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As we should now.”
    â€œWe should,” he agreed shamefacedly. He saw his guards looking warily about for curiosities, for chills and shadows and other such events of his company, but without a word he climbed up on Petelly and eased him past the other horse’s nose. Uwen turned next. The king’s men turned about in the woods and followed.
    The wind, an entirely natural wind, blew dust up and sent leaves across the path as they left the hilltop. Petelly danced and skipped through the insubstantial obstacle. The men rode after him in haste, and for a moment they went pell-mell down the chancy turn, over ground buried in leaves. Tristen knew the footing, and so did they all. There were no roots, stones, or holes; but he knew that there was no threat above to give any reason for haste, either, so he pulled Petelly down to a reasonable pace past the spring. They all came safely to the lower road again, sheltered from chill breezes and wayward memories by the looming, forested hills on either hand.
    â€œNo shadows,” Uwen said, having overtaken him.
    â€œNo shadows,” he assured Uwen. “Not a one. I was listening to the wind up there. Looking at the hills.” For some reason, perhaps because it was a matter for wizards and not for soldiers, he was reticent about confessing his looking out toward Amefel. “There was a fungus I had never seen.”
    â€œA fungus, ye say.”
    â€œOn a dead trunk.”
    â€œOh, them things.” Uwen seemed both relieved and amused, and it was as he expected. Uwen ventured not a ghost of a guess what the growths were named, or what their virtue was. “Ye don’t eat ’em, least I for certain wouldn’t. Mushrooms is done for the year.”
    â€œTo come back in spring?” So many things were promised to return in the spring. And some things would Unfold to him the moment he asked a question, but some things would not. “Or in the fall?”
    â€œA lot in spring, or in rainy spells. I don’t rightly know about that up there, that kind. But cooks dry the wholesome ones in the kitchen for the off-season, so ye never fear, m’lord: there’ll be mushroom soup aplenty all winter. I heard Cook say yesterday there’s a special attention to mushroom soup for harvesttide on account of Your Grace.”
    Harvesttide was only two days off. He did indeed like mushroom soup, and he would be as happy as most in the approaching celebration if he were happy in other points, and if he knew he were welcome among the other lords, but neither was the case.
    Still, it was too fine a day for melancholy on that account. Uwen rode beside him, knee to knee on Liss, a mare Uwen greatly coveted, and they were comfortable a while in silence. It was still a wooded road after they had taken the Cressitbrook way, winding deep among the base of hills where only the king’s woodsmen cut wood, and where only the king and the king’s friends hunted. It needed no quick pace at all, as Uwen had said, for them to reach Guelemara before dark. The road they took now showed no track of horses or men since the rains, and therefore held less likelihood of meeting anyone. The men rode more easily, far from any critical eye, talking of whatever took their fancy, and anticipating the harvesttide festival, for which the town had been preparing for days, building a bonfire of truly prodigious proportions.
    Friendly voices, friendly company surrounded him, past the spring and down along the little brook that flowed down from it. Tristen listened idly and watched the leaf-paved road above the twitch of Petelly’s black-tipped ears—busy ears, they were, alert to every burst of laughter and every whisper of the freshening wind out of the west.

CHAPTER 2

    T here were pearls, an abundance of pearls. Cefwyn trod on one and winced, hoping it was only one of the sleeve-pearls, not some stray and costly one from the wedding crown, which lay in