“I can’t do what Mauryl did,” he said in a low voice, only for Cefwyn. “I wish I could. Mauryl could make the pain go away.
And I’ve tried.”
“Emuin says you’re not a wizard,” Cefwyn said. His grip was painfully hard. “I don’t call on you to be. Is the fire out?”
“Kitchen grease, Your Majesty,” Idrys said.
“I’d at least expect something more exciting,” Cefwyn said.
Cefwyn all but fainted, caught a breath and several more, before he asked: “Emuin. Where is Emuin?”
“Stairs have lately turned hostile,” Idrys said. “Master Emuin fell, m’lord King. He will mend, but he’s in no better case than you.”
Cefwyn seemed to have fallen asleep, then, but he was so pale, so waxen-looking.
“It’s as well His Majesty should sleep,” the physician said.
“Close the curtains. All of you. Out. Away, m’lords.” He set out a jar on the bedside, full of something noxious and something white and moving.
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“You,” Idrys said, “take that from this room, sir.”
“The wound is suppurating, Lord Commander. The flesh is corrupt. The maggots will keep it clean.”
“There will be no damned maggots, sir. Out!”
“The flesh is corrupt. I tell you that you are trifling with his life!”
“Get him out of here!” Idrys said. “Get master Haman.”
“I shall go to the prince.”
“Go to the devil!” Idrys said. “I’ll not have your hands on him!
He’d have been well by now if you’d the talent of your damned maggots. Out!”
Tristen drew a long breath as the man gathered his bottles and left.
“His Majesty don’t like the Lord Physician, m’lord Commander,” Uwen ventured, head ducked. “He wouldn’t let ’im near Lord Tristen again, he swore not.”
“With good cause,” Idrys said, and adjusted pillows under Cefwyn’s knee. “Go! Out! The lot of you! Annas has business here. The rest of you—out!”
They had gotten the fire in the kitchen out, so Uwen said, by flinging sand on it, which had been Cook’s notion. Cook’s hair had caught fire and three of the boys were badly burned: there was sand all over, brought in buckets from the smithy, and every pot and wall was blackened with soot. The fire had broken out, the report was, while the night-cook was asleep.
“Wasn’t nothing going on,” Uwen said, “except the morning bread risin’, and then by what they say, the grease-pot was overset and it run down into the coals. After that, it was merry hell, m’lord. They don’t know if it was some dog got in, that knocked it over, or what, but Cook’s just damn lucky. It’s sausages from the courtyard, campfires and kettles for us tomorrow.
It’s a rare mess.”
Tristen paced the floor, with nothing better to do—there was nothing he could do. Emuin was holding out on his own and cursed at him for a distraction, saying there were untoward 655
influences. The ether is upset, Emuin insisted, which he did not understand, but he remembered the pigeon and the latch rattling, and with the dark outside the window-panes, he paced and he looked for the intervention of the enemy in all that was going on—he feared to attract Hasufin’s notice, but feared Hasufin was laughing at all of them this moment. If a window-latch could rattle, he said to himself, a pot might rock and go over.
He had not prevented calamity, he with his little attempt at magic. He felt his failure keenly, and wondered whether he was not in fact responsible for the calamity. And from time to time he went across the hall and asked the guards how Cefwyn fared, but there was no news, except that master Haman had come and looked and said he could bring up a poultice they used on the horses, and he could stitch it up, but that was all that lay in his competency.
According to the guards and the gossip in the hall, Idrys had then said, “Do the horses generally live?” and Haman had said,
“Yes, sir,” and Idrys had had Haman bring what he had.
It did not please Prince Efanor, who sent the physician back with two of his guard and ordered Idrys to accept his treatment.
Idrys had told the guards and the physician they were in danger of their lives if they meddled further.
So they had gone back to Prince Efanor to report that.
