Rufus Hale

An old man sitting on a flat stone upstream of Beckwith with his boots off and his feet in the beck. He gets one chapter and changes Corin Ashby.

He has not left

RUF: Been up to Solmere twice. Once for a wedding and once for a funeral, and neither of them mine, and I've not been back since the second one. Forty-one years ago now. COR: You've not left this village in forty-one years? RUF: I've left it. I've walked the whole of these hills, every path in them, and there's a fair few. I've just not needed to be anywhere else while doing it.

He has never been to Castelgard, and says so "the way a person states that they have never been to the far side of the moon".

What he sees

RUF: You walk like a man being chased. [...] Forty minutes upstream and never once looked at the water. That's not walking, lad, that's fleeing at a reasonable pace.

What he says about it

Corin tells him the thing he has been carrying since the mill: that his family holds title to more land than the village sits on, and he has never once thought about who carries the sacks.

RUF: That's a hard thing to notice. COR: It's a late thing to notice. RUF: Aye. Most people don't manage it at all. What is it you're going to do about it? COR: I don't know. RUF: That's honest.

Then the reframe:

RUF: You've noticed. That's the good version of this. There's a great many lords' sons who go their whole lives never noticing, and they're not wicked men, most of them, they're simply men who were never once made to carry anything. You've carried sacks for three days and you've noticed. That's not late. That's about as early as it ever happens.

RUF: I've had forty-one years by this water and I've got fairly good at telling the difference between a man who's ashamed and a man who's simply been shown something.

And on why it does not bother him to be somebody else's revelation:

RUF: It's not generous, it's practical. You'll go back to Castelgard in a year or two and you'll hold your border, and somewhere in the middle of it you'll remember an old man with his feet in a stream and a miller who wouldn't ask for help, and you'll make some small decision differently because of it.

I'll never know which decision. Doesn't matter. It'll still have happened.

Corin, standing after two hours he had not noticed passing:

COR: Thank you. RUF: For what? COR: I'm not entirely sure yet. RUF: That's usually how it goes.

The caves

He is the one who sends them.

RUF: there's caves up past the high pasture. Follow the beck to where it comes out of the rock and then keep going, there's a path, it's not hard if you're not stupid about it.

RUF: Three of them worth the walk. Two are just holes. The third one goes back a fair way and there's a chamber at the end that'll take the wind out of you. COR: Is it safe? RUF: It's a cave. It's as safe as you are sensible.

And a last instruction:

RUF: Take the small one with the loud voice. He'll hate it and he'll not shut up about it for a year, which is the best possible outcome for everyone.

Ch. 326 is "Two Holes". Ch. 327 is "The Chamber".