Servants led the way to rooms upstairs, in an arrangement not unlike the Guelesfort, though much older. It was all carved, dark wood, and there was, again, a small servants’ quarters where the staff wanted to bed Paisi down.
“No,” Elfwyn said. “He’s not my servant. He’s my brother.”
“I ain’t,” Paisi said quietly. “Cousins, at best, by adoption, as is, an’ I’m his man, an’ shall be. But I’ll stay close by m’lord tonight, if ye will— he’ll rest best if I do.”
It was quiet, after the servants left. It was deathly quiet.
And, clothes and all, lying atop the coverlet, they went to bed.
“We’re back where we was,” Paisi said, lying on his side by him. “ ’Cept it ain’t the Guelesfort.”
“It’s my fault!” Elfwyn cried, tears welling up, and Paisi put his hand on his shoulder, gently so.
“Ain’t. Gran’d have a fit to hear ye say it, so don’t. If it was her, lad, that was an old, old war, your ma wi’ Gran an’ Lord Tristen. Ye ain’t nothin’ t’
that fight, yet. Ye may be. But ye can’t be yet, so no such talk. If ye was a wizard, say, I’d ask why ye didn’t See it, ye know—”
“I did See it. I Saw it in my dreams.”
“Oh, aye, an’ maybe I saw fi re, too, which could mean Gran might burn the soup: it’s one thing to See, it’s another to know what ye Seen, an’ still another t’ stand up an’ fight the likes of her.”
“I tried, and I shouldn’t have gone up there. I thought I could do it, and I was an utter fool. I thought the ring would keep me safe, and I didn’t think about Gran and you not being protected, the same.”
“Aye, but Gran were a witch, an’ Saw clear as can be if it was in her to See it. You was there, lad, right enough, but there was Lord Tristen himself could ha’ stepped right in— he can do that. He can arrive like lightnin’. I know’t him to do it. An’ he didn’t come, nor know ye was steppin’ into trouble, so ye can’t blame yourself for not knowin, nor’d Gran ever blame her Otter for what a witch herself couldn’t stop.”
He wept for Gran, quietly. It was all he had left to do. Sleep came down on him in the middle of the day. He slept into dark, and waked when servants brought supper in, but neither he nor Paisi ate much.
He lay awake after that, dry - eyed, and thought black thoughts about his mother, just upstairs, unscathed, a hateful and dangerous proximity that he would have to ignore just to share this roof, which he would have to share, perhaps for the rest of his days, thanks to his mother’s ruining his chances 2 6 7
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in Guelessar. Gran was dead, part of that heap of ashes, not even a grave to mark her place in the world, while his mother lived on, smug and happy, he could imagine it, in having destroyed a woman so much her better—
He grew angry, terribly angry, and anger unleashed the hate Gran had always advised him to avoid— hatred of his mother and his circumstances, alike, as if his soul had burned as raw as his hands last night. He didn’t sleep.
He couldn’t, now. It seemed forever before daylight crept into the unfamiliar windows of an elegant room, a clear sky with a slight pall of chimney smoke rising into it.
Town smoke. More burning, tame burning, by people who thought fi re was their servant.
Paisi waked, stretched, knocked his hand into the bedpost inadvertently, and winced. He blinked, perhaps taking a moment to realize where he was, and to remember their circumstances.
“I’d better get breakfast for us,” Paisi said, as if they were back in the Guelesfort.
“Let servants wait on us,” Elfwyn said. “They will.”
“Not on me,” Paisi said. “I’d rather be stirring about, m’lord, I had, and I know me way about this place like the back o’ me hand.” Paisi had served in the Zeide before, when he was Lord Tristen’s servant, and Master Emuin’s before he left. “Servin’ here was no shame, m’lord,” Paisi informed him. “It was somethin’ I was proud of.”
“Then do that,” Elfwyn told him, surrendering the whole matter, and watched Paisi leave. He lay abed for a few moments after Paisi had left, wishing he could pull the covers over his head and spend the next several days asleep, but the pain of his burns and the memories behind his eyelids gave him no rest at all, and he had never even taken off his boots last night, no more than Paisi had. He got up in defeat, washed the finer marks of the soot off his face, now that clear daylight was coming through the windows.
