There is no leaving, young sir. You cannot find Mauryl again. But you can find me, at your need. Do not come here oftener than you must. I strictly forbid it. So can your Enemy reach this place. Do not bring him here. And do not linger in the light. At your urgent need only, Tristen. To do otherwise will put us both in danger.
It was like a brush of Emuinʼs hand across his face. Like a kindly touch, as Mauryl had touched him. And a warning of an Enemy that frightened him with scarcely more than that fleeting Word. He knew that Emuin was going away, but not as Mauryl had gone there was a Place that Emuin would go to, and it was measured across the land and down the Road, and was not here but it was not death.
He knew that something had happened to Mauryl, and that there was a danger, and that it dwelled in the light as well as in Ynefel, rendering that gray space dangerous for him to linger in.
Emuin vanished within a distant doorway, rimmed with vines, a green arch above the path.
And a gust of wind skirled along the gravel, kicking up dust. There was a fluttering sound, as the wind went ruffling callously through the pages of his abandoned books.
He had been careless. He did not like such breezes. He went and gathered up Maurylʼs Book and the Philosophy both from the bench, closed and pressed the precious pages together, under the watch of his patient guards.
But he had nowhere he had to go, nothing now that he was bound to do but what Emuin had bidden him do. He sat on the stone bench and thought about that, watching the fish come and go under the reflections on the surface until the shadow from the wall made the water clear, and he knew his guards, who had no interest of their own in books or birds or fish, were restless, if only to walk somewhere else for the hour.
CHAPTER 11
He heard a clatter in the yard in the morning, and a great deal of it. It brought him from his bed and sent him to the door to ask the guards, who, in their way, knew most things that went on.
We ainʼt to talk, the one named Syllan chided him, mʼlord.
Master Emuin, said Aren, the one who would talk, sometimes, in single words and with his head ducked. Leaving.
Leaving, Tristen echoed, distraught, and flew inside to dress without the servants, without his breakfast, without attention to his person. He was in his clothes and out the door, as quickly as ever he had dressed in his life, in Ynefel or in Henasʼamef. I wish to go downstairs, sirs.
Young mʼlord, Aren said. Ye know ye ainʼt permitted down there wiʼ the horses
But he was already on his way, and his guards followed. Only from the steps, he said, walking backward for a breath, then hurried down the hall and ran down the stairs, his guard overtaking him on the way.
The lower floor was echoing with activity, the doors at the middle of the hall were wide open, and when he went out to the great south steps, which he had never attempted to visit before, the courtyard was echoing and a-clatter with horses. He heard shouts and curses, not the angry sort, but the sort of curses men made when there was haste and good humor about a task. He went halfway down the broad steps before one of his guards interposed his arm and stopped him.
Just a little further, he asked of them, but they drew him over to the side, out of the jostling current of people coming up and down on business; and held him there until straightway they fell into conversation with some of the soldiers waiting for a captain who had not shown up.
He watched the gathering of horses, and the men climbing into saddles, sorting out weapons and banners; it was bright and it was noisy, a show he would have been curious and delighted to see if he were not so achingly unhappy with the reason of it.
Emuin had shown him a way that he might find him even in a commotion like this if he really, truly wished
No, he said to himself, that was not so. Emuin had said that it was dangerous to do and to do it only if he really, truly needed to reach him.
So he stood, doing as people had told him until just at the very bottom of the steps he saw Emuin walking past, and he moved two steps down before he even thought that he was testing the limits of his guardsʼ patience.
But Emuin had looked up and beckoned to him, so on that permission he ran down as far as the bottom of the steps.
Remember what I told you, Emuin said, taking him by the arms.
Yes, sir, he said. He looked Emuin in the face and saw neither disapproval nor anger, but anxiousness; and he wanted never to be the cause of Emuinʼs concern. Mauryl taught me about dangers, and to shutter the windows.
The Zeide has no shutters, Emuin said. But be careful of dark places, young lord.
I shall, he said earnestly. Please, please be careful, master Emuin.
I shall, that, Emuin said, embraced him again, this time with a fervor Emuin had denied him yesterday, and walked on toward the tall, spotted horse they were holding ready for him.
Emuin climbed up, then, with a groomʼs help. The mounted soldiers closed about, the Zeide gates opened, and the column filed out with a brisk clatter of horsesʼ hooves.
In the same moment Tristen found his guards near him again, ready to reclaim him, and he climbed calmly halfway up the steps with them, then stopped to look back at the last of the column.
The iron gates clanged shut. His guards began to talk again to the soldiers standing there. All real reason for him to be in the yard was done, and most people were going up the steps and inside or off through the courtyard toward the stables, but he had nowhere urgent to go.
A darkness touched the corner of his eye. He looked up and saw Idrys frowning down at him from the landing.
So did his guards see, and looked chagrined, caught in serious fault, Tristen feared. He went up the steps in company with them, as Idrysʼ cold eyes stayed fixed on him the while.
It was my fault, sir.
Do you take the princeʼs order lightly? A matter to ignore at will?
No, sir, he said. He feared that Idrys would do something to restrict the freedom he did have. Or that Idrys would unfairly blame his guards. But Idrys went inside the doors ahead of them, and did not look back.
That were good of you, mʼlord, Syllan muttered, and Aren said, Aye. It were, that, mʼlord.
It was my fault, he maintained, because it was, although he was also glad to have seen Emuin at least once more, and glad to have had that embrace of Emuin, which made him feel that Emuin did care for him and would, truly, be there at his need.
But he said no more of it, since the guards were supposed to say nothing at all and were breaking another order.
He went to the garden then, and found it as trafficked as usual. People laughed and talked, where there was often quiet for thinking. It seemed as if everyone who had taken leave of ordinary business to see Emuin leave now congregated to gossip about Emuin and his reasons, and they stood about in clusters, chattering together in voices they wanted not to carry.
But the garden, usually his refuge, reminded him only that Emuin would not chance here again, in this place which had, to him, seemed overwhelmed by Emuinʼs presence and now was dimmed and made small by his absence.
He would not abandon the birds, who looked for him. But he went away after he had fed them, and took to his room.
He read, sitting on the bench in the light of the diamond-paned window, with the latched section, not even large enough to put his head out, open beside him. He had lured the pigeons almost as far as the inside sill, but the boldest was still too wary. He had a secret cache of bread crumbs, which he set out on that windowsill now and again. That was his dayʼs entertainment.