Chapter 172

He went north for Ewan at the end of August, when the hay was in and he could get up onto a horse without anyone holding its head.

Issen said no. She said it in the stable yard at dawn, and then in elven, at greater length, and then she put two fingers on the place under his ribs and pressed, and watched his face, and said it a third time in a voice that sent the grooms to the far end of the yard.

“It opened on the mountain,” said Caspian. “It closed in June. It has been held since. I am not asking you whether it will hold. I know it may not.” He took his hand off the saddle. “I am telling you where I will be, and why, so that you can be angry with me accurately.”

“I am always angry with you accurately,” said Issen. But she put a roll of linen and a pot of something green in his saddlebag herself, and told him what to do with them in words of one syllable.

I stood at the kitchen door. I did not go nearer.

It was not mine. I had said so on a landing at m