But before he had finished, a flow of servants started through the doors, bringing buckets of water, and trooping through into the bath. Others brought a wealth of clothes— far more than a plea of Paisi’s would have arranged. He let the servants bathe him: the water hurt his burned hands; he dressed in his own choice of the abundance the servants provided him, plain brown, but very fine. A gray- bearded man of serious mien— he remembered him as Lord Crissand’s physician— came in and renewed the salve and bandages.
“Paisi was burned worse than I,” he informed that man, who reported Paisi was bathing and changing down in the scullery, where he likewise would be treated. “My apprentice,” the physician said, “is very skilled, young sir.”
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He was glad at least that Paisi hadn’t had to wait for such comforts.
Breakfast arrived, a choice of breads, on fine pewter plates, with jams, a pile of what looked to be boiled and peeled eggs, with a plate of smoked fish and another of cheese. It was more than he could possibly eat . . .
but he knew from Paisi that nothing he sent back went to waste in the kitchen.
He sat down to eat, alone, and had finished by the time Paisi came back, all shaven and combed and bandaged. Paisi walked in, gave a little bow.
“There’s blackberry jam,” Elfwyn said. The servants had all left. “If you like.”
“A smidgen,” Paisi said, and took a sliver of bread with jam, standing up.
“ ’At’s good, m’lord.”
The division was between them again. But Paisi said he had been proud of his service here— he always had been: Paisi had served Lord Tristen, and Master Emuin, and perhaps, Elfwyn thought, it was only his present lord who suffered in the comparison.
“I’ve been thinking,” Elfwyn said, “we should get a proper stone to mark the place. If Farmer Ost gets the land, at least there should be some marker where the house was. We can find one in the fields and move it there.”
Paisi sat down across from him, now that he had finished his bread and jam. “Ost himself has that hitch of oxen,” Paisi said, “and considerin’ the land, an’ all, he’d do Gran a favor.” So they began to lay their plans.
“We can put a bird on it,” Elfwyn said. “A sparrow. Gran would like that. Maybe we can get a carver to work it proper. We do it now while the ground’s hard, or wait till summer.”
“Snow’s going to lie deep another month,” Paisi said. “Ain’t no great hurry. She’ll sleep a bit to herself. She ached so much, m’lord. ’Tis at least a warm bed she got.”
Paisi wept then, and he began to as well. But then he thought of his mother, smug and satisfied in their pain, and went dry - eyed. Paisi wept, while Elfwyn sat and stared out the windows, wishing death and ruin on his mother’s head.
“I think I’ll go upstairs,” he said, purposing to get up, and Paisi took a heartbeat to understand that. Then Paisi shot his hand across the table, dislodging dishes, and seized Elfwyn’s arm, bandages and all.
“No,” Paisi said fiercely. “No! Ye can’t. Ye’re angry. And Gran always said that wasn’t good. You quieten down, m’lord. Ye wait, ye wait to see her.
Lord Tristen’s comin’ here, ain’t he? It can’t be that much longer, and he’ll settle wi’ your mother. You can’t. Ye daren’t.”
He settled back into his chair, knowing that Paisi was right, that he would 2 6 9
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only fail again, and perhaps put others in danger— Paisi himself, or Lord Crissand, thi
s time, to much greater ruin. He looked down at the ring he wore and wished he had taken it off before he visited his mother. He meant to do so when next he did.
But not today. Not, at least, today. He and Paisi stayed in the rooms, doing very little but nibble at the food— more arrived at noon, with Lord Crissand’s regards and an inquiry whether they had other needs. They had none. They ate, and, drawing the drapes, they tried to sleep, but dreams intervened, terrible dreams, from which Elfwyn waked with a cry.
“There, it’s all right, lad.” Paisi put an arm about him.
“It’s her!” he cried in indignation, and swung his feet over the side of the bed. “It’s her doing it! She gives me no peace, Paisi!”
“Could be. Could be the Zeide itself. It’s full of haunts.”
He was quiet, then. He sat there in bed, forearms on his knees, and fi nally curled back over and went to sleep again.
