Текст книги "Fortress of Dragons "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Being not born, himself, and never a child, and never intimate with a woman, he had only uncertain questions where ordinary men had sure knowledge. He felt helpless in his ignorance, and so many things had converged in the last few days… magical things, dreadful things, hopeful things, and now, it turned out, Tarien's child, which it seemed would come sooner rather than later. He had feared Midwinter, just past, and the turning of the year, when a conjunction of the stars that Emuin said had been his birth had ended, and a new cycle had begun.

"When?" he asked. "How will we know?"

"She ain't immediate, I don't think," Uwen said, who had had a wife, once, and children. "A hellish far walk, she's been, if they come from Anwyfar, an' in the snow, and a-horseback before that. If she was near, that might ha' brought it on. And it didn't."

"Eight months?"

"Seven or eight, maybe."

In magic and wizardry, more particularly in sorcery… there were no coincidences. Seven or eight months… from its beginning, which was also to reckon.

"Could she have gotten the child in the summer, and no one know?"

"Damn sure she did," Uwen said somberly, "an' all that time, and her bein' a witch an' all, I'd about wager she knew right well, m'lord, that I would."

His thoughts grew vague and frightened and darted here and there in distracted fashion as he walked. His shoulders had felt the burden of armor for hours, as his cloak and his boots were soaked through with snowmelt. He had been scant of sleep for far too long, had walked, letting Tarien ride on the way home—and he thought now, after a month of striving and wrestling with Amefel's danger and Ylesuin's, now that he had done something so irretrievably foolish as this, he might rest… he might finally rest, as if he had done what folly his restlessness had aimed toward, and as he faced the stairs upward all the remaining strength was flowing out of him like blood from a wound.

Tarien knew about the child, he kept thinking to himself. When she went to Anwyfar, she knew. When they dealt with Hasufin Hel-tain, and bargained with him– Orien knew.

"M'lord?" Uwen asked, for he had faltered on the first step. All the accumulated hard days and wakeful nights came down on his shoulders at once, and he found he could not set his foot to the step.

"Are ye hurt, m'lord?"

Uwen's arm came about him, bearing him up, and with that help he essayed the first step. Another arm caught him from the right, Lusin, he thought, and he made the next, telling himself that he must, and that rest was at the top of the stairs, just a little distance down the hall.

"Are ye hurt?" Uwen insisted to know.

"No," he said. "Tired. Very tired, Uwen."

" 'At's good, then, m'lord. Just walk."

He climbed up and up the right-hand steps, those that ascended above the great hall, leaning on two good friends… and there he paused, drawn to turn and look down on that staircase, on that lower hall lit as it was from a mere handful of sconces. There burned but a single candle in each at this dim hour.

He had come up this stairs from the great hall the one night he had come very close to believing Orien and falling into her hands… and then, too, Uwen had seen him home.

He had run these steps the night Parsynan had murdered Cris-sand's men… and the shadows of those men haunted the whole lower hall, all but palpable at this hour.

He had gone down these steps toward the great hall as a new-made lord, and there faced a haunt that now was all but under his feet, the old mews, out of which Owl had come.

And did it stir, tonight, that power, knowing these twin sisters had come home?

He willed not. Trembling in the support of two strong men, he willed strength into the wards that kept the fortress safe. He willed that nothing within these walls, no spirit and no living soul, should obey Lady Orien, accustomed as this house might have been to her commands.

He did all that on three breaths, and was at his weakest, but he was sure then that the haunt below in the mews had not broken out or answered to Orien's presence, and that most of all reassured him, for of all dangers in the fortress, it was the chanciest and the greatest.

"Shall we take him on up, then?" Lusin asked, tightening his arm about his ribs, clearly supposing his lord had lost his way.

" 'E's stopped on 'is own," Uwen said pragmatically, against the other side, and shifted his grip on his wrist and about his waist. "An' 'e'll start on 'is own. 'Is Grace is thinkin' on somethin' worth 'is time, and I ain't askin' what till he's through."

"I'm very well," Tristen said then, although for the life in him he could not think of what he had just been doing.

"Lean on me, lad," Uwen said then—neither Uwen nor Lusin was as tall as he, but they had their leather-clad shoulders beneath his arms, and a firm grip around him, and bore him up the last step and down the corridor. His head drooped. He was next aware of his own foyer, outside Uwen's room.

