In a moment more he had disposed his baggage and gotten into the saddle, settling his cloak around him. Then he waved good - bye to Uwen and his household, looked last at him, with a little respectful bow, then rode quietly out the gate Uwen opened for him. He left of his presence only tracks in the courtyard snow, tracks the sifting white would soon fill. Ynefel was almost as it had been. Almost.
“Go,” Tristen whispered to Owl, and Owl flew from the height and passed the wall, swift as an arrow.
Perhaps, Tristen thought, he should have given the boy plainer warnings about his mother, but that might expose the boy to more influences once he began to wonder more persistently about her.
At very least a warning not to go near his mother would act as a grain of sand in a boot, a slow irritant that might drive that particular boy to doing 2 2 1
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the very things he ought not. Best lay wards about the young man, as he had done, and keep him safe and quiet, as untroubled by outside forces as he could make him.
For the other matter— he had written a message to Lord Crissand, bidding him not admit Elfwyn any longer to his mother’s tower, no matter what, and to await his arrival.
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owl was no better than he had been, a tricky bird, leading plainly at times, and at others vanishing among the barren limbs, turning his head, and pretending to be a snow clump. Elfwyn had had hopes of better behavior, but Owl was Owl— untrustworthy in the finer points. Maybe it was a good thing to be feared, Elfwyn thought, during one of those times Owl had deserted him, and it was certainly very humbling to be Mouse. But he could see why Owl wasn’t a pleasant creature, or the sort anyone would want for a friend. Owl did what he had to do, and what he wanted to do, but he repaid a kindly hand with a bite— which was going to scar his hand for good— and he scared people he was helping.
It was not a sort of creature he wanted to be, he decided. He remembered the fish, which was swimming the river now, alive, and he was glad of it, although he had eaten what Uwen had caught. He remembered Mouse, sitting up and eating the crumbs he gave, so wary and wise a creature, and so fragile Owl could carry him off in an instant. But he was clever, and quick, and hard to catch. Perhaps it was not such a bad thing to be Mouse.
Owl flitted ahead of him and was lost again.
Owl appeared, usually when he had stranded himself and had to retrace his steps in the maze of branches at some little difficulty. Apparent trails turned out to be mere bare spots in the woods. Trails such as Owl led him were oftenest as choked with brush as places that were not trails, and there was no sign at all that the way they went now was the same way he had come in.
He slept the night, with enough to eat and with enough for Feiny, and waked with snow sifting down on him, a white dusting that grew worse as he rose and rode. Within an hour the downfall grew so thick it obscured everything but the nearer branches.
Owl had left him, of course. He was of a mind to stop until Owl came back, but it was a cold and inconvenient place, where he had realized he c. j. cherryh
had lost his guide. He was on a ridge, and he decided to ride to the bottom of it, where there was shelter from the wind, before he stopped. He weaved his way down between clumps of sapling trees and down onto a fl at place. But Feiny lurched, there was a crack of ice, and all at once Feiny fell through an icy shelf into water and spilled him onto cracking ice, going down sideways.
He flailed out amid cutting slabs of ice, Feiny struggling beside him, breasting cracked sheets of ice. The water was no deeper than his waist—
Feiny was able to climb out, once he had righted himself, and he did, too, holding to Feiny’s tail, but he was soaked nearly through, and instantly shaking, teeth chattering. Feiny, in his heavy caparison, was soaked. He knew not many things about finding his way in the world, but he knew that he had to find shelter, and he had to warm himself and dry out or die. He let Feiny stand, left the wet wool felt on him for warmth against the wind, and got to the fire kit he carried attached to his belt. The red fiber beneath willow bark, willows growing all about, here, was the least damp fuel he would have at hand: he was trembling so he could hardly keep from curling into a ball, but he persevered. He peeled bark on the underside of a dying limb and collected his little knot of dry fiber. He broke off dry twigs from limbs, and swept a spot clear in the snow, where he sat to work with a pile of dry kindling on a bed of wet, slick leaves, warming himself with furious effort with the fi re kit.
