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There came, on a night in Guelemara not so long after they returned from Ilefínian, a whisper on the wind. Tristen sat up in his bed before he quite knew what he had heard, ice in his stomach and a sudden sweat chilling his skin. The watch candle’s flame stood as still as glass while the panes shook and rattled and moaned.
“I am done with it,” he said to the drapes; beyond them the window, the courtyard, the city, the wall, the night.
The wind.
His breath tangled in his throat, tripping over the fear lodged there. Hasufin was gone, as gone as Tristen could make him, as gone as one such as he could be made. “I am done with it,” he said again, a command now, and one that was his right to give. “It is done.”
The wind fell off at once, and then returned to pry with doubtful fingers at the little glass panes before it slunk off into the night. Tristen shook, bedclothes fallen around him, and stared without seeing at the deep blue curtains.
“Lad?” Uwen said, from the doorway and the warm circle of another candle – this one jumping madly. “Is aught amiss?”
My name on the wind, he almost said, only it wasn’t his name, and it hadn’t been the wind. Not Hasufin’s tricks. Hasufin was gone. He willed it so. Someone else perhaps. “A dream,” he said. “Someone was calling me.”
Uwen looked uneasy, as well he might given the sorts of things that called Tristen in the night, and wanted to come in and fuss at him, but Tristen sent him back to his bed, and went back to his own. He lay awake, wishing Master Emuin had stayed in Guelemara, wishing Owl had not gone away to wherever Owl went when he wasn’t bothering Tristen, wishing he could slip away to Cefwyn’s rooms and talk through the night as they’d done in Henas’amef.
But Emuin was at the abbey in Anwyfar, and Owl had never been tame, and Ninévrisë was with Cefwyn on this night. His thoughts tangled around them and skittered away, and he slipped from bed, flushing, and put on his coat.
He padded through the outer rooms, past Uwen’s snoring, out to the corridor where he looked both ways, chose at whim, and set off.
Lusin and Aran startled, and then scrambled to follow. They did not pad, but clumped after him in their heavy boots, and Tristen realized he could feel the icy stone floor beneath his slippers. He did not know where he was going; the Guelesfort was huge and he had been given new quarters on their return from the war, ones Ninévrisë had lived in for the months before the wedding, before she had moved into Cefwyn’s mother’s rooms, down the hall from ones that had been Cefwyn’s father’s, and were now Cefwyn’s. The corridors in this part of the citadel were all corners and turns and dead-ends, both to stop the draughts and to confuse intruders, but they were well lit.
The night candles led him onwards, down two flights of stairs where at last he came to the corridor outside the kitchens and knew where he was. Over one gallery there was a small garden, little used because it faced the north and had neither sunshine nor view to recommend it.
It was the view Tristen wanted, black but for the lights on the far distant wall, no stars and not a breath of wind. Not a word now that he was awake and on watch.
“It does not suit you?” a voice said at his back, and he stiffened, and Lusin shifted, but it was only Idrys, black as a shadow and solitary. Tristen nodded to him.
“Lord Commander... I beg pardon...”
“The room.” Idrys came a bit into the garden. “Does it not suit you.”
“It suits me.”
“I’m afraid the only better is his Majesty’s.”
“I’m content with what I have.”
“And yet.”
“I heard something.”
A single black brow arched, and Tristen looked away, ashamed without knowing why.
“Do I frighten you?” Idrys asked, head to one side, like the crow Cefwyn so often called him.
“Once.” A lifetime ago and yesterday. The dark suited Idrys; his face sliced through the candlelight like the faces in the walls at Ynefel, sharp and mocking but a fixture of home. “And you, Commander?” Do I frighten you?
Idrys only watched at him with his dark hooded eyes that glittered blackly in the candlelight.
****
Idrys was not the sort that could be avoided if he took to following a man, although Tristen would just as soon walk alongside him and answer any questions he might have. But it was Idrys’ nature to come at a problem from angles, as much as it was Tristen’s to face it head on. Not that facing his current problem had brought him anything but a voice he couldn’t quite hear, calling a name that wasn’t quite his.
“You look much to the north these days, Your Grace.”
