Mistrinaut Castle stands across the Blue River at a remote crossing, a place where the promise of refuge and the threat of pursuit meet. Tiuri first approaches it as a weary traveler seeking shelter, then discovers that the Grey Knights have made it the scene of his arrest. When he returns after completing his mission, the same castle receives him as a friend: Ardanwen has been kept there for him, and Lavinia and her family welcome him back. Its changing significance rests not on any alteration to its walls, but on the people within them and the choices they make.

Setting and Reputation

The castle lies across the Blue River, opposite the point where a road joins the main route. A farmer tells Tiuri that the bridge is always lowered and that anyone may enter, receive a bed, and eat as much as they wish. The stronghold’s lord, the farmer explains, came from another country, defeated the former lord, and drove away the evil spirits that had ruled there; the king himself thanked him. By the time Tiuri hears this account, Mistrinaut is said to have become a hospitable place.

The landscape offers a less reassuring first impression. Tiuri reaches the river in rain, under a darkening sky. The water, gray rather than blue in the weather, runs narrower and faster here than near the City of Dagonaut. On the far bank, the castle rises behind a lowered bridge, its gate set between two thick towers. Though the bridge is down, the massive, dark building, with its stern walls and forbidding towers, does not look welcoming to Tiuri. He knows little of this isolated part of the realm, which lies beyond a great forest and has seldom figured in its stories or history. Still, with no shelter nearby and a light appearing in a window, he crosses the bridge and knocks.

A Threshold That Becomes a Trap

The gate opens at once. Inside, one of the guards takes Tiuri to a small, round chamber in a tower beside the entrance. A second guard is absorbed in a chess game; after moving a piece, he announces that the castle is in danger, then fetches a large book, quill, and ink to register the guest. Tiuri gives the invented name Tarmin and claims the identity of a brother from the Abbey of Brown. These ordinary routines of welcome and record-keeping mark the castle as both a refuge for travelers and a controlled, watchful stronghold.

In the morning, Tiuri checks the letter against his chest, his habitual first gesture on waking, washes at a courtyard pump, and goes to the dining hall. He catches a white chicken that has run inside, returning it to a castle resident. The scene is domestic and unhurried, but his intention is to leave promptly. When the lord appears, he says he will have the gate opened and the bridge lowered. He speaks with an unfamiliar accent and asks where Tiuri comes from and where he is going. The welcome tightens into questioning.

The danger becomes unmistakable when the lord takes Tiuri across the courtyard. In a second courtyard, two servants are grooming a black horse while residents admire it. Tiuri recognizes Ardanwen, the horse of the Black Knight with the White Shield. The Grey Knights then identify Tiuri as the person they are seeking and claim him as their prisoner. He protests that he does not know them and has done nothing to warrant arrest, but the lord gives no answer. The knights seize Tiuri and take him upstairs; the silent escort ends at a small room where they shut him in.

The chamber is comfortable in its furnishings but remains a prison: an octagonal room with an open window high above an abandoned courtyard, heavy furniture, cushioned chairs, rugs, wall hangings, and a decorated copper lamp. Its polished domesticity cannot soften the fact that escape seems impossible. Mistrinaut’s hospitality has failed Tiuri at the very point where its lowered bridge appeared to promise safety.

Lavinia and the Lord’s Intervention

A hidden opening behind a moving tapestry gives the captive a way through the castle’s apparent solidity. Tiuri sees the tapestry shift, then discovers a dark passage in the wall and a young woman standing in it. He recognizes her as one of the women who had dined with the lord the previous evening. She identifies herself as Lavinia, the lord’s daughter, and explains that although she is not supposed to know what is happening, she overheard enough to understand that the Grey Knights intend to harm Tiuri. She warns him that they will soon come for him and brings him a bundle containing a mail shirt.

The lord also visits Tiuri and brings him protective equipment: another mail shirt, a dagger, and a sword, telling him to arm himself. The gesture is striking because it follows the Grey Knights’ arrest and contradicts the lord’s earlier silence. Tiuri notices that the lord has given him what Lavinia had brought as well. The evidence of the castle’s divided loyalties is therefore not abstract: it appears in the hidden passage, the concealed aid, and the weapons placed at the prisoner’s feet. The stronghold that seemed to close around Tiuri contains people willing to help him from within.

Return, Welcome, and Reunion

After Tiuri has completed his journey, he travels back along the Blue River on foot. The return takes three days, and autumn has arrived. He reaches Mistrinaut after dark in rain, wearing his old cloak again for protection. This time he asks first for Ardanwen. A guard confirms that the horse is there: the Grey Knights had left him in the castle with instructions that he be cared for until Tiuri returned. The horse has been exercised in a field, but no one has been allowed to ride him.

The great hall presents a deliberate contrast with Tiuri’s earlier confinement. Though supper time has passed, many people are gathered there. The lord speaks with weapon attendants, his wife sits by the hearth embroidering, and Lavinia sorts colored yarn at her feet. The guard announces a guest they know, and the lord comes forward to welcome Tiuri. He insists on proper hospitality before questions: when Tiuri says he has not eaten, the lord orders a good meal, and Tiuri tells the story of his mission over the food. The place that once held him under suspicion now gives him a table, an audience, and news of those he encountered.

The lord tells Tiuri that the Grey Knights’ company has disbanded and that Knight Ewijn has returned to his own country. Tiuri cannot remain long, since he must reach King Dagonaut quickly, but the lord and Lavinia accompany him as far as the forest edge. They stop at a small inn to rest and eat before parting, and the lord asks Tiuri to promise that he will visit again. Mistrinaut is thus not only a place of arrest and release from immediate danger; it becomes a point of continued connection, with a welcome explicitly left open for the future.

That welcome matters again when Piak, determined to catch up with Tiuri, climbs back toward Menaures and then hurries down the mountain after deciding that he wants to be with his friend despite missing the mountains. Remembering Tiuri’s account of Mistrinaut, Piak goes there to ask for news. The lord, his wife, and Lavinia receive him; they lend him a horse and arrange for a weapon attendant to accompany him part of the way so the horse can be brought back. The castle extends its hospitality beyond Tiuri himself, helping his friend continue the journey to find him.

Narrative Significance

Mistrinaut’s place in the story is shaped by a reversal in how welcome and danger coexist. Its reputation is generous, its bridge stands open, and its household can provide food, shelter, and care for a traveler’s horse; yet the same walls contain Tiuri’s captors and a prison room high above an empty courtyard. The castle does not resolve that contradiction by becoming uniformly safe. Instead, Lavinia’s warning, the lord’s belated assistance, and the family’s later hospitality reveal the human choices concealed inside an imposing stronghold.

Its repeated appearances also mark changes in Tiuri’s circumstances. He first enters under an assumed identity, guarding the secret mission and looking for a night’s shelter. He leaves the first visit as a prisoner of the Grey Knights, with Ardanwen already inside the castle. On his return, he arrives openly, eats in the great hall, reunites with his horse, and is accompanied toward the forest by people who have become allies. Piak’s later visit confirms that Mistrinaut’s welcome has become part of the journey’s network of trust. The castle’s lasting significance lies in this shift: a threshold that once exposed Tiuri to capture becomes a dependable refuge for reunion and onward passage.