“Damn it,” Cefwyn said, “damn it, no, I refuse to send the boy home. Or to back off! Mend it! Find a stone, dead of night, replace the paving, replace the whole damned altar if you have to. Make a miracle. Let them chatter about that.”
“Stonemasonry raises noise and dust,” Efanor said, “and stonemasons talk. And one stone will not cure it. What has stirred in the Quinaltine, I fear, is beyond any mason to cure, now.”
“You believe it!” he exclaimed. “Good gods, you believe it!”
“I believe in what I saw the day of the battle. I believe there is a haunt there that roused itself once. I saw it . . .”
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“Once. The whole world shook, that day. There were manifestations from end to end of Ylesuin, nothing since, here or there. Oh, come, this was no encroaching shadow. This was no howling wind. It was a sneeze, gods save us! It was a boy’s sneeze, and an old man’s foolishness. No. One thing will buff the scratches into abeyance. A glittering substance. Apply it.”
Efanor shook his head. “Be careful. Be careful with His Holiness, brother.”
“We are the Marhanen. We have ruled since there was a Guelessar, in spite of idle gossips and busy opinions and drawn daggers. You know what to do and where to apply the gold. In all of Guelessar, there has to be one fi t stone, if enough gold moves it. In all of Guelessar, there has to be an altar cloth wide enough to cover whatever marks may appear. And if there aren’t priests willing to find a miracle in that, we can find more priests, too.”
Efanor drew a deep, deep breath. “As you will, brother. I shall see what I can do. I do not promise success. And find some excuse for the boy to stay abed tomorrow.”
“No, damn it, he will be with us in the morning. I don’t put it past certain priests to have caused this with exactly that aim. Make that suspicion clear to His Holiness and tell him that as I made him, so I can unmake him.”
“Not so easily, can you, and you know it.”
“Yet I can, and by the gods I will, rather than disavow a son of mine because some priest dropped a pot, gods damn his connivance! Tell him I take this as a personal affront, an intended incident, abetted by priests, and tell him count his zealots— one of them is in the midst of this.”
A second deep sigh. “I shall apply what suasion I can.”
“Good.” He caught Efanor’s arm. “You are a true brother.”
“I am also, and not by my will, the boy’s uncle. The boy’s honest and devoted uncle, brother of mine. I made my own mistakes in youth, less fortunate even than this one. I devote myself now to amends.”
“What sin did you ever commit?”
Efanor turned one of those rare and pained looks that he had worn ever since a day in Amefel.
“Our father’s loss? That was none of your doing. The fault is mine. By the gods, I refuse to have you carry my faults about. You are not to be that pure, brother of mine, without being a damned saint, and I won’t have it, by the gods I won’t!”
“Oh, we have each our flaws. Marhanen and Aswydd. I could never have achieved that. Gods save us, what a breeding!”
He glared. Efanor gave a little bow, a very little bow, and walked off to-1 3 0
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ward the door, having had the last and telling word, which only vexed him the more.
Sometimes, however, the Marhanen luck simply held out against all odds, blind, deaf, and dumb. He had ridden to battle with it, time and again. It never worked in his favor when he retreated.
And was this boy, half of his blood, not due a share of that luck?
Otter would not be found hiding among the cobwebs tomorrow.
And if Efanor had to rouse out and bribe a score of stonemasons, there would be a miracle. Let the masons talk: let them proclaim in every tavern in town that they had replaced the stone. The people loved their miracles more than truth, and what appeared suddenly to set things right roused passions that paid no heed to rational explanations. He had learned the ways of the faithful, while the object of his own personal belief was across the border, beyond Amefel, and at present gave him no answers.
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the boy was fearful of going back: efanor saw that, when the family gathered before dawn for the morning processional. Aewyn attempted to cheer him, but the boy, Otter— Elfwyn Aswydd, as he was written, now, in the holy record— looked apprehensively into the shadows of the hall and started in every limb when a guardsman thumped a pike against the paving.
