“Me lord?” The child came as far as the door and shoved it open to the drizzly night. “They don’t ’low no lamps, m’lord, on account of fire.
What would ye be wantin’?”
“I need a horse,” he said.
“Aye, m’lord.” The boy-shadow sounded doubtful, and scratched his ribs. Lightning lit the aisle, shone off the white-edged eye of a heavy-headed and dark horse that looked out of its stall, waked by the goings-on. “Ye want ’im f’ far or fast, m’lord?”
“The best you have,” he said. “A horse that didn’t work today.”
“‘At sure ain’t many, m’lord. We brung Petelly here from pasture.
He’s a big fellow, fair fast. ’E don’t mind th’ weather, but ’e’s a stubborn mouth, and ’e sure don’t like the spurs, m’lord, ’e pitches like a fool.”
“I wouldn’t like them, either,” Tristen said. The boy went to the horse who had put his head out; and who regarded him with a wary eye as the boy led him out in the flickers of the lightning. Petelly stood patiently while the boy searched up the tack, stood sleepily through the saddling and bridling—sniffed over Tristen’s hands as Tristen took the reins and heaved a sigh as Tristen climbed up, moving into a sedate walk as Tristen rode out into the rain.
He tucked Cefwyn’s cloak about him and over as much of Petelly’s back and gear as he could make it cover. He rode Petelly quietly to the Zeide gate, and the guards, surprised in a dice game, let him through with only a question who he was and a look at him by lamp-light from their open gatehouse door.
“Tristen, sirs, from the Zeide.”
“What business?” one asked.
“My own, sirs.”
But one plucked at the other’s arm and said,” ’At’s a King’s messenger, don’t ye see?”
The second man held the shielded lamp close, and said. “Pardon, sir.”
Perhaps it was the cloak. He did not think they knew him. They were not the guards who had been on duty the night he came, and it was at least the second, if not the third, watch of the night. But he did not quarrel with their notion he was a messenger—which was, he supposed, wrong, but, then, he was doing nothing he ought to be doing, and it was, he supposed, too, less wrong than running off with Petelly, which he knew was going to perturb master Haman, and probably get the poor stableboy in trouble.
But he could not do other than he did, and did not tell them the truth: they opened the gate for him, and he rode Petelly slowly down the slick cobbles of the town’s main street to the town gate, and the gatehouse there.
“Who goes there?” the challenge came to him. The gatehouse door opened, its lamps sending out a feeble light onto flooded cobbles, water pocked with rain, where the drainage was not good. One resolute man waded out into it, carrying a lantern and dutifully looking him over.
“Gods, didn’t know ye in the dark, m’lord. Hain’t you no escort?”
“None tonight,” he said. He did not know the guard’s name, but the guard seemed to know him. “Open the gate, sir.”
The other came out, saw him and made a quick sign over his heart.
“Gods bless, ’at’s the Sihhé” The thunder was booming off the walls, and the lightning lit the faces, whiter than the lantern-light. “The gate,” Tristen said.
The guards’ faces were fearful. They both made signs against harm, and hurried to lift the bar on the little gate, the Sally-port, the Word came to him. He rode through, and they began quickly to shut the gate after him. But he had thought of one trouble he had not accounted of when he had begun to evade the watch Cefwyn set over him.
“When my man comes here,” he said, “as I’m sure he will, tell him I did not go to Ynefel.”
“Where is ye goin’, m’lord?” one asked, under the stamp and splash of Petelly’s restless hooves.
“Searching,” he said, which was at least a part of the truth. “Tell him I will be back.”
He turned Petelly along the wall-road, and at his asking Petelly picked up his pace, laying back his ears at the thunder-strokes, but shaking his neck and wanting to run.
“Go,” he said, and let Petelly have the rein he wanted. Petelly stretched out and ran, splashing through puddles and tearing along the road beside the Ivanim camp.