He drew sparks. Over and over they failed, or only livened for an instant, and died in the wind. He hunched over his little pile and kept trying, his hands cut, but cold beyond feeling. His feet were numb. He felt nothing from his knees down. And if there was any virtue in this flint and steel being given by Lord Tristen himself, he hoped it would take.
One spark lived, and spread to two strands of the red fiber, and three.
He sheltered it with his hand, and made a window between his fi ngers for a little wind to reach it, until heat burned his palm. Then he added twigs ever so gingerly. He fed it and fed it, while the feeling left his upper limbs.
He stumbled about on half - dead legs, broke dry branches he yanked from off the oaks on the higher bank. They smoked, their upper surfaces being soaked, but they burned, and he dragged back larger ones and put them in, building a blaze in a spot clear overhead.
Ice had formed in his hair, and it dripped water, now, down his face when he faced the fire he had made. It sent up smoke in plenty: he hoped Lord Tristen himself might see it, and know he was in trouble; but he began to be warmer.
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He drew Feiny closer to the fire. He limped over under an oak limb he had seen, still clinging to its tree, a big dead limb from which the bark had fallen.
He seized it, wrenched it back and forth and dragged it back, posing the arch of it over his fire, ramming it down so it would take.
His feet had suffered all he dared allow. He sat down by a considerable fire, worked off his boots and stockings down to bare feet, and rubbed life back in until it tingled and hurt. Feiny, having sense, had stayed close by the warmth, and showed no disposition to leave him and go running off. He fed Feiny a little: the grain had not gotten wet, and Feiny’s barding was not wet through, particularly on the side that had not gone into the stream. It was, he was glad to know, quite warm inside. He got down a good blanket, which had stayed dry, and, shivering, took off his cloak and his other garments, wrung them out with all the strength he could command, spreading them on the arch of the large log, then, within his blanket, huddled close to the fi re, searching with his eyes into the thicket for more such limbs.
Fool, he said to himself. He should have had better sense than to ride Feiny across. Nothing else had been that flat. The spot had been too sheltered, and too inviting, and if not the fire kit and the stand of willows, he would be freezing to death. As it was, he set his boots and stockings nearest the fire but could not get them dry again before he had to go out, barefoot in the snow, and crack off more dead limbs and pile them on. The cold hurt his skin. His limbs jerked uncontrollably as he worked, but he hauled back whole branches, unwieldy as they were, and made a larger and larger fi re, until it melted back the snow, and melted the cover off a rock overhang, and melted the very edge of the icy stream.
Lord Tristen, he wished, in Owl’s absence, Lord Tristen, help us. Help us, or we freeze to death in your woods.
But Owl stayed gone, and he piled on the wood hour after hour, until he had a good bed of coals under the burning wood. Whenever the bigger logs burned through, he heaved both their burnt ends closer in on the coals, and kept the blaze high and strong, fire that melted all the snow that fell, and only whipped about in the driving wind, too strong and hot to fail. He sat in the smoke stream, where the greatest warmth was, and finally had strength enough to set his cloak and other clothing up on a frame of dead willow branches,
likewise in the smoke, where they would dry faster. The dark came down around him, and by a firelit dawn, he had gotten his clothes and boots dry enough to put on, but not dry enough to risk leaving his fire yet. He unsaddled and fed Feiny, who had kept warm near his fire through the night, and having warmed himself again, he decided he finally dared sleep, his head 2 2 5
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on his forearms, and all of him tucked in a fire - warmed, smoky blanket, in smoky air.
His nose and his eyes ran. He waked whenever the fi re needed feeding, but slept, and finding himself, and now the blanket, damp from the air about him, he dared not leave the fire for long. He stayed all the next miserable day, ranging farther and farther about to find dry, deadwood still on the trees, chilling through in the process, then warming himself again. He was dirty and smoky, but at least not starving, thanks to Cook’s cakes, which he ate sparingly, the while, and which he would have sworn were not so numerous.
