Besides the prowling of the Shadows, there had arisen a sound, a thumping in the earth that reminded him most of horses. “For all our sakes, Lord Tasien.”
“Tasien,” the lady said, “we shall go. We shall bury my father, and we shall go as he says, to speak to Cefwyn Marhanen.”
“This man will not fight your enemies!” Tasien said. “Is this a King? Is this the King we have waited for?”
“Sir.” Tristen looked Lord Tasien square in the face. “I am not afraid of you. I do fear for you.”
Tasien stared back at him, and the anger seemed to desert him for a different expression—almost. “If we go, then we shall have you for a Hostage, lord of Ynefel. If Cefwyn does not respect a Truce, and attacks our lady, I will kill you myself.”
The Words made sense, and offered a way out of this place, both practical and frightening. “If it pleases you, Lord Tasien, and if it please the lady, and if we can leave this place, I have no fear of giving you such a promise.”
“I thought,” Emuin said, his fist firmly about a cup of mulled wine. “I have thought about it and thought about it, m’lord King, and, though in my earliest youth I saw all the royal house of the Sihhé and knew their faces, and, more, knew them in ways a wizard knows—I had no impression I knew the lad. It worried me that night I first saw him and realized what he was: I told myself that of all the dead souls at Althalen Mauryl might have chosen, he could well have chosen Elfwyn’s true brother Aswyn, who died at birth—as a natural restraint upon the one who had that body ....”
“We know that story,” Cefwyn said impatiently. They were upstairs in his apartments. Idrys stood with his shoulder against the door, making certain there were no eavesdroppers even among the trusted guards.
“This is not Elfwyn. Nor any stillborn babe. He is skilled in the sword and horsemanship, which I do not think comes in the cradle. The name, old master. Favor me with the name, no other, no explanations, no long narrative.”
“Plainly—Barrakkêth, m’lord prince—M’lord King.” Emuin was more disturbed than he had ever seen the old man. “The founder of his line. Or one of his cousins. I do believe so.”
“A fair guess,” Idrys said from across the room. “A name that can be written. You could have spared a messenger to say so before now.”
“Peace, sirs.” Cefwyn grew more than impatient. “We knew at Emwy he was no scholar-king. But whence this? Tristen’s is not cold hearted, nor self-seeking, nor a wanton killer. Barrakkêth was. Why Barrakkêth?”
“Mauryl did not like your grandfather.”
It was like the turns of Tristen’s speech: it startled him into laughter.
“None of us liked my grandfather. My grandmother never liked my grandfather. Tell me something more dire than that, sir! Where is your proof? Prove to me your notion!”
“To Mauryl, the Marhanen as successors to the Sihhé were a choice of chance, at best. The Marhanen were there to take advantage of the situation, but your grandfather was very uneasy with Mauryl. Remember that Mauryl was not of this age, not of whatever blood men share. He had no loyalties even to the Galasieni, who were supposedly his people. Elfwyn’s father had besought—call it the gods, the gods some Sihhé worshipped if they worshipped any at all—to raise his stillborn son. The blood had run very thin by that time, and Elfwyn’s father certainly couldn’t have raised the dead. Except—he opened a door. As ’t were. To a dead wizard.”
“Hasufin Heltain,” Idrys supplied, and Emuin cast him a troubled look.
“We have had to seek our own answers,” Cefwyn said. His leg was paining him, acutely, he was peevish, and trying to be patient. “Many of which, it seems, are on the mark, master Emuin. Go on, sir, don’t dole it out like alms. Give me your reasoning. Tell me what you fear happened at Althalen, and why this is Barrakkêth.”
“Young King, Mauryl fought this wizard in Galasien. Mauryl chose in Barrakkêth and his cousins an agency of destruction so ruthless—so ruthless—there is a Galasite word for it ... so lacking in attachment. Yet honest. Mauryl did call him honest. He contended with wizards by magic—magic, not wizardry, mark you—and with men with the sword. I don’t know why. Mauryl said they were not Men as we understand Men to be. The true Sihhé had an innate, untaught power that would not be deterred. What the true Sihhé willed, so I understand, and am beginning to fear, wizardry does not easily prevent.”
“A god,” Idrys said dryly, arms folded, and walked back to stand at the tableside. “You describe a god, master grayfrock.”
“Something very like.” Emuin’s voice was hoarse. He had a large gulp of the heated wine. “Something far too like, for my taste. And the Quinalt and its witch-hunting have been too thorough in their hunt for wizards. There are few wizards left worth the name, m’lord King. There is no one to contain either Hasufin or Barrakkêth.”
“Oh, come now,” Cefwyn said. He had until then been concerned, but drew a longer and easier breath, and massaged the fevered wound in his upper leg. “Our Tristen? A ravening monster? I think not.” “Ask Barrakkêth’s enemies.”
“Idrys tracked a Hasufin Heltain through generations of musty chronicles. And found a Hasufin in the royal family. So what did become of him? Is he still alive? Or haunting Althalen—or what?”
“My lord, I killed that child, I, myself, at Mauryl’s behest. I killed Hasufin’s last mortal shape.” The old man rocked to and fro in discomfort and had another large drink, the last. “Do you suppose, m’lord King, there is anything left in the pot?”
Emuin—kill a child? “Idrys,” Cefwyn said, feeling a chill himself, and Idrys looked, filled another goblet, poured more wine into the pot and swung it further out over the fire to warm.
Emuin took a sip, seeming as glad to warm his hands as his insides. He looked frail tonight. His skin was pale and thin, his lately drenched hair and beard were drying in wisps of white. His shoulders had grown very thin.
I dare not lose him, Cefwyn thought. I dare not. “And what,” he asked Emuin, determined to unravel the matter, “what, precisely, was Mauryl’s judgment on Elfwyn? Was it his father’s sin? Was it retribution?”
“It was simple fear, my lord King. Fear not only of Hasufin, dreadful enough, but the union of Hasufin’s very great wizardry and the innate Sihhé magic, dilute as it had grown by that day. No one could predict what would happen—with a wizard potent enough to bring himself back from death, joined to a Sihhé body. One simply didn’t know.”
“One thought you priests knew such things to a fare-thee-well,”
Idrys said.
“My lord King, I will not bear with his humor. I do not think I have deserved this. This is difficult enough to explain.”
“You might have been here,” Idrys said sharply.
Emuin clamped his lips tight. “Aye, that I might, and added my bit to the brew. You might have been very sorry, Lord Commander, if I had swayed to the left or the right the force that Mauryl had set on course.
His spell was still Summoning, still is, sir. I warned you of it, and I would not to this day put my meager working in the path of that force, no more than I would tamper with a river in flood without knowing what lay downstream—which is the difference between myself and those that meddle with things they do not understand, sir, as is the habit of some people I could name!”
“Peace, peace, good gods, I had forgot the sound of you both under one roof.” Cefwyn poured his own wine from a pitcher on the table, unmulled and untampered-with, and hoped for surcease of the ache in his leg that now beat in time with the ache in his skull. “So you don’t know, in sum, what we are dealing with.” “I have had years to think on it.”