He had at no point of his evolving escape been sure he could escape and ride out past the guards, and past the camps—but no one now put his head out of a tent, no sentry prevented him in this downpour. He passed the Ivanim. He passed the camp of Lanfarnesse. The guards in town were not at fault, if no one had told them not to let him out. The sentries of the camps outermost, watching Cevulirn’s horses, and those watching Pelumer’s, had no reason to challenge him: he had come from the town, past other sentries.
And with the last tents and the last picket lines behind him—there was nothing but open road and the night ahead of him.
Now he had no one to account to and no one to harm but himself: his greatest fear had been Uwen’s finding out, and rushing after him in a mistaken and utterly dangerous direction, because they had talked of Ynefel.
He was sure that Uwen, hearing Cefwyn and others come in, as he must have done, would be wondering already why he had not come back.
Uwen would have begun to worry; and probably already Uwen would have dressed and gone downstairs to look.
Then Uwen would ask close questions of the guards, who perhaps had not seen where he went. But once they began to search as far as the stable-court, which was a favorite haunt of his, and far more likely than the garden in the dark and the rain, then the boy would surely say at once that he had given him a horse.
But after that—after that, Uwen had to ask for a horse, too, and Uwen was not a lord: Uwen could not obtain a horse for the asking. Uwen would have to go to the commander of the watch, who might have to wake someone of more authority, like Captain Kerdin.
Or Idrys. Idrys would be angry, and cast about very far and very fast looking for him, bringing his cold wrath down on those who should have asked more questions. He was sorry for that, he was very sorry for it.
But there was no way at least Idrys could blame Uwen, who had not been on duty. It was, if it was anyone’s fault for not watching him-Idrys’ own fault, though he did not think it would put Idrys in any better humor. Idrys would send down to the town gates to ask where he had gone, and they would surely say, He went west, and Idrys would know at once, the same as Uwen would, where besides Ynefel he might go.
Then Uwen would beg a horse and orders that would let him and the guards ride out to catch him. He hoped that Idrys did not ride out himself.
But the boy had said that they were bringing in horses from the pastures, horses that were not the best; and if the boy had given him one of the strongest and fastest horses they had, in Petelly, that meant whoever of the guard chased him would not have the best. And Uwen was not a foolish man. Uwen would not rush ahead of other riders.
What he was doing was disobedient. Mauryl would say so. Dangerous. Uwen would say so. But it was clever. He thought so.
Not wicked. Or—not as men reckoned wickedness. He had harmed no one, except, perhaps, the guards who had let him do what they thought he had a right to do. He had disobeyed Cefwyn’s order to go back to Cevulirn’s forces, and not to go with him, and Cefwyn had thanked him for it, because he should have clone that. And if they would not listen to him in their council, still, someone had to do something, because the enemy was not waiting for a more convenient time—and Cefwyn had acquired new advisors who urged Cefwyn to listen to the priests, who knew least of all about Mauryl’s enemy.
And once Emuin arrived, Emuin also would forbid him to try, even enough to find out what that enemy was doing—he had begun to perceive the reasons of Emuin’s retreat far from him, and it was because Emuin doubted he could do anything. Emuin was afraid of his enemy, and did not want to face him.
But if Emuin waited until the enemy did more than rattle the windows of the Zeide, then the threads he had seen going out of Ynefel would be very many, and very dark. And that was not good advice.
He had been at two places where he had felt the Shadows most powerfully. He had gone on Mauryl’s Road as far as Henas’amef, but he thought now, tonight, that Henas’amef was not, after all, the end of his travels, only a resting-place, a place to learn. He could not rest too long, or remain too safe—Mauryl had not brought him into the world to be safe; he knew that now: Mauryl himself had not been safe. Mauryl had been fighting an enemy all unknown to him, an enemy that had finally overwhelmed him, and now, though he had never yet been able to read Mauryl’s Book or understand Mauryl’s reasons, he knew at least something of Mauryl’s fight.
The rest of the answers were not, he assured himself, at Henas’amef. He had been closer to them at Emwy than he had been anywhere since he had left Marna, in that place where the Emwy road came closest to Ynefel.