He dreamed of birds, scores of birds, in a rift in the wall. He thought of Gran’s marker, and the bird of peace he’d intended, but these were raptors, all, with cruel beaks and mad, murderous eyes.
“Birds,” he told Paisi, when, again, he waked with an outcry. “There were birds in the wall . . .”
“Was it?” Paisi asked him, the two of them in the dark, the seam of sun long since gone from the draped windows. It was utterly dark, except the banked fire in the other room. “Was it, now?”
“It’s a silly, stupid dream. I don’t know why birds should be in a wall.”
“Not so silly as that,” Paisi said. “There’s a haunt like that in the Zeide, in the lower hall, right down the way, an’ I don’t like you dreamin’ of it. Ye don’t ever go into that place, if ye see it. Ye go the other way, right fast. All the servants know about it. It’s right down from where your ma’s guards stand. It’s them Lines again, is what Lord Tristen said.”
“He didn’t settle it, when he was here?”
“Oh, haunts has their ways of breakin’ out again, an’ this is one Lord Tristen himself has used, so I guess it ain’t easy to block up— ain’t never done any harm, that I know: it’s more scary than harmful. There’s cold spots upstairs, there’s one in the pantry, but this one’s noisy.”
“Noisy.”
“Like wings beating. Servants skip right fast past that spot, an’ the old stairs beside it. Your ma’s guards ha’ prob’ly seen it more’n once.”
“Lord Tristen showed me about Lines,” he said, and for the first time it occurred to him that he could draw a protection around them, in this room, 2 7 0
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the sort that Gran had used to do, and which, in going out of Gran’s house, they had lacked. So while Paisi watched, he got out of bed and walked about the room, drawing the Line with his hand, especially across the gaps, like the tall windows, like the fireplace, and the doors. He drew them once, twice, all about, and a third time; and then, to his own amazement, he saw a little blue glow attend the passage of his hand.
“Do you see it?” he asked, but Paisi shook his head and asked what he meant.
“The wards,” he said. “They’re working. If I’d done them at Gran’s, if I’d done them the way Lord Tristen said, maybe Gran would have—”
“No,” Paisi said sharply. “Don’t ye think such a thing. If Gran’s own wards didn’t work, an’ her a witch, how’s yours to? Lord Tristen hisself might ha’ set ’em and kept your ma’s spite out, but ye ain’t Lord Tristen, m’lord, for all love. Some things is just too strong for a lad.”
“Like the birds.”
“Like the birds in the wall, aye, like that. Ye c’n hold ’em back, or, well, someone like Master Emuin or Lord Tristen hisself can stop ’em for a while, but the wards tend to fade if ye don’t keep at it, so I understand, even for the things they done.”
“I’ll do it, every night, before we sleep. Maybe they’ll get strong enough to keep her out. Maybe we’ll get some honest sleep, and I shan’t be waking you up every hour.”
“Maybe,” Paisi said. “An’ when Lord Tristen comes, he’ll set ’em so’s they’ll hold fast. He’ll settle the haunts, too. All of ’em. Too many folks ’s died in this place, too many of ’em angry, not least of ’em Lord Crissand’s own da, who was murdered down the hall, an’ Lord Heryn, that your da hanged off the walls. Come to bed.”
He gave a sigh and came back to bed. And in truth, he did burrow his head into his pillow and sleep, deeply.
But before morning he waked again in a sweat, and heard a furious scratching at the glass and leadings of the window.
“Paisi,” he said. “Paisi! Do you hear that?”
Paisi snored.
It was a bird, he decided. A determined, even frantic, scratching at the glass, something trying to get through. But it had stopped when he sat up.
Maybe— the thought occurred to him. Maybe it had been Owl. Maybe Tristen had sent Owl to them.
That thought he found encouraging.
But he dared not open the drapes to try to catch a sight of the creature.
