Текст книги "Fortress of Dragons "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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"What more?" he asked, unsettled. Tristen could be feckless at the most damnable times. "What news of Tristen?"

"He…" Ninévrisë"'s breath caught in her throat. She seemed to have caught a chill despite her robe, small wonder, at such news, and he moved quickly to gather her up and into his arms, in the warmth of an occupied bed.

The shivering kept up for a moment, and now he knew the truth, for Ninévrisë had taken the matter of Tarien's baby so entirely worldly-wise and matter-of-factly he had convinced himself she accepted it without a ripple.

Now in a stroke he doubted all his assumptions, about this, about all the other slights she took so calmly. She forgave him in the very embrace of her arms and the inclinations of her heart, but the existence of a child named as, gods help them, Tristen of all people… had named this child… what could she think?

What could anyone think?

And what did Tristen think, giving hisson that name? Not a damned thing, was the first conclusion that leapt up in him: Tristen could be the most feckless soul alive, did things because those were the thoughts he said Unfolded to him, thoughts that leapt into a head that otherwise could be utterly absorbed with a hawk's flight or the shape of a leaf.

Yet Tristen, the worst liar in all Ylesuin, was not dealing with a hawk or a leaf in this child… this was not something Tristen would treat casually or on a whim, and the other aspect of his flighty concentration was that absolute, terrifying honesty, in which he would leap in where no courtier would tread. He had met that appalling honesty when—gods! when he had left off his folly of love-making with the Aswydd women and gone downstairs to look a stranger in the eyes… and he had never after been able to avoid that stare, that truth, that honesty. Like a boulder in a brook, it had diverted all his life into a different path.

And now… now the result of that moment was a child, and Tristennamed him. He was deaf to wizardry, but like a deaf man, he could feel the drumbeat in the ground under him: a moment had come back to haunt him and change his life.

ElfwynTristen named the boy. So, indeed, Elfwyn he was, the will and word of his unacknowledged father and his father's wife notwithstanding.

And this Elfwyn, this bastard prince, was in fact heir to nothing, since his only legitimate claim, Amefel—where a maternal lineage did have legal force—had passed to Tristen's hands. But in his Aswydd and Marhanen blood he had substantial claims to everything in reach, if he one day decided to reach for it and cause a world of trouble.

With that name, the name of the last Sihhë High King, he had claims to gods knew what more.

Is this, he asked himself, the King To Come? This child? Mine? It was not what he had thought. Tristenwas what he had thought, and trusted Tristen's complete lack of ambition. But this? Did Tristen name his own heir, in this child?

"It's not all," Ninévrisë said faintly, holding to him, "it's not all. Ryssand's with Tasmôrden."

He laughed, untimely, unseemly given the circumstances. "That's no news."

"He means to kill you."

A second time he laughed, this time because he was already set to laugh and wanted to deny all fears tonight and reassure her… but on his next breath he fully heard what she had said, and knew it was part of that letter, and felt cold through and through—not believing, far from disbelieving a warning from Tristen—and in the context of this newborn child, potential heir, potential pretender to more than two thrones.

" Here?" he asked.

"Tristen overheard some sort of plot, I don't know how, but I think the way wizards know. Tasmôrden's courting Ryssand—he's persuading Ryssand, with all sorts of promises if you should die, if weshould die… that they'll make peace, for lands, all the bargain to be good no matter who makes it. Efanorwould have no way to rally an army."

"Does Tristen say that?"

She hesitated. "I think it's been there a while. It doesn't feel part of the rest, but I only heard it tonight. I think it was the disturbance there. And I wasn't sure of it before, but now I know it's there… I don't think I thought it was different, thinking you by no means trust Ryssand, or Cuthan, either. But it's different now, and I know, and I don't know how I know, except it's from the letter. But Tristen doesn't know where we are, he doesn't know we've marched—"

"He's not received my message."

"Not yet. It's not yet there. But what Tristen knows, in the letter… and what I know in my heart… I'm not sure which of us knows it, but between us, I do know, and Ryssand iscoming. He'll pretend to have a change of heart. He'll count on your welcoming him. And he'll betray you, and I don't know how I know!"

"Do you know it for the truth?" he asked. "Are you absolutely sure?"

"I'm afraid," she said. "And I don't know why, except this letter."

A paper blank except for seal and signature, and no more readable for him than before… wizard-work. Magic, Emuin insisted. Perhaps it was even bound to the truthof the situation, reporting when the world grew chancy enough and the barriers that divided them from Tristen and from their enemies grew thin.

