king of Ylesuin had had a hope of establishing lasting peace on any border.
And he could not allow Tristen to leave him—not in respect to his hopes of peace and a reign that would not be remembered for its disasters.
Nor for his own sake, he found; it was a large part of his anger and distress that, absent Tristen, he could see no one—no one he could look to for his own happiness. Emuin would ask him common sense. Idrys would lay out cruel choices and remorseless reason for taking them. Tristen asked him simple questions that made him look again at simple things he thought he knew.
He had no friend, none, in his entire life, that his father had not minutely examined and appointed to serve that function. He had no prospect or enterprise to draw him from day to day except the duty of a King. And of men who crowded close about an heir apparent, and those, far more numerous, who must settle their future hopes and daily needs upon a king, he had three he relied on: Annas for his comfort and his good sense; Idrys for his dark and practical advice, Emuin for the knotty questions of justice a King could face—but of all he knew, he had never found any man who reached the less definable needs of his heart, until, that was, Tristen asked him foolish questions and touched those things in him he had thought men gave up asking. Tristen had brought the wondering of boyhood back to him, and he found himself thinking about things and looking at them in odd ways, when for years he had simply defended his own thoughts, taken wild pleasures to give his detractors a less vital bone to gnaw, done his duty to the Crown and barred his soul against those with something to gain of him.
A King could live without a friend: gods knew his grandfather had, and his father, by what he knew. He might reign long, might become well respected, might die in a productive, peaceful, perhaps safer, old age, alone.
But his heart would have died long before that day.
Chapter 25
Petelly had tired, long since—had run as far as he could and went at long, brisk walks along the Emwy road, among the wood-crowned hills. Petelly was not as fast as Gery, but he was strong. Perhaps Uwen could overtake him, Tristen thought. Uwen was good at things a soldier did. But for the while he was free, and he had no wish, at least for a day or two, to be near anyone who knew him, though dearly he loved the sound of Uwen’s voice, and already missed him. He worried about him, as well, if Uwen followed him too closely or somehow failed to hear his message; but he counted on Uwen to be wise, and to read the trail he was leaving on the muddy road.
Such a din of things had begun bearing in on him, so many echoes and voices had begun clamoring for his attention and his understanding, that he longed for his space of silence before Uwen or someone of the Zeide did overtake him. He no longer made sense of any single voice. He felt drawn thin, overwhelmed with pieces and shattered bits of knowledge of Henas’amef and of things that meant nothing to him, that everyone believed should be vastly significant.
Now—now, deep in the hills, at last with only Words he knew about him, and no one speaking to him, he could draw a peaceful, considered breath.
He could not have borne, last night, some new constraint of Cefwyn’s fears holding him locked in his rooms. He could not bear some new, more dreadful event tumbling in on him before he had understood the last.
Most of all, he could not bear Cefwyn making some new demand of his unquestioning belief—or Emuin arriving to take charge of him and severing him from Cefwyn—for Cefwyn might well yield him up to someone who could occupy him for a time; and then forget about him and his advice for days upon days. He did not fault that Cefwyn would abandon him: he knew that Cefwyn was busy. But he knew that his concerns were important. And it occurred to him that, absent, he would weigh far more heavily on Cefwyn’s thoughts, and what he had said might weigh far more than it ordinarily did.
But if Cefwyn could lock him away and know where he was, Cefwyn would cease to think about what he had said. So, absent, he decided, he was far more present than if he were at Cefwyn’s elbow.
Here he felt free, no longer hedged about with constraints, no longer so unremittingly battered by chance. He rode in both fear and anticipation of what lay ahead of him, at least to discover more truths of the world than he knew now, and, by that, to be less helpless than he was among men who knew who they were.
It was not without discomfort, this journey: he was still soaked through, although the sun warmed the cloak and Petelly’s body warmed him. He had eaten very little on the road to Emwy, nothing on the way back, had missed his supper asleep yesterday evening, and his breakfast this morning, and after that his noon meal, so that by now he was a little light-headed, but he did not at all miss the clatter of his well-meaning and kindly servants. He had been hungry before, on the Road. He took it for no great hardship. He let Petelly graze a little for his midday meal as they went. Petelly had left a warm, dry stable and run both far and fast for his asking, and was surely as glad as he was to see the sky clearing and to feel a warm afternoon sun touch his back. Petelly had mouthfuls of thistle-bloom, one after another—he seemed to favor the purple, feathery sprays, and they grew profusely on the hillsides and along the road, silvery, jagged leaves, and tassel-like puffs rising above the gold and green of the grass and the thickets of broom.
He had wrung water out of Cefwyn’s beautiful cloak, and knew he owed Cefwyn both its return and an apology for its condition. He had taken off his coat as he rode this morning and wrung it out, but wearing it, rumpled as it was, and wearing the cloak spread out on Petelly’s rump was the only way he could find of drying them, save this early morning when he had let Petelly rest. Then he had spread the cloak out on stones under the sun, so it had become merely damp instead of sodden. His new coat with the silver stitching seemed ruined for good—it was soaked, the padding under the mail was soaked, —his boots had stayed somewhat dry during the ride, but walking in the wet grass this morning, leading Petelly, had soaked through their seams, and he did not want to get down and walk on the road, and gather mud that would end up on Petelly and his saddle-skirts.
Fool, Mauryl would say, fool, out in the rain again.
But Mauryl’s rebuke carried no sting at all now. It had become a bittersweet memory of an old man who had been very patient with him, and with his own perpetual failure of Mauryl’s desperate expectations.
He could hear Mauryl in the quiet of the countryside: at least the memories of Ynefel had begun to come clear to him in greater detail and with more color than in Henas’amef. He had had his head and his ears all stuffed with the presence of Henas’amef, the Words of Henas’amef, the Names of Henas’amef, some of which had touched him and taught him and made him wiser.