“A far leap, Your Majesty. I still refuse to make it, or to attribute anything to a name I cannot otherwise put shape to. So to speak.”

He ignored Idrys’ wry humor. “Yet the name is in the Sihhé line. That proves some connection to my grandfather, to Mauryl, to Ynefel, and to Tristen.”

“Suggests a connection, my lord King. Which might mislead us. All those things are possible. But none are proved.”

“Still, —”

“Worth inquiry.”

“Prince Aswyn called Hasufin in the Bryaltine book. Was there possibly also another still-living Hasufin when Althalen fell? A namesake uncle? A cousin of the same name? Or was this Aswyn?”

“I looked for all manner of references. One must know, m’lord King, the records, particularly the early ones, are all anecdotal, nothing of a chronicle in the way of the Guelen book, just the notation that a wizard named Mauryl did this or that, a wizard named Mauryl lifted a cattle-curse at Jorysal in a certain year. A wizard named Hasufin was supposedly associated with the Mauryl who may or may not be the same Mauryl as ours. The trouble is, there are Hasufins aplenty associated with the district for as far back as the records go. And Aswyns. Four at least.

Elfwyn’s youngest—not younger, but youngest—brother, the Book of Kings reports as stillborn. And then the same book turns up an Aswyn as brother to Elfwyn with no mention of the stillbirth—typical of the records-keeping.”

Cefwyn leaned heavily on his stick, sank into the nearest chair, and adjusted his leg before him, deciding that this would not be a simple report. “And the lad who died at fourteen?”

“According to the Red Chronicle, which we know, Mauryl’s partisans killed the fourteen-year-old younger brother of Elfwyn king, during your grandfather’s attack. According to the Bryaltine record, the Amefin record, mind you, yes, the one Prince Aswyn died at birth, and turns up in further records as living. Then in that record—the Bryalt one, mark you, m’lord, he has the surname or gift-name Aswyn Hasufin. But no further mention for good and all does the record make of him between two and seven—if it is the same Aswyn and not a third. Two brothers of Elfwyn died by accidents. We do not have their names, though I remotely remember hearing in my youth of one called Hafwys or something of the like. Possibly Hasufin—who knows? I was not born either when Althalen went down.”

“Fevers. Childhood mishaps. In a house reputed for wizardry—one would expect, would one not, fewer fevers and fewer fatal mishaps?”

“There was mention of vows made by the Sihhé king for the life of that infant, some sort of offense to the Galasite pantheon, some hint of an unholy bargain with the gods, the usual sort of thing—but this is a Bryalt record that talks about divine judgment.” Idrys was not a superstitious man. It had the flavor of irony. “From the Bryalt—they might know. The Sihhé king was unlucky in the rest of his reign, at least, lost two sons and died, which brought Elfwyn to the throne within a span of—perhaps fourteen years. That much is not coincidence. And, it seems, even in a royal household, chroniclers grow careless and namesakes confound the record—I’ve searched archives before, on various accounts, and, understand, I find this confusion nothing unusual, Majesty. An entry goes in, no one records the death. A second child is born, they assign the same name, the chroniclers fail to rectify the account, and someone later attempts to mend matters, further confounding the confounded.”

“Elfwyn’s younger brother was always given, in every account I’ve heard from Emuin and my mother, as Aswyn, no mention of Hasufin.”

“If we for a brief moment assume the Red Chronicle can be reconciled with the Bryalt account, and that this is Elfwyn’s only surviving brother who appears as Aswyn, and that it is also Hasufin—though they give the age as nine, not twelve—at Elfwyn’s coronation, and that it is not a cousin I found also named Aswyn—an Aswyn who is the right age does appear in further record, a prince among princes, and there were dozens honored with the title but remote in the succession. He was a student, as Elfwyn was, of Mauryl Gestaurien, as who in that court under the age of his majority was not a student of Mauryl? —But, but, lest I forget, my lord King, in this prolific confusion of Aswyns and Hasufins—another name of note: an Emuin, called Emuin Udaman in the chronicle, named as Mauryl’s apprentice, aged thirty-four at that time, if the chronicler made no other mistakes. Is that not remarkable? If that were our Emuin, and not a cousin, that would make his age—”  “Over a hundred.”

“One might certainly ask. And dark-haired still in your memory as well as mine. I debated mentioning that. And must.”

He recalled Emuin of the immaculate Teranthine robes—but more the graying man in ink-stained roughspun, making a most unwizardly ascent of a willow in which his king’s son’s first hawk had entangled its jesses and tried to break its wings.

Emuin, skinny legs in evidence, retrieving the wayward bird, which bit his thumb and his ear bloody for the favor.

“You find conspiracy under every leaf, master crow. You cannot doubt Emuin. He’d laugh at you.”

“A man whose ambitions and actions, like Mauryl’s, may be older than the Marhanen reign? I find at least a question in the coincidence and a duty to report it.”

“I find nothing at all sinister in it. He always claimed to have been Mauryl’s student. Why should he not be in the account? And if we accept that Mauryl was as old as the Amefin believe—as by our experience, he might be—what’s a mere hundred years? Why quibble, if we accept Mauryl saw centuries? If we accept that Tristen is—whatever he is—why, gods, indeed, why balk at anything? Our search through archive is for a dead man!”

“One observation more, my lord. I may yet astound you. Emuin, most certainly our Emuin, indisputably, paid a visit to the Bryaltines in this very town when he left Mauryl and came seeking service with your grandfather. But, what is not in the Red Chronicle, but in the Bryalt book, he recorded a curious wish among them: that for a sum of gold, provenance unknown, a sign be written on the wall in letters of curious shape, that the Sihhé star be set in silver there, and that candles in certain number be burned day and night.”  “You jest.”

“Certainly not the sort of shrine one could bribe the Quinaltines to establish. And not one even the Teranthines would countenance.”  “Was it done?”

“Oh, it is there, m’lord. The size of a man’s hand, that star, with odd symbols, in a remote corner of the crypt. To this hour the candles, thirty-eight is the specification, burn day and night—tended by someone in constant care. The sum of money must have been considerable.

It does go back eighty years, during your grandfather’s reign. Perhaps, too, the Bryaltines are very general in their worships; in the villages, I have observed, Bryaltine priests seem very little distinguishable from hedge wizards. Most of all, this is Amefel, my lord, and never did I feel it so keenly as standing in that small shrine.”  “Thirty-eight. Why thirty-eight?”

“Why, twice Nineteen, my lord King. A second Nineteen. A return of the old gods? Another ascendancy of wizardry over men?”

“Damn.”

“Aye, m’lord.”

“Emuin is Teranthine. A rational man, not a religious. I know him, my teacher, my—”

“The record is there to be read, my lord, in the shrine, if you will I bring it to you. —My lord, granted the Teranthines do shelter him and attest his piety. But they were an obscure sect before he came to them and brought them fame and fortune. As Emuin has grown in favor, in two, now three reigns, so they have prospered in donatives and courtly devotions of lords who would not omit a respectable order, especially now, one favored by the Marhanens. And so blessed, would the Teranthines denounce him willingly for his private devotions, to whatever powers? A minor peccadillo, one of those small matters I doubt Emuin told your grandfather—or your father when your father made Emuin your tutor. I know him well. And I doubt Emuin has ever confessed fully his sins to me—or to the Teranthines, who doubtless do not wish to bear the burden thereof, even if they suspected it. I am tolerant, but not where it regards the overthrow of the realm or fealty to dead wizards.”