He began to be quite pleased with himself now that he had recovered from his folly and saved himself and the horse, alone as he was. Paisi, he thought, would be proud of him. Uwen would nod, in that way he had, and approve.
He had done as much as anyone could do, on his own, and with no help at all.
In the morning the snow had stopped, and he got up, saddled the horse, and used the end of a log to break up his bonfire and shove the coals and burning wood out onto the ice of the brook, where it fell through. Then he mounted up and rode along his side of the brook, which at least offered him a road through the trees.
Something brushed his shoulder, and shot along in front of him. Owl had turned up, after two nights and a day, and continued remarkably well behaved until the sun was high, after which he disappeared again, faithless bird.
Elfwyn decided he could be as obstinate as that. He stopped, got off the horse, and waited, sitting, wrapped in his cloak, on a relatively warm fallen log until Owl decided to show up again. He was feeling quite pleased with his management of calamity, sure that Owl would come back, and having slept well enough and eaten a bit of a breakfast. Paisi, he thought, again, would be proud of him; and he was more and more anxious to get home again and tell Gran what he had seen and have her word on things— she and Paisi both had known Lord Tristen, and would want to know everything, every tiniest thing.
After he had gone to Lord Crissand, that was, and—
He had a terrible thought, and looked in his purse, which was empty of everything but his fire kit and a little willow bark; and felt about his person—he remembered putting it into his shirt— but he had had every stitch of his clothing off in that terrible hour, and he had been shaking all over, numb, and the wind had been blowing, so he would never have felt a little thing like a letter fly away from him.
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It was a day behind him, that place, and he had no idea now how to fi nd the fire site, or how he would find a scrap of paper in a snowfall. The snow had covered everything. He had been so pleased with himself for staying warm, and never once thought of the message he was carrying, never once put it in a safer place after he had tucked it inside his shirt that morning he had left.
Fool! he said to himself, distraught. Fool! So smug, so sure . . . and it’s gone.
He sat there, however, having no other answer and no rescue for his folly.
Owl came back, perched smugly on a branch nearby, waiting for him.
“I’ve lost it,” he said aloud to Owl. “What shall I do? Can you tell him?”
Owl paid no attention at all, but took wing before he had quite gotten back into the saddle.
He had to get back to Gran and Paisi and get their advice about the message he had lost.
But what would Lord Tristen’s message have said? It surely advised Lord Crissand of what Tristen had already said to him, that he intended to ride out and probably pay Lord Crissand a visit— that, at least, he knew, and he could at least advise Lord Crissand that there would be a visit.
And then he had a reason to ask Gran if she could See what Lord Tristen was up to— because he ached to know when Tristen would ride out, and whether that riding out had to do with him. He had had a kindly welcome at Ynefel, no question— but Lord Tristen had looked into matters, as he had said, then decided to send him out first in some degree of haste.
That haste, he had denied to himself for the last several days, but haste it was— urgency was certainly what he had felt in his dismissal.
Well, Guelenfolk had certainly wanted him gone from their premises, which, now that he was gone, probably made things easier for his father.
He would never expect that a place like Ynefel and a Sihhë - lord should have any fear of him at all— but why, then, had Lord Tristen decided there was so much hurry about dismissing him?
That was what it had seemed to him, that at fi rst Lord Tristen had been preparing to have him stay in Ynefel keep a few days, and then something had changed, and Tristen had flung him out onto the road into a coming storm.
Surely Lord Tristen, who could look out into Amefel and Guelessar, could have watched over him, right on his doorstep. Instead, Owl had run 2 2 7
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off at the very worst moment and left him, as if the bad luck that attended him was too much even for Owl to overcome, because he was a wicked boy, bent on ducking himself in a brook and losing a message Lord Tristen had meant to send . . .
