He had scorned the answer. He had disbelieved it.
And he named you, Master Emuin had said of Lord Tristen. Then I suspect he did see what I see.
And he had asked, disturbed: What did he see? What do you?
A conjuring, Emuin had answered him. A Summoning that opens a door.
What door? he had asked, straight back at Emuin. Make sense, please, sir!
And Emuin:
You govern what door, if you have the will. Do you have the will, Spider Prince?
A chill ran through him, deep as bone, a chill that had him shaking in every limb. He looked down at his hand, where, forgotten, Lord Crissand’s ring shone in the firelight, dull silver, and festooned with cheap silverwork.
It had not tingled since all this last mad course began. It had not warned him against Emuin. It had lain inert during their precipitate rush from Marna to Lewen Field to the river. It had not warned him of Sir Wisp or his mother. Perhaps his captors had killed the virtue in it. He wished he had given the ring to his brother when they were at the beginning of all this. Perhaps then Lord Crissand would have been able to find Aewyn, at least, and saved his father pain.
He wished… like the spider. He chained one wish to the other, starting not with what was impossible, but what was possible. He sat down before the fire, and wished one spark to fly out, and to land on his hand.
It flew. It landed. Without hesitation he seized it, and patiently wished the next thing. He wished the chill away, wished himself warm. One thing after another, one thing after another.
He wished Aewyn safe.
The fog appeared again—not around him—but where the door had been. He saw just the least glimmer of light.
iv
SNOW STILL FELL IN THE DARK, AND THEY RODE THROUGH THE REMNANT of walls… walls lit by ghostly blue lines, which Cefwyn himself could see tonight. He rode by Tristen’s side, Uwen just behind, and all around them, like a ghostly city, old Althalen rose, not just its foundations, but the outlines of its long-fallen towers, and the soaring height of domes greater than any in the realm. It was a glimpse of the Sihhë capital, as it had been, and a Marhanen king knew what his grandfather had brought low.
But things changed. There were bonds made. And the heart of that maze of blue light led to a simple place, a corner of what had been the palace, and a wall, where a tomb was set—they had not been near it a moment ago, but then they were, and Cefwyn had the heart-deep conviction Tristen had magicked them a bit, just a little, over a hill and down it.
He saw then a gathering of haunts, in a little low place, at that corner, ghosts that, at their coming, turned and stared at them with gray and troubled eyes, before they shredded away on the winds. Layer after layer of haunts fled their passage, wisps that left an uneasiness in the air.
But a young lad sat against that wall—no, he rested against the knees of a bearded old man, whose ghostly hand stroked his blond, curly head, and by that man stood, gowned in cobweb, Auld Syes, the gray lady—her, he knew for long dead; and on the other side, behind the old man he now recognized for the old Regent, his father-in-law, stood a woman in a shawl, who was his other son’s gran, likewise perished. These three had his son in their keeping, and his heart froze in him. He swung down before his horse stopped moving, and ran to his son, heedless of haunts or spirits or whatever magic might be here. He was an ordinary man. He brushed it all aside, and seized his son up in his arms, and hugged him as hard as he could.
“Ow,” Aewyn cried. “Papa!”
“He’s alive,” he called to Tristen and Uwen, who, likewise dismounted, were right behind him, and he looked around to thank the dead, at least— old friends, old allies.
But there was nothing there but a crumbling stone wall, and the stone they had set there for Uleman Syrillas.
“It was Grandfather,” Aewyn murmured against his collar. “And Paisi’s gran. And a lady I don’t know.”
The boy was half-frozen. He might lose fingers or toes. Cefwyn brought his fur-lined cloak about them both, and looked desperately at Tristen, who simply said, “Give him to me.”
He did that. He had not a qualm, having Tristen take the boy from his arms and pass his hands over him. Aewyn’s eyes shut, as Tristen let him down to the snow, then opened again, with a curious tranquillity, a wonder in them.
“You must be Lord Tristen,” Aewyn said faintly, catching Tristen’s hand. “My brother is lost. Find him. You can find him.”
“I have never given him up,” Tristen said, pulling him up by that hand, so that a father who had been very sure he had lost both sons, could touch one of them and be sure that he was real.
“We were by the river. And then here,” Aewyn said to him, “and I tried to hold us down, and he slipped away. I don’t know where he is.”
Tristen, however, had looked away into the dark.
“I know,” Tristen said. “I know. He has a trinket of mine.”
v
AEWYN WAS THE FIRST THING ELFWYN IMAGINED WHEN HE BUILT HIS WEB, Aewyn in the snow, as he had left him, and he imagined where he had left him, but he could not make that image stay—it broke apart, in fat flakes of snow, and drifted on the wind, threads taken apart.
The wind, however, was a constant presence out there. He constructed that, stirring the trees, raising the snow in little plumes.
Fire was another presence. He constructed Aewyn’s voice, telling him about maps, and a laughing fish, one evening by the coals.
He constructed Paisi, sitting by the fireside, and Gran, busy over her bread-baking. He recalled Uwen’s wife, and her fireside with the lump in the stones.
And then, very carefully, he began to spin the strands that tied him to Lord Tristen.
He remembered the table by the fireside in Ynefel, while the whole fortress creaked and groaned with the wind, where the stairs sneaked furtively into new places, and faces in the stone seemed to watch someone walking by. Curiously enough, he could not recall Lord Tristen’s face, nor his voice, but he could clearly recall Mouse, taking his single crumb—taking his little success, and immediately running for cover.
He recalled Mouse’s enemy, Owl, on the newel post, and could see the mad glint of his huge eyes. He felt a sting, and looked down at his hand, where a mostly healed nick reminded him never to trifle with Owl.
Be Mouse, Tristen had told him.
He immediately recalled another fireside, and an old man who had asked him if he could be a spider.
Spider he was, tonight. He wove his web. He had made his mistake right after that warning. He hadn’t trusted the old man: he’d held fast to Aewyn, but he hadn’t trusted the old man enough when he tried to take them with him.
He would, if he met him again.
He thought about his charm of old Sihhë coins, and saw a bowl of oil on water. If he had been a real wizard, he could have made it show him something. He would have seen the truth in it, and told the truth to his father, and nothing of what had happened would have happened…
He kept staring at it, patient, patient as he could be, waiting to see what he would see now that he had it back. He stared and stared at the water, and saw a fog come over the surface.
It was the best he could hope for, that fog. It had carried him here. He wished it larger, and larger, and larger.