“Your Majesty.” It was Gwywyn. “Shall we ride forward and find them out?”
“No,” he said, “I know who they are. Let be.” So the Lord Commander fell silent riding on one side of him with Efanor, and Cevulirn arrived beside Idrys on the other, to hear the same. They drew steadily nearer.
“Majesty,” his father’s Lord Commander whispered, justifiably apprehensive, for there was indeed an eeriness about the pair, who had never looked to know what rode behind, as if a king’s funeral cortège and the procession of his successor were nothing remotely of interest to them.
The stocky man looked back finally. The other did not, but rode slumped in the saddle, dark head bowed.
He is hurt, Cefwyn thought in anguish, and yet—and yet—in the trick of the setting sun and the dust the two horses raised in the trampled roadway, it was as if two ghosts rode before them, beings not of this time or place, nor accessible to them.
Not Elfwyn, he thought. Whatever soul Mauryl had called—it was surely not Elfwyn’s unwarlike soul that had ridden to save their company. It was not the last Sihhé king whose hand and arm and body had found such warlike skills as drove armored enemies in panicked retreat.
Sihhé! their attackers had cried, falling back in consternation. He would never forget that moment, that the enemy about to pour over him had given way for fear of two men, one of them having ridden out unarmed but for a dagger.
Tristen rode loosely now, as if sorely hurt, as if he expected no help, Cefwyn thought, and would rebuff what aid might be offered him. But gingerly he moved his horse forward, while the main column kept the pace it could best maintain.
He rode alongside, met Uwen’s anguished face.., saw Tristen’s profile in a curtain of dark hair. Tristen’s head was bowed against his breast, as if only instinct kept him in the saddle. His face was spattered with blood like his hands, and the black velvet was gashed, showing bright mail underneath. Blood had dried on the velvet, and on the mane and neck and feet of the red mare. Tristen’s hands did not hold the reins. They clenched a naked sword, on which sunset glinted faint fire, and blood sealed his hands to it, hilt and blade across the saddlebow. “Tristen,” Cefwyn said. “Tristen.”
The dark head lifted. The pale eyes behind that blood-spattered mask were unbarriered and innocent as ever as they turned to him.
Cefwyn shuddered. He had expected some dread change, and there was none.
“This, too, I know,” Tristen said distantly, and raised the bloody sword by the hilt in one hand. He let it down, then. And without any expression on his face, without any contraction or passion in the features, tears welled up and spilled down his face. “You saved my life, Tristen.”
Tristen nodded, still without expression, still with that terrible clarity in the eyes, fine hands both clenched upon the sword.
“My father is dead,” Cefwyn said, and meant to say in consequence of that—that he was King. But suddenly the dam that had been holding his own tears burst when he said it, as if with his saying the words, it all became real. He wiped at his face, and the tears dried in the dusty wind, as he became aware of the witnesses closing up around him. “Are you hurt?” Cefwyn asked.
“No,” the answer came, faint and detached. Tristen’s eyes closed as if in pain, and remained so for several moments. “Uwen, care for him.”
“Your Highness,” the soldier whispered, and fear was in his eyes as he corrected himself. “M’lord King.”
Riders had come up behind him. Only the leaders had overtaken him: the column was falling behind them. The pace they had taken was a hardship on the wounded.
“My lord,” said Idrys’ cold voice as he reined back with Efanor and
Cevulirn. “The Sihhé should not precede you, not in this column, not into the town. It will not be understood. You have fostered this thing.
Now it grows. Better it should vanish. Kings need no allies such as he is.
Send him to some quiet retreat where he will be safe, and you will be.”
“He was by me,” Cefwyn replied bitterly. “He rode between me and the assassins. He almost saved my father. Where were you?”
“Serving Your Majesty, not well, perhaps. Better I had left Heryn to others. I deeply regret it. —But, all the same, he should not precede you.
For all our sakes, my lord King.”
It was truth. It was essential, even for Tristen’s future safety. He surrendered, still angry at himself, at Idrys, at fate or the gods or his father for his dying act: he was not sure. “See to it.”
Idrys rode forward. Cefwyn watched as Idrys spoke briefly to Uwen, and immediately after the pair went to the side of the road and let the column pass.
He could not see Uwen and Tristen, then. He must trust that they would come in safely, that Uwen’s good sense would fend for them both, however far back they had been pushed by the succeeding ranks, and that Tristen would find his way home with the rest of them, when of all persons he most wanted to know was safe, it was Tristen. He was King. And he could not protect the things he most wanted safe.
A wind began to blow at their backs, a chill wind out of the north, kicking up dust in clouds, flattening the grass beside the road and making the broad Marhanen banners crack and buck at their standards, so that the standard-bearers fought to hold them.
Idrys dropped back into place. He said nothing. Efanor was on the other side.
They spoke no words. The journey now did not require them.
The sun was rising as they came into Henas’amef, with the gate bell tolling, and the Zeide bell picking up the note as they rode the cobbled streets.
A Marhanen king, Cefwyn thought, seeing the townsfolk gathered. A
Marhanen king is visiting this town for the first time since the massacre of the Sihhé.
Now the Marhanens bleed.
He had sent Idrys ahead, to deliver word up to the Zeide. But, perhaps uninformed, the townsfolk had run out to gawk and cheer as the column came in with banners flying and numerous strangers to the town. The crowd was excited, then struck silent and sober at the sight of wounds; they muttered together at the King’s banners; and as the cortège passed, somewhere a voice cried out, “The King is dead!” and the cry went through the town, with an undertone of fear—well it might be fear, if the province were held to blame.
And hard upon that, “Sihhé!” went rippling through all the rumors, beneath the tolling of the bells, until he knew that Tristen had likewise come within the gates—knew that it was more than Tristen’s presence that stirred the people. A Marhanen King was dead and a living Sihhé had ridden in from battle. To them it might be omen, even verging on prophecy.
The Zeide gates up the hill gaped for them; the grim skulls looked down victorious from the south gate, and the Zeide’s many roofs behind that arch were a mass of shadow against a pearl-colored sky. “I will show you justice here,” Cefwyn said to Efanor as they came beneath the deathly gate. “I promise you an answer for the treachery responsible for this.”
Efanor did not look at him, nor he at his brother. They preserved funereal decorum as the procession labored its way up and around the front of the Zeide, to the east façade and the holy and orthodox Quinalt shrine where—he had already given orders to Idrys—the body would lie in state within the Zeide’s walls.
“Promise me another answer,” Efanor said finally, when they had come clear of bystanders, in the cobbled courtyard, “an answer for the questions that brought our father here.”
Now, now the bitterness came out. And the suspicion.
“Was it not enough, what you saw, Efanor? They were lies that Heryn used to lay a trap for you—playing on our family’s cursed suspicions.
There was nothing true in anything Heryn reported. Our own distrust was his ally, Efanor. Do not go on distrusting me.”