Текст книги "Fortress of Dragons "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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More than that, considering rumors of internal weakness in the steady arrival of fugitives at Althalen… he hoped his disturbance at the edge of Elwynor might search out the hollow heart in Tasmor-den's power, the ones only marginally loyal to the usurper, most in fear for their lives. Those Elwynim who would turn again and swear to Ninévrisë Syrillas as liege lady might in such a presence find a place to stand, and Tasmôrden then would find his strength melting away, as the commons found the Lady Regent more to their liking.

In point of fact, it was not alone the weather he wished to change, and had no compunction at all about wishing Elwynim to serve Ninévrisë Syrillas. She had the right to their allegiance, and the good heart to mend the land after its years of war and waiting. There could be no better fate for the Elwynim.

"Time, then," he said aloud, "time for us all to set to work."

So the lords agreed. They were pleased when they left. He had accomplished that.

He remained seated a moment, Owl spreading his broad wings and settling claws into his flesh. "Go," he wished the recalcitrant bird, and encouraged him with a toss, but Owl only moved to his hand, and drew blood, and clung.

"You were very plain, young lord," Emuin advised him, neither approving nor disapproving. Emuin had stayed, along with Uwen; and Lusin and his men. "Some of your army might be afraid. Not the great lords, perhaps, but some of your ealdormen looked green as new apples."

"Cefwyn says I'm a poor liar." Wind brushed his cheek, distracting him with a flap of wings as Owl flew up to his other favored perch, up on the cornice. "When should they discover the danger, master Emuin? On the field?"

"And what will you? When will you make up your own mind?"

"To what?" He was genuinely bewildered.

Emuin's glance followed Owl's course, and came back to him, dark and direct under his snowy brows. "That you lead this army."

"I know I lead it."

"That you rule this province."

"The man who shouldrule is freezing in a snowdrift right now, between here and Modeyneth."

"Crissand."

"Yes, Crissand. In this one thing I'm certain. About the war itself I won't wish. I observe caution. I learn, you see, I do learn, master Emuin."

"That you do." Emuin walked a few paces to the left, and turned again. "So now the truth is out. Cefwyn's child. Gods save us. A Marhanen Aswydd. A white crow. A black dove. And ours to deal with."

"Ours. And hers." He still felt Emuin's disapproval. "I did the best I knew, bringing them here. I still think it's safest. I think it was best to tell the lords."

"Safest, yes. Safer than most dispositions."

"We could notsend Cefwyn's son to Elwynor. Nor have him in Ryssand's hands."

"I agree. He'll be born here, under all the auspices of this place– and if I read the stars aright—he aims for your birth night."

"For mine." He had not remotely thought.

"Wizardry, wizardry, wizardry, young lord! Wizardry is an art of timeand place. We have the place, we've missed the turn of the Great Year… what timeshall we suspect is coming?"

He was appalled. It cast everything in a new and threatening light.

"And we need a midwife," Emuin said. "A woman skilled in childbirth—a woman with the gift—and proof against Orien Aswydd."

"Are there such women in the Zeide?"

"The best is in town. Sedlyn. Paisi's gran, so he calls her, though no more kin to our young jackanapes than Cefwyn is. And she may serve. The date of birth is the question. Sedlyn might help us. A child can be encouraged to come into the world, or held out of it."

He had only book knowledge of births. He sat on the ducal throne of Amefel, empowered to dispose life and death over a province.

But to change a birth, to hasten, to delay, to meddle with what a child in his very existence wanted to be—the sort of meddling Emuin proposed troubled him.

"Was I wise or unwise to obey Mauryl?" the old man asked him, apropos of no question he had asked aloud, and walked away without another word—more, left without a whisper or a breath of wind in the gray space.

No one else could be so silent, or so secret.

No one in his knowledge had done such a deed as Emuin had done—no one carried such a wound as Emuin carried, having murdered the last prince of Althalen, a child he knew… or had known. That was what Emuin meant.

And in the silence Emuin wrapped about him like a mantle, in his secret going, cloaked even from him, for the first time Tristen knew why Mauryl must have chosen this one wizard, of all the others, and sent him to kill Hasufin Heltain—for the silence Emuin could wrap about himself was so great, so deep, that he had never realized it was uncommon among wizards.

