Mauryl had approved his work. Mauryl had said- But Mauryl had no longer any clear face in this memory. The whole of Ynefel seemed strange to him and beyond recovery. He was cut off from its good memories. There was no way now back to those days, that innocence. He could not but ask questions, and questions, and questions of men less wise than Mauryl, and the questions led him, every one, farther and farther from home and safety.
Cefwyn said, Idrys said, men all said, and it was probably true, that he was Sihhé; that all the Sihhé had died terribly, and that Mauryl had called him out of death and given him a shape and substance; the servants said, and Cefwyn said, that he did not so much learn things, as remember them.
If I go on, he thought with a shiver, I may remember dying. I would not wish that.
The servants spoke when they thought he was not listening, and he knew that they greatly feared his nature, even if they regarded him kindly. He knew they thought him a wizard. They believed his name had been Elfwyn, and they said that he had died at Althalen.
And perhaps it was true—he thought that they had overheard it from those who knew—but the name of Elfwyn was not a Name to him, although he remembered clearly that Cefwyn had said it to him, trying, he knew now, to discover whether he would remember it—and he had not.
Althalen itself, though a Name, was a place he thought ought to prosper, not lie in overgrown ruin. His thoughts were cluttered with far worse places than that, Names he could not recover, and others—Galasien, Aryceillan, Arachis—Names he had never heard anyone use, hovered on the edge of his awareness, and came near him at sleepy moments, like birds that tried to light, but found no footing in recent memory.
The servants said perhaps he had had his last fit because he had come near a cursed site, and the ghosts that lingered there had made him ill, as ghosts were, he gathered, reputed to do, stealing life from the living. But it was not theft that had afflicted him there. It was no ghosts that had afflicted him at all, but a surfeit of Words, Words in horrid profusion, violent Words that had not confused him at all today, when he had seen Cefwyn in danger. Once he had seen the fighting in front of him, once he had seen the King’s banners all grouped together and the troops helplessly drawn in on each other, with Cefwyn trying to breach that knot, he had known clearly what to do. He had known in the way he had known, once the pen was in his hand, how to write, and in the way he had known, once he had found a horse under him, how to ride. He had known in such clear order the things that had to be done to unfold that foredoomed battle-line and bring it to bear on the enemy again.
He had known not only the use of the sword, but the process and the direction of the battle. He had known where to go, and what had to be done to let that embattled knot break open—and he had seen without a doubt on that field the specific men he had to take down to confuse the attackers and drive them in retreat.
A sweat broke out on him that had nothing to do with the fire. The wind that had swept down on them on the road had been cold, and that wind still blew—he could hear it against the windows.
He had done what he knew to do. He had not read Mauryl’s Book, but he had found a skill in him for wreaking dreadful harm—he had found a capability latent in his hands, in this present sinew and bone that Mauryl had made. He knew that things were still unfolding to him, and that he might discover more things still. He was not the feckless boy who had fallen on Mauryl’s wooden steps, and skinned knees on the stone floors of Ynefel. He was coming to what Mauryl had wished him to be, perhaps, but he was not yet aware of what that was. He did not think his present being was linked as tightly to his past as Cefwyn and the servants feared—he did not think it mattered that much who he had been, though it was a start to knowing who he was to be, and what he might expect himself to do.
That was the thing that set him shivering: not knowing what other abilities might unfold in him. He had discovered today that he was not a slight man. He was tall, and strong, and might seize a man and break his hold on a weapon; he was quick, and could strike faster than a man who came at him. He rode without needing to think—in motion, Gery was part of him, coming through for him by her bravery when other men’s horses shied into trouble. She had gone over the dead, on uneven ground—he had not failed Gery and she had not failed him, and that was the terrible thing. While they did together what he knew to do, it had felt like flying, the sword had weighed nothing to him, and Gery had done what Uwen swore she was never trained to do, because he had the gift, as Uwen had said the Sihhé lords had had, to speak to horses and to enchant them.
He thought not. He thought it was only because he knew how to sit a saddle and because he had once, alive at some other time, ridden for many, many hours, and loved it best of anything he did. He didn’t know how he could have risked Gery the way he had—he didn’t know how he could not have risked her and himself and Uwen, to go to Cefwyn’s defense, when Cefwyn was in deadly danger—so many, many things he did not know how to weigh one against the other. He could not weigh the value of taking the sword, and saving the men, and killing others, who were, at the end calling out, “Sihhé! Sihhé!” and refusing to fight him, so that his chief weapon then became the vacancy he could create with his mere presence, where he rode, where he made Uwen follow, where he forced a horse to go, who had become dear to him—as Uwen was, as Cefwyn was, as the peace was, that he had found in Cefwyn’s presence.
He shut his eyes tight, feeling moisture squeeze between his lids. He wiped it with both his hands and pressed against his eyes so the red light that made would take away the sights from him. He inhaled the wood smoke, and it made him remember Althalen. He felt the stone of the fireplace against his back, and it was all that told him he was not drifting in the black and red, knowing the value of nothing, knowing not what to do, or how to weigh what he had done, or the lives, or the pain, or the fear. Words and abilities were breaking out in him so rapidly he could not master them—they were, the opposite, near to mastering him, sending him careening wildly through choices he could not reconcile, into events every turn of which violated Mauryl’s precepts of right and wrong. He met necessities that caused him to do terrible things, even-even enjoying the feeling of Gery under him, or the loft the sword could attain, like a living thing, like that day in the courtyard, when he had learned to use the axe, and found it weighed nothing to his hands. He had thought it good. He had thought that day good, and never known where it might lead him.
Or was every choice like that, when one truly, truly ventured into the wide world beyond the woods? Was there no clean, clear line to tell him right from wrong? Was there no way to make right choices without scattering harm in his wake—without making even Uwen afraid of him?
He made himself clear rules to guide him in a world of confusion: I shall not harm Cefwyn, he thought. I shall not harm Uwen. It was a modest beginning, surely.
But harm meant such complex things, and extended in so many directions. Was harm thwarting Cefwyn’s wishes, or doing what one thought best, even when Cefwyn objected? Was harm risking Uwen, saving Cefwyn?
He heard Idrys’ voice, accusing him, and demanding he come in the gate last, because otherwise it would disrespect the King—but which King, had not been clear to him then or now.
“Sihhé!” the people in town had cried, out of joy to see him, the very people who had shunned him in their streets when he had been in such desperate need, alone, and hungry. “Lord Sihhé!” they shouted, like the men on the field, but the ones had rushed toward him and the others had fled. “Lord King!” they cried out, when the one King was dead, and the other King was Cefwyn, but he was not their king, nor wished to be, that least of all.
The wind rattled at the windowpanes. There seemed menace in the night, and the wind reminded him of the wind that had hovered around the towers of Ynefel. The wind blew now as it had blown there, in violent and angry gusts, and rattled the window latch.