Lightning made shadow play on the canvas walls, the outline of other tents close at hand. It felt like dawn, but the clouds were so thick and the rain so intense no light reached them. Idrys, Lord Commander, but still in his intentions his bodyguard, slept, or pretended to sleep, in the other chamber of this tent, among the maps and the armor. Waking guards sat duty there, too, out of the rain, men who had been with him even in Amefel. Close by their tent was the entire Dragon Guard, trusted men.

Could he fear for his life and hers tonight, so protected?

So too, he had claimed the mass of the Guelens and the rest of the common levy, and held a camp on its way to war. Osanan had joined them. Marisal was sending men. He had rallied more men than he had hoped.

Were there traitors already insinuated among these men?

They were bogged in a lightning-shot deluge that had followed sun and then snow. The heavens were utterly confused—and that was surely wizardry or the worst weather-luck a campaign ever had: and here they were bound for the river bridge, and as yet had seen nothing of the contingent from Murandys, when Murandys was the land through which they traveled.

Nelefreissan and Ryssand had farther to march, and it had not been certain they would come, since Ryssand's storming out of court and out of the capital, but would they now, if Ryssand meant some act against him?

There was no one else he could summon. His missives southward he had sent in a bundle, all to Tristen, to give to the lords with him, for he knew now that letters to their capitals would not find them at home, but rallied at Henas'amef, to come by the southern bridge, for the stony hills of Gerath lay between, a wedge of land that had no straight trails, and all too many blind valleys: it had swallowed armed force before now and given nothing back. Tristen could not reach him.

And was the north to betray him?

Thank the gods at least the southerly bridge, the one Tristen held, would not become the sally port for Tasmôrden to start a diversion in Amefel.

"So Ryssand will come," he mused aloud, "with nefarious intent. And dare I say his message with Cuthan passed both ways, and he passes all we do to Tasmôrden? Who knows? Tasmôrden might have such a letter as we have."

"Ryssand intends to kill you," Ninévrisë insisted, more directly, more urgently. "If he does, Tasmôrden will let the army retreat from the field, and Ryssand, and Murandys, and all of them… all under truce… theywill deal with him. Theywill sign a peace. The army will march home, owning part of Elwynor. They'll crown Efanor."

This was no idle threat, but a well-formed plot. He found himself perversely intrigued by the mechanisms of what might be his death. Did men often have such a vision of events to follow their impending demise? It was like a taste of wizard-sight.

"No dagger in the dark," he surmised. "Nothing so definite. That leaves witnesses and evidence. But men lose heart on a battlefield. Ryssand takes the field, his heavy horse fails the charge—breaks and falls back. The wing they're in collapses. The enemy sweeps around. Our army makes haste in retreat… and the rest follow. Hard for a man to stand when his neighbor's flung down his shield and bolted. Never count the good men that will die in such a maneuver."

"Tell Idrys. KillRyssand before he even arrives here!"

Ah, for his gentle bride. "Not that simple."

"It isthat simple. This man will kill you!"

"Out of a dream and a letter with nothing written on it? Gods, all of this is such a flight of ifs!"

"Don't make light of me!"

"I do hear you. I take it in utmost seriousness."

"Is Tarien's baby an if? Is Ryssand, then?"

"No."

"If we seem about to win, then what will Ryssand do? Someone may tell more than Ryssand dares have known if you take prisoners of Tasmôrden's side. He daren't have you win! He'll only grow more desperate to strike at you, a knife, or poison—witnesses won't matter then. He'll want to set Efanor on the throne, see him wed to Artisane, and then Efanor's gone. Look at all he's done! He's severed you from the southern army. He's dared bring Cuthan to court. He's affronted you and stormed out. If he comes to join you now, you'll know what he intends. Be rid of him! Gods, be rid of him!"

Idrys advised it. Now Ninévrisë advised him the same.

And yet—and yet he had no evidence to justify himself to the rest of the barons. He had no proof of Ryssand's actions, more than that damning letter to Parsynan Tristen had sent him, and that was old proof. A great deal of water had flowed under the bridge since then… most significantly that he had let Efanor court Ryssand's daughter; now if he ordered Ryssand's head on a pike, would the rest of the orthodox north still take the field with good will? Would they fight to the uttermost to support a king who had just killed the foremost of them?

