“I didn’t want to catch this one.” Elfwyn scrubbed his hands in icy water and tucked them under his arms to warm, after.
“Why not?” Cadun asked. “He was a big fish.”
“Maybe that’s why,” Elfwyn said. He didn’t want to talk about it. He wanted to go inside the cottage, and did, and sat by the fireside. Uwen brought the fish to Cook, and said something Elfwyn couldn’t hear before he went out to wash.
“M’lord invites you to supper,” Cook said, “as I’ll cook and send over with ye, if ye will, young sir.”
He wasn’t ready, he thought. He remembered, with a thump of his heart, that Lord Tristen had been looking for answers, all the while he had been finding questions about himself and things he thought he could do, and would do.
“I will,” he said respectfully, and watched as Cook put their dinner on to cook, apple tarts, first, that smelled of southern spice. Then plaincakes, that rose and split and baked all brown on hot iron, and last of all fish that no longer looked like fish, nor smelled like the river.
He was both troubled and relieved to find that the smell made him hungry.
v
MOUSE HAD HIS SHARE, BOTH OF PLAINCAKES AND CHEESE. AND IT TURNED OUT Tristen would eat fish, even if he lent no hand to catching them.
“I was Mouse today,” Elfwyn said. “I wasn’t much help catching fish. I couldn’t. I don’t know why.”
“There has to be Owl,” Tristen said. “If there weren’t Mouse, Owl would starve. And if there weren’t Owl, Mouse wouldn’t be Mouse.”
He thought about that. He wasn’t sure he understood it, entirely, advice one direction and then, of equal force, from the other, like shifting winds. Were both things true?
But they dined on plaincakes and crisp fish and apple pie, a wonderful repast, in which Mouse had a share, sitting on the end of the table, his little whiskers twitching busily between bites.
“Where is Owl?” he asked, and Tristen sailed a glance up and away, toward the dark that now ruled the rafters outside the dining nook.
“Outside the walls, hunting,” Tristen said. “It’s his hour.”
Tarts filled out the meal. Still Lord Tristen had said nothing about his business of the day.
After the tarts, the silence.
Elfwyn stared into the fire, unwilling to question his betters, or to nettle Lord Tristen with asking.
“So,” Tristen said, “have you a question?”
“Have you an answer for me, my lord?”
“That your father is worried for you, and that his men have reached Lord Crissand, who is greatly distressed at your departure. That Paisi has cut a great stack of wood, and has blisters, and Gran is baking bread tomorrow.”
He was not sure he believed Lord Tristen knew so much, so dear and of so little of use to him. The report of people he loved stung his eyes, all the same. He pressed his luck. “And Aewyn?”
“Aewyn is shut in his room, not coming out, and he refuses his new tutor.”
He wasn’t quite so sure he disbelieved anything, now. Aewyn would do exactly that.
“But nothing of my mother.”
“Your mother and I have little to do with one another,” Tristen said, and asked: “Has Gran shown you hedge-wizardry?”
“A little,” he confessed. He corrected himself. “I’ve watched her.”
“And did your looking show you things in Henas’amef?”
“No,” he confessed, uncomfortable. “It only brought trouble.”
“Has she ever taught you wards?”
“I’ve watched her.”
“They’re old, in the Guelesfort. If not renewed, they weaken. A spell reaching out the windows can weaken them further. Think of that when you reach out of a place. You make yourself visible when you look out—you open doors and windows as you do. More, they will never close with the force they might have had if you hadn’t crossed Lines with your seeing, if you have not a skill the equal of the one who laid them down.”
“I don’t understand, my lord.” He hesitated to ask, but he feared what Lord Tristen was saying. “Did I make the trouble in the place, myself?”
“Wards are a simple magic,” Tristen said, and rose from the table without answering him. “Come.”
He followed, out into the dark, where a few candles sprang to life without Lord Tristen even seeming to notice them. Lord Tristen led him to the stairs, and up and up the rickety web. The steps trembled and groaned underfoot, and Elfwyn gripped the rail as he went.
They passed one of the faces. He would have sworn it turned, when he looked back, and did catch it in motion.
“Don’t look at them,” Tristen said. “Don’t talk to them. Not all are trustworthy.”
Did they speak? He heard nothing but groaning, nor wanted to hear. He gripped the rail, white-knuckled, and kept close to Lord Tristen as they arrived on an upper balcony.
“You may sleep up here tonight,” Lord Tristen said. “My wards are constant about the keep, and you will not weaken them.”
Tristen took a lighted candle from its sconce, pulled the latch of a door, and let him into a small, stone-walled room with a shuttered horn-pane window. A crack split that wall. It ran around the window and up and down, above the ceiling and below the floor. It was a little room, with scarcely room for the bed and table it contained.
Tristen went to that window and ran his hand across its sill, across the crack. “Follow the line of the window, not the rift: the wall is a Line that Masons drew, do you see, and the stone is a barrier. But in that protection, for us to come and go there must needs be breaches, doors and windows, and these are its weaknesses. Locking a door is a ward. So is a wish to draw a line and to keep harm out. Draw it with fire or with the warmth of a hand.” This he did, and now a faint blue light showed in the shadowy places, a Line brought to life.
Elfwyn drew in his breath, alone with this power, and with magic itself, and not knowing what might happen next.
“Stones remember such things very well,” Tristen said. “And doors and shutters become part of them. The Line Masons draw is potent, if renewed.”
“It glows,” Elfwyn said, and this caused Tristen to look sharply at him.
“Not all will see a light, but this is a magic Men can use even without Seeing, and one you can use without fear—it lies upon the earth, deeply, and has the earth’s bones for strength: it will not come back on you or betray you. It can be broken, by great strength, but never turned against you. Only beware of casting outward, of looking beyond those wards if enemies are about.”
“Are there enemies?” he asked, not believing they would ever come here.
“You know you have enemies,” Tristen said.
“The priests,” he said.
“More than that,” Tristen said. “Be Mouse. Mouse did not grow as old as he is by ignoring Owl. He always looks about him.”
“I don’t know where to look,” Elfwyn said, hoping for an answer, but Tristen walked to the door, and he made his appeal. “Show me wizardry. Teach me. I want to learn.”
“So you can be Owl?”
He didn’t know the right answer to that. Tristen gave him no clues. He had always been good at saying what the authority that ruled him wanted to hear, and now he found authority who gave him no clue how to please.
“I don’t know, my lord. I don’t know what’s right.”
“Be content. Be content right now.”
“But will I see Aewyn again?” he asked. “And will Gran be safe from my mother?”
“Patience is one thing you lack,” Tristen said quietly. “Patience is one thing you must gain. Vision is another.”
Elfwyn drew a breath, and another, seeing he was losing ground, and that the very person who held all he possibly wanted had, indeed, posed him a lesson: not one he wanted, but at least Tristen posed him a challenge he could overcome.