He had never truly known, in his reckless, innate magic, that not every wizard could tell him no.

And now that he saw into that silence, he found himself grateful for master Emuin, deeply, profoundly grateful that his first venture into the world had brought him into Emuin's hands. It seemed now no chance had directed him.

And all this time there had been a warm, soft blanket wrapped about him, protecting him, shielding him, containing him in every sense.

Now, in this moment, Emuin quietly folded it and took it away, and left him feeling the cold winds of wizardry in all its reach.

Behold the world, young lord.

Behold the choices of those who choose for others, and who hold life and death of thousands in their hands.

"Ye ain't quarrelin' wi' master Emuin," Uwen said uneasily.

"No," he said, finding it difficult even to speak in master Emuin's silence. But the mortal world went on. "He just now challenged me. A lesson."

"A wee bit late for learnin'," Uwen said, "by me."

"He contains the Aswydds. They can't work while he holds them in. I don't know they even know it. He contains what Ican do. I see now how much harder that is. And now he's let me go, to do what I wish to do."

A clatter startled the silence, right by him. Syllan had dropped a spear, and was red-faced, gathering it up.

Dropped, perhaps. There were small, darting movements, as the servants quietly snuffed all candles on the far side. Darkness advanced, flowed along the channels of the pavings, spread soft grays from its harsher dominion over the deep, curtained corners of the hall. It chased under tables, at the side of the hall. It divided itself and extended tendrils of dark along the joining of wall with floor, and ran between the paving stones, reminding one that 'within the wall, all was dark.

Tristen saw movement within that dark from the utmost tail of his eye. He felt a draft from some source that might not be the opening of the robing room and its corridor. The drapery there did not stir. Nor did the great green velvet curtains near the front of the dais.

"We've Shadows in the hall tonight," he said to his guards in the faintest of voices. "Listening. But there's no harm meant."

"Ghosts, m'lord?" Lusin looked anxiously at those dark corners, and Syllan and all his guards gripped their weapons the more tightly.

"Something like. Some were Crissand's men, not bad men at all." He drew a deep breath, and stood, listening. "The hall's been threatened."

"Tasmôrden?"

"I think it comes from outside, and far." He could see the little shadows moving, back among the pillars, and the littlest of all running along the masonwork, like darts of dark fire, flickering like lame. "They're uneasy. They listen. Something's trying to get in."

"Into yourhall, my lord?" Lusin seemed to take it in indignation, regarding a hall he was charged with guarding.

"The candles don't truly dispel them," Tristen said. "They're al -

ways here. They're part of the wards, or they're tangled with them: but they're harmless. Don't wish them harm. Especially the Shadows in the great hall. They're all our Shadows, honest Amefin Shadows, and a few Guelen. They're guards, standing their own watch."

"And elsewhere?" Lusin dared ask. "Elsewhere, m'lord? The old mews… what's that place?"

"The old mews leads places. I don't know how many."

"To Ynefel," Uwen said.

He nodded slowly, thinking on that place of strange light and bating wings, row on row of perches, for Ynefel had indeed been within that light and he had been in Ynefel. He recalled the high, rickety stairs and wooden balconies, all bathed in the blue, strange light.

But he had explored them in all their brown, dusty webwork when he was new and when the light was the leakage of daylight through the cracks and the soft glow of candles, casting a shifting, wind-driven light along balconies and out into impenetrable dark of further distances. He had had no idea in those days that dark spots and cold spots and bumps in the night could mean ruin. His fears had been all surmise in those days… Mauryl's anger, the whisperings of the wind, the surprise of a carving on the stairs—such things he had feared.

Had the old mews always led there?

He had never discovered any other place fromYnefel. He had run amongst the Shadows in Ynefel and not known to fear them– at least not the little ones that came out and went back again in the trickery of candlelight. The stone faces within the walls of Ynefel . . . they were Shadows, themselves, of a sort, that seemed to change and shift on uneasy nights.

And were they destroyed when he drove out Hasufin? Or did they still stand?

"The mews leads to Ynefel, and leads from," he said to Uwen. "And it's a cold spot in this hall. It's the cold spots I like least. Shadows there always are, but the cold ones are never happy."