And could not bear to go back into the bedchamber.

"I'll sit by the fire," he said.

"The fire an' not your bed, m'lord?" Uwen asked. "Your bed's waitin'."

"Not now." It was an effort for him to speak, now, not that it was hard to draw breath, but that his thoughts wanted to wander off, and the firelight seemed safer than the dark in the rooms beyond.

Time was when he would fall sound asleep at moments of revelation, at any moment when new things poured in on him so fiercely and so fast that his wits failed to keep up. For hours and hours he would sleep afterward, no physician availing to wake him, and when he would wake—when he would wake, then he would have remembered something he never knew.

But such sound sleeps no longer happened, not since the summer, when War had Unfolded to him in all its terror. He no longer had that grace, nor dared leave his servants and his men a day and more unadvised. He fought to wake, and make his limbs answer him– and yet it was so much effort. If he could only sit by the fire, he thought, and see the light, then he would not fall asleep.

"Will ye take food, lad?" Uwen asked.

"Hot tea," he said.

"Tea an' honey," Uwen said, and a distant murmur went on a time, then a small, distant clatter of cups until one arrived in Tristen's hand.

He drank, and the fragile cup weighed like iron, an effort even to lift. There was no strength in him, and he supported one hand with the other to have a sip without spilling it.

Uwen hovered, waiting for him, perhaps expecting to drop it. Uwen had ridden through drifts the same as he—but was not half so tired.

"Petelly," Tristen said. He did not remember now where he had left his horse. His last memory of Petelly was of his shaggy coat snow-plastered and his head hanging.

"Havin' all the grooms make over 'im," Uwen said, "an' 'e's sleepin' by now, as you should be doin', m'lord."

He gave a small shake of his head. "Not now. I daren't, now. ^pve things to do."

He failed to remember where Owl had gone… Owl had gone off to kill mice, perhaps, or flown off to some place more ominous, but at least Owl had gone, and nothing worse would come tonight.

"What d' ye wish, m'lord?"

That was a fair question, one to which he as yet had no answer.

"Ye want to post a guard up there wi' the ladies," Uwen reminded him. "There's servants in this house that served the Aswydds."

"Do that," he said, and then heard, in the great distance, Uwen naming names to Lusin, choosing Guelenmen, Quinalt men, men least likely to listen to the Aswydds' requests or to flee their threats.

He had another sip of honeyed tea, sitting before a fire that had been Orien's, in an apartment that had been Orien's, green velvet and bronze dragons and all. It had been Orien's apartment, and Lord Heryn's before her, and on the best of nights he never felt quite safe here. He watched it, guarded it as much as lived in it, and of all places in the Zeide where he could bestow the twins, he would not cede this one to Lady Orien.

The old mews was virtually under his feet here, that rift in the wards out of which Owl had come, and which he had not been able to shut, since.

"Tassand's gone to see to the guests," the next-senior of his servants came to report to him… Drys, the man's name was. "Your Grace, would you have another cup? Or will you have the armor off?"

He had lost his cloak somewhere, or Uwen had taken it. The brigandine's metal joinings scarred the chair, and the padding beneath it was much too warm.

He must have assented. Drys knelt and began to undo buckles about his person, and two others helped him from the boots. He stood, then, with Uwen's help, and shed the brigandine, piece by piece. It was light armor, and lighter still the padding beneath, but the very absence of its weight was enough to send him asleep on his feet.

" 'Ere, m'lord," Uwen said. "You ain't stayin' awake. Best ye go on to your bed an' sleep. The ladies is under guard an' dawn's comin' afore ye know it. Ain't a thing in the wide world ye can do else for anyone, but to sleep."

He was defeated. Drys set a cup of mulled wine in his hand, and the mere pungent smell of it sent his thoughts reeling toward the pillows and the warmed soft covers. Whatever he had tried to think of before he stood up to shed the armor went fleeting into the dark.

" 'At's good," he heard Uwen say, realized he was abed, and felt Uwen draw the coverlet up over his shoulder.

Mauryl had used to do that small kindness for him. Uwen had done it most nights, from the time Uwen had begun his service… only this summer. So quickly he had sped from youth to manhood– and missed so much, never having the ordinary things a man might know. Summer seemed long ago, an autumn ago, a winter ago. He was wiser now, and knew there were dangers in the world he had never reckoned in the summer.