Tristen tipped his head, but did not turn from his watch. Late spring in Guelemara was a bright and gusty place and Tristen had chosen this spot in particular because one might assume him to be observing the wind-tossed apple blossoms in the orchard – or, if they knew him better, the horses in the field beyond.
Or, if it was Idrys, Amefel and Elwynor and lands that lay beyond.
“Am not duke to Amefel any longer,” he said mildly. “That is Crissand’s place.”
“And what place do you seek for yourself?”
Reluctantly Tristen pulled his eyes from the flat blue sheet of northern sky and turned to face the Lord Commander. It seemed Idrys was done dancing. “I do not seek what you seem to imply, my—“
His back slammed against the courtyard wall before he could finish, Idrys’ black eyes too close, breath warm on his face, and Tristen’s guards chatting with a maid at the other end of the yard.
“I ask what you seek, witling king, not what you do not. All men desire.”
“I am not a man,” Tristen gasped.
“And if you tell me you do not desire I will call you a liar.” Idrys was all against him and there was a knife, still sheathed but if Idrys drew it the laws of men and honour said they would have to fight. Cefwyn would not want that – Tristen did not want it, and so shut his eyes tight and tipped his head back and gave Idrys his throat.
A mouth there at once; lips and teeth nipping at his skin and Idrys’ hand on his hip, rough, and Idrys all in between his legs.
“Ah!” Tristen said to the sky, and Idrys bit the sound away and lifted him against the wall, rough and scraping. The knife had gone and Tristen’s head swam with things unfolding – hot sensuous things he wanted to do that set his blood aflame and made him clutch at Idrys’ shoulders and murmur ‘Yes,’ to his ear.
“Fool,” said Idrys. “King’s men as we both are, not everything is about Cefwyn.”
It startled a laugh from Tristen and he bowed his head until it was resting upon Idrys’ shoulder, until the woodsmoke and leather scent of him made up all the world. “I shall tell you what I desire if you tell me what you fear.” Idrys trembled a little, and let down Tristen’s legs – he went slowly, dragging every bit of himself against the lean dark form and feeling the tremors grow. “I desire,” he said low into Idrys’ ear, “health and happiness for Cefwyn and Ninévrisë, for Uwen and Efanor and Emuin and Crissand and all my friends. I desire the freedom to ride over that hill tomorrow and see what lies beyond. And I desire this, this thing you have made me remember, that makes my pulse race and my palms sweat. I should like you to come back to my rooms with me, and I will give you wine and take you to bed and let you do what you please.”
Idrys’ hands had gone gentle, surprisingly so, and ran down Tristen’s sides. “I fear you, Lord Sihhë. I fear all you could do and all that could be done to you with your mooncalf sense and your foolish trusting and your incaution. I fear when you gaze upon the world and I do not know what it is you see.”
Tristen smiled, understanding. Had he not, after all, feared Mauryl at times, even as he had loved the old man? He took Idrys by the hand and pulled him from the courtyard, away from the orchard and the field and his startled guards – away from the wind sweeping down from the north with its endless unanswerable question. Today was for desire; whatever the wind sought would wait.
****
A helmet landed on the table, and nearly upset the candle holding down one corner of the map. --Well?
-- Do be careful. This is my best map of the midlands.
-- I don’t care, you can send your familiar to make another. What of the King, boy, the King?
Ashyn tapped the table thoughtfully, the impertinence and Saronyn’s narrow-eyed impatience sliding past him like a shadow past a well-warded window. -- He does not answer me.
-- Of all the useless... we march, then, with or without Barrakêth. There was a hum of agreement from the others, though Harusyn, Ashyn noted, remained silent.
Their eyes met over the table, and Harusyn’s were flat and empty; Ashyn dropped his gaze to the map, where one finger traced over the lands of men, and then he closed his eyes, reached south one last time, questing across the winds for that single incandescent star amidst all the guttering candles.
-- Father?
****
In Guelemara, in the second year of Cefwyn Marhanen’s reign, a wind swept through the streets, up over the walls to rattle a question at a window.
No one answered it; the men inside were asleep, tangled skin to skin and dreamless.