“More years than most, as a matter of curiosity,” Idrys said.
“Peace! Damn you, Idrys, let us have his account undiverted.”
“Tristen is at Althalen,” Emuin said.
“You are certain of that.”
“I am certain. So, in a wizardly sense, is Hasufin. And something—let loose as a consequence of his dealing. I don’t like to think of it. Quickly!
Ask me another question!”
“The same question! What did Mauryl intend? What are we dealing with? Why Barrakkêth?”
“The same answer, my lord King: the Sihhé were Mauryl’s choice to succeed the folk of Galasien, nine hundred years ago. Mauryl loosed Barrakkêth on the south, from what Mauryl claimed to be his origins up far in the Hafsandyr. No one knew more than that. Barrakkêth arrived well versed in arms, he subdued what is now Amefel and Elwynor and Lanfarnesse with brutal thoroughness. He would not go among Men, but ruled as High King from Ynefel, which was in its present gruesome state: he ordered the building of Althalen and its pleasures, but he rarely stirred from Ynefel except for war, and, save once, he left the begetting of heirs to the handful of Sihhé that arrived with him—who amply attended that duty.”
“He enchanted those faces into the walls?” Cefwyn asked. “I take it, then, that those rumors are true.”
“They are true. They are most awfully true, and contribute to the strength of the place. All I know is what Mauryl said: that the walls of Ynefel became what they are during the battle between Barrakkêth and Hasufin Heltain.”
“And Mauryl.”
“And Mauryl.”
“Who seems to have been a damned busy man. Why should he care what this Hasufin did? He was old. He was dying.”
“My lord king. He is dead. I do not know that he was dying.”
“Meaning?”
“He lost, m’lord. He lost to his enemy. Now we have Hasufin to deal with. But Mauryl was not a man to go down without revenge. We also have Tristen.”
“Revenge on whom?”
“That is the question. What did Mauryl promise the Marhanen when he stopped Hasufin the second time? To rule forever? I think not. Mauryl promised the Elwynim a King. And was it for love of them—or for some sort of balance with the Sihhé themselves? Far less did he love your grandfather, or your father, or care to leave Ynefel long enough to inquire what manner of King you would be. Was this the man they called Mauryl the Kingmaker, who, surrendering all power to the Marhanen and a regency in Elwynor, locked himself away from worldly power and said nothing for eighty years? Was this the action of the man who ruled behind the thrones of two kingdoms? I don’t believe he went down without arranging something to settle accounts.”
There was no love wasted between Emuin and Mauryl. He saw that, too. And possibly it colored all Emuin said.
“He could have sent a plague on my grandfather. None of us would have cared. He sent us a gentle and reasonable young man.”
“So I apprehended. Mauryl took no oath to your father, neither of homage nor even of fealty. Little it would have mattered to him.”
“Tristen has. He swore to defend me. Knowledgeably. He did swear, Emuin.”
“I am aware. Perhaps that is the test Mauryl set you: to deal with young Barrakkêth.”
“Like lessons? Like that? Guess the reason? Guess the purpose?”
“My old student does remember.”
“Damned right I remember, old master. But is that all your theory?”
“It’s my most hopeful one. And direst magic may have an escape, however improbable. Therefore I said, Win his love. We wizards are cranky, impatient sorts. We live long—unless we abandon our practice-and we grow damned impatient with fools. That is the worst thing about living long. One sees so many mistakes repeated, over and over and over.
It makes one a little mad and desperately angry. Mauryl—was a master wizard. A Man, I have always thought, in the sense that he was not Sihhé himself. But one never knew his loyalties.”
“One never knew,” Idrys echoed him. “And what master do you serve? ‘Win his love, m’lord Prince.’ ‘Win his good will’—all the while telling us nothing of his nature. It is damned late, sir priest, to come to us with your advice!”
“Now you understand me. Not then. Now you’ve dealt with him. I see fear, sir, that may still destroy you; but I see respect for what is by no means like yourself. You are dealing with your greatest enemy. His good will is still your best hope.”
“I said he was a wizard,” Idrys muttered, and paced away again, rubbing the back of his neck.
“He is not a wizard,” Emuin muttered under his breath.
“This man,” Cefwyn said, “whatever he is, this man you advised me to win, this friend, this sworn friend of mine, is nothing evil—a plague on your suspicions, Emuin. I do not believe he is my enemy. I refuse to believe it.”
“That might be best,” Emuin said. “All along, that might be best.”
“Don’t read me such lessons! You think something else, sir. Out with it.”
“That wizardry at its highest is not cattle-curses. That what the Sihhé are, wizards struggle to be. Hasufin was not a greater wizard than Mauryl.
But prone to cheat. Too willing to work in the physical realm, that was what Mauryl said. An assassination here, a tweak of wizardry there-Mauryl despised him. He’d brought Hasufin very far along before Hasufin’s nature became clear to him, is what I very much suspect. Wizardry requires a man search himself very deeply and face all his most secret faults—lest they work the spells, that was what Mauryl used to say: that there comes a point when one realizes one has power, and the faults work the wizard as the wizard works the spells.”
“So with kings,” Cefwyn said, feeling they had wandered far from the subject.
“So with Tristen, too. This is the trap Mauryl set you and me and the Elwynim all in one.” “You’ve lost me.”
“To live life without him, my lord, or to bring back the reign of magic over the world of Men by our own choice. The Quinalt, with its holy abhorrence of wizardry, has left us all but unarmed against that boy’s lightest wish, and hope to the powerless gods we find better help. Mauryl has left me the last, the last teacher of the higher wizardry that stands any chance of denying that young man what he wishes.”
“To all I know,” Cefwyn said, feeling a most unaccustomed and angry moisture in his eyes, “what Tristen most wishes is my happiness. What are we saying? Tristen named us an enemy! And yet we’re speaking of Tristen as the danger!”
“All the same,” Idrys said, “all the same, I hear what Emuin is saying, my lord King. And it disturbs me. What both of you say—disturbs me profoundly.”
He cast a frowning look at Idrys, and knew that there was yet another danger that Emuin did not reckon of: Idrys’ loyalty, and Idrys’ perception. Idrys had taken oaths of homage to him. Of fealty to him. But in the challenge to the Marhanen that those oaths had never anticipated, he found himself without sure knowledge what Idrys’ attachment was: to him, as King; to the realm; to whatever man Idrys served—or to his own unexpressed sense of honor. Idrys measured things by some scheme that had never yet diverged from his personal welfare.
He had, in that light, to ask himself what that welfare was, or might become, and what Tristen’s was, or might become.
Tristen was now at Althalen, Emuin said. With this Hasufin.
How in hell did Emuin know? How did wizards know?
But Emuin said, Tristen was not a wizard; and presumably did not use wizardry—whatever that fine mincing of words meant. He was no longer certain he knew, and he was sitting at table with a man slipping fast toward wine-drowsiness who was the one and did the other.
In a small alcove of the ruin, a section of the wall with several such arches still standing, the Elwynim made a grave for the lord Regent, piling up loose stone from nearby rubble, in the dark and the misting rain. They had brought out one of the lamps from the tent. One man sheltered it with an upheld arm and his cloak, while others labored by that scant light to make their wall solid and to make the lord Regent a secure resting place.