In truth, the world in general had become much more familiar to him, less a-jumble with new things and unguessed words, so that in the close confines of the Guelesfort an entire fortnight might pass without his finding something new. But outside its walls, he gathered wonders and set himself in predicaments his guards indulged with kind patience… this might be one. He came to this hilltop for the silence and the sound of the trees, only to think without the sounds of five men and horses about him, and for a moment, so engaged, and perplexed about his path, he might almost hear Mauryl’s voice saying, “Boy? Boy, where areyou now? What have you gotten into, lad?”

A rising wind whispered through dry branches. It almost seemed he did hear that voice, that he was in some secret hiding place where it was not Mauryl who was lost, but himself, and only for a moment. He would turn around, and he would see Mauryl standing there, his plain brown robes blending with this gray autumn woods, his hand about that staff of his, his white hair and beard alike flying in the gentle whim of the breezes.

“So what have you found?” Mauryl would say, if he was in a patient humor, and Mauryl would come have a look at his log and tell him the name of the fungus and whether he should bring it in pieces back to the hall to join the vast collection of strange and curious things Mauryl treasured. Mauryl’s robes, never reputable or fine, and always smudged with the dust of the old fortress, would surely acquire tags of leaf mold and dirt just as his cloak had, Mauryl’s hair would have just such unseemly detritus of leaves, and his face would take on that look of concentration that was Mauryl at his kindest.

Petelly’s nose met his shoulders and shoved. Tristen drew in a breath rough-edged with the smell of oak and earth and autumn, and knew that Mauryl would not be there, not at distant Ynefel, certainly not on this hilltop in Guelessar, and that he had well and truly overstayed his time, since he heard the jingling of men and horses coming up the road. His guards had grown concerned, or curiosity had moved them, and leading Petelly toward the trail to meet them, he saw to his chagrin that they had all come.

Uwen was in the lead as they came up the turn, then Lusin, Syllan, Aran, and Tawwys, armed and armored, the lot of them—as of course he was, or more or less so. He had let Petelly carry his sword, which he had stowed behind the saddle, but he conscientiously carried a dagger on his person as Uwen advised him he should, and beneath his brown ordinary cloak and leather coat, he wore the mail the king and the king’s captain commanded he wear, even though he considered it very little likely that enemies would cross the Lenúalim and tramp across a good deal of Guelessar to invade this hunting preserve and climb this very hilltop. In all truth, most Men had rather not face him with or without that sword, and he suspected that the guards the king assigned him generally served him better in deterring the approach of the unwary than in fending off hazards.

He pulled and scraped his way past berry bushes as his guards arrived, jingling and breathing and thumping and creaking, four men in the red of the King’s Dragon Guard, with his sworn man Uwen in plain brown. Uwen wore only the smallest black badge of Althalen over his heart, the same as he wore himself. The others, being king’s men, wore the gold Marhanen Dragon and red coats.

“So what ha’ ye found?” Uwen asked him amiably from horseback, with no reproach at all, while four riders fanned out among the trees to turn around, the trail being just wide enough for one horse. The hindmost of his guards was very steeply on the slope, even so. “And should we be riding back soon, m’lord?” Uwen asked. “This’d be our turning, here below, to go back by way of Cressitbrook, if ye’d rather a different road going home. As we should now.”

“We should,” he agreed shamefacedly. He saw his guards looking warily about for curiosities, for chills and shadows and other such events of his company, but without a word he climbed up on Petelly and eased him past the other horse’s nose. Uwen turned next. The king’s men turned about in the woods and followed.

The wind, an entirely natural wind, blew dust up and sent leaves across the path as they left the hilltop. Petelly danced and skipped through the insubstantial obstacle. The men rode after him in haste, and for a moment they went pell-mell down the chancy turn, over ground buried in leaves. Tristen knew the footing, and so did they all. There were no roots, stones, or holes; but he knew that there was no threat above to give any reason for haste, either, so he pulled Petelly down to a reasonable pace past the spring. They all came safely to the lower road again, sheltered from chill breezes and wayward memories by the looming, forested hills on either hand.

“No shadows,” Uwen said, having overtaken him.

“No shadows,” he assured Uwen. “Not a one. I was listening to the wind up there. Looking at the hills.” For some reason, perhaps because it was a matter for wizards and not for soldiers, he was reticent about confessing his looking out toward Amefel. “There was a fungus I had never seen.”

“A fungus, ye say.”

“On a dead trunk.”

“Oh, them things.” Uwen seemed both relieved and amused, and it was as he expected. Uwen ventured not a ghost of a guess what the growths were named, or what their virtue was. “Ye don’t eat ’em, least I for certain wouldn’t. Mushrooms is done for the year.”

“To come back in spring?” So many things were promised to return in the spring. And some things would Unfold to him the moment he asked a question, but some things would not. “Or in the fall?”

“A lot in spring, or in rainy spells. I don’t rightly know about that up there, that kind. But cooks dry the wholesome ones in the kitchen for the off-season, so ye never fear, m’lord: there’ll be mushroom soup aplenty all winter. I heard Cook say yesterday there’s a special attention to mushroom soup for harvesttide on account of Your Grace.”

Harvesttide was only two days off. He did indeed like mushroom soup, and he would be as happy as most in the approaching celebration if he were happy in other points, and if he knew he were welcome among the other lords, but neither was the case.

Still, it was too fine a day for melancholy on that account. Uwen rode beside him, knee to knee on Liss, a mare Uwen greatly coveted, and they were comfortable a while in silence. It was still a wooded road after they had taken the Cressitbrook way, winding deep among the base of hills where only the king’s woodsmen cut wood, and where only the king and the king’s friends hunted. It needed no quick pace at all, as Uwen had said, for them to reach Guelemara before dark. The road they took now showed no track of horses or men since the rains, and therefore held less likelihood of meeting anyone. The men rode more easily, far from any critical eye, talking of whatever took their fancy, and anticipating the harvesttide festival, for which the town had been preparing for days, building a bonfire of truly prodigious proportions.

Friendly voices, friendly company surrounded him, past the spring and down along the little brook that flowed down from it. Tristen listened idly and watched the leaf-paved road above the twitch of Petelly’s black-tipped ears—busy ears, they were, alert to every burst of laughter and every whisper of the freshening wind out of the west.

CHAPTER 2

There were pearls, an abundance of pearls. Cefwyn trod on one and winced, hoping it was only one of the sleeve-pearls, not some stray and costly one from the wedding crown, which lay in partial glory and strips of ribbon on the table. A mound of pale blue velvet and gold- and pearl-colored satin stood like a mountain range against the high, clear windows of the former scriptorium. The center panes of amber glass cast a bar of golden light across the room, from the embroidering maids to the far, scrap-strewn tables in this, the domain of the Regent and her ladies-in-waiting.