But it was home to one of the boy’s own, too.
They tended south and west, and now every stride of the horses carried them aside from the book and from Elfwyn, and his own guilt rode with him. He had reached instinctively, attempting to divert both boys from plunging through that looming ward, and created disaster as he did it. The boys had been headed right for a suddenly appearing gap in the wards and Elfwyn had shot through as quickly as if he himself willed it. Perhaps he had gone so quickly because Aewyn’s resistance had pulled away—Aewyn, even half-fainting, had clung to where he was with a fierceness that held them to earth; and when he had come loose, perhaps at his jostling the boys, Aewyn had plummeted somewhere in between the two places—not straight down, but aside, to a place with its own will and its own magic, old magic, and a special claim on him. The old ruin, extending constantly into the gray space, might have found a mote flying free, recognized it, and simply snatched it down into itself… while Elfwyn, set free of that bond, had flown like an arrow, and now was entirely out of sight, sealed behind those wards.
Folly, he said to himself: Mauryl would have said it, most certainly. He had tried because they were both about to vanish through that gap—but he had lost one of them in the process, and where the other had come down was not well-intentioned or safe: not by accident, such events, not even his own failure.
And while there was now every chance that, if he took them all into the gray space to save time, he might reach Aewyn safely, without flinging him into Elfwyn’s predicament, there was equally well the chance that Elfwyn himself maintained some hold on his brother, and that the book’s intent would snatch the second boy through if he pressed hard. The book’s intent reached far, far across Amefel. It wanted to be found, and it wanted to be loose in the world, and it wanted at least one of the boys if not both… which was, Cefwyn would say, a damned great lot for a book to want.
It was that. Say rather, either Mauryl Gestaurien had laid an intent on his work to keep it out of his hands, or that the wizard who had tried to lay hands on it more than a decade ago had laid a geas on whoever found it.
Or say, equally possible, that Elfwyn, with enough magic in him to shake things loose from hiding, had had such a command laid directly on him long, long ago, in those visits to his mother. He had felt attachments he had not trusted when the boy had asked him to be his teacher.
He had said no.
And which of the two of them had done right?
Might he have told the whole uncomfortable truth to a chancy, immature boy?
He had not told all he feared to Cefwyn. He dared not, at this moment, consult Emuin about his choice to go after Aewyn—not with the gray space as chancy as it still was—and he was not sure to this hour that he had made the right choice.
He hesitated to burden Cefwyn with the likelihood that the bond between the brothers was not ordinary—least of all did he want to say what else he sensed, that it might never be broken.
Cefwyn said not a word, in the meantime. Nor had Cefwyn said anything more about Ninévrisë and his daughter being across the river, in the place defended by those icy wards.
Nothing about it boded well for his household.
But there was one more reason for turning aside after Aewyn: Elfwyn Aswydd had more than a compulsion on him: there was also his father’s blood in him, there was a Syrillas brother’s love, Emuin’s concern, and a Sihhë blessing on him. If there was one young lad it might be difficult for any enemy to hold, it might be this one.
He made up his mind. As much as he dared nudge a set of affairs so very precariously balanced, he sent the most delicate thought curling toward what was now an iron wall—a thought that quested after the least, most insignificant gap in the barrier, the sort a brotherly bond might make. And he intended to lay hands on that brother.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
i
COUCHES, AND CUSHIONS, AND DRAPES——THEY WERE EVERYWHERE for comfort. It was that precise green and that precise gold that had been the Aswydd heraldry, forbidden now, but everywhere about, and the monstrous fireplace, with what might have been a dragon, or a grinning devil. The harp. Defying his prison, having heard in Gran’s tales that harps could be enchanted, Elfwyn ran his bruised, cold-burned fingers over the strings and evoked a rippling of notes.
No answer came.
“Ordinary,” he said in his most stinging way. “Besides,” he said to his absent mother, in case she could hear him, “you never played this harp, did you? I would never expect you to like music.”
That drew an answer. The door never opened. But a figure appeared by the fireside—not his mother, but a young man who for all the world looked like Lord Tristen: that kind of youth that was neither young nor old; that kind of beauty that set its owner apart from blemished mankind.
That figure faded, and in its place stood a woman, a woman with long red hair. Her back was to him, her face to the fire, her hands lifted to it.
“Mother?” Elfwyn asked harshly. “Mother!”
The woman turned, and it was his mother’s face, and his mother’s cant of the head, and it held that same kind of beauty, chilling, severe, and foreign.
“Not your mother,” she said. “Your aunt. Your aunt, dear boy. I pass by any thanks for rescue. I would never expect gratitude, not from your father’s bloodline.”
“Mother!” he shouted, but the figure, like the man before it, faded before his eyes, leaving only the fire.
ii
AEWYN’S FEET HAD LONG SINCE LOST ALL FEELING, HIS LEGS BUCKLED, it was not weakness, he insisted. He was weary, but he had only stumbled this time on a bit of ice. He levered himself up, holding to the wall as he could with fingers that likewise had gone numb within his gloves… it was only the roughened leather that gripped the stones. His fingers would no longer bend.
He was in a predicament. He realized that, in a distant, determined sort of way. He might have made certain wrong choices, but if he turned back a second time, that would be three times down the same stretch of wall.
“Otter?” he called, and was utterly confused to find night settled about him, as if daylight, so newly born, had just given up in exhaustion. “Elfwyn!” He shouted that out whenever he found breath. If only there were an answer, if only they were together, they could share warmth and find a nook to shelter them from the damnable wind. Or if someone heard him, it might be one of the villagers, and he could raise a general search for his brother. He would promise the village—he would promise them whatever a prince of Ylesuin could promise: cattle, sheep, horses, a grant of land, whatever they wanted, if only they could find his brother alive.
As it was, he could only put one foot in front of another, and did that because, if he stopped, he would die, and his father would never know where he was.
“Boy,” someone said behind him. “Boy, what d’ ye want wi’ my Otter?”
He turned, blinking, as snow hit his eyes. A woman stood there, a little old woman in a shawl, then a robed woman in gray skirts, who was almost too dim to see.