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“The physician is on his way,” Idrys said.
“He fell on the stairs,” Tristen said, still out of breath. “He heard the alarm—”
“Where in hell were the guards?” Idrys demanded, pressing a linen wad against the wound, and the guards again attempted to explain—but Efanor came through the doors, cursing the guards and demanding to know what was happening.
“The kitchen’s afire,” Idrys said shortly.
“—Happening to my brother, sir!”
“Stupidity!” Idrys said. “Damn it, where is the man? A
If you would help His Majesty, Your Highness, see if you can stir the surgeon out of hiding. He only lately attended master Emuin, of another fall on the stairs—he’s probably in his residence. He wasn’t at the fire.”
Efanor, without another word, turned and left.
“We’ll have the damned priest in here next,” Idrys said. He had a pad of linen pressed to Cefwyn’s wound. Blood soaked the sheets. The endmost stitches had burst. It was not all red blood that came out. “Damn it! Lord Tristen! Go out into the hall, set a guard over Emuin, Prince Efanor, and the lady Regent—gods know, it may rain frogs next.”
“Yes, sir,” Tristen said, and went out and caught one and another servant of his own and had them find out what was happening downstairs.
He sent one of Cefwyn’s distraught guards upstairs to order the guards watching over the lady to be alert and to make no such mistakes—he thought that the guard might be especially passionate in urging the point.
He had one of his guards to fill out the number at Cefwyn’s door and sent another to put extra guards with Efanor, who was searching, he hoped, for the physician.
Rain frogs. Idrys meant ills of every improbable sort. It was too much calamity. He tried to reach Emuin. He called to him, in that gray place, from where he stood; but Emuin was waging his own struggle—and when he would have joined it, Uwen came up to him in mid-hall. “His Majesty’s come awake,” Uwen said. “But he’s not well, m’lord, he’s not real well. The captain said you might ought to come quick.”
He all but ran to Cefwyn’s apartment, and Idrys was still at Cefwyn’s bedside. Cefwyn was absolutely white, but his eyes were open. The physician had arrived, the same that had stitched up Emuin.
“Tristen.” Cefwyn reached out his hand and Tristen took it, wishing the pain to stop and for the wound to be well, but clearly it did no good.
Cefwyn’s mouth made a thin line and sweat broke out on Cefwyn’s white face.
“I can’t do what Mauryl did,” he said in a low voice, only for Cefwyn.
“I wish I could. Mauryl could make the pain go away. And I’ve tried.”
“Emuin says you’re not a wizard,” Cefwyn said. His grip was painfully hard. “I don’t call on you to be. Is the fire out?” “Kitchen grease, Your Majesty,” Idrys said.
‘Td at least expect something more exciting,” Cefwyn said. Cefwyn all but fainted, caught a breath and several more, before he asked:
“Emuin. Where is Emuin?”
“Stairs have lately turned hostile,” Idrys said. “Master Emuin fell, m’lord King. He will mend, but he’s in no better case than you.”
Cefwyn seemed to have fallen asleep, then, but he was so pale, so waxen-looking.
“It’s as well His Majesty should sleep,” the physician said. “Close the curtains. All of you. Out. Away, m’lords.” He set out a jar on the bedside, full of something noxious and something white and moving.
“You,” Idrys said, “take that from this room, sir.”
“The wound is suppurating, Lord Commander. The flesh is corrupt.
The maggots will keep it clean.”
“There will be no damned maggots, sir. Out!”
“The flesh is corrupt. I tell you that you are trifling with his life!”
“Get him out of here!” Idrys said. “Get master Haman.”
“I shall go to the prince.”
“Go to the devil!” Idrys said. “I’ll not have your hands on him! He’d have been well by now if you’d the talent of your damned maggots.
Out!”
Tristen drew a long breath as the man gathered his bottles and left.
“His Majesty don’t like the Lord Physician, m’lord Commander,”
Uwen ventured, head ducked. “He wouldn’t let ’im near Lord Tristen again, he swore not.”
“With good cause,” Idrys said, and adjusted pillows under Cefwyn’s knee. “Go! Out! The lot of you! A
They had gotten the fire in the kitchen out, so Uwen said, by flinging sand on it, which had been Cook’s notion. Cook’s hair had caught fire and three of the boys were badly burned: there was sand all over, brought in buckets from the smithy, and every pot and wall was blackened with soot. The fire had broken out, the report was, while the night-cook was asleep.
“Wasn’t nothing going on,” Uwen said, “except the morning bread risin’, and then by what they say, the grease-pot was overset and it run down into the coals. After that, it was merry hell, m’lord. They don’t know if it was some dog got in, that knocked it over, or what, but Cook’s just damn lucky. It’s sausages from the courtyard, campfires and kettles for us tomorrow. It’s a rare mess.”
Tristen paced the floor, with nothing better to do—there was nothing he could do. Emuin was holding out on his own and cursed at him for a distraction, saying there were untoward influences. The ether is upset, Emuin insisted, which he did not understand, but he remembered the pigeon and the latch rattling, and with the dark outside the windowpanes, he paced and he looked for the intervention of the enemy in all that was going on—he feared to attract Hasufin’s notice, but feared Hasufin was laughing at all of them this moment. If a window-latch could rattle, he said to himself, a pot might rock and go over.
He had not prevented calamity, he with his little attempt at magic. He felt his failure keenly, and wondered whether he was not in fact responsible for the calamity. And from time to time he went across the hall and asked the guards how Cefwyn fared, but there was no news, except that master Haman had come and looked and said he could bring up a poultice they used on the horses, and he could stitch it up, but that was all that lay in his competency.
According to the guards and the gossip in the hall, Idrys had then said,
“Do the horses generally live?” and Haman had said, “Yes, sir,” and Idrys had had Haman bring what he had.
It did not please Prince Efanor, who sent the physician back with two of his guard and ordered Idrys to accept his treatment. Idrys had told the guards and the physician they were in danger of their lives if they meddled further.
So they had gone back to Prince Efanor to report that.
A long time went by, in Haman’s comings and goings, in the drift of smoke from the downstairs—many rooms had their windowpanes ajar, letting it flow out, but the smell of smoke clung to everything, and the servants were bundling fine clothes into linen wrappers and sealing the doors of chests and such with wadding. Emuin seemed better, at least so his servants reported, and had called for tea, but had headache and did not want to be moved, cursing his servants and telling the good Teranthine brothers that he wanted them to go light candles in the sanctuary.
What good would that do? Tristen wondered when he heard it, and wondered whether Emuin was in his right mind, or hoping for this salvation of his. He went down the hall to see Emuin, and Emuin was indeed better in color, but seemed to have lost substance, if that were possible.