“Good lad.” Cefwyn kissed his son’s convenient brow and pressed his arm. “But we know what he did and have that to hold over him when we need. Keep his sins in mind. They’re as good as coin.”
“Otter’s not Guelen. He won’t want to be Guelen. He’s Amefin, and he likes being that.”
“Hush,” Cefwyn said, in the approach of the duke of Carys. He managed a smile, a gracious extension of his hand to one who was truly a friend.
Three days on, one of Idrys’ company came back, having turned back at the river ford to deliver a report. “The lieutenant believes the boy has crossed the river dry-shod,” that man reported, “and the lieutenant crossed on into Amefel to carry the message as ordered. He sent me back to advise the Lord Commander and understand the situation in the capital.”
“Stay and warm yourself,” Cefwyn said, “and put yourself at your commander’s orders.” He did not dispose Idrys’ men, not ordinarily, and Idrys would have his own questions to ask the man. He was not utterly surprised that Otter had eluded them, and would, at this rate, be home or close to it. He hoped the boy had indeed had a dry crossing, and slept warm.
He had had a dream of his own last night, however. He had dreamed he rode after the boy, and that he fell farther and farther behind, until in a white gust, Otter vanished. That dream continued to haunt his day.
Aewyn picked at his meals, an unheard-of degree of distress. He had discharged two of his servants for reporting his mood, he had taken to the library and demanded maps of Amefel, and sulked through the family dinner that quietly celebrated the end of the Bryalt feast.
“Where is hischair?” he asked loudly, and the servants froze in confusion. In fact the table was arranged for the intimate family, and there was no place set for Otter.
“He will be back,” Ninévrisë said reasonably. “Your father has made that very clear. And I believe he will come. Do not you?”
Aewyn frowned and pushed his peas about the plate, disconsolate. He only picked at his dessert, and that final display, with his surliness toward his mother, truly roused Cefwyn’s temper, but he kept it under tight rein nonetheless.
The evening was full of storms. Aemaryen was fretful. Even the servants went about glum and downcast, and one dropped a dish, a crash that dented a gold-rimmed plate and brought down the majordomo’s silent fury.
Your father has made that clear, Ninévrisë had said.
Sent, and by a guardsman. He had been reluctant to put that royal apology on paper. He had turned back, when he had told his son he would do better than that, and his son had hoped, had he not? A son always hoped his father could work a miracle.
Afterward, in his office, at his desk, he found a blank sheet under his hand and the pen near, and he picked up the pen, and found himself wondering again what he could write, what he dared commit to paper. Messengers had been intercepted before this, and a gods-cursed run of bad luck in the visit counseled caution.
His queen was waiting. His servants would not go to their beds until they had seen him to his.
But after all the hurry and flurry of the dinner, after all the press of petitioners and favor-seekers, there was a silence, a very lonely silence.
It became a very resentful silence.
One more, he kept thinking, one more piece chipped away by the priests. A son, this time. The half of me, before this, when Tristen had quietly slipped even out of Amefel and sent him only a letter, saying, “They hate me too much.”
Too cursed much. The damned priests. Always, the damned priests. And the people he ruled. The hatred of Guelenfolk for the Sihhë who had ruled the west had not faded at all. Hatred had sent Tristen from the world of Men—though Tristen would never accuse his people or blame those who drove him out.
The anger that had slowly welled up came brimming over, rendering him furious beyond words. He more than suspected traitors among the priests, mortal men who thought they knew better than their king. The scratches and the spot were all too convenient to create a furor, not yet a sedition, but so easily could the matter have gone to riot and bloodshed, given the bloody-handed history of the Quinaltine and its priests.
Efanor claimed a manifestation, and he did not disbelieve in such powers; but on the other, and from a king’s jaundiced view, it might have a common, human, seditious origin, even human conjuring of the forces Efanor warned him against. Oh, that that were the truth, and that he could find the author of it and get his hands on one priest’s throat—
But he was wiser than that. Wiser than his father. He drew no absolute conclusions. He refused the answers his temper wanted—the assumption that hidden enemies in his own realm had done it, forces he already detested, the old contenders for power over the king…
Anger and imprudence had ruled his father Ináreddrin before him, distrust of those around him had let the very conspirators, agreeable men, into his father’s deepest confidence, until ultimately those men had brought his father down. The temptation to see enemies and opposition where there was only frustration was, oh, so easy when one wore the crown. It was natural enough that the common folk feared an Aswydd bastard from across the border, it was natural there be whispers… it was natural they look to the gods for signs.
The gods hadn’t helped him, had they, when the kingdom tottered on the brink of sorcerous ruin?
Magic, however, he had seen work. Sorcery and wizardry he had seen in abundance. Religion he had not seen work at all, except to watch it deny him friends and drive an innocent boy out into a snowstorm.
So damn all priests—the gods never helped him to what he wanted, never did anything that he could see but gather money from rich and poor alike, paying back a little bread and ale for the poor, and observing silence on sins for the rich.
The gods were not particularly good about silence for hissins, leaping gleefully onto his mistakes, not even sparing his attempts to do good. The gods deserted him whenever he relied on them in the least—and yet, in all justice, he knew he was never really faithful to them—not like Efanor, whose piety was always tinged with just a little sensible doubt—
But Efanor still prayed. Efanor saw the same things he saw and somehow managed to think the gods existed behind the false appearances, managed to find divinity hidden behind the priests, power behind the superstition and the terror, all with a doctrine that Efanor never was able to explain.
And Efanor had at least said he liked the boy, had he not?
Efanor had counted Tristen a friend, had he not?
And if there were gods, and if there was faith, Efanor had a grip on that realm and saw merit in the boy. So he was not wrong in what he had done.
Above all, he didn’t deserve to have all he loved forever hedged about and threatened by priests as well as dark magic—
Dark magic. Thatwas the worst of it. Magic of things Tristen hadn’t created, and didn’t wield—magic the Aswydds had slid into when they were kings in Amefel.
There were facts the Marhanen house would have to deal with: not only was his bastard son half-Aswydd, which entailed a strong Sihhë connection, but there actually ran a faint thread of Sihhë blood in his other son—in Aewyn, himself, through Ninévrisë.
And that was the knowledge that tainted his relations with the Quinalt priests: that, the way he knew secrets about them, they had his queen’s heredity to call up anytime they wanted to declare war on him. Challenge them for their misdeeds, and they could challenge him with that.
They had been affronted, when he brought an Aswydd bastard here, installed him in the house, then held him over into Festival. He knew it. He had known it would be not be smooth going when Tristen asked him to care for the boy.
Had he misinterpreted what Tristen asked of him? Should he have cherished the boy in Amefel, near his mother’s influences, after all, instead of trying to remove him from that district?