He got under the covers, having no other recourse. The bed was comfortable and not at all musty, the bedclothes well kept.

And now that Tristen had mentioned Gran and Paisi, he felt a rising anxiousness for them, a surety he truly needed to be going back, that this place, even Uwen’s cottage, was not the right place for him.

He didn’t know what had turned his opinion around. He suspected Tristen had, and he wished he hadn’t, and that his answer had been different, but Gran—Gran did miss him, and Paisi did, and if Lord Tristen was going to ride out into the world again—then the power that had decreed he ought to live in the first place would come and see how things were in the land, and maybe set his life in order. At least there might be a hope for him.

He slept.

And waked again, with the candle out, and in darkness. For some reason he felt alarm. He heard a series of noises, like someone thumping at boards just outside the door.

He lay still, fearing to move, for a long time, and ashamed of himself. Then there came a scratching at his door, as if someone were playing a game with him, and that made him angry. He rolled out of bed, and pulled the latch, to face whatever it was in the light outside.

A rush of air and a battering of claws and broad wings drove him back in.

Owl, he realized. Owl had prevented him leaving. The terrible sight of swinging stairs and faces alive in the walls lingered in his vision, branded there by the one burst of light, before he had slammed the door to keep Owl away from him.

He reeled away, and sat down on the bedclothes, then recalled what Tristen told him about wards.

He made a pass of his hand across the door, and all about the wall, wanting, this time, not to be the one who opened windows. He did it all around three times, to be sure. Then he tucked down into the warm covers, hearing the sigh of wind outside. But everywhere he had just walked, the wards glowed palest blue.

Did I do that? he asked himself in wonder. DidI do that?

Or did Lord Tristen?

vi

A GOOD BOY, TRISTEN THOUGHT, SITTING BY THE FIRE. HE WISHED PAISI MIGHT have come with the boy, though if Gran was ill, there was ample reason not.

Gran being ill, now, that was a very grave business, one that might bring danger on them all prematurely, and whether it was the course of nature or not, he felt uneasy to have that news.

He had reached so seldom out of Ynefel. It was never wise to put forth magic carelessly, however potent, and he disliked breaching his own wards, for whatever purpose.

But this boy—

This boy was the very reason he had pent himself up in Ynefel in recent years: he had been reluctant to lay hands on the situation too early and often, fearing he might blind himself to what truly was moving through it. Now, clear of the quiet workings of Tarien Aswydd, he had gained a certain perspective, enough to see past others’ fears. And his own.

Elfwyn’s heart was clean, still clean. But he had seen him attack Owl himself, up above, and he had felt the wards, how they quivered, not quite what they had been. There was in the boy that little darkness that could well nest something else, something older and more dangerous— thatwas the thing to fear. The sins at first would be inadvertent, the opening of a window for the best of intentions. The boy was a cipher, and with threads of connection running under doors that could not safely be opened… not safely, because there was no sure way to close them after.

And that Elfwyn had recourse here, unasked—that was worth a question: he had battered at the gates asking help—but at whose will? Something had wanted the boy to come to him. Perhaps it was even his own will, in some obscure, inclusive circle of his wards about those he loved: Sihhë magic could work that way. He wondered if Gran herself was strong enough to do it, or if possibly—least likely—the boy’s own will had found its own direction.

That was what he had indeed hoped, even wished over the infant, who had become Otter and now Elfwyn—that Hasufin, who had created that intended vessel for his own shell, would be driven so far from the world he would be ages finding his way back; or at very least—that the vessel itself would not be overcome without such a struggle that it would advise him of the danger.

There was a hollow spot in Elfwyn, as in the first Elfwyn’s child. Perhaps there always would be that hollow spot in the boy—not want of a soul: he had that. Perhaps it was want of love. At least what wanted him—an old enemy, the oldest of enemies—had not gotten in at his birth, or thereafter.

He was still an innocent. Thank Gran for that. It was not an old soul who had gotten past his front gates, to Uwen’s peril, but a young and innocent one, not quite as innocent or as vulnerable as he had been, but still clean. The power that wanted him born had not gotten in.

But this year the boy, nearly a man, came under attack. Everyone attached to the boy now came into danger. Elfwyn was Unfolding, like a word; and that Unfolding would shape him—would, at its worst, work like luck and move everything and everyone aside who opposed the Shape he was born to have—would, blind force, like a seed in the ground that pushes and shoves to reach life below and above, become stronger as it progressed. Elfwyn might yet prove a shell, a husk around an undetectable seed.

That was the danger. Elfwyn was no match, yet, for what might begin to flower in him.

Had he done wrong to preserve the child?

Preserving him, he preserved Cefwyn. He preserved a good king, and a good man, and his friend.

Preserving him, he preserved himself from a deed he could not contemplate and still be himself.

Preserving him—and knowing where he was, and trying to fill that hollow place—

Well, at least they had a watch over him.

Tristen bent, reached to the woodpile by the fireside, and put a stick in, letting the fire take it, watching the bright light that had always been wonderful to him—warmth and pain, the two first lessons of his life, close together and so finely divided. His body, after all his wounds, bore only one scar. It was on his hand, the first one.

Perhaps, he thought, he should go immediately as far as to Henas’amef and meet with Crissand… or send, as he could, and bring Cefwyn here. One stride through the gray space, and he could do that.

But above all, he had to be careful. His own will was potent: he could fill that hollow in Elfwyn with a Word, and if he did, and if he began to work toward a thing in the outside world, he himself might bend the world in ways that he could not predict… precisely because Hasufin was gone from the world. His enemies had a value to the world: they could oppose him, and most things could not. He had all but unstoppable power. But he had learned a hard lesson in Elwynor, that his own will was not necessarily wisest or best for the world.

The stick burned to a wisp of ash and fell away. He rose from his seat then and walked out into the echoing great hall, and to the door.

A face appeared there, looking inward.

“Mauryl,” he said. “Mauryl, my teacher.”

The face seemed to change somewhat, or maybe it was the candleflame moving.

He remembered his days with Mouse and Owl, prey and predator, how he had learned to esteem each, and how such things as a rain barrel had taught him, when Mauryl lived in Ynefel.

It had all come crashing down one day, when the beams fell, when a foolish boy had made a mistake with the wards.

“A boy has come here, Master,” he said. “A boy has come to me for help. What shall I do?”

Dared he go out into the world and learn what had become of the things he knew, what mortals had come into the world, and who of his old friends had left it?

He wasn’t sure, tonight, that he had the courage.