A long time went by, in Haman’s comings and goings, in the drift of smoke from the downstairs—many rooms had their windowpanes ajar, letting it flow out, but the smell of smoke clung to everything, and the servants were bundling fine clothes into linen wrappers and sealing the doors of chests and such with wadding. Emuin seemed better, at least so his servants reported, and had called for tea, but had headache and did not want to be moved, cursing his servants and telling the good Teranthine brothers that he wanted them to go light candles in the sanctuary.
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What good would that do? Tristen wondered when he heard it, and wondered whether Emuin was in his right mind, or hoping for this salvation of his. He went down the hall to see Emuin, and Emuin was indeed better in color, but seemed to have lost substance, if that were possible.
“Sir,” he said. “Did you want more candles in here, or what can I do?”
“I want the brothers to light the candles,” Emuin said, and confided to him then so faintly he could hardly hear: “to get them out of here before I go mad. Is it dawn?”
“Not yet.”
“Do you feel it—no! don’t look there. Stay out of that Place.
Something’s prowling about. It’s here. Gods, it’s here.”
“I feel something dreadfully wrong. The air is wrong, sir.” He went down to his knees and caught Emuin’s cold hand in his—but Emuin did not move his head at all from where it rested, and seemed in great pain, perhaps not hearing him, as no one else ever had heard him when he tried to say the most desperate dangers. “It doesn’t ever stop, sir. It’s getting worse. I had my window rattling. And one of my birds killed itself.”
“He’s reaching out,” Emuin whispered, so faintly he might not have heard if he had not had his ear close. “He wants me. He wants me to die, apostate from the order—he wants me very badly. He wants me to die here, in this place—and damned to hell. Useful to him. Another stepping-stone.”
“Mauryl used to speak Words, and the tower would feel safer, at least. Do you know any of those Words, sir?”
“I haven’t the strength right now to think of them. Let me rest awhile. Let me rest. My head hurts so.”
He brushed his fingers across Emuin’s brow, ever so gently, wishing the pain to stop. But it was impudent even to try with a wizard such as Emuin was. “If my wishes help at all, sir, you have them.”
“They are potent,” the whisper came, but Emuin’s head did not move, nor his eyes open. “They are more potent than you know, young lord. Potent enough I could not die. Damn you!”
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“Yes, sir,” he said, and took it for an old man at the edge of sleep, and in pain.
“Cefwyn,” Emuin said then, seeming agitated. “Watch Cefwyn.
Young fool.”
He did not know which of them Emuin thought the fool, but he said, “Yes, sir,” and got up and left for Cefwyn’s room.
But the guards, very quiet and very correct since Idrys had had private words with them, said only that the King was in some pain, and that Idrys had said he might come in whenever he wanted.
He thought that he might visit Cefwyn, but there was a sense of ill everywhere alike, that same sense that he had had before, and he seemed to bring it with him.
There was a commotion on the stairs then, a number of men—Dragon Guard—came up the steps and kept going, to the next floor, as Cefwyn’s guards and everyone else looked anxiously in that direction.
But not just men of the Guard. Efanor. The priest, all with very determined mien. Lord Commander Gwywyn. Why to that floor? was Tristen’s first thought, and then: Ninévrisë.
Efanor had objected to her presence. The priest
disliked Elwynim. Gwywyn had begun with his loyalty to Ináreddrin. “Uwen!”
Tristen called out, and to the guards:
“Tell Idrys. Efanor is going against the lady. With Gwywyn.
Quickly.” He ran for the stairs, following the guards, who reached Ninévrisë’s floor just ahead of him. He hurried along behind them, overtaking Efanor and the priest, who were among the last, along with other priests, some carrying candles and some silver and gold vessels.
“Lord Prince,” Tristen said. “What is the matter?”
“Sorcery,” Efanor said, and a disturbed look came over him.
“But you would know.”
“Yes, m’lord, I would. And there is no need to disturb the lady.” He saw the Dragon Guardsmen, with Gwywyn, sweep the mere sergeant of the Prince’s Guard aside from Ninévrisë’s door, along with the rest of the guards. They were going inside, and Tristen went to prevent harm to the lady, as, past 658
the invaded foyer, a handful of frightened Amefin servants were trying to stand between Ninévrisë and a Guelen prince, armed soldiery and a priest of the Quinalt.