Maybe he was truly cursed from birth, the way the Guelenfolk thought.
Tristen had told his father not to kill him— but Tristen had told his father not to kill his mother, either, and everybody agreed his mother was the wick-edest woman that ever lived, so that was no recommendation.
So what was he? And why were people everywhere he went so much better off without him?
He felt cold despite the cloak and the horse’s warmth, chilled right to the heart.
Tristen hadn’t been willing to teach him wizardry. Maybe he had been too dangerous, too evil to teach— though Tristen had seemed to consider it moderately, and had shown him wards, and when he had done them— which was wizardry, was it not?— they had clearly worked.
So maybe he wasn’t irredeemably wicked. Lord Tristen might be testing him, whether he could overcome his birth.
He hadn’t done well so far, losing the message . . . but he knew it now, and it was no time to sit on his hands and mope, as Gran would say.
Telling the truth to Lord Crissand was the most urgent thing, and when Tristen did come to Henas’amef he would go to him at the first chance and confess outright that he had lost the message. Tristen had dealt with him kindly, even if he had stripped his comfortable name away from him and told him to carry the one he was born with: it didn’t mean that he was damned.
It meant that he was no longer a child, and he had to be a man, and deal with that name.
Be Mouse, Tristen had advised him, and not Owl.
Timid and brave, like Mouse. Wise, like Mouse. Not fierce and faithless, like Owl. He would not have understood that about those two creatures if he hadn’t visited Ynefel and seen how they were. He wouldn’t have thought twice about them if Tristen hadn’t made him stop and think about their natures, and his— and he’d not been able to kill the fish, had he?
That had been a test. He knew that now. He’d doubted it when they’d had fish for dinner, all the same, but Tristen had said something about its being all right to be Owl, but not at all right for him . . .
Which meant Tristen had seen some virtue in him, had he not? And Lord Tristen had, after all, taught him wards, and given him the fire kit, last of 2 2 8
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all. Tristen had given him exactly what he needed and left him to rescue himself.
What were his two words, that Tristen had given him, that he had to gain for himself?
Vision was one. Clearly, if he’d been looking at what he was doing, he wouldn’t have ridden his horse onto thin ice. If he’d Seen himself, stripping
all his clothes off, or paid any attention to what fell on the ground, he wouldn’t have lost the letter, would he? Vision was something he’d needed to have, and hadn’t.
The other word was—
He could see Tristen telling him, but the image faded when he tried to think of that second word— it faded, like a dream by daylight, a simple word, an obvious word, the sort of word that anyone ought to possess. It was something he had, quite indignantly, thought he already possessed, but Tristen hinted he did not . . .
Love, might it be? He had wondered often enough in his life whether he had been loved enough, or by the right people. He had wondered whether he had enough of it, on his way to Ynefel.
Love was important, love from mother, or father, or brother— and the one he knew he had won, but one of the three he knew he never would, and the middle of the three, he doubted he had deserved. Love, but not yet from his father and certainly never from his mother. Tristen said whatever it was, that it was all - important for him . . . but was it love? Love was what he had been hoping for, lately.
Tristen had said . . .
He became convinced there was something he had forgotten entirely, something that rested just outside his reach.
Worse, more things began to escape him, faster and faster. The snow had whited out the world, and now it whited out the very memories he had hoped to carry away with him— since his struggle against the cold and the weather, he had more than lost the message, he had let other details begin to escape him. He wanted to write them down, but found nothing on which to write and nothing with which to write. He scratched it with a piece of sharp twig on his own bare hand, until it bled: Vision, he wrote.
Owl was gone. In the very moment when he had broken off a twig and written it, he had misplaced Owl again, or Owl had misplaced himself.
But in the next little space of riding, the woods thinned before him, and he saw snowy meadowland, and when he had ridden a time across fenceless meadow, he came on the snow - covered and untracked ridge of the east – west 2 2 9