Tristen dismounted quietly, and Uwen got down. He saw a boy hand Cefwyn a stick, which he did use, and seemed for a moment to be in pain, but Cefwyn was at hand as Ninévrisé slid down in a flurry of skirts: so was Tasien there to take the lady’s arm. Cefwyn and Lord Tasien were polite to each other, and Lord Haurydd and Lord Ysdan were there, all of them being polite, all of them concerned about the lady.
He supposed it would be difficult to add himself to that crowd. He could speak to the lady in a way they could not. He could tell her things they could not: he would gladly, when his knees were not shaking from exhaustion, help her explain to Cefwyn what had happened, and why there was a danger up by Emwy, and what had happened to the old man and to the Elwynim rebels.
But he knew better now than to intrude on Cefwyn when Cefwyn was dealing with the lords—least of all, he supposed, when Cefwyn was dealing with the lady Regent. Marry her?
Cefwyn had talked about marriage, before now.
Marriage was a Word of great importance to a man and a woman.
Marriage entrained other Words so ... numerous and so strange to him that he lost his awareness of where he was, and realized that he was walking across the courtyard, watching Cefwyn and Idrys and the lady and the lords climb the steps, Cefwyn using his stick and limping in pain and talking all the while.
It was one of those moments in which he felt shut out, unwelcome.
And he supposed Cefwyn was angry with him for leaving—deservedly so. He wanted Cefwyn to be as glad to see him as he appeared to be to see the lady—as he wished the lady herself would speak well of him. He thought he had deserved it. He could show her things Cefwyn could not.
But, no, they would settle things as they pleased, without him.
Uwen was with him as he walked up the steps. They had already gone inside. He heaved an aching sigh, found tears almost escaping him, and realized how tired he truly was. He was foolish to expect a welcome after he had stolen Petelly, lied to the guards, and sent six squads of Cevulirn’s horsemen out looking for him. Well that Cefwyn had been as pleasant and glad to see him as he was. He had not at all deserved well of Cefwyn for what he had done.
He had not deserved, either, to have Uwen still faithful to him, and forgiving of a soaking and a long, long ride and a chase through very very dangerous places. But Uwen did forgive him. He supposed that Cefwyn did; and the lady, after all, owed him nothing.
He followed the lords inside, and while they went down the corridor to one of the halls of state, he went upstairs, and down toward his apartments, where his guards, to his chagrin, were still patiently standing, as if he were still there.
Had they never left? he wondered. He saw their faces lighten as he came, and, “M’lord,” one said, and they were glad to see him, which he did not at all deserve.
It made him ashamed.
“You go fetch His Lordship’s servants,” Uwen said to the youngest.
“You tell them he’s here and wanting to rest and they should be quick.”
“Yes, sir,” the guard said, and hurried to do that as the others let him in and wished him well.
Every detail of the rooms, the very fact of coming home, when he had not been sure he would ever see any of it again—filled up his senses to a dizzying fullness. He stood in the middle of the room just looking at the furniture and finding somewhere he had, wonderful to say, come back to and found again.
He heard a step behind him and thought it was the servants. But a brush of gray as soft as the footsteps told him a further amazing thing before he even turned around. “Master Emuin!”
“Tristen.” Emuin came and set his hands on his shoulders. “I wish I had foreseen more than I did.”
He had done badly, Emuin meant, on his own. He found himself facing the judgment of the only teacher he had alive, and found it a hard judgment of his choices. “I did what I knew, sir,” he said. “I tried to reach you.”
“You have met so much. A great deal of changes. A great deal. You’ve had to find your own way, young lord. And not done so badly, perhaps.
Tell me, tell me what you did, and saw, and how you found your way.”
Emuin held out hope of approval, which he was all too ready to grasp: but Emuin began to draw him into the gray space—which he feared since last night, and with the Regent dying, and with Ninévrisé—and the Shadows, and their Enemy. He refused; and Emuin stepped back of a sudden, ceasing to touch him.
He had not remembered Emuin’s face seeming so old, or so drawn, and Emuin, who had at first seemed so wise and calm, looked haggard and afraid. “I see,” Emuin murmured faintly, “I see, young lord.”
“Do you know all that’s happened? Hasufin was reaching out of Ynefel. But the lord Regent said he shouldn’t have Althalen, and wanted to be buried there—” Things made far better sense, telling them to Emuin, than they had to the lady, or than they would when he told them to
Cefwyn. “He said he’d listened to Hasufin too long. He came to Althalen to be buried because he feared he would be a bridge for Hasufin if he was buried anywhere else. And I brought the lady here, sir: her father wanted to talk to Cefwyn, and Cefwyn says he wants to marry her.” “Merciful gods. Marry her.”
“I think—” he said, because he had had all the ride home to reason it out, “I think that the people of Emwy village were hiding the lord Regent. I think they knew he was there all along, and they protected him.
He was a good man. But now all the houses are burned and the people are Shadows. Idrys might have done it; he was going to burn the haystacks; but I think it was a man named Caswyddian, looking for the Regent. He found us—but the Shadows caught him. I don’t think he followed us out of Althalen. I heard the trees breaking.”
Emuin passed a hand over his face and went over to the table and sat down as if there were much more to hear. There was not. But Tristen went, too, and sat, feeling the weariness of what seemed now days in the saddle, Cefwyn’s father’s murder, and now this ride to and from the Regent’s death—there was so, so much in turmoil around him, and too many dying, whatever it meant to die—he could not puzzle it out. And he wanted to have Emuin tell him he had not been mistaken, and that he had not brought Cefwyn worse trouble.
“I should have been there,” Emuin said.
“Have I done wrong, sir?”
“It remains to see.”
“I’ve killed people. I fought Cefwyn’s enemies. But I—knew how, sir. It came to me—as other things do.” “Did you do unjustly?”
“No, sir. I don’t think that I did.” It was a question the like of which Mauryl would have asked. It showed him a path down which he could think. “But is this what I was meant to do? Is fighting Cefwyn’s enemies what Mauryl wanted me to do? I thought by going on the Road I might find the answer, and I found the lady and the lord Regent. I think this was where I was supposed to go. But I can’t tell if this was what Mauryl wanted. How am I to know such things?”
“Gods, lad, if I only knew, myself. But you did very bravely.”
“Hasufin still has the tower, sir. He has that, and he might have Althalen, now. I don’t know. The old man, the lord Regent, was fighting to stop him. —He was a wizard. I think he was, at least.”
“The lord Regent?” Emuin sounded surprised. “Why so?”
“Because he went to the gray place. So did his daughter, but she didn’t know she could do it. Can only wizards go there?”
“The daughter can?”
“Yes, sir.”
Emuin drew a long, slow breath.
“Is it wrong to do?” Tristen asked, not understanding Emuin’s troubled expression.
“No. Not wrong. But dangerous—especially in that place. I have always told you it was dangerous.”