But he was not unguarded. He had Uwen. Owl was somewhere about. Emuin was awake and wary. Even knowing the quality of the guests he had brought beneath his roof he could draw himself smaller and smaller and smaller, until he could finally wrap himself up in a small dark ball of awareness, and gather to him his hard-won memories.

For memories he did have now, not many, but vivid ones that spread themselves like shadowy curtains. He saw visions of battlefields and forest, he smelled the stone of Ynefel's rain-swept tower, and faced Mauryl's rain-soaked indignation.

He met Uwen's gray-stubbled face by evening candlelight, saying to him, "Lad, ye mean well. 'At's worth somethin'."

And Emuin's face, gray-streaked beard gone whiter and whiter at the roots, and eyes sunk deep in wells of shadow: " Meanwell, young lord? Do well, there's the challenge!"

He saw Owl, sitting in a leafless, ghostly tree in Marna Wood. Owl dived away and flew before him through the night, his self-appointed guide, above a white stone path that was the Road into the world.

He saw Owl, shining with wizard-light, fly before him through an unnatural night of sorcery, amid the clash of iron and the cries of dying men.

He saw Cefwyn, standing by a tattered banner, saying to him, 'We've won!" as if it were true for all time.

He curled tight against the dark, holding fast to these things that bounded the spring and summer of his single year of life, too weary to be as afraid as he ought.

He sank so deep he saw the dark before him.

Then, not in fear, but in sober realization of his danger, he began to travel away from that Edge, resolute instead on reaching the world, determinedly gathering up his resources. He bent all his will on opening his eyes, and on being alive.

He lay still a moment, counting what he had brought back with him, for his dreams were not like Uwen's dreams. Where he went in his dreams was not, perhaps, memory: he had begun to fear so, at least. He remembered not dreams, but efforts; and what he remembered of his ventures told him things.

It told him that all the books in the archive of Henas'amef, all the accumulated wisdom of the kings and dukes of Amefel arrayed on those dusty shelves, was less knowledge of time past than what he could draw to the surface, if the Unfolding came on him again.

But he resisted it. Perhaps that was the reason the Unfolding happened less often now… he feared to know. He wished not to know. Men said that he was Barrakketh, first of the warlords of the Sihhë. But he did not know it. He refused to know it. The Book of that knowledge he had burned in fire, the night before the battle at Lewen field, but the knowledge of the Book that Barrakketh had written he had stored away as too fearsome, too inimical to all he wished to know. Waking, he tucked that away, and carefully remade his world without that knowlege, testing every part of it, renewing his ties to those he loved. He slept seldom, and waked relieved to remember he did have Uwen, who always slept near him.

He had Emuin. Not Mauryl. Emuin… though the width of the fortress lay between them.

He had Cefwyn, who was his friend, though the width of a province and the distrust of all the court lay between them.

He waked by dim daylight cast from outer windows through the archway of his bedchamber. He waked in the great bed beneath the brazen dragons of Aswydd heraldry, and recalled that these things were so.

And in rare luxury of absolute abandon he drew deep, grateful breaths into his chest, finding everything well under his roof, even given their guests, and Orien Aswydd, who would never own this bed again, and never rest where he had slept.

This part of the world he remade, too, and made it sure in his mind, for doubt was a breach, and doubts he refused to entertain. He was safe, abed, suffering the aches of last night's long ride.

His servants moved about. They needed nothing from him. Out in the yard the whole fortress had waked to life without him. The garrison had begun its drills. The town had spread open its shops and gone about its trades. The camp outside had waked, stirred its fires to life, and the tavern help from inside the walls had bustled out with hot porridge to feed the men gathered there. Far across the fields, in pens they had established for the army that would gather there, stablehands tended their charges. Down by Modeyneth men set to their day's work on a wall he had ordered restored, and as far as the Lenúalim's banks, soldiers watched and warded the border. All these things happened this morning without his guidance, or rather, within the compass of his care but without his oversight; and the progress of those unwatched matters reassured him that the sun reliably rose and the roof under which he slept was safe even when he let his attention fall.

He found great pleasure in unaccustomed idleness, in fact: in the small sounds of his servants laying out breakfast for him… things also happening quite without his guidance, quite pleasantly without his orders or his will. Indeed, the bulk of things that happened would go on without him, or around him, or in spite of his cautions—and he need not govern every drawing of breath as he had grown accustomed to do since Cefwyn had set him in charge of Amefel.

