But his heart would have died long before that day.

Chapter 25  

Petelly had tired, long since—had run as far as he could and went at long, brisk walks along the Emwy road, among the wood-crowned hills. Petelly was not as fast as Gery, but he was strong. Perhaps Uwen could overtake him, Tristen thought. Uwen was good at things a soldier did. But for the while he was free, and he had no wish, at least for a day or two, to be near anyone who knew him, though dearly he loved the sound of Uwen’s voice, and already missed him. He worried about him, as well, if Uwen followed him too closely or somehow failed to hear his message; but he counted on Uwen to be wise, and to read the trail he was leaving on the muddy road.

Such a din of things had begun bearing in on him, so many echoes and voices had begun clamoring for his attention and his understanding, that he longed for his space of silence before Uwen or someone of the Zeide did overtake him. He no longer made sense of any single voice. He felt drawn thin, overwhelmed with pieces and shattered bits of knowledge of Henas’amef and of things that meant nothing to him, that everyone believed should be vastly significant.

Now—now, deep in the hills, at last with only Words he knew about him, and no one speaking to him, he could draw a peaceful, considered breath.

He could not have borne, last night, some new constraint of Cefwyn’s fears holding him locked in his rooms. He could not bear some new, more dreadful event tumbling in on him before he had understood the last.

Most of all, he could not bear Cefwyn making some new demand of his unquestioning belief—or Emuin arriving to take charge of him and severing him from Cefwyn—for Cefwyn might well yield him up to someone who could occupy him for a time; and then forget about him and his advice for days upon days. He did not fault that Cefwyn would abandon him: he knew that Cefwyn was busy. But he knew that his concerns were important. And it occurred to him that, absent, he would weigh far more heavily on Cefwyn’s thoughts, and what he had said might weigh far more than it ordinarily did.

But if Cefwyn could lock him away and know where he was, Cefwyn would cease to think about what he had said. So, absent, he decided, he was far more present than if he were at Cefwyn’s elbow.

Here he felt free, no longer hedged about with constraints, no longer so unremittingly battered by chance. He rode in both fear and anticipation of what lay ahead of him, at least to discover more truths of the world than he knew now, and, by that, to be less helpless than he was among men who knew who they were.

It was not without discomfort, this journey: he was still soaked through, although the sun warmed the cloak and Petelly’s body warmed him. He had eaten very little on the road to Emwy, nothing on the way back, had missed his supper asleep yesterday evening, and his breakfast this morning, and after that his noon meal, so that by now he was a little light-headed, but he did not at all miss the clatter of his well-meaning and kindly servants. He had been hungry before, on the Road. He took it for no great hardship. He let Petelly graze a little for his midday meal as they went. Petelly had left a warm, dry stable and run both far and fast for his asking, and was surely as glad as he was to see the sky clearing and to feel a warm afternoon sun touch his back. Petelly had mouthfuls of thistle-bloom, one after another—he seemed to favor the purple, feathery sprays, and they grew profusely on the hillsides and along the road, silvery, jagged leaves, and tassel-like puffs rising above the gold and green of the grass and the thickets of broom.

He had wrung water out of Cefwyn’s beautiful cloak, and knew he owed Cefwyn both its return and an apology for its condition. He had taken off his coat as he rode this morning and wrung it out, but wearing it, rumpled as it was, and wearing the cloak spread out on Petelly’s rump was the only way he could find of drying them, save this early morning when he had let Petelly rest. Then he had spread the cloak out on stones under the sun, so it had become merely damp instead of sodden. His new coat with the silver stitching seemed ruined for good—it was soaked, the padding under the mail was soaked, —his boots had stayed somewhat dry during the ride, but walking in the wet grass this morning, leading Petelly, had soaked through their seams, and he did not want to get down and walk on the road, and gather mud that would end up on Petelly and his saddle-skirts.

Fool, Mauryl would say, fool, out in the rain again.

But Mauryl’s rebuke carried no sting at all now. It had become a bittersweet memory of an old man who had been very patient with him, and with his own perpetual failure of Mauryl’s desperate expectations.

He could hear Mauryl in the quiet of the countryside: at least the memories of Ynefel had begun to come clear to him in greater detail and with more color than in Henas’amef. He had had his head and his ears all stuffed with the presence of Henas’amef, the Words of Henas’amef, the Names of Henas’amef, some of which had touched him and taught him and made him wiser.

But now, in the hills, under the sky, he found himself thinking very clearly of Ynefel, and Mauryl, and the things of his earliest memories.

The advice of Men had filled his ears with a clamorous assault in town.

Here, he listened to the Lark and watched a Fox trot along the hill and thought—how Mauryl had said it was very easy to make things do what they wanted to do.

And if Men in Henas’amef called that wizardry, he never recalled Mauryl calling his work that, though Mauryl had called himself a wizard. Mauryl had simply expected a thing to be as it wanted to be. And it was. Mauryl never seemed to think it remarkable. He didn’t think it remarkable, either.

So perhaps it had been easy to make himself be here—because this was what he wanted to do, and this was the direction he wanted to ride.

Nothing had been able to stop him last night and nothing had prevented him this morning.

He recalled Mauryl saying he would know what to do when the time came for him to go. And he had indeed known. He had followed the Road and found Emuin. So what Mauryl had promised him had come true.

And now that he thought about it, it did seem that he might know when it was time for him to do other things, and to take other Roads, even to take up the one he had been on, which he had once thought led through the gate of Henas’amef.

But perhaps his Road had only turned there, and gone along beside the wall of the town. Perhaps that was why it now drew him out again, and perhaps the clamor and clatter of the town and the gathering of lords and their men had troubled him because they were all outside Mauryl’s wishes.

That was one state of his thoughts. There were two. One state of his thoughts was calm and safe, and he knew he could rest as he rode, and do as he pleased, and arrive where he wished to arrive, and ask the questions he wished to ask. That was the freedom.

The other state of his thoughts was not calm. The other was full of jagged edges and Words half-unfolded and things that might and might not be, and all the ties he had made to people. That state of his thoughts was full of Cefwyn’s expectations of him, and Emuin’s, and Uwen’s, all unfulfilled. He did not know where good or bad resided, whether with the things Mauryl had wished him to do, or with the things that bound him by friendship to Cefwyn. The thoughts did not at the moment seem compatible.

He knew that in the simplest thinking of all, he should have stayed for Emuin and accepted Emuin’s advice, even if it was to stay in his room and keep silent.

But it seemed to him—leaping to that other way of thinking—that he had found his way past the gates without hindrance because that too was the way things wanted to be. If that indeed was wizardry, then Mauryl had done it or he had.