One thing was suddenly very clear to him.

" You, love, can't stay in their reach."

"Elwynor is no Guelen prize! My land, mycrown—"

"My heir," he said in a low, determined voice, and with his arms about her. "My love. My very dear love, you're the foremost hostage they could hold… your welfare, above all heirs and all else. I love you. I honor your claim and risk all my kingdom to bring it to you. But this warning, if I believe it, changes everything."

"I am sovereign in Elwynor! You swore—"

"I denyyou nothing. I admit every claim. I make myself your debtor when I ask you—I plead with you, for my own peace of mind—to take ourson and ourheir out of harm's way."

"Back to Efanor, who has enough to do to defend his own interests, let alone mine!"

"Efanor has men enough and guile enough to keep you safe. I know my brother. I know my brother as he was before he took to priests, and I swear to you there's a man there. If he should take the throne, Ryssand wouldn't like it."

"I believe it all, I never doubted it, but I won't leave you."

"Nevris." He pressed her head still with his hand, hugged her tightly against him.

"I'll not go, thinking I'll never see you again!"

"I swear to you I've no intention of dying, love. I'll deal with Ryssand andTasmôrden. But I can't take you onto the field, and most especially I can't defend myself wondering whether you're safe back in my camp, or held hostage in Ryssand's."

"I'm not a fool!"

"Nor am I! And not being one I can't divide my attention—don't argue with me, not in this. You know I'm right. If you're there I'll be thinking of you, no other thing. I know you'll be suffering all the worry I'd suffer if you were there. But that's your part to suffer, mine to ask it, or I won't have my wits about me—Hear me! I'm king, and it's my damned army! Go to Efanor!"

She said nothing. She held to him. He routinely lost arguments when she said nothing. But this time he would not yield, and he waited, and waited.

"I'll go to Amefel," she said, prying herself from his arms, and with a rustle of the paper she had abused with her holding him, spread her hand on it, smoothed it.

He had not thought at first of Amefel. But it was fortified. Its people were Bryaltines. Tristen ruled it, and had the loyalty of the people.

It was a better choice. And hardly farther away. Assurnbrook was a deep and treacherous river, once it received the flow of Arreyburn on its way north to the Lenúalim—that was one reason no bridge had ever stood in its shifting sands and soft banks, and the other the fact that Murandys had had no interest in linking itself to Amefel. But Assurnford was not that far south of their camp here, and once across that, Ninévrisë would immediately be in a Bryalt land, safe even in the countryside—not risking the mood of Guelen villages, who, no, would not be pleased that the woman for whom Guelenmen went to war was going back to safety.

He did not mention that hazard, knowing how it would sting her pride: it stung his that his own people were so inclined to hate her. But he did know a better choice when she laid it before him: safe from the time she crossed the Assurn, not having to brazen it out with the banners and Idrys' authority or slip into Guelemara cloaked and by night, simply to reach the Guelesfort in safety.

"Idrys will see you there."

"Idrys won't," she said. "For one thing, he won't leave you."

"He'll do it if I order it," he said, "and if he wants Ryssand's head, which he does. More than that—he serves the Marhanen. And you carry the Marhanen heir." Then it crossed his mind that where he sent her, Tarien was, and she had to confront that situation. "Tarien's there."

"So is Tristen. And Emuin. Tarien doesn't frighten me. Nothing there frightens me."

"Then you'll go tonight. Now. We'll make as little fuss about this as we can." Her sickness had troubled her, at the Guelesfort and on the march, and she had endured her misery and forced down soldiers' fare, refusing to have anything more delicate. He had lost all his arguments until now, and he took no chances. "A soldier's tent, a packhorse, Idrys and four men and their gear. Can you do it?"

The rain rushed against the walls of the tent. The river would be up, and the crossing at Assurnford itself an ice-cold flood of snowmelt. He knew what a misery that soaking ford might be. But Idrys knew the crossing in all its treachery, and he would get them to safety.

"I've no doubt," Ninévrisë said, and Cefwyn held her tightly, wanting nothing more than to have her with him and nothing less than to see her in a town where no harm would possibly come near her.

"Before the sun's up," he said. "With no fuss, no delay. Idrys will want to come back, and I won't forbid it. I'll see you after this is over, in Ilefínian."

"In Ilefínian," she said. "Don't worry for me. Guard yourself. Do whatever you need to do. Say I've gone to the capital: there'll be less talk, and if trouble comes after us, it'll take the wrong road."

