“Because of Hasufin.”
“Because of him, yes.”
“Could you have defeated him, if you were there?”
“Where Mauryl failed? I am not confident. I am far from confident.
And you must stay out of that place! You and she both must.”
“The lord Regent said—” He tried to follow the tangled reasoning that the lord Regent had told him, how it was easy to slip into Hasufin’s trickery, but all thinking was becoming a maze for him, like the dazedness that came with too much, too fast. His tongue forgot the words. His eyes were open, but they were ceasing to see things clearly. He was all of a sudden profoundly, helplessly weary, and knew he was where he could trust, and that there was his own bed very near him, which he wanted more than he wanted anything in the world.
“Poor lad,” Emuin said, as Mauryl would have said; or he dreamed, and rested his head on his hands. He heard the scrape of the chair as Mauryl rose, and he tried to wake. He felt the touch of a kindly hand on his back. He might have been in Ynefel again. He might have begun to dream.
“Poor m’lord,” someone said, and he heard someone say, “Put him to bed. He needs that most of all.”
He felt someone at his shoulder, heard Uwen’s voice then, saying, “On your feet, m’lord.” “Emuin, —”
“Master Emuin’s gone to his supper, lad.” Uwen set an arm about him, and he waked enough to help Uwen, and to get his feet under him.
“Servants has got hot towels, m’lord, and your own bed is waitin’.”
He could walk for that. He let Uwen guide him to his own bedroom and set him down on a bench by the window. Uwen helped him off with the coat, and with the mail shirt, and with the boots, and then he sat and shivered in clothing that never had dried.
But the servants came with stacks of hot, wet towels, and he shed his clothing and let them comb his hair and shave him and warm him with the towels, until his eyes were shutting simply with the comfort, and he was near to falling asleep where he sat.
Uwen and one of the servants pulled him to his feet and took him across a cool floor to his bed. There was a fire going in the hearth, he could see that as he lay back and let Uwen throw the covers over him.
“Was Emuin angry? I don’t remember.”
“He wasn’t angry, m’lord. He said you’d sleep a while. He said not to worry, he’d talk to the King.”
“I am tired, Uwen, unspeakably tired. That’s all, now.” His eyes were shut already, and the mattress was bottomless. “I’ll sleep through supper, I fear.”
“‘At’s all right. ’At’s just all right, lad. Ye’ve done very well.”
“I wish I thought so.”
“Ye’ve weathered more’n ye’ll say, is clear.” Uwen’s gentle hand brushed the hair off his face. “Ye got to stay out of such places.” “They seem where I’m most fit.”
“That ain’t so, m’lord. Don’t ye ever say so!”
“Uwen, forgive me for bringing you out in the rain.”
“There’s naught to forgive, lad. Only I hoped ye’d fled the blood and the killing and just took a ride in the country, is all. And ye found ghosts and worse.”
“I found Hasufin. I found him and he still was too strong. But the old man drew me to the Elwynim. And I drew you to us, at least I think I did.
I was wishing you away, but toward the last, there was nothing I wanted more to see than you coming down that hill.”
“Nothing I wanted to see more than you, lad. But ye done right well, ye done right well. I heard you askin’ master Emuin. It’s a spooky business, I say. The Elwynim talking about fire and smoke, which we was smelling, with the rain coming down in buckets and tubsful. The Ivanim say that’s the reputation of the place, that the haunt often goes with that smell about it. But what broke the trees, m’lord?”
“I think it was the folk of Emwy,” Tristen said, and tried to open his eyes, but they immediately closed again. “Talk of something else. Talk about the village you came from. Talk about the town. Make me laugh. I would like to laugh.”
Uwen talked, and talked, but it became a lazy sound to him, and dear and distant at once, telling him about his aunt and the priest and the pig, which was a funny story, and made him laugh, but he could not for two blinks of his eyes follow it, or consciously understand the joke, except the pig had found its way home again by sundown, and the priest had wanted to have it for dinner. So he was on the side of the pig.
Chapter 28
Gossip had run the halls all evening and it had had twins by morning, so Annas reported.
And mostly it was true what the gossip was saying, simply that there was rebellion in Elwynor, Emwy village was burned to the ground—and the King was marrying the Regent of Elwynor. Cefwyn looked at least to have an hour or two before he had to refute wilder elaborations on that report. He had had a late night of questioning Cevulirn’s captain, and discussing matters with Cevulirn—a later night, with the pain in his leg keeping him awake. But he had not finished his morning cup of tea when Efanor came bursting past the confused guards in a high fit of temper.
“You cannot be serious,” was Efanor’s opening plaint. “You cannot do this. You dare not do this.”
“I can, and I can and I dare,” Cefwyn muttered over the rim of the tea cup. He felt a sort of triumph to have set Efanor so thoroughly aghast. It was good to have some forces of nature predictable. “Name me a disadvantage, brother, and do sit down, have a cup of tea. Shush! You know I hate uproars before I’ve waked.”
Annas brought another cup, and Efanor settled. There were smiles.
There were nods. The door shut.
“The woman is a heretic!” Efanor cried.
“I’ll ask her whether she is. If she consents to my suit.”
“The King cannot marry a heretic! He cannot blaspheme against the gods! He cannot make light of them!”
Do you really think they notice? he was almost tempted to say. His leg was hurting this morning and he was quick to temper. But he could be at least as crassly self-serving as Efanor’s priests, and cold-bloodedly larded his own unreligious philosophy with priestly cant. “I believe the gods send us chances, Efanor, I do believe that chances to do great good are rare, perhaps one in a lifetime, and this is mine.” Luck was the way he personally thought of it. But, inspired to one impiety, he proceeded to an outright fabrication: “I had a vision, night before last night, and I saw the sun shining on the far side of the Lenfialim. I think it’s the gods’ providence that Tristen came to us instead of across the river where Aséyneddin, who is truly faithless, would have seized on him and used him ill, and I think it’s the gods’ good providence that they have given me a chance to bring the realms together.” “They’re heretics.”
“Good loving gods, Efanor! Whom else can one rescue from sin? The pious? The gods already have them. It’s the heretics the gods have to court!
It’s heresy to deny the gods’ providence, —is it not? These are clearly providential events, absolutely unprecedented, tumbling one upon the other!
And surely the good gods want converts and influence in Elwynor, which the lady can give to them, —if the gods’ pious Guelen worshippers make a good impression and don’t offend the lady by arresting doddering trinket sellers in the market. Let us have a sense of proportion, here, brother, and give affairs their sensible importance! What matters more to the gods?
Scaring some old woman? Or having peaceable relations with Elwynor and the chance to secure a border? Leave the gods to take care of the old women in their good time and let us do what they clearly have set before us, in the matter of this border, and the Regent, and a chance that has never ever come to any king, not for a hundred years. If we fail—if we fail, we shall stand accountable for thousands of lives. We shall lose all we hold dear and defeat the gods’ own purpose. And I would not have that on my soul, Efanor, I would not!”