“You were out there. Tonight.”
“I saw, sir.”
“It was justice,” Cefwyn said.
“I believe you,” Tristen said, knowing nothing else to say.
“You had news of Emuin. A messenger? To you and not to me? Or what?”
It was not Cefwyn and himself, it was not Cefwyn who could be his friend and bear with his imprecisions and his foolishness.
Nor was he the same as he had been, even days ago. He said, with cold at heart, “No, sir. Emuin does speak to me. He tries to help me. But he can’t, always. I think that’s why he went away.” “Wizardry,” Efanor said.
“No, sir,” Tristen said, “I don’t think so. I don’t feel so. Just—he hears me.”
“How can you dispute such things?” Efanor demanded, not of him, but of Cefwyn. “How can you countenance such arguments—wizardry and not wizardry? Do natural men hear wizards?”
“We had no natural man at issue in Mauryl,” Cefwyn said in a hard voice, “and damned well we should consult, brother, both Tristen and Emuin, where they have something of significance to say.” “Consult as you like, then. I’ll none of it!”
“I’11 warrant you’ll hear nothing to imperil your delicate holiness.
Stay. As a wizard, Tristen is gentler than Emuin is.” “I saw his gentility on the field.”
“And he ours, and yours tonight, brother! Forbear. Father gave me a province next a wizard and Emuin for a counselor to help hold it. Now Mauryl’s fallen, and left me Tristen for a ward—whom Emuin approved.
Tristen swore to be my defender, and kept his oath like a good and godly man, or this realm would have no king, not you, nor me, nor Marhanen at all—and Heryn would lord it over a realm of his own tonight, snugged right close to Elwynor. Wherewith the Regent would go down, some pretender would rise up with the marriageable daughter, and Heryn would become bulwark of an Elwynor no longer held at bay by a river that Mauryl, I have long suspected, defined as their border until his overdue but unwelcome departure from these mortal bounds. That is my fear-that whatever stricture the old man laid on the Elwynim no longer holds.
But it is not a fear I wish to rehearse before the Amefin lords—”
“Whom I would not have admitted to counsel, let me tell you.”
“Brother, I know these men, that some are in dire fear of being tied to Heryn’s sins, and others hated Heryn bitterly for reasons of their own and thought until today that he had had unquestioned Marhanen support. As perhaps Father did find him useful, Father not well knowing the inner workings of Amefel—but, to be quite pragmatic about Heryn Aswydd, I have been in this province long enough to have known too much about his excesses in office and to have received at least tentative approaches from the lords most desperate of those excesses, so that I no longer needed him. Therefore his head will adorn the gate.’
“And in your manipulations you drew Father into this—”
“Do not you dare say that to me!” Cefwyn brought his hand down on the maps, hard. “Father chose to believe Heryn instead of me. Ask Father’s councilors if they could dissuade him, or whether they fed the fires. Ask them! I do not ask where you stood.”
Tristen clenched his hands together, wishing he knew what to say to prevent a fight. But after a moment Cefwyn said, more quietly,
“I do not ask, brother. I take your presence here as exactly what you said, coming here to make things look better than you feared they were.
But I do not think you looked to find me in Henas’amef.” “I did not,” Efanor said, also quietly.
“To what an extent we have left our childish trust. We swore, you and I—we swore not to let Grandfather divide us.”
“I keep that oath,” Efanor said. “I do not know if you do, brother.”
“I shall. Nor shall I believe the lies men tell. Heryn finally realized that small change in his affairs, tonight. I fear that Father did trust him. But I would not. Tristen. Tristen, my friend. What do you need of me?”
He was confused in the flow of Words, Words that made great sense in the instant he heard them, and faded the next, but that advised him that far more had passed than he knew, and that nothing in these chambers was so clear or unequivocal as matters had seemed on the battlefield.
How alike these two lords were, he thought, Efanor and Cefwyn, alike in features, alike in stature, in small turns of expression—but for Efanor’s smooth chin and the crown on Cefwyn’s brow.
“I came to say,” he began, and his thoughts were still chasing the matter of Heryn and the fire, and the hanged men, and Heryn beheaded because he was noble. And the Marhanens. “I came to say, sir, I fear-fear—”
“Be at ease,” Cefwyn said.
He could not but look at Efanor, who he knew disapproved him. At Idrys, who frowned. And, distractedly, last at Cefwyn.
“I saw Ynefel,” he began. “I saw Mauryl’s enemy reaching out of it.”
“How do you know that?”
“I saw it, sir.”
“You were nowhere near Ynefel. You dreamed, you mean.”
“I dreamed awake, sir. And I think the harm never left Ynefel when Mauryl—died. Mauryl said I should go, I think, to keep me from it. It’s not a good thing, to let his enemy stay there. His enemy is reaching out into Elwynor. Even here. My window rattled, more than once, and it did that in Ynefel. He did it.”
“The man’s mad,” Efanor said in disgust.
“No, now,” Cefwyn said. “Tristen. Go on. He, you say. This danger.
What should we do about it?”
“You ought to have shutters, sir. Mauryl closed them every night.”
“Shutters,” Efanor said. “Of course. Shutters will save us. Good gods, brother!”
“Be still, Efanor. You are no help to his good sense. —Tristen. What about the windows? Are we speaking of magic, here? Is it something Mauryl did?”
Efanor made it hard to remember things in order. Idrys was staringhim, listening to everything he said and ready to find fault with what hecould scarcely explain in words. He tried to gather his points in order.
“Mauryl’s enemy, m’lord King. He came to Ynefel, usually with ~, He rattled the shuttersat night. Now the windows rattle here.”
“Wind does that!” Efanor said, and Cefwyn: “Hush, brother.”
“Mauryl said—Mauryl said that holes in the roof were no matter. there are lines on the earth Men make when they build, and so long as youtake care of them, the enemy can’t get in. You ought to close all the windowswhen the Shadows go across the courtyard. You should have shuttersm’lord, and close them. Everyone in the town should. Doors and windowslet a spirit in. It can’t cross at other places.”
“And it seeks to come indoors.”
“I don’t think it has, here. People are careless in town—but I don’tthink it’s powerful here, yet. I think it could become powerful, if peoplestarted listening to it. I think Heryn was listening to it. I think that someone in Elwynor might be.”
“Is this a god, this creature?” Idrys asked. “Or what?”
“It was a man. I think it’s a ghost. A haunt. Emuin calls it Hasufin. I’m not certain that’s its name.”
“Hasufin,” Cefwyn said.
“Gods forfend,” Efanor said, and he no longer sounded scornful. “I said there would no good come of this place. It’s the whole cursed province. But past the holy shrines, no ill will come.”
“It wants a Place, sir, that’s what I know. But it’s not just staying there.
I’m afraid it’s not. I don’t know if it has help to go outside Ynefel, or even if it wants to. If you’d give me soldiers, sir, I’d go find out.”