"What isthat place?" Uwen asked. "We saw the light, things flutterin' and movin', leastwise we thought we saw. We agreed we might ha' seen.—And I could see you, almost, but for the life o' me, all I touched was solid stone."

"Could you see that much?" Tristen asked, surprised and all attention, now.

"I don't know ye could quite call it seein'," Uwen said. "It wasn't like I was lookin' with me eyes."

"You saw into the gray place. Into the haunt. If it opens to you, don't go in, no matter what. Stand on solid ground, and call to me if you find reason to take alarm."

"Take alarm, lad!" Uwen laughed. "I was cold scairt!"

"Did yousee it?" Tristen asked the other guards, Lusin and Syllan, Tawwys and Aran. "What did you see?"

"Like the cap'n," Lusin said. "Not at first, but the longer we stood there, we all saw a blue light, cold-like. It weren't fire and it didn't burn. And ye come walking toward us like a movin' bright light, and ye had this owl wi' ye."

"Which hadn't any place it come from, that any of us could see," Tawwys said. "He scares the lot of us, perchin' outside your door, starin' while we're on watch."

"Does he? I'd thought he was in the stables."

"He comes an' goes," Tawwys said, and Aran:

"An' he ain't friendly. He bit Syllan's finger."

"I offered 'im a tidbit," Syllan said, "but 'e weren't grateful."

"He's not," Tristen said, and considered the wounds Owl'had dealt him, with the stain on his fingertips. "I fear he'll eat the pigeons. But I can't wish him away."

"Why not?" Uwen asked.

"For one thing, I don't think it would do any good and for another I don't think I ought to. He lived in the loft when I was at Ynefel. When I lost my way in Marna Wood he guided me. And on Lewen field he flew ahead of me. He's always there when I don't know where to go."

"Then he has a use," Uwen said.

"He seems to. At least when he flies I'm not lost. He's here now, and I don't see my way through, but he's here." He had not thought of Owl's presence as a comfort, but he began to think that way. "Someday he'll fly, and I'll know it's time to follow him."

"Don't ye talk of goin' after that bird!" Uwen said. "Or of followin' 'im. I don't trust 'im, not a bit. An' if he goes to Ynefel or worse, don't ye dare go wi'out me. There's roads. We can take 'em, the lot of us."

He was silent. He dared not promise that. He looked at Uwen's honest, worried face. "I can't promise you," he said, and looked away again with a shake of his head, as honest with Uwen in return.

CHAPTER 4

There seemed no courteous way to write the letter that circumstances required. Two pieces of paper, three, four, and five Tristen used, and cast each attempt away into the fire of the hearth near his desk. He had every confidence in Tassand and his servant staff, but he found the letters too painful to have lying about, and he would not leave them a moment on his desk—or send them to his friend.

Orien Aswydd came with her sister Tarien. Tarien is with child, which is yours, and a wizard…

… Orien and Tarien Aswydd fled Anwyfar when men attacked it. Tarien has your child, a son, and he has the wizard-gift…

With the Aswydds in residence a few stone walls away it was folly to carry difficult consultation to the gray space, and he feared he was growing so distraught with the letters he had become easy to overhear. He felt alone, abandoned by his friend, by his advisor. He had somehow to say a thing which he knew would bring pain to two he loved, and which might, in the wrong hands, bring bloodshed and war, and he could not find the words to take away the sting of that unanticipated revelation.

Tarien Aswydd came here for refuge and will bear a child in perhaps a month, which…

The sixth attempt went into the fire. He rested his head against his hands, checked his fingers belatedly for ink—they were clean– and at that one practical thought knew that his later attempts at gentle advisement were worse, not better.

At that point he left his desk in his apartment, gathered only Lusin and Syllan to guard him, and went to Emuin's tower.

He rapped, pushed the latch, and discovered the old man, far from having lain sleepless during his hours of flailing about the edges of the gray space, had fallen sound asleep in his chair. Young Paisi was curled by the fire like a young hound, and their supper dishes stood empty on a table cluttered with charts.

He eased the door shut. The latch went down, and stung, doing so.

Emuin's head came up. Eyes blinked, as if trying to resolve what they saw.

"Well, well," Emuin said. "Is there trouble? Or more trouble?"