They moved, out into a snowy, breathless dawn, and across a soft new blanket of snow in the courtyard and on the street. Only a few earlier tracks marred the white.
They climbed the broad, sparsely torchlit steps toward the open doors and entered the sanctuary as they must do every morning of Festival. And here Efanor climbed a little faster, and seized Otter’s arm and diverted him and Aewyn to the bench behind the king and queen, in much better view of the aisle, and of the lords who filled the benches. The Lord Chamberlain, fl ustered, filled in the next bench after with his family, and others moved smoothly into place, none noticing, perhaps, until the last row, when some might be left standing: no one sat in the king’s row unbidden; and no one had dared crowd into the Prince’s company in his appropriated row, either.
Everything had gone just slightly out of joint.
But Efanor, nearest the aisle now, had placed the boys where he could keep an eye on both of them— Aewyn, he would gladly have sent forward with Cefwyn, so as not to taint the heir with his half brother’s diffi culties.
He signaled so, but Aewyn, who had stuck like a burr when he had diverted the Aswydd boy, now ignored the urging to join his parents and stuck fast, publicly attached to the scene, making himself a hostage.
Well, Efanor thought, that was as it would be. The masons, paid for silence as well as labor, had done their work last night. A new stone, inconspicuous among the rest, lay in place, unblemished. The altar there was no replacing, but a broad white altar cloth covered the damages. Everything to the public eye was pristine and perfect.
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He had gotten perhaps four hours of sleep last night. Otter beside him looked to have gotten less. The lad’s face was white, lips pressed tight.
Cefwyn seemed perfectly happy, his requirements satisfied, his sons in place, the people quiet in the contemplation of the third day, the day of thanksgiving, happier than the day of fasting and the day of forgiveness.
They had only the day of petition and the day of praise to get through, beyond this one— and if Cefwyn could draw an easier breath this morning, confident in his deafness to things that might move in the shadows— it at least kept his face serene as a monarch’s ought to be.
Efanor felt no such serenity, nor would, he thought, until the sun rose on the world and shadows slunk back to their proper places.
It was always an uneasy place. Lord Tristen had said it was the Masons who had laid out the foundations, who had deliberately built on a place of power, and attempted— arrogantly— to contain it. But could anyone persuade the Holy Father to let Tristen Sihhë redraw the Lines beneath? No, a thousand times no.
Consequently the conflicting Lines were still there, more gateway than ward. They had flared into life that day of battle and outright broken, badly knit again by the persistent pacing of the Holy Father and other priests, back and forth, back and forth along that track before the altar. It was a ragged line they made, like loose scraps of yarn laid for a defense, not the bright, brave blue that attended Tristen’s sure working— the mending of the Lines had started out as bits of red, then green, where they crossed, and a few, now, blue in the heart of the skein, showed a certain health.
But to Efanor’s disquiet, if he looked in the right way, a shadow seemed to have fallen on the heart of the new paving stone, which the Masons had raised from the inner chapel floor and brought out here. Masons had trimmed it, chisels ringing in
the dim, vacant hours; they had set it, pure and gray and polished, and cleaned away the dust.
Now a spot appeared, and spread like ink in water, right by the king’s bench, right by Cefwyn’s left hand.
It was not a spot such as ordinary Men might see, not yet: the choir sang, the congregation rose and sat by turns, but spread it did, and sent out ten-drils of stain to touch other stones, running like ink in the crevices between stones. The white altar cloth seemed to glow with a red fire, as if coals were under the cloth, never blackening, only continuing to glow, a mis - set Line.
No one saw, Efanor thought to himself; not a soul else noticed it.
But when he thought that, he felt a strange thing: that fear sat beside him: not mischief, not a source of the darkness, but fear.
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The boy was gazing at the floor beside the bench, his lips pressed to a thin line. Sweat stood on his face.