He had been giving too much, and managing too much, and over-seeing far too much.

Folly, he said to himself.

As if Uwen, who had guided him this summer, needed his guidance now.

As if Tassand, who had come along with him to manage his small household in campaign tents and in palaces alike, could not protect this place and manage the staff without his niggling daily concern and his abundant, constant questions.

He lay, deliciously imagining this morning what each sound meant, as he had seen them do the tasks scores of times.

He imagined that Uwen would be in soon, and that Uwen would be in his ordinary gear and ready to go about his peaceful business. He knew the look of Uwen Lewen's-son of a morning down to the gray of his hair and the freshly scrubbed look of his face… and when he rose and dressed, Uwen indeed had joined him in just such a condition, and declared he was going down to the stables and the camps as soon as they finished breakfast.

So despite his guests, he drew a leisured breath, and another one.

It was a fine morning, in very truth—a peaceful, a glorious, a safe morning, leisured instead of idle… he had never before understood the distinction in those two Words, until he had found time to draw breath.

"No alarms," Uwen said cheerfully, over buttered bread, "and Her Grace ain't seduced the guards yet."

Tristen knew the power of Orien's persuasions. She had bent her thoughts on him once, though to little result.

And it was indeed worth his concern, regarding anyone set to watch her.

Also the lords had all seen her arrival… and they had had few questions last night, considering his long ride, but they would have them before the morning was over. That Orien reported an assault on a shrine in Guelessar, just across the border, seemed credible, but it was still to doubt.

And they had not even heard the matter Tarien brought.

So, breakfasted, dressed, with Uwen off about his duties, he resolved to gain some of those answers from the question that was Orien. He was sure of himself, at least, that she could not charm him into compliance, or overwhelm him with sorcery: she had tried both when he was far more innocent, even then to no avail. If he had fear for his men, he had none at all for himself, nor in the least doubted he could deal with the ladies.

Emuin was asleep, like Owl. So was Paisi. Outside was snow, remnant of the storm that had blown white and thick while it lasted. Now the sun was bright, and the weather seemed to have spent its momentary tantrum. Midwinter, the hinge of the year, as Emuin called it, had passed with a fury.

And just last night they had finally gotten into shelter all the contingents of their muster that had been at risk on the road: Uma-non's heavy horse and Cevulirn's light horsemen, both accustomed to sleep under canvas: they were safe in the camp, while Pelumer's rangers out of Lanfarnesse would camp wherever they were. Lord Sovrag doubted the storm would have greatly delayed his boats on their journey south, for the storm wind had blown from the north, and his men, he declared, would manage come what might. So the storm that heralded Orien's return had done nothing to disarrange his plans, and things regarding the camp were in order.

He did not trust, however, that that was true in lands beyond his reach—clearly not so where men had assailed a nunnery and sent the twins toward his hospitality.

"News'd come welcome, out of Guelessar," Uwen had remarked at breakfast, and in putting it that way, laid his finger on the most worrisome thing: an attack on such harmless religious women under Cefwyn's rule, in Cefwyn's own central province, hinted at unrest in the heart of Guelen lands, perhaps even in the capital itself. Welcome, indeed, would be the knowledge that Cefwyn was safe and taking firm, swift action there.

There was the chance, of course, that Orien had made up the story. There remained a chance that she had done the damage to the nuns, or drawn baneful events to them for the sole purpose of setting herself and her sister free of Cefwyn's guards.

But whose if not Orien's was the storm that had so cast things into confusion, and posed Orien and him alike an obstacle? The snow had begun on Midwinter Day, had gathered strength and gathered violence for days—then vanished without fuss once he had found Orien and her sister. Was she so powerful as that? She never had been… not alone.

And whose was Owl? His, for what he could tell, but he had not planned Owl's arrival. He had not planned the storm. He had not planned Auld Syes' arrival in his hall on Midwinter, or the darkness and all the events and omens which had followed.

And most of all he had not planned Tarien's baby.

So what Uwen had said about Guelessar and the lack of news from Cefwyn settled into his heart with a cold, persistent worry… for there was no safe way to send or receive a message in that quarter. If Cefwyn had sent any message to him in recent days, he had not received it… and his last messenger had had to come back like a fugitive, in fear of his life from such elements as Orien blamed for the destruction of the nunnery: in fact, it all fit together in very disquieting agreement, the last messenger's story with Orien's tale of the nunnery burned.

