That was the way Paisi kept things. He hoped to be as clever with his hands. It was a Gift, potent unto itself.
Vision. Seeing things for what they were and what they could be.
What was that other word? It still eluded him.
ii
OWL WAS BACK IN THE KEEP, DISAGREEABLE AND PEEVISH. HE HAD LOST A FEW feathers, and sat puffed and mad-eyed on the newel post upstairs.
It had not gone well. Luck had not run the boy’s way, and a good deal of his path had become obscure, deeply shadowed.
Perhaps, Tristen thought, he should have ridden out with him and conveyed him home. He had foreseen trouble. But the world had been shadowed these last few days, and it would have meant, had he gone out from Ynefel and devoted himself to one boy, on one solitary track through the woods, that he would lose track of other things, to the peril of all.
More, his presence risked drawing more attention than the boy already had on him. The boy had fallen into a dark place, one of those shadows Marna had within it, where even Owl had had trouble finding him. Likely the boy had not known that old stones lay near, likely had never even felt the gap in the earth, but he had gotten out of the trap and away, and come out of shadow unscathed, at least.
Leaving the keep now, abandoning his vantage at Ynefel, meant he would suffer a degree of blindness during the boy’s passage, which would have brought the boy into greater danger. He would suffer a degree of blindness to movements in the land when he did ride to Henas’amef—the balances there had already shifted, tipped, trembled on the edge, and if he moved, he sensed, he would tip them right over.
None of what had happened in Henas’amef of late was what he wanted. If he went there, when he went there, it would shake the world and the world beyond it. But what had been gnawing away at the peace all these years had its own intentions, and undermined, and shifted, and would have its way, sooner or later. The boy was the lever that moved things. He had been born for that.
The boy, however, had gotten safely as far as Gran’s house, and slept inside her wards tonight. It was Cefwyn and Crissand who had their troubles at this hour. Those did not grow quieter. Peace might last a little longer.
Perhaps he should still delay going, and only see whether things settled now that the boy himself had settled to rest for a time. The intervention of a Sihhe-Iord in the affairs of Men had rippled the calm surface of ordinary years, and he had seen how his withdrawing to Ynefel had smoothed things out for a time: things that ought to sleep slept more deeply, the longer he kept his distance. The whole world drew an easier breath.
And should he go now, hastening everything, to divert this boy? He was a good lad. Gran had made him that.
Uwen came and went among Men much more frequently, usually with Cook: the two of them had gone, generally as plain travelers, into villages, and now and again as far Henas’amef itself to consult with Lord Crissand, or to exchange messages—oh, with far less fuss than the lord of Ynefel would generate, and very little ripple in the peace. They were quiet, and clever, and came back full of news and gossip—news he would not have thought to ask, names that quickened fond memory—servants he had known, and minor lords, and sometimes they brought news from Guelessar, or down the river: familiar names, like Sovrag, and Cevulirn, that conjured warm evenings and happy moments as well as dreadful. The two of them had ridden out, and came back bringing him the oddest trinkets, a curious tin box, a fine pair of gloves, packets of spices from the southern trade… all these things he valued, but the things he most longed for no one could bring him in a bag of trinkets. A quiet supper with Lord Crissand was what he wanted, or rarest and dearest desire, with the friend of his heart, with Cefwyn himself.
Oh, he had made ventures, but never since the boy had grown old enough to ask questions.
He had met with Paisi, oh, at least half a dozen times, at the edge of Marna Wood: if not for Gran and the boy, Paisi would have gladly ridden into Marna and begged to stay.
He remembered a dirty-faced boy, who had also been Paisi, in the streets of Henas’amef, the day he was lost. Paisi running errands for Master Emuin. Or holding a baby who could not go back to its mother.
Time ran back and forward for him when he let his mind wander. He had visions at times… he had been a dragon once—he had felt his own power increase beyond all bounds, had felt the earth shake, seen men cast to ruin in a breath. He had drawn apart, to keep his influence out of the world, but, oh, he was so tempted to go into Guelessar, and to turn up in his old friend’s path, and just to say, as Cefwyn had used to say to him, “Shall we go riding?”
Those had been the best times of all.
And when, since that day, he did go out into the world, when the poor or the desperate begged for health, for fortune, for justice—he had been the Dragon, and the power was always there. Oh, indeed, the touch of a Sihhë hand could work such magic… the people knew it. Some, if they knew the price, would pay it…
And whenever he worked, he knew. The smallest magic could just as easily, and not by his intent, bind an unwarded soul to his own life, as Paisi was bound, as Gran was. Healing could just as easily make some desperate man an open gateway to things that man would never expect to meet. Men prayed to their gods. They prayed by their own understanding, reckless of what they invoked, and wanted things, wanted so very much—and sometimes with such complete justice and need—
Some things he granted. But some things he never would. He would not, for instance, raise the dead. Mauryl had done that, had clothed a soul long in the dark.
Had good ever come of that?
Mauryl had never said—but then, the final word was not written, and Mauryl himself had never known the outcome of his Shaping. That was all he dared say of himself, that he tried to do the best he could, which was as little as possible.
He would not, for instance, deal with children, or try to bend them one way or the other. Childhood baffled him. He hadn’t grown that way. He had simply stepped into the world as he was and learned it as he could. He understood that, in Elfwyn, he dealt with a creature not yet a Man, but something nearly a Man, a creature with a Man’s passions, but not quite a Man’s desires; a Man’s yearning, but not a Man’s self-restraint. That would come. And when it came, there would be another new creature, one which had not existed in the world until Cefwyn had engendered that life in Tarien Aswydd’s womb. Elfwyn Aswydd was notTarien’s remote kin, long dead, or Cefwyn’s grandfather, also dead. He was something of both, and neither. He was a wild force, a power unto himself, and most unpredictable of all, he was still in that stage of things Unfolding within himself—not as things had to him, out of a mature knowledge and the distant past, but taking shape out of bits and scraps of what other people showed him and what his intellect could make of it. There was, in fact, no knowing which way Elfwyn Aswydd would turn.
His mother had her own plans for him; but worse, she had made herself a window through which other things could look, and her plans, set into motion, had never been all her own. Her time had run, irrevocable in the world of Men. Threads had come together in a design that wove through and through this boy’s existence. Hasufin Heltain was one thread. Heryn Aswydd was one. Orien was. And Tarien Aswydd.
Stubborn he was—and what else? He was Cefwyn’s son, equally.
He sat thinking until the sun rose, trying to ponder what this boy was.
And in the morning he walked into Uwen’s cottage. There he found that Uwen was sharpening his sword, tending his own weapons for the first time in a long time.