Why had she wanted him back in Amefel? It wasn’t love.
Why had she killed Gran and given him no other place to be?
Why had the librarian trusted him, a newcomer, to give him a key he hadn’t even known to ask for?
He stood while the boy saddled Feiny, then led him into the aisle.
Swift, single footsteps approached, outside, and the door opened. It was Paisi, Elfwyn saw to his profoundest relief, Paisi carrying a heavy white bag, and passing the laboring stableboy as if what was going on in the middle of the night was absolutely as it ought to be.
“I got it, m’lord,” Paisi said, handing him the bag. “You hang on to this, an’ I’ll help the boy.”
It speeded matters. Paisi led up Tammis for him to hold the halter rope, and helped the boy finish up with Feiny’s complex harness, then ordered the boy to open the stable doors.
The boy opened one door. It was enough. Paisi took the flour sack, slung it over Tammis’s withers, and they mounted up, Elfwyn struggling for the stirrup—he had learned how to reach it and pull himself up; and Paisi gave a hop and was up, bareback. They rode out of the stable yard and onto the snow-buried courtyard.
At the iron gates that barred their way to the town, Paisi rang the little bell, a small, terrifying sound that brought the night watch out into the falling snow.
“Aswydd business,” Paisi said, and Elfwyn boldly showed the ring toward the lamplight.
There might at any moment be a search of their room, a search leading eventually down to the stables, out into the same courtyard. But the night guards had to get on their working gloves and move the heavy iron latch, which shrieked aloud in the quiet, and heave one frozen gate open, cracking ice off the hinges.
They rode out into the upper town, took the road to the town gate, and struck a quick pace.
“There’s bells they can ring,” Paisi said anxiously. “There’s the thief bell can stop the town gate from openin’ until they ask up the hill. We got to hurry, lad.”
The fine snow obscured all but the nearer buildings, and wrapped them in white as they put the horses beyond safe speed on the downhill course, but there was no traffic at all, only a shutter or two flung open in curiosity at the noise, and most shut with a thump soon after.
They reached the gate, and the gate-guards had heard them coming.
“Aswydd business,” Paisi said crisply, and the guards saw the ring Elfwyn showed and gave way to it, shoving hard to open the little sally port against the new snow.
The sally port was enough for two riders. They ducked through singly and picked up the pace, quitting the vicinity of the gate as fast as they could. Snow wrapped them about, and still no bell sounded.
Paisi might indeed ask him, now that they were away, why they ran. He was less and less sure he knew the answer, except he had gone mad for the moment, and panicked, and the terror of his mother’s sorcery grew less with every stride the horses took.
Fear had driven him. Fear had taken away Guelemara, and now it had taken his own town, and with Gran gone, fear behind him was all he had left for a guide.
iii
THERE WAS A DISTURBANCE OF SOME KIND, SOME RACKET FAR AWAY IN THE apartment, which roused Crissand from his wife’s side. She slept, but he leaned on one arm, sure he had heard something, and grew surer still, when he heard the sounds of quiet debate, far off in his chambers… debate, then very quiet footsteps and a mouselike knock at the door.
Crissand got out of bed, reached for his dressing robe: Cenas, his valet, had already let himself in, and soft-footed it over to him.
“My lord, a difficulty with your guest,” Cenas whispered. “He’s gone.”
His heart sank. “Gone where?” he whispered back.
“The gates, as seems,” Cenas said, then hastened to stay with him as Crissand strode out the door and down the hall, wrapping his dressing robe about him and still barefoot.
The night duty captain was there, with another guardsman, grim-faced and still a little diffident.
“What’s the matter?” he asked them sharply. “What’s this, gone?”
“Your Grace, the boy, the boy who carries your ring—”
“My cousin,” Crissand said sharply. “What of him?”
“He’s taken to horseback,” the captain said. “He and his man. He was in the library—”
“The library?”
“A fire was burning there, late, and when the guard roused out the librarian and investigated, for the safety of the premises, Your Grace—”
“What has this to do with my cousin?”
“He had one of the keys. Your Grace, there was plaster, loose plaster, and a hole dug under a counter, right through the wall. And the fire was burning.”
On the surface, it was ridiculous. The whole story was ridiculous. But there had been a dark deed in the library, the murder of an elderly librarian, the flight of a thief, the burning of certain wizardly manuscripts—Mauryl Gestaurien’s, no less. They had thought they had recovered the remainder, those that had been carried off. He rubbed his face, asking himself if he had slipped in time, in a dream that had subtly changed the shape of things.
“And the librarian said he didn’t know, that there were four keys, and he had one, and you another, my lord, Master Rue the third, and your cousin— your cousin the fourth. So we went upstairs. No one was there, and the fire was left burning in the hearth…”
“Plague take the fire! Where is my cousin?”
“We looked to the kitchens, where boys do go, Your Grace—”
“Go on.”
“And found tracks in the snow, from the side entry and from the kitchens, both to the stables, and the night watch had saddled their horses. The boy showed your ring.”
“Clever lad,” Crissand said, with a sinking heart.
“And they went out the town gate, the same way. It’s come on a blizzard, Your Grace. It’s snowing to beat all.”
“It would,” he said. “Double the watch on the tower. Search Lady Tarien’s room for any book or scroll or scrap of parchment. Whatever you find, take charge of, keep, and throw her in irons if you find any such thing. Tell her nothing. Nothing! Meanwhile, get my horse and get the guard out to ride with me. Good gods, why didn’t you rouse me before this? Which direction did he go? Has anyone looked out to find the tracks?”
“The gate-guard didn’t say, Your Grace.”
“Damn!”
“Your Grace,” the captain protested, but Crissand stalked back to his bedchamber, the servant chasing him and calling on others to wake.
Clever, clever boy, he said to himself. Snowing heavily, no report on where he’d gone, and no tracks left by now. Elfwyn had searched for something lost before he was born, something no one expected ever to find, and, if the recovered books were any guide, he had looked for something that any witch or wizard would give his soul to obtain.
Then he’d run, whether or not he had found what he was looking for.
But there was the ring. There was that, once he wondered about it, and once he simply wanted to know. Tristen had bound it to him in that way, so that his idlest wondering would find it, if he wished.