And if the king's law did not prevail out into the countryside, not protecting the king's messages, and now, evidently, not protecting houses of worship, of a sect the Quinaltines accepted as respectable… as they did not deem respectable the Bryalt faith of the Amefin… how then did they regard the lady Regent, Cefwyn's bride? And how did they take their king's other orders?

And was Ninévrisësafe, if men were hunting the king's messengers and burning nunneries?

He wondered that with a great deal of concern—and furtively thought he might gain Ninévrisë's attention in the gray space, even at such great distance. She had the wizard-gift, a weak gift, unprac-ticed, but his certainly was not: after the dire news of last night and Uwen's remark this morning he found himself lingering over a last cup of tea and wondering if, one-sided in the effort, hemight reach her.

He thought so, and wished he had her advice regarding the As-wydds, for that matter: but the risk was far greater than the gain, much as he was tempted to try. She was small and quiet in that aspect: she might enter the gray space unnoticed; he, Emuin assured him, could not, and reaching to her, he might well draw unwanted attention—Orien's, for one. But it was only one.

The weather breaking free of his wishes, Orien's arrival, all these things advised him his was not the only will at work even in Amefel. He was far more subtle these days, and knew a wizard-wish need not be thunder and lightning and the overthrow of oak trees. It might be far, far subtler than that… wizard-work was, in fact, more effective when it did not flail about and raise storms and blast holes in roofs. Such attacks did not frighten him. The subtle ones did; and if he acted rashly, trusting he could deal with every subtle attack that might come, when the truth was, no, he could not—where would hostile wizardry aim its deadly shots, but straight at his heart?

And where was his heart, but with Ninévrisë and Cefwyn, with Uwen and Crissand and Cevulirn and Emuin himself—all those he held most dear; and those who touched the gray themselves were not most defended: they were instead more vulnerable to such attacks.

Such possibilities Orien brought with her under his roof.

That there were other wishes at work, he was certain.

Whether Tasmôrden, his enemy across the river, had worked this maneuver on him, or whether it was some other force, that he did not know. Eight months, Uwen had said, looking at Tarien Aswydd. And eight months ago Tasmôrden had not even been a cloud on the horizon.

But other enemies had been.

And Orien Aswydd had been hand in hand with them.

CHAPTER 2

First it was the kitchens, down in the warm, firelit domain of baking bread and wash water: Cook's maids were scrubbing away flour when Tristen arrived, the scullery lads washing pots, while the open door, braced with a bucket, only gave a welcome, snow-flavored draft to the hardworking staff. Daylight shafted through a haze of steam in an amazing glory of white and old, scarred surfaces. He could not but give a glance to it, despite the sober purpose of his visit.

"M'lord," Cook said, not surprised to find him in the kitchens, or his four day guards outside her domain, finding converse with the maids. The kitchens were one of his favorite places from summer. Cook was one who had been kind to him before others had, and among the very first acts of his rule here, he had set Cook back in her domain. He took tribute now and again in the form of hot bread and the occasional sweet.

This time, however, he was straight from a good breakfast, had delayed only to toss the remnant of bread to the pigeons, and had come down here on matters he hoped Cook had observed last night.

"Seven, eight months along," Cook said to him, confirming Uwen's guess, and added with a shake of her head, as she folded her stout, floury arms: "And wandering in the storm, they say, clear from Anwyfar."

"Lady Orien said they began with a horse and lost it.—But might they have walked that far, do you think? Orien might. But Tarien—"

Cook set her hands on her hips and wiped a strand of blowing hair. They stood in the draft, and Cook was sweating, even so. "To tell the truth, m'lord, I hain't the least notion where Anwyfar is, except it's in Guelessar, which is far enough for a body in high summer and with the roads fair and dry. With the storm, and the drifts and all…"

"Was it impossible for them, since, say, Midwinter Eve?"

"I don't know as to impossible, m'lord, but…" Cook had an unaccustomedly fearful look, and added with a shift of her eyes toward the upstairs, and back again: "Their ladyships has a gift, don't they?"

"They do," he said. "Both.—So it had to be before that."

"I don't know," Cook said. "I've never traveled by horse. I hain't the least idea. Was it Midwinter, m'lord?"