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He dared not stir from bed, not until the sun sent a shaft of daylight through the curtain slit.
ii
lord crissand bade him attend a quiet dinner the next evening, only Lord Crissand himself, and his lady, a plain woman with a beautiful voice—not in looks, but in manner, she put him in mind of Queen Ninévrisë, and he was glad she had come to grace her husband’s table. She could chatter on lightly about the keep, about the birth of a servant girl’s infant, about the need for spices and the hope the thaw came soon, and somehow wove a calm about her that did not make it necessary for him to talk about Gran, or their fortunes, or what they were to do with themselves.
That was Lord Crissand’s part, when the lady had left, and they shared a late cup, stronger than Elfwyn’s wont, and perhaps intended to send him to his bed for the night. It tasted strong on his tongue and tingled on its way down, but he drank it, all the same.
“Will Paisi farm the place?” Crissand ended up asking. “It’s poor soil for anything but goats.”
“He wanted Farmer Ost to take it over,” Elfwyn said, which he hadn’t intended to say, until Ost could make his own petition. He hoped he hadn’t done wrong. “Ost was good to our gran, and came to help her that morning, so we hoped to give the land to him. We were going to put up a stone.”
“Well, you wear that ring,” Crissand said, “so the gift will stand, won’t it? And that ring will get certainly get a stone set.”
He had forgotten. He began to pull it from his finger in some confusion.
“I should give this back.”
“No. Not yet. You keep it until Lord Tristen comes. A stone, you say. I’ll have a proper one set up, right on the roadside, where travelers can see it.
A stone for an honest, good woman. A brave woman, who sheltered kin of mine— you are my cousin: I take you for such, with all good will. And you should know, I would have taken you in much before now. You went to Paisi’s gran on Lord Tristen’s advice, which I hope was a happy place for you. I hope you bear no thought that I failed in kinsmanship.”
“I’m a bastard cousin, m’lord, and I hope I was never a burden.” The kindness Crissand showed him opened wounds and brought him unexpectedly close to tears, and to truth. “My mother— my mother likely killed Gran, 2 7 2
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to spite me, because I visited her. I made her angry. She couldn’t come at me, so she killed Gran, the same hour as I left her.”
Crissand’s face, ordinarily clear- eyed and kindly, darkened. “If she did that, then she may find terms changed. If you’re to be here, perhaps it’s time we found a new place to lodge this woman . . . I do not call her your mother: she has never merited that good name. If her sorcery did start the fi re, then she’s a murderess after being pardoned once from a death sentence, and she will not stay under this roof to trouble you, not by my will, and likely not by Lord Tristen’s.”
; That was the best news he had had. But conscience made him say: “She would try to strike at you or yours, then, my lord. You should take the ring back for your own protection. And send your lady and your children far off while you deal with her . . . her Sight doesn’t reach the river. Or it didn’t seem to: I dreamed, even in Guelessar. And I’d no notion she’d come at Gran when she couldn’t hurt me. I never once thought of it. Now I’m afraid to stay here, my lord, for your sake.”
“Keep the ring,” Crissand said. “Keep it on you day and night. Between her and my household, Lord Tristen set other protections. They hold. They hold, thus far.”
“Gran’s protection didn’t hold her out.”
“Tristen will have no trouble dealing with her. I’ve sent a letter to your father and told him your news, that Tristen is coming to Amefel, and I would by no means be surprised if your father came south himself. I have also sent to Lord Cevulirn, and would by no means be surprised to see him come out of Ivanor: he would scarcely forgive me if he hears Lord Tristen is abroad, and I failed to tell him. And Sovrag of Olmern, and even old Pelumer of Lanfarnesse. We dealt with Hasufin Heltain, who was a hundred times the threat that woman is, and I assure you we will find a way to deal with Tarien Aswydd. Go to bed, cousin. Trust this house has protections much beyond that ring: it travels with you. That is its particular virtue.”
“I am greatly honored, m’lord.”
“Cousin.” Crissand shook him gently. “Go rest. Sleep.”
“I shall, sir.” He gathered himself up, made a little bow, and left, a little unsteady from the unaccustomed drink and warmed by the touch, and feeling a little disconnected from the world, with all the changes in his fortunes.
He walked out of the little dining hall, and down the late - night darkness of the broad corridor, in which the servants had extinguished all but a few candles. All he had to do from there was go to his left and immediately up the main stairs.
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