“Aye,” Paisi said then, seeming happier having a reason. “That might be. An’ then I’d have mine, too, because ye ain’t t’ go nowhere wi’out me, hear? Ain’t got Gran to look after, and if you go ridin’ off wi’ Lord Tristen or ’Is young Highness, I’m goin’, no question. So I’ll tell ’em that.”
Paisi didn’t ask about the books. Elfwyn didn’t mention the detail of things he’d learned. The forced good humor of yesterday, dealing with Gran’s death, had grown weary on them both. Gran was a matter they neither one mentioned this evening. There was nothing they could plan for themselves: all they could plan remained at the king’s pleasure, and the duke’s, and Lord Tristen’s, when he might arrive. The rooms they shared were only lent, nothing their own, and they had no duty except to each other. Even that needed very little: house servants did all the work and all the carrying, and arrived more often than they needed, so Paisi was at loose ends, and Elfwyn even more so.
They waited uneasily and without speaking about their unease—waited for Lord Tristen, waited, possibly, for the king, and for Aewyn to come. They waited for what might change the whole course of their lives, and finally sighed and decided on bed, to face another day of much the same.
CHAPTER SIX
THE WIND TURNED FOUL TOWARD DARK, CARRYING BLOWN SNOW INTO THEIR faces, stinging eyes and noses. It was a hard day’s ride for a boy, and Cefwyn rode between his son and the wind while the Dragon Guard rode around them, and ahead, trampling the snow into a broader path.
Aewyn’s flow of questions had stopped even before the sun went down.
If they did not come to the way shelter before too long, Cefwyn thought, he would order tents broken out of their small pack train. In this weather, and with a boy in the company, they traveled at least with canvas, and fire-pots, and a certain amount of food already prepared.
A guardsman rode near to say they had smelled smoke, and the waft of it came with the messenger, borne on the same wind. “The shelter, Your Majesty,” that man said, pointing ahead, and so it must be—one of the little three-sided stone waystops he had ordered built along the King’s Road south and north, where there were wells or nearby water: he ordered his foresters to provide each its small store of firewood.
That was their destination tonight, the last such shelter before they would cross the river—the bridge had gone down in the fall rains: old Lenúalim was notoriously hard to bridge, all along this shore: not that it ran deep here, but wide. It took down bridges with ice, or scouring, and most recently lightning, which was so strange a circumstance that no few had named it as a sign there ought not to be a bridge over the river at all. So they would ford it at the old place, by the last shelter before the monastery, which was said to be frozen over, and Cefwyn had no desire to risk doing it in the dark. They had pressed hard today, bypassing one shelter at midafternoon, determined to reach this one, and to make time so that they could cross by fair daylight tomorrow. He had thought he might have overreached, and doomed them all to the labor of making a roadside camp, and now the news that they were coming into a shelter occupied, and with a fire already going was cheerful news.
The smoke was more definite on the wind as they rode, so that all the company knew it. The pace picked up a little. Aewyn said not a thing, only clenched his cloak about him and stayed beside him, brave lad, at a faster clip.
Two guardsmen broke ahead of the party, to be sure who was there; and it was a little space before they came atop the rise and whistled a signal back to their comrades that all was well.
It was a rush, after that, weary horses encouraged to move, with the smell of smoke and shelter in their nostrils and the prospect of grain before them. It was, Cefwyn thought, a small merchant party they would meet, with a fire already built, possibly with useful wares or commodities to offer fellow travelers. Winter merchants, traveling to the villages and back, were usually the younger traders, and the hungrier, especially to be out on the road in a bad streak like this.
There was no such party camped around. Guardsmen dismounted, and Cefwyn did, neglecting to help his son down at the moment, his attention all for the single man at a small scrap of a fire, a huge pile of ash, but only a little fire; and a man wrapped in his cloak and a single blanket.
“Here’s your king,” a guardsman said. “Can you stand, fellow?”
“Leg’s broken,” the man said, and scanned the lot of them, looking for authority, as it seemed. Cefwyn came to stand in front of him, and, as the man flung back his cloak and the blanket, he saw the red and black Amefin colors and, indeed, a roughly splinted leg. “Lord Crissand’s courier,” the man said through cracked lips. “Your Majesty.”
Cefwyn squatted at eye level and saw a man, indeed, in dire straits.
“A message,” the man said, and felt within his coat. He came out with a crushed and bloody letter, in a hand itself black with scabs and dirt. “My lord—my lord—said it was urgent. An’ me horse went down on the ice.”
“Care for this man,” Cefwyn said. “More wood.” It must have cost this man agony to get back and forth between the diminished woodpile and the fire pit. “Cut more, if you need.” Any cutting on the king’s right of way had to have royal permission. It had that, tonight.
“What is it?” came a young voice. Aewyn had gotten down from his horse, and finally found a question, squatting down beside him as he broke the seal and held the letter, fairly written, in good black ink, so that the fire lit it from behind.
Your son has returned safely, Crissand had written, himself: he knew that strong, clear hand. When your ward reached his house, he indeed went west, and reports he has seen Lord Tristen, who he says has informed him he should carry the name Elfwyn. He reports that the lord of Ynefel will come as far as Henas’amef, how soon and in what intent, unfortunately, I do not know. He says that Ynefel gave him a message for me, but that he lost it on the way, in bad weather. This alarms me, as I am sure it will trouble us all.
In the loss of Ynefel’s message, I have lent your ward the ring which Ynefel gave me…
Lost it on the way, for the gods’ sake. That was uncommon bad luck, for one of Tristen’s messages.
Surely Tristen knewit was lost. Didn’t he? Had Crissand gotten another message from him by now, since the dispatch of the letter?
And Otter—Elfwyn—was safe. Safe, and going under his given name, by Tristen’s instruction.
And carrying Crissand’s ring, as potent as Cefwyn’s own amulet. That was welcome news, but it indicated Crissand was very worried, and wanted to be sure where the boy was.
Tristen, gods be praised, was coming to Amefel.
“What does it say?” his son asked, trying to see.
“That your brother has made it back safely.”
“Then I shall see him!” Aewyn cried.
Should he see him? Cefwyn wondered. Tristen was involved. The boy had come back under some instruction from him, and there the matter of Ynefel’s ring, and Otter—Elfwyn—electing to visit his mother, of all damned things. He is convinced her ill will may have caused certain misfortunes, and he seems to believe that Ynefel’s arrival may deal with her. I am uneasy in his intention…
Not the half of it, Cefwyn thought. Crissand wrote: my forbidding him might have consequences I cannot foresee, and I hope that I have done wisely in granting this request, and I shall continue vigilant…