Efanor shot out a hand without forethought, gripped the boy’s wrist, and pressed that cold flesh, gently, solidly, feeling, still, neither emanation of the threat nor an answering defense. It was a very mortal chill, the shiver of a soul completely vulnerable to the threat it perceived, and knowing not what to do.
He had force enough. Efanor had discovered it in him on that day, call it prayer, call it a Working, in Tristen’s terms: he had prayed, then, not to the Five, but to justice, and fairness, and to the balance that kept the living in possession of the hill: he prayed now for the lives of all those present, all the city round about, for his duchy of Guelessar, for all the realm, all weighed against the dead, and whatever force tried to break those Lines that held the shadow back.
Shadow pressed back. The blue Lines turned red, and gold, and a few snapped. The boy shivered, and flinched, and Efanor loosened his grip somewhat, praying with all his might, lips moving now. The boy’s other hand closed atop his, circle closed, force running through all the boy’s being, and Efanor locked his left hand atop all, willing safety on the lot of them, on all present.
The Lines held. What he held, what he met, in that completed grip, tingled through him in a way he had rarely felt.
It held. It held through the singing and the Holy Father’s sermon, the old man talking on and on about thanksgiving for deliverance from sins, and uttering inanities, outright inanities about birth indicating a soul’s righteousness and rank being given by the gods.
What rank, this boy? Efanor wondered, distracted. What holiness, this lad, the bastard, whose presence this place abhors?
Whose life this place fears . . .
It fears him, fears the Aswydd blood. The old enemy, is it, you shadows?
The Marhanen lie buried here, Efanor thought: my father, my grandfather, the queens, the forgotten princes, those who never reigned, and those who did— my grandfather who slaughtered the Sihhë - lords and overthrew their palaces . . . who suborned the Aswydds in the doing of it, but the Aswydds were never the object of the attack and never suffered what their lords did. The Aswydds ruled on, under special provision, with their own peculiar titles and honors preserved— the Aswydds still rule, by Cefwyn’s own dispensation.
Aswydd blood can’t be the disturbance here.
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Something else is.
A howling wind seemed to go through the sanctuary, up among the banners, but none of the audience stirred. The boy, however, looked up, candlelight reflecting in his eyes. The boy had heard it. The boy had felt it.
Had he heard some threat yesterday, when the censer fell?
There had been a thunderclap in that moment, in Efanor’s ears. Thunder in the snowfall, that no one seemed to have heard, only the fall of the censer, the ringing of metal, the racket of the congregation all out of their seats, striving to see . . .
“Good lad,” Efanor whispered, under the singing. “Good lad.”
A desperate look turned to him. The boy’s hands were like ice. Beyond, Aewyn had looked aloft, and cast them a worried look, as if perceiving some trouble beyond his ken.
“You should not come here,” Efanor said to the boy in his grip. “I know that. I shall talk to your father.”
“My lord.” The boy tried to withdraw one hand, and Efanor let him, retaining only a hold on his wrist.
“I shall see you safely out of here, when the congregation rises. Walk quietly. I shall keep close by.” Efanor let go the boy’s wrist as the congregation rose. He slipped an arm around him instead, and when Cefwyn and Ninévrisë began the procession, drew him into the aisle, proceeding together behind the king and queen, down the long walk toward the opening doors.
Aewyn came up on Otter’s other side, and put his arm about him, the image of familial devotion as they came out the doors.
It was surely more familial devotion than Cefwyn might want displayed, making clear to all the witnessing crowd outside that here was the Aswydd sorceress’s son, the family mistake, in the very heart of the family, embraced by both generations. Cefwyn might not see the shadows running the aisles like spilled ink, might not feel the bands of terror loosed from about his ribs as they passed the doors or see the sunlight as the cleansing force it was.
Otter must not go there again, Efanor said to himself, shaken. He must not go there. Cefwyn’s will or no, he dares not.
He slipped his hand from the boy’s shoulder then, letting Aewyn and Otter go their way in the mistaken blitheness of boys, the darkness inside now past. They made a game of walking together through the snow as they reached the bottom of the steps, kicking it into fl urries.
