“Is there some occasion?” he asked, embarrassed to be the object of such anxious attention. “My lady.” He did not at all look his best. His hair would be in tangles. He ran his hand through it, and felt his arm quite inexplicably weak.
Annas arrived with a bowl of soup, saying that the kitchen was limited at the moment until they could wash all the pots, whatever that meant, and while he was trying to think of a question, a page came and stuffed cushions behind his back and another held the bowl and spoon for him-prepared to spoon the soup into his mouth in front of all these witnesses.
“No,” he said sharply, and waved away soup, spoon, and boy. “What is this?”
“It was witchcraft,” said Efanor, who sat on a reversed chair, arm along its back.
He was not prepared to make judgments on Efanor and witches.
“Orien Aswydd,” Ninévrisé said. “Master Emuin broke his skull but he says he will be better soon.”
“I feel fine,” he said. “I keep telling you I feel fine. What are all of you doing here?”
“You should fare much better now,” Idrys said.
“I shall, if I have fewer people staring at me.” He was unaccountably weak. He had no desire for the soup. He most wanted to sleep. He decided he would shut his eyes for a moment, and said, “Did you see the horse, Tristen? What do you think?” “I think he’s very fine, sir.”
“Good,” Cefwyn said, remembered his betrothed bride was in the company—with his brother, which he found unlikely, and made the effort a second time to lift his eyelids to be certain it was true. “Forgive me. I don’t mean to fall asleep.”
The eyes shut. He was aware of them moving about, and discussing him quietly, and Annas saying they would put the soup back in the pot and it could go on waiting. He had as lief escape it. But Annas was very hard to escape. He had learned that, at Annas’ knee.
Was it porridge he should eat? He thought of the sunlight coming in a window of his childhood.
But that was silly. Or magical. On this particular morning, when he was about six or seven, he could hear all the voices of most of the people who would be important to him in his life. So it was a very important dream, although he didn’t know their names, now; but he knew that he would, someday, and he should remember it when he grew up.
Chapter 31
In two days a Frost had come, and rimed the black slates of the Zeide roof outside Tristen’s window. He opened it to test the strangeness of the white coating, and found the air very cold, and the Rime slick and cold and quite remarkable. People went about morning chores in his narrow view of the courtyard below and their breath made white steam. So did his own against the glass. “Look!” he said to Uwen, quite foolishly, entranced by this miracle, and Uwen looked.
“Why does it do that?” he asked Uwen, and Uwen scratched his morning-stubbled chin.
“Because it’s cold.”
“But why?” Tristen asked.
“I can’t say as I can answer,” Uwen said. “I can’t say as I ever asked anybody as would know. That’s a wizard-question. Breath’s warm.
Horses do that when they’re hot.”
“Give off steam?”
“They can.”
“That’s very odd,” Tristen said, and blew more steam at the glass and watched the magic instead of dressing in time for breakfast. He would have liked to ask master Emuin further about the ice and the steam, but Emuin did not wake much, except to eat, even yet, and then he had so fierce a headache Tristen wanted not to be near him. Emuin was angry at him, and upset, and would not see anyone. The priests kept praying in the shrine and called Emuin’s getting well a miracle of the gods, but Emuin called himself damned now and said it was his own fault for coming near him again.
That stung. But he told himself Emuin didn’t mean it that strongly, and that once Emuin was well, which Emuin would be, Emuin would be in a much better frame of mind. Meanwhile Emuin had confided in him that he was mending himself, far more slowly than he might—and that such strength as he had to spare at all, he gave to the King.
And Cefwyn was on his feet. Cefwyn was inquiring, Annas said, about the kitchens, the boys that were burned, and the whereabouts of Orien Aswydd, Idrys having told him that troubling matter and the reason of his wound not healing. Cefwyn came down the hall to visit master Emuin, using the hated stick the way Emuin peevishly said, lifting one blackened eyelid, that His Majesty should have done in the first place and not fallen down the stairs like a damned fool.
More kindly spoken, Ninévrisé came downstairs, made Cefwyn tea and fussed over him, Idrys fussed over him, Annas fussed over him-Tristen did the same, such as the others left him room: he brought Cefwyn reports from the pastures and the armory; he had done that yesterday. And he thought, in his collecting of cheerful things to tell Cefwyn, about telling him about people’s breaths steaming and the air turning cold, but he thought that it was probably much too commonplace a miracle to entertain Cefwyn.
Annas and Idrys gave orders and kept the household in order; servants were lugging water up the stairs and washing everything the smoke had smudged, and it turned out to have coated even walls that looked clean.
Cook had the courtyard full of tubs and fires going, while servants brought out the blackened pots and tables to scrub, and a master builder had taken a look at the timbers and masonry of the kitchen and given orders to a number of workmen. A pile of charcoaled pieces from the kitchen timbers fed the fires in the courtyard, and the smell of cooking vied with the lingering smell of smoke.
Wind bore down on the citadel that night, a noisy, cold wind, that had every fire lit and that rattled doors and windowpanes, but it seemed innocent. Cefwyn invited him, among others, and sat in front of the fireplace, in a comfortable chair, with his leg propped up, a quilt about him, a cup of wine in his hand, and his friends, as he said, around him:
Ninévrisé and Margolis came down, and he and Idrys and Annas were there. Efanor, more quiet than Tristen had ever seen him, came in while Ninévrisé was reading poetry aloud, and sat and listened, before he came and rested his hand on Cefwyn’s arm and in a quiet voice asked him how he fared and wished him and his lady well. The harper entertained them.
No one argued. No one mentioned Orien Aswydd. Efanor did not seem comfortable the entire evening, but he was there, and he was resolutely gracious to the lady, who, when he took his leave, early, seized his hands, looked at him and said quite gravely, and in everyone’s hearing, “Thank you.”
Efanor did not seem to know how to answer. He turned very red, and held the lady’s hands a moment looking at the floor as if he were trying to say something and could not decide what. Then he said, “My lady,” and left.
Idrys cocked his head with a look at Cefwyn. Cefwyn was looking toward the door—or at Ninévrisé who was looking at the door. Tristen wondered what Efanor had thought of saying, and realized he had held his breath.
On the next day leaves lay thick about the land. Tristen rode Dys out and about the meadows, through an orchard bare-branched and piled with leaves that scattered under Dys’ huge feet. He on Dys and Uwen on Cass had chased a hare through the meadow and into the brush, and came back with the horses blowing steam into the chilly afternoon air.
And to his surprise and the guards’ distress, Cefwyn had come down to the pasture stables. He had ridden Danvy down, followed by a mounted guard. The chill had stung his face, and he was pale, but red-cheeked, and cheerful. “There you are,” he said, and rubbed his leg, if lightly. “Danvy does the walking, fairly sedately, thank you, but far, far less difficult than a sennight ago. I waked this morning feeling very little pain. I won’t attempt Kanwy—but I’d take a turn out and back with you.”
“Gladly,” Tristen said, and Cefwyn and he and Uwen and the guard rode out a good distance across the sheep-meadow.