"Wise lady."

"Promise me: don't let Ryssand's men near you. Set him near any engagement: let him bear the brunt of any encounter.—And carry my banner with you."

They had planned the advance from the river through provinces that might be favorable to Ninévrisë. All those plans were cast to the winds, and her banner by all custom should not fly if she were not there: but custom be damned, he had no difficulty agreeing to it, if it saved them fighting Ninévrisë's loyal subjects and killing honest men.

"I will," he promised her. "All I do, I do in your name."

"I'll launch rumor north from Henas'amef, with Tristen."

"See you don't launch yourself," he said, for he had a sudden apprehension of her finding Elwynim forces inside Amefel, and the temptation it would be to her.

"Trust me," she said, "as I trust you to take my capital."

"I've no choice," he said. "And I swear to you that banner will fly."

They made a silent farewell then, a lovers' farewell, with the storm flickering and roaring beyond the tent walls, and the rain pouring down.

After that he waked Idrys, and Idrys listened, expressionless, to the plans they had.

"I'll be riding back," Idrys said, as he had known Idrys would say.

"There'll be no trouble tracking us," Cefwyn said in grim humor. "I trust you'll find me, crow: you never do miss trouble."

CHAPTER 5

After the deluge of rain came the west wind, from the evening of Tristen's day, blowing the clouds from the sky and warming the last piles of snow, drying the fields and banging at loose shutters. The banners atop the South Gate flew straight out, and the pigeons when they came to the window had hard work to maintain their places.

They were still as many as before: Tristen counted them as he did every day, worrying about Owl's appetite, and still they stayed safe.

And still Tarien's babe stayed safe, and slept, as Uwen assured him new babies did, and nursed and slept and slept some more. Gran Sedlyn refused to leave, having mislaid the baby once: she slept close by on the night of that day, and tended Tarien and Elfwyn both. It was passing strange to Tristen that now he must think of a new soul, a creature that had never existed before, but there he was, indisputably a baby.

As for Orien, she lay where she had died, and no one wanted to go into that fire-blackened cell. That very day, and on Emuin's advice, Tristen sent for masons to wall up the guardhouse, from the stairs on down. It was simple work, requiring no great time to accomplish it. And when it was finished, he and Emuin both had warded it, for the sake of Tarien's soul, and Elfwyn's, and to give Orien's spirit what rest it might find—but Tristen doubted she wished peace at all.

Orien had lit her own funeral pyre that night. Shut behind the cell's iron door, guarded by men in the hall above, she had still, found an escape, a way for her spirit to go walking, cut free from her bonds—so she had imagined, to seize a new home in Tarien's body, but she had failed in that attempt. She had attempted to escape the wards altogether, riding an intruder spirit's will, and to fly all the way clear; but she had become lost, left behind. The wards had thrust her ambitious soul back into the cell from which it had extended itself—and now with the new wall and the wards, Tristen hoped they had bound it there, bound it and sealed it in such a way it would never escape.

But there was still a danger from the old mews. If some power came in by that and breached the wards there, then Orien might have help to free herself—for she had made herself a Shadow, and a dangerous one, potent and quick—dangerous especially to Tarien.

Tarien had rejected her sister's influence, had defended herself with unexpected strength, and utterly cast her out, terrified at what desire she now saw—but she had weak moments. She had ambitious moments. And she remained vulnerable to Orien's desires, a woman who mothered Cefwyn's son, and on whom they had to rely.

In the meanwhile, however, the contrary weather seemed now not to resist his wishes. The roads were drying, he knew from messages that Cevulirn's men were well established, and now he took it on faith that Cefwyn would do as he said and march to the river.

So he had done. But Tristen lingered here, waiting and waiting for a message from Cefwyn.

For the pride of the northern barons, Cefwyn had said, they must go first across the river.

But for the friendship that was between the two of them, Tristen believed a letter would come, and that from that letter he would learn things he needed to know.

So for two days more he found things to occupy him, the questions of supply, of weather damage, of disputes over scarce resources; and questions, too, of master Emuin, who would not march with the army. Emuin continued his scrutiny of the heavens and his consultation of dice. From time to time he made inquiries of master Haman on the behavior of horses and stable mice—and made them again, while Paisi had caught a mouse in the lower hall, and kept it in a cage: about that matter, Tristen had no understanding, but the mouse ate well, and took water from a silver dish.

