“ Init?”
“It was the wings, and I was somewhere else, then, back in the hall and nobody else even noticed. The candles didn’t blow out. The guards didn’t leave their places.”
“That haunt leads places, is what,” Paisi said. “An’ once’t Lord Tristen and Lord Crissand went all the way to Elwynor by that haunt.”
“To Elwynor!”
“Or elsewhere. No knowin’ where ye was. Ye stay away from that place. Ye don’t above all go in there.”
“I didn’t! Or I didn’t mean to. I don’t want to again!”
“Ye sit down, lad. Ye ain’t used t’ drink, an’ ye had some, didn’t ye? Ye pour your own water in, if someone serves ye strong wine. Specially if it’s more ’n one. Damn, I knew I should ha’ come down t’ serve ye.”
His head spun and felt stuffed with wool. And he hadn’t wanted Paisi acting as his servant, standing behind his chair. But he’d wished at the time he had dared pour water into what the duke offered him, which was clearly costly wine. Next time, he said to himself, he would do it, and never mind the embarrassment. Crissand had called him cousin, treated him like a grown man. Crissand, however, would forgive his manners.
“Maybe it wasjust the wine,” he said. “Maybe I’ve had too many dreams.”
“There’s a good lad. Or maybe ye did see the haunt. I ain’t sayin’ ye didn’t.”
“I’d swear I did.” He didn’t speak for a while, only sat and watched the fire. “It scared me. It scared me more than anything, and I can’t even say why it did. It was only birds, after all.”
“Dead ’uns,” Paisi said, and kept sharpening the blade. “An’ how’s ’Is Grace?”
“The duke,” he said, remembering. “His Grace said it’s not just Lord Tristen who’s coming. He wrote to my father and maybe he’llride down when Lord Tristen does. And the lords of the provinces southward. Do you think my father will come?”
“Oh, aye, he’s bosom friends wi’ Lord Tristen. He always has come, if herides out.”
“You already knew that?”
“I wasn’t goin’ t’ promise it in case of something different happenin’, but it’s likely enough.”
That good news tingled all the way down his limbs, and he let himself ever so slightly believe that it could be true. If Tristen was here in person to keep his mother at bay, things might work out with his father, too. That scratching at his window might indeed have been Owl. And curse the fear he’d had: he’d been too scared to let Owl in.
“His Grace said he might,” he said to Paisi, “and he said, too, that he’d raise the stone for Gran, a marker right on the roadside where everybody can read it.”
Only the king or the duke could put something on the public right of way. Even a goatherd knew that.
“That’s grand,” Paisi said, not too enthusiastically, and shrugged, looking into the fire. After a moment he said, with a sigh: “She’d say it was too grand for her, wouldn’t she?”
He thought about that. “She would.”
“I tell you, I think she’d like it if we got the oxen and moved her in a country stone wi’ no writin’ nor fancy carvin’ at all. She’d complain she couldn’t read any writin’, nor ever could learn. It was just a frustration to her, an’ her eyes were too poor when I tried to teach her. But she’d like a good stone.”
The manners of the fortress, its fine clothes and its ambitions had settled into him so quickly he’d fallen right into the duke’s grand notion, had he not? Paisi was who could make him know what Gran would say, so plain, so matter-of-fact in her speaking. Gran wasn’t someone, he thought, who could be honored by the duke. She was someone who might honor a duke or even a king with her blessing, from such a stone. Calm and peaceful as the earth, she was… always had been.
And it was strange, that when Paisi had said that, just in her words, he heaved a deep sigh, just like Paisi. He could think of her again, not the fire, not the ashes, but Gran as she was, smiling at them, or poking about her stove, all the fire in the house tame again and under Gran’s dominion…
As ought to be, he thought. As forever ought to be. A pang of grief still touched him when he remembered now, but for a moment he was convinced that Gran was all right, despite his mother, despite him and his mistakes, despite everything.
His mother might have power—might have blackest sorcery—might have broken loose the Lines and let loose the haunt in the night… but he’d gotten out of it, hadn’t he, all on his own? Despite anything she did to try to scare him or get him up those stairs, he could live under this roof, growing wiser, and stronger, and never, ever visit her again, despite all her tantrums and threats.
Lord Tristen would see to her. And then there would be justice for Gran.
iii
THE WINGS, HE DREAMED. THE WINGS. THE WINGS WERE IN THE WALL. AND Elfwyn knew even amid the dream that he was only dreaming, and he turned over and slammed the pillow with his burned fist, which hurt, and dragged him halfway out of sleep.
But when he fell back into the pillow he fell into the hallway again, and something pursued him, down the hall, around the turn to the library. He knew the library door: he had visited it with the duke when he was still small. He knew every detail of that amazing room, the eagles on the doors, carved shapes that screamed out of the wood, and he worked feverishly to get the latch open in time, as the pursuit of the hunter birds beat and thundered behind him, rattling the very stones of the keep. In there was safety, in there was what he had to have, and the birds behind him threatened that…
The door came open. He was in the library, with its tall windows, its many tables, its tall stacks and shelves of books; and he was so sure that the answer to the hallway behind the tapestry was somewhere in this room, behind something, hidden, and if he could get it, and if he could solve that puzzle, then he would be safe, and Paisi would be safe, and nothing would ever threaten them like this again.
But the blue light and the wings had reached the library door, and beat to get in.
Lord Tristen needed to know. He had to have what was in this room, and if it went elsewhere, even he was helpless. Tristen grew weaker and his mother more powerful, high up in her tower, so long as this thing stayed hidden… she struggled, sending the haunt, to get it into her own hands. If she got it, she would be unstoppable. She was on the track, with the birds, and he couldn’t find it.
Elfwyn waked, bolt upright in bed, and sweating. Paisi slept, snoring in his sleep, common and welcome sound.
When sunlight came through the windows again, he was too ashamed to tell Paisi. It was just one of his dreams, fading, now, in import and in detail. He couldn’t even remember why he had been so afraid of birds, of all silly things, and what he had been after, and why he had waked screaming.
His mother’s work.
Or a warning. There were other haunts here. There were other ghosts besides a gathering of birds, hadn’t Paisi said so.
iv
THEY WENT DOWN TO SEE THE HORSES IN THE MORNING, TAKING A TREAT FROM their breakfast, and finding them in excellent care and glad to see their masters. They lingered there, talked a time with the stableboys, and Paisi and the stablemaster fell to discussing people they’d known in the war years, before Elfwyn was even born.
Elfwyn knew none of the names, and the wind was cold. His coat was thin, suited only to indoors, and he grew rapidly chill. So while Paisi talked, he simply slipped off quietly, waved, so Paisi would know he was going, and went on inside the fortress, intending to go up to the room and get his warmer cloak before he went outside again.
He didn’t know why he walked as far as the center stairs of the lower west wing, when he passed a perfectly fine stairs he could have used to go above; or why he walked farther than that, down close to the haunt; but he could see, down in the east wing, and with the lower hall lights all lit, where the guards stood watch, and the blank wall where the haunt had appeared.