“There she is!” the priest called out from among the hindmost.
“There is the evil! There is the sorceress!”
“No, sir!” Tristen said, and pushed his way past the soldiers and the Lord Commander. “This is wrong, sir!” he said to Lord Gwywyn. “No. I’ve called Idrys. He’s coming. Wait for him.”
“Idrys is bewitched the same as the King!” the priest cried,
“and this is a Sihhë—don’t look him in the eyes! Arrest him!
Arrest the lot of them!”
Gwywyn’s face betrayed deep doubt. Tristen looked straight at him, but the priest was pressing forward and flung ashes at him, which stung his eyes, and the guards went past him, as the servants cried out in alarm.
“What is this?” That was Idrys’ voice, and of a sudden something thumped heavily against the wall and clattered down it—a guard in Idrys’ path. “You! Out! The rest of you get out of here!
Good loving gods, have you lost your senses?”
“You have clearly lost yours, Lord Commander!” Efanor shouted at him. “I hold you accountable—I hold you accountable for my brother’s life!”
Idrys shouted back. “The King is not dead—damn it, put those weapons away!”
“No!” the priest said. “You have brought the King under unholy influences, Lord Commander, among them this man’s!
Arrest them, and the women!”
Idrys moved, spun about and set his back to the wall and his side to Tristen, and that quickly a dagger was in his hand. Tristen did not want to draw. It seemed to him once that happened there was no reason, and he only moved to prevent the guardsmen getting past him, men who showed no disposition to want to lay hands on him. The men of the Prince’s Guard that Idrys had brought were pushing and shoving those of the Dragon Guard who had come with Efanor and
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Gwywyn. On Idrys’ side was Uwen, who shoved his way through and stood with a drawn sword facing Gwywyn and his men, followed in rapid succession by Erion Netha and Denyn Kei’s-son—armorless, wild-haired, with shirts unfastened, both carrying swords unsheathed. They and men behind them, all of the Prince’s Guard, looked as if they had just waked and seized up weapons as they could.
“Hold, all!” Idrys said. “Damned fools! Your Highness, His Majesty is well enough. And he will have you to ask, sir, whence you made this ill-advised assault. This is utter foolishness! Put the swords away, I say! Put them away!”
“I do not take your orders, sir!” Efanor said. “Until I hear the King’s word and see his eyes, I do not believe you—and I will have the physician, not a horse-surgeon, attend His Majesty, and other matters I shall set right, beginning with the inquiry into why an accident in the Bryalt shrine, and why the fire, and why His Majesty my brother is lying in peril of his life within hours after a betrothal that gave away far too much to an Elwynim witch!”
“Accuse me of sorcery?” Ninévrisë cried. “Oh, very well, dear sir!” She snatched up a small book from off the sideboard and held it aloft. “I have your gift, my lord brother-in-law, I am reading your gift in search of your truth and your faith! I had not known it came with such other behavior!”
“Don’t listen to her!” the priest was shouting, and Ninévrisë:
“Oh, well, and am I so dangerous? I have dismissed all my men! I have trusted you! I have His Majesty’s sworn word for my safety and his personal grant of these premises for my privacy!”
“This is enough!” Gwywyn was saying, appealing for reason and truth, but the words were starting to echo, with the priest shouting, and Ninévrisë shouting, and of a sudden men were shoving one another again, and steel rang on steel, as came a stabbing pain at the base of his skull, Emuin’s presence…drawing him in, warning him…such as he could hear…
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Small and angry, something in the east…close at hand. Deadly dangerous. A step in the dark, a burning of candles, candleflames, not orange of fire, not blue of amulets, but smoldering black, with a thin halo of burning white, smoke going up in thin plumes above them…above a fluttering of wings…shadows and wings…
— The east, he heard Emuin say. Harm…against the King.