The pond thawed, and the fish waked from their winter sleep. Amid all his more serious concerns, Tristen took them bread crumbs, and saw with delight that the small birds had come back to the barren trees in the garden.

Yet all of this filled a time of waiting—waiting for word from Cefwyn, worrying for what he knew of Ryssand's purposes, wondering what use Cefwyn might have made of what he could send to

Ninévrisë… or whether Ninévrisë' might have heard his messages at all; wondering whether Anwyll had reached the capital yet, and whether he was safe, and whether he had reached Idrys without incident. Of all messengers he could send, surelyno one would assail a captain of the Dragons at the head of his company—and surely he would have a message soon, telling him he was free to cross the river.

But the third afternoon the gate bell rang, startling the pigeons into flight, a sudden wall of gray wings obscuring the sky, beating aloft; and at that iron sound of the bell his heart rose up, the same, and he quickly shut the window and latched it, caught up his sword and his cloak before his servants closed about him to put both on him, and was out the door of his apartment, papers and signatures and petitions of town nobles forgotten.

He was sure it was the messenger he awaited. He knew that Emuin was in his tower, that Tarien was in her room asleep: all these persons he was always aware of.

But he was suddenly astonished to understand that Ninévrisëwanted him, and was thinking of him at this very moment.

He stopped on the stairs in midstride, alarmed, casting about him to know what mischance had let him and Ninévrisë touch, so far apart, and whether dangerous wizardry had hurled them together: she felt so unaccustomedly strong, and distressed, and glad, and close…

She was at his own town gate.

He hurried down the stairs with his concomitant racket of guards and weapons overtaking him from behind—Uwen was elsewhere, about his duties, but Gweyl and the others were with him; and letting them follow as best they could he half ran down the lower hall to the west doors and out to the stable yard.

There he spied a stableboy with a sorrel horse at lead.

"Is he fit?" he asked the boy, who stammered yes, and without any regard of ownership or the boy's destination, he took the lead and with both hands vaulted onto the sorrel's bare back. "It's no great concern," he said to Gweyl and the guards, who had caught up. "Wait here!"

Those were certainly not their standing orders from Uwen; but Ninévrisë was already on her way uphill, and Tristen was in no mood to wait for saddles and four more horses. He turned the horse to the gate and rode out on the instant onto the street and down, bareheaded, bannerless, but bound for answers and an appearance he had never looked to see come to him.

At the midtown crossing he saw the weary visitors coming uphill, a rider in a muddy blue cloak—Ninévrisë—in the lead, with, of all men, Idrys, and ten guardsmen in plain armor, mud-spattered to a brown, dusty sameness with their horses.

Had Cefwyncome south to join him? he asked himself, with a dizzying flood of hopes and fears—together they could do anything, overcome the north, accomplish all his hopes—but if Cefwyn came south it meant calamity with the northern provinces.

And it was only Ninévrisë, only Idrys, which frightened him beyond words.

He rode up to Ninévrisë's heartfelt and weary gladness to see him, and the gray space opened, pouring out everything to him: her pain, her distress, his letter, his warning; and Cefwyn days advanced on the road to Elwynor… none of these things with words, and none in order, and all with her exhaustion and fear. He was as dazed at this Unfolding of dangers as if the sky had opened on him.

"Tristen," she said aloud, reaching out her hand. "Oh, Tristen!"

"Is Cefwyn safe?"

"To our knowledge," Idrys said in his low, calm voice. "He bade me bring Her Grace to Henas'amef for safety, but the roads so delayed us I looked to find you on the road north by now."

"I waited for his message, sir."

"None reached you?"

"No," he said, dismayed.

"One should have. I'll be off," Idrys said, "this hour, with the loan of horses."

"With the gift of anything you need," Tristen said fervently. "But what message should have come? And did Cefwyn not get mine, with Anwyll?"

"None from Anwyll," Idrys said, and by now they were riding side by side, bound uphill, with the curious stares of townfolk all around them. "But His Majesty will be at the river by now, and Anwyll may have to go there."

"Sir, Tasmôrden's plotting with Ryssand!"

"That, he knows."

"The letter told me," Ninévrisë said. "Your letter, the magical one. Only I fear—I fear it didn't tell me everything, and there might have been news there for days that I didn't hear until the news about the baby."

He had never been sure it would tell her anything at all. He was vastly relieved to know that not all his efforts had gone astray, and he saw in what had gone amiss no mere chance, but a hostile wizardry.

