But, Tristen thought, but—Cefwyn had never yet understood him.

Cefwyn had never understood there was imminent danger, and Efanor certainly had not. He looked to Idrys, who was holding the door, as first Cefwyn, then Efanor, left the room.

“Sir,” he said to Idrys, “sir, please tell him—”

“M’lord King has his father lying dead,” Idrys said coldly. “He has his pious brother to deal with, no easy matter. He has fractious lords chafing to establish their influence, and to add to his problems he has the Quinalt aghast over your influence as it is, m’lord of Ynefel. I suggest for the moment and in days following you keep very quiet and do not offer advice on priests again in Prince Efanor’s hearing. This is a religious man, to whom priests mean much. I would not, not, sir, say again what you said to him about the ineffectuality of priests.”

“But it is true, sir. If they could have kept me out of the shrine they would have, this morning. And they could not.”

“M’lord of the Sihhé, if you persist, you may find what priests can do in this world. They can move princes to do the bloody things you saw in the courtyard, and they can move lords to speak and act against your King, to whom you swore fealty and obedience, sir. That you saved my lord on the field counts much with me and I honor that. But you will do as much harm to Cefwyn as you did good today if you turn the Quinalt priests against him with your talk, and well you might. I shall oppose you in that, I do warn you.”

“But the danger, sir, —”

“Is in no wise as urgent as you have presented it. If you can prove otherwise, come to me with it and I shall batter His Majesty’s doors down to gain you audience with him. Otherwise admit that while you may know Emuin’s thoughts from afar you know nothing of Quinalt orthodoxy, on which rock you will founder if you persist in speaking such opinions, true or not. Good night, lord of Ynefel.”

Cefwyn was going away with Efanor and with the guard, upstairs.

Idrys left the door and followed, already well behind and hastening to overtake Cefwyn.

There were men of the Guelen guard still about the council door who might take him to his room, separately. And he sensed that Idrys had listened to him, but Idrys was telling him that truth or falsehood did not matter, and against all Mauryl’s teachings—it did. There was no equivocating with thunderstorms and less with the Shadows.

And least of all, he feared, with what he saw in that gray realm which Cefwyn did not see, which no one but Emuin seemed to travel with him.

He did not know how to make Idrys understand, when he did not understand the threat himself. He did not know how to make Cefwyn believe what he himself could only half believe was so. He held Cefwyn’s cloak about him, thinking of doing as Cefwyn expected him to do, and asking the guard to escort him back to a place where he could be guarded, and kept, and, he feared on his experience with Men, locked more securely away from seeing unpleasant truths.

That meant that he should know less of Cefwyn’s affairs, not more, and he should have none of his questions answered, and none of his warnings heard: the more ignorant they kept him the less they would sensibly heed his warnings of what little he did see.

He moved away from the doors and left the guard, who had not questioned him and perhaps did not think of doing something without  someone asking them to move, for someone who was not their assigned duty—he had learned of Uwen how the guards thought, and what they were told to do.

He walked to the massive central doors. The rain was still coming down, but the fire was not wholly drowned. It burned sullenly, and a handful of men, some well gone in wine or ale, stood in the shelter of the arches, watching the fires. There were guards, but they were watching the men, or talking with each other. And, he thought, he had Cefwyn’s cloak about him, with the Marhanen Dragon blazoned on the leather edges.

So it was no difficulty to walk out onto the steps in the drizzle, and to walk down the steps in the shadow of the wall, and then to walk around the corner of the wall, and to walk on in that shadow, along the puddled base of the wall, to a dividing wall and a gate that always stood open by day.

It was open by night, too. He walked through, past the steps and the doors at the end of the wing, doors which were shut, their guards inside in the dry warm air, where sensible men had rather be.

The gate to the stable court was latched, but not locked: he supposed there were so many guards about and there was so little place to take a horse without leave that, absent the chance the horses would stray from there, no one cared. The stable door was shut, but that had no lock, only a latch. He went inside, and heard a stirring in the straw.

He thought at once of Shadows. Then he thought that the horses who lived here Would not stand quietly if there was harm about; and it proved only a sleepy, half-scared stableboy who called out asking who was there.

“Tristen,” he said.

“Me lord?” The child came as far as the door and shoved it open to the drizzly night. “They don’t ’low no lamps, m’lord, on account of fire.

What would ye be wantin’?”

“I need a horse,” he said.

“Aye, m’lord.” The boy-shadow sounded doubtful, and scratched his ribs. Lightning lit the aisle, shone off the white-edged eye of a heavy-headed and dark horse that looked out of its stall, waked by the goings-on. “Ye want ’im f’ far or fast, m’lord?”

“The best you have,” he said. “A horse that didn’t work today.”

“‘At sure ain’t many, m’lord. We brung Petelly here from pasture.

He’s a big fellow, fair fast. ’E don’t mind th’ weather, but ’e’s a stubborn mouth, and ’e sure don’t like the spurs, m’lord, ’e pitches like a fool.”

“I wouldn’t like them, either,” Tristen said. The boy went to the horse who had put his head out; and who regarded him with a wary eye as the boy led him out in the flickers of the lightning. Petelly stood patiently while the boy searched up the tack, stood sleepily through the saddling and bridling—sniffed over Tristen’s hands as Tristen took the reins and heaved a sigh as Tristen climbed up, moving into a sedate walk as Tristen rode out into the rain.

He tucked Cefwyn’s cloak about him and over as much of Petelly’s back and gear as he could make it cover. He rode Petelly quietly to the Zeide gate, and the guards, surprised in a dice game, let him through with only a question who he was and a look at him by lamp-light from their open gatehouse door.

“Tristen, sirs, from the Zeide.”

“What business?” one asked.

“My own, sirs.”

But one plucked at the other’s arm and said,” ’At’s a King’s messenger, don’t ye see?”

The second man held the shielded lamp close, and said. “Pardon, sir.”

Perhaps it was the cloak. He did not think they knew him. They were not the guards who had been on duty the night he came, and it was at least the second, if not the third, watch of the night. But he did not quarrel with their notion he was a messenger—which was, he supposed, wrong, but, then, he was doing nothing he ought to be doing, and it was, he supposed, too, less wrong than running off with Petelly, which he knew was going to perturb master Haman, and probably get the poor stableboy in trouble.

But he could not do other than he did, and did not tell them the truth: they opened the gate for him, and he rode Petelly slowly down the slick cobbles of the town’s main street to the town gate, and the gatehouse there.

“Who goes there?” the challenge came to him. The gatehouse door opened, its lamps sending out a feeble light onto flooded cobbles, water pocked with rain, where the drainage was not good. One resolute man waded out into it, carrying a lantern and dutifully looking him over.

“Gods, didn’t know ye in the dark, m’lord. Hain’t you no escort?”