Boys, still. Boys whose fates rested in other hands than their own—
In the hands of grown men, who had to act with the limited understanding they had; and Efanor turned back forthwith toward the Quinal-1 3 5
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tine, taking an untracked walk toward the priests’ door, along the side of the building, where a wintry, snowy hedge concealed his visit from common view.
He opened the unlocked door, walked into the close, echoing warren that held the private chapels, the robing rooms, the wardens’ chambers, and the storerooms that supplied the less public aspects of the Quinaltine services.
He climbed up a flight of narrow steps, and into His Holiness’ less public domain, where the Holy Father, the Patriarch, was shedding the heavy gold miter. His sparse white hair had wisped up into random peaks. He looked like any old man caught in dressing, except for the golden raiments, except for priests and lay brothers who raced up to him to ask questions and receive instructions, departing again at a run. It was a hive overturned, buzzing with distress and worry.
“Your Holiness,” Efanor said.
“Your Grace, the spot is back. It’s back, it’s on the new stone, and it’s larger. The whole city will see the mark!”
“Shut the doors.”
“Shut the doors? It’s Thanksgiving, the day before Praise. I have another service to hold in an hour, and the commons at eventide. We can’t shut the doors!”
“We’ve other stones. We’ll lay another stone. The services will be late today.”
“What will we tell the populace?”
“Tell them anything. Lie. Decry excessive drunkenness in the crowd. Say you’ve taken ill. But shut the doors!”
He turned on his heel and left a royal order hanging in the air. The Patriarch might send to the king to confirm it; and he had to reach his brother beforehand.
He lost no time at all, crossing between the Quinaltine and the Guelesfort. Unlike his brother, he moved at times without guard or escort, and this was notably such a moment, in which his plain raiment and his haste was disguise enough, given the sifting fall of snow. The crowd in the square was waiting to be let into services that would, alas, be hours delayed. The guardsmen closing the Guelesfort gate realized who he was and let him pass.
He left melting snow behind him as he climbed the servants’ stairs, up to the level of the royal apartments and straig
ht down the hall . . . past the boy’s rooms, and past Aewyn’s, straight for his brother’s.
But not without interception. A black - clad guardsman checked him with a hand on his arm, right near his brother’s door.
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Idrys.
“Your Grace,” the Lord Commander said in a low voice. “I take it that it was not without disturbance.”
“No,” he said, “it was not.”
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it was a visitation of ill omen: cefwyn saw it coming—efanor, passing the guard at his chamber doors with no lingering courtesies, went straight to the point, just when the Lord Chamberlain had begun a report, and asked for complete privacy.
“The mark is back,” Efanor said directly.
“No such thing!” Cefwyn said. “I looked. I saw nothing at all.”
“Some see it. Some, among the priests, the Holy Father— as well as your Aswydd son— do. I see it. It will manifest again. I’ve ordered the doors shut, the stone replaced. Your miracle, brother, has failed; worse, it’s gone wrong.
All through the service, I was with the boy . . .”
“Who did nothing!”
“I will warrant myself, by deed or word or invocation, he did nothing—but what he saw, and what I saw, brother—”
“These Lines.”
“You’ve seen them yourself. I know you can see them.”
“I agree they’re there. Once and twice, yes, I’ve seen them elsewhere, in darkest night. Why should we be so blessed this time? And why should it be the boy’s fault? Why not one of the priests doing this?”
“I don’t at all deny that it could be. But the fact is, other things manifest when the boy is there. They frighten him, and what I saw there this morning frightens me. Listen this time, brother. Whatever the cause, for the boy’s sake, for yours, the boy must not go through those doors again.”
Master Crow had come in, sole exception to the request for utter privacy, and stood by, arms folded, the last man on earth who might see mysterious Lines or give way to superstition; but he, like Efanor, had seen far more un-accountable things in his life.
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