And whose wizardry it was, since Elfwyn's birth, he now was sure.

"When we reach the Zeide," he said, "I'll tell you all of it. And I pray you wait, sir, and tell me everything that was in Cefwyn's letter. I'll order horses and supplies, all you need. But I need your advice, what I should do."

Riders were coming toward them at a fair speed, Uwen Lewen's-son, with Gweyl and the rest, and Lusin, all of them astonished to see who had arrived.

But they all knew how to take things in stride, and meeting them, simply reined about calmly and rode with them, without a question, while the townsfolk on the street that stood and watched did so in a certain solemnity, not sure what it all meant, perhaps, but knowing that visitors had come. Enough of them surely recognized Ninévrisë, and even more surely, the Lord Commander; and their arrival in such grim, unlordly guise must start rumors running the streets… rumors of danger to the kingdom, perhaps even of defeat in the north and disaster to Cefwyn… Tristen had feared the same in his own heart, had no doubt the townsfolk would fear the same—even that Uwen and his guard might guess Ninévrisë's appearance with Idrys portended calamity.

So at the crest of the hill, in the open square, Tristen turned the borrowed horse about to face the straggling curious in the street and gave them the things he could tell them.

"King Cefwyn's army has moved against Earl Tasmôrden! He's requested us to safeguard the Lady Regent, and so we will! Her Grace of Elwynor, our guest and ally, with the Lord Commander, her escort—the Lord Commander will rejoin the king, in Elwynor!"

A cheer went up at that report, relief on all the faces.

"Wise," Idrys said in his low, travel-worn voice, "and a wonder to the people of Henas'amef to be so trusted by His Majesty, to be sure."

That ironic observation might be the underlying truth, but the people waved in unfeigned jubilation, and with the bells ringing and the echoing commotion outside, Tristen brought his small party inside the gates.

"The Lord Commander and his men are riding back immediately," he said to Uwen, and to Lusin, sliding down from the sorrel's bare back. A boy ran up to reclaim the horse, and now Tristen saw Tassand had hurried out into the nippish air and down onto the west door steps, ill dressed for the chill wind: "Her Grace is our guest, Tassand."

Those three he needed tell, and everything else happened—boys running for ponies to ride down after remounts, master Haman shouting, and Tassand hurrying up the steps as fast as his agile legs would carry him. Lusin, too, dispatched messengers with the necessary instructions for others of the staff, all of this in motion before they had reached the steps. Tristen promised supplies, clean clothes, hot baths if the men would wait that long.

"We have no time," was Idrys' protest, but Tristen swept Ninévrisë and the Lord Commander at once up the steps and inside. Down the hall only a short distance he brought them into the old great hall, far more intimate than the newer one the other side of the stairs, and nearer the kitchens. Servants whisked chairs into position, moved a small table, and had a pitcher of wine and a steaming teapot and service ready almost before they could settle in the chairs—and immediately after that a cold meat pie, cold bread, cheese, and sausage. The servants were hard-breathing, his guests a little dazed by the instant flood of amenities, but Cook had learned since Cevulirn had gone to the river that Tristen's messengers and his friends arrived ravenous and left with bags and wallets stuffed with food, and every such arrival met this hospitality unasked and unadvised.

Hot herbal tea and honey met instantaneous approval.

"Her Grace is carrying the heir to the kingdom," Idrys said, first of all, to Tristen's dismay. "And has risked a great deal in coming this far."

"I'm very well," Ninévrisë said shortly, cherishing a warm cup in hands pale-edged beneath the spatters of mud.

Another prince, leapt immediately into Tristen's essential understanding, though why he should think sonscarcely skimmed his wits. He had not heard the child as he heard Tarien's, but he had no disposition to doubt it.

"This message," she said. "This message of yours, and Cefwyn's…"

"Cenas carried it," Idrys said, "with the king's writ and seal. And had ample time to be here."

"He's not come," Tristen reiterated.

Uwen had joined them cautiously: he was bidden listen to all councils. "Gedd," Uwen said now in a quiet voice, and drew a darting glance from Ninévrisë and Idrys.

"Sergeant Gedd carried Cefwyn's last message," Tristen said, well understanding, "and was days late. He had to let go his horses and hide and move by night: he was followed out of Guelemara."

"Two of my men never came back from that ride," Idrys said. "Now Cenas. And he left without fuss."