"Or before. It might have been before. They might have tried to be hereon Midwinter, and come late."

"For wizardous reasons, m'lord?" Cook's eyes narrowed. Little frightened her, but she ventured her question in a hushed and respectful tone.

"I don't know," he said.

Cook said not a thing to that. She was a discreet soul, in her way, and not a word would she say to the maids that she knew she was saying, but the gossip was bound to fly, and had already flown. He saw the looks from the staff all about them. At a certain point the rattle of a spoon sounded like doom, and swiftly hushed.

"Get back to your work!" Cook said sharply, and: "M'lord, there's sweets, there."

He took one. It was honey and fine flour, and stuck to his fingers. The lord of Amefel licked fingertips on the way out, and then turned back and took two more, which he saved as he climbed the rebuilt scullery stairs.

He ascended to the west stairs, and up to an area of the Zeide which had had a very different feeling for him this summer past, when Cefwyn had been in residence.

Not Cefwyn's bodyguard, now, but Guelen guards from the town garrison stood at that door, and more in Guelen colors stood down the hall. Guards guarding the guards: that was the seriousness of Uwen's precaution where it regarded Orien Aswydd and her sister.

The guards on watch opened the foyer door for him, not advising those within; and at a wave of his hand, he set his own watch on that threshold, a ward, a pass of his hand, and a wish, whether the guards knew it or not… but Orien knew it. He felt her attention, and her anger: she had set her own ward on the door, and he violated it with hardly more than a chill.

Her precaution was reasonable and he was hardly angry, but he was sorry not to have set his own last night, for the guards' safety.

His two nunnish guests, clad all in gray, sat at the snowy window, and as he entered, Orien rose straight as a candleflame to defy him, gray habit, red hair unveiled in its cropped despoilment. She had been a lord's sister, accustomed to luxury, sought after for her beauty, her birth, her access to power, even before she had been duchess of Amefel.

Now instead of the glittering court gowns, the velvets and jewels and the circlet on her wealth of autumn hair, she wore a travel-stained gray robe. They had both cast off the nun's wimple, and the red hair—that she had cut to spite Cefwyn—stood in stark, untidy disorder. It was her twin sister, seated in the white window light, who still kept that glory about her shoulders.

From a lush, luxurious woman to this lean, harsh creature that was now Orien—it astonished him how dreadfully the more powerful of the twins had changed, even while the white light that fell on Lady Tarien's seated form found softer edges. Tarien's pale face lacked any of the anger that suffused Orien's: a young face, a bosom modestly robed in gray, a body grown strange and potent with the child inside. Orien stood with her hands on Tarien's shoulders, as if her sister were some sort of barrier to him—and for the first time without the cloak and in the daylight from the window he faced a woman far along with child. He saw in her not one change but an alchemy of changes, the scope of which he did not clearly imagine, and which spun wildly through the gray space, fraught with possibilities. Powerwas there, power over the powerful, in the hand that rested on Tarien's robed belly.

"How may we please your lordship?" Orien asked, and, oh, there was thick irony in that salutation, to the lord who had title now to all that had been hers and her sister's.

"I came," he began, "to see how you fared, and whether you needed anything." He proffered the sweets. "From the kitchens."

He knew Orien would not take them. He saw, however, that Tarien wanted them, and he set them on the table near him. "At your convenience," he said.

"Where are our servants?" Orien asked in ringing tones. "Surely the great Marhanen won't have been so petty as to harm them. Where are my sister's maids?"

"Most of your servants fled across the river when Cefwyn came. The others are my servants now… or the gods'."

"I demand my servants!"

"And I say they aren't here any longer."

"And our gowns?" Tarien asked. " SurelyYour Grace has no use for our gowns."

"I've no idea where they are." In fact he had never wondered where the ladies' wardrobe had gone: he had supposed it had gone with them to Anwyfar, in all the chests. The gowns they had worn in their days of power here had been gloriously beautiful, and with all the jewels, he supposed they were as valuable as Lord Heryn's dinner plates—which he had in the treasury. "I've seen no store of clothes, not a stitch of them."

"And our jewels?"

The whereabouts of certain of the Aswydd jewelry he did know, and was sure in his heart that the province's need for grain was far greater than their need for adornment. But he regretted the beauty and the sparkle of the stones, too, all shut up in the dark treasury.