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.—I respect you, he said to one he was sure had his ears well stopped and his heart warded.I respect your working, sir, nor am such a fool as to ignore it.When I transgress, you will not tell me; but should I transgress against you, sir, I beg you continue to call me a fool.I fear the silence more than the shadows.I will to do good, sir.But we are, are we not, something different one from the other? If I am the wind, you are the fire, and may burn, but mine is the stronger force.I am Sihhë.Is that the lesson I am finally to learn, that I am not a Man and that I should not practice wizardry?If that’s so, sir, it would seem I need you.I need you very much.The captain of the Guelens has very likely fled, and mischief will come of it, and wizardry might prevent him.But do you say I should not wield it? That magic is my skill, and I should avoid wizardry?He listened until the ink dried on the quill tip, and he heard no answer, none, at least, in words.But there was a sense of presence grown more peaceful, a touch softer than the feather and more subtle than a word.The dragons that loomed over this place threatened that peace: creatures of fire, reared in angry postures.Yet was the carving oak, or horse?Was the image bronze, or all that a dragon might be?The nearest of them loomed, a spell in its own right, and warred against the peace.It leered across his shoulder, flanked him, stared outward with him, with its bronze and dreadful countenance, an Aswydd beast, witness of all that had happened here … and trying, so it seemed, to be his ally.Do I command the dragons? he asked that silent, wizardly witness, with none but an afterthought to the king’s men who bore that name, or to the arms of the Marhanen, the golden dragon on the red field, which was the emblem of the kingdom as well.His immediate question was to what extent he could reach back into Aswydd power, and rely on it; but in the way of such questions, it answered itself differently.The echo of understanding the question raised in him was that the Aswydd dragons extended their reach into Guelessar, and that they backed the Marhanen throne, not Sihhë emblems … never the Sihhë emblems.The dragons were solely the emblems of Men and kings and lords of Men.This room he had never felt he owned.This room he had warded by his presence, as much as lived in it.It was useful to everyone’s safety that he lived here and kept the wards.Yet it came to him, yes, he did command the dragons, now, and only so long as these creatures of fire and passion failed to rouse his anger, or his passion, or his fear.That long, and only so long, did he command them, and only that long did he command those who were their masters.The dragons and those who commanded them must not break that condition.They must never break it.With wind and fire alike they could deal, but never break that condition.He was writing a message to the Lord Commander, with the local garrison in disarray; he was facing a meeting of the lords of Amefel, to sit and do justice, and the dragons loomed above, reminding him their anger was fire, and his will was wind.He felt that silent and wizardly witness to his musings, sealed as he was, and deliberately withdrawn from the soundless sound in the silence that lapped about this room of his refuge.This, too, Emuin witnessed.The quill when he dipped it and wrote scratched like claws on stone, as if the dragons stirred on their perches.Shadows, the tame ones that had a right here, lurked and crept under tables and in the folds of green drapery, within cabinets and in corners as he shaped his report.He owned magic as his birthright.Having it, he knew he must be careful of it.He never loosed the shadows that belonged here, never, in fact, allowed the lights to be extinguished: candles always burned here, and he never shut the drapes by day.The ones who had died in this room were not wholly his men; but they were faithful to Amefel, and he willingly lived under their witness, conscious of their leanings, and sure now, as in Auld Syes’ salutation to him and Crissand, that he held what would not forever be his.Emuin heard that, too, and tried very quietly to slip away.But Emuin could not elude him now: often as Emuin might have watched, unseen, mistrustful of him before this, he was not unseen now, and might never be again.—Know that, Tristen said, wounded, and know I have heard at least one and two of your lessons, master Emuin.And because I have heard, I’m about to hear the demands of stonemasons and of the earls.I wish the Guelens and the house of Meiden will not go at each other’s throats.Why, why, master Emuin, do wicked purposes seem to slide by so easily, and these men escape me to do mischief and Mauryl’s letters burn, and reasons for all this wickedness slip through my fingers? Is this the way of things in the world? Or is there cause aside from me and you?Is that the reason of your mistrust?And is that mistrust of me the reason you came here, after all?CHAPTER 7There was no miraculous word of the fugitives by the hour the court convened … and that was not to Tristen’s surprise or Uwen’s [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]