The stairs. The east stairs by the grand hall…
He could not get breath to speak, he could not think past the pain, except that he could not desert the lady, he needed help, and he snatched Ninévrisë by the wrist past Uwen and Erion, with the outcries of the servants in his ears, with Efanor bidding them stop him, and men attempting to do that, but Uwen and Erion were there with drawn swords, holding off a number who backed away from them, as he whisked Ninévrisë past the priest, past Efanor and Lord Gwywyn and in an instant in among the Prince’s Guard.
But that was not where he was going, blinded by headache and so afflicted by Emuin’s pain it all but pitched him to his knees. He reached the stairs. Ninévrisë was crying out questions.
He realized he was holding her too tightly, and let her go, wishing her to come with him. Hearing Idrys and Gwywyn shouting at each other above, he ran, and she ran with him, down and down the steps—
He was aware of alarm in the lower hall, then, people staring in fright as they passed, people trying to intervene with questions.
He saw the east stairs in front of him, and he did not need Emuin now. He knew. He felt it, a small tingling in the air, but a presence, nonetheless, that had taken alarm.
“What is it?” Ninévrisë breathed, hiking her skirts, trying to overtake him on the steps as he reached the floor above. Orien’s guards looked at them in startlement as they came.
“Sirs,” he said as calmly and reasonably as he could, and hoping pursuit did not overtake them. “Open this door. Now.”
The guards did as he ordered. He had never been past the foyer of lady Orien’s rooms. Now he went past those inner 661
doors, with Ninévrisë and the guards, as women inside cried out in alarm. In the opening of both inner and outer doors, cold wind gusted through a window-panel wide open to the night, and carried on it a stinging, perfumed smoke. Candle flames wavered in the gale, and flung shadows about a group of black-clad women with astonished faces, horrified looks.
In front of them were candles on a table, a basin of something dark, severed red braids and a sprig of thorns. Among those women he felt presence, and chief of them he sensed was Orien Aswydd, who faced him with her face stark and hard, in the flaring light of a single candle. All the other candles had gone out.
“Damn you! ” Orien said, and indeed there was a flash of gray and a tingle in the air.
“Is this Orien Aswydd? ” Ninévrisë demanded. “Is this Orien
Aswydd, who killed my messengers? ”
“Get out! ” Orien cried at her, then, in fear, “Keep away from
me! ” for Ninévrisë brought anger into the gray world—Ninévrisë
started for her and women scattered,
and Shadows scattered around them. It was not good to feel. It shivered through the air, it set all the gray to rippling like curtains, fluttering like wings.
It welcomed anger.
“No!” Tristen cried, and seized the table edge, overturning it in the way of the women, and the candles and the basin and all went over in the light from the door. Fire flared in the spilled wax on a woman’s skirts, and shrieking, the woman tried to smother it.
In that firelight metal had flashed in Orien’s hand. He saw it, spun Ninévrisë back as Orien came past the end of the table, and evaded her as another woman drove a blade past him. She did not aim well, he thought, and in the slowness of such moments and without difficulty he caught the woman’s wrist—in near darkness: one of the guards had smothered the burning cloth and the other stopped the women from fleeing. He took the knife and let the woman who had attacked him go, at least to the keeping of the guards.
But Orien also had gone down in a pile of dark skirts and 662
Ninévrisë was standing on Orien’s hand with one slippered foot.
There was another knife, as the guards were finding the women in general so armed; and Ninévrisë trod hard on the hand when Orien tried to claw her ankle and tried to overthrow her by dragging at a handful of her skirts.
Tristen bent and took the knife from crushed fingers, then took Orien by the wrist, pulling her not entirely gently to her feet.
“Damn you!” Orien’s eyes burned with rage and with fear.
She fought to be free and he let her go. “Damn you!” She spoke Words, but no sound came. Wind blasted into the room.
“Good bloody gods,” one guard said.
“I think you should take her away from here,” Tristen said.
They were Names she had spoken. He did not know what they attached to. He found no image of them but dark. The air felt far less dangerous after that gust, but a cold wind was still breathing through the open panel. “Shut the window, sir. I think it’s far better shut.”
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