"Forgive me. I need words, master Emuin."

Two blinks more. "Words for Cefwyn?"

"Yes, sir."

"Oh, try follyand prodigious fool."

"You don't mean that, sir."

At this point Paisi waked, looking exhausted and startled at once.

"Oh, I mean it," Emuin said, ignoring the boy. "I said it then, damn his stubborn ways, and I say it again."

"But I can't. Do I say to him… Tarien Aswydd has your child, a son? That's what I've written."

"That's fair enough. That should inform a thoughtful young man he's been a fool. That's the essence of the report, isn't it? Maybe he'll hear it from you."

"He listens to you."

"Not in this."

"Ninévrisë will be upset with him, won't she?"

"Oh, I imagine she'll be somewhat upset. She's a lady capable of setting aside her heart's feeling to serve her common sense, but this will test the limit, I rather think."

There had been a time he had not understood Emuin's humors, or his ironies. Now they cut keenly, but he knew that they shielded a worried and fond heart.

"What will she do when she knows?"

"All of that is Cefwyn's to deal with," Emuin said brusquely, not yours. You're not the keeper of his conscience, nor am I. Just deliver him what he needs to know, and let him find the way through this maze. It's enough we have the lady in keeping and she's not making pilgrimage to Guelemara this winter. At very leastwe'll deal with the birth. I don't know what more we can do with the plain, unpleasant truth."

"Am I not to be his friend? Wasn't that your advice? And Wouldn't a friend give him something more than just… the plain truth, on a paper? Shouldn't I have something else to say? Shouldn't I be wise enough to have advice?"

Emuin's frown eased, and the fierce scowl revised itself into a more pensive, wounded look.

"Or can't youadvise him, sir?" Tristen leaned both hands on the table, on the welter of charts and dishes. "You came here with me, and you left him to fend for himself. Idrys is clever, and Her Grace is wise, and Annas is kind, but youaren't there, and I think he'd truly wish you were with him when he reads this letter. He needs your advice. He needs it most of all."

"I can't travel in this weather. I'm old. My bones won't stand the saddle, I can't ride through such drifts, and by the time a carriage; made the trip the news would have walked to Guelemara, drifts and all. I can't advise him! Too many people know this. Someoneis going to tell the wrong person, if they haven't already run to the capital to shout it in the streets, and the longer we wait, the more certain that is. We don't know we're not already too late to keep it out of Ryssand's hands… particularly if those blackguards of Es-; san's attacked the nuns because someone had found out about Ta-rien. Tarien might have been their reason, more fool they—someone's hope to keep her andthe babe when it's born. And if that was the case and if they lost her, they'd have run straight to the capital and reported to whoever set them on."

"Or they'd run for the far hills and not come at all."

"There is that hope."

"Orien thought it might be because Cefwyn found out. I don't think so. If he knew, he didn't need to send the Guelen Guard: Idrys, maybe, but not soldiers to attack the nuns. I think they could be; Ryssand's. Maybe Orien said what she did about Cefwyn finding out because she suspected someonehad found out, but I don't think that someone is Cefwyn. He wouldn't kill the nuns."

"He would not," Emuin mused, raking tangles from his beard. "I can think of two reasons there was an attack on Anwyfar in the first place: first, the one you name, that someone knew there was a child and wanted Tarien in his hands. Ryssand could do gods know what at that point, none good. So could Tasmôrden, if Cuthan spilled what he knows in that quarter, and if he knows too much. That's well possible.—Or it could be someone's blind ill working that bounced off us like a rock off a shield and rebounded on the closest and most vulnerable of our precautions. Our confinement of the Aswydds was always chancy."

"There's a third," he said, taking very seriously what Emuin said.

"That the working was Orien's, to arrange an escape, and to come here. She surely wished it. Ordinarily she couldn't manage it. But she found a current already moving—and maybe she found help."

"Certainly she'd like to be involved," Emuin said. "And think, too: the gainer in what's happened is Orien. She's here. The great loser thus far in what happened is Ryssand: he'd have been so pleased to have Tarien in his hands. The scandal will still break: there's no hiding it forever. But if we'revery lucky we might conceal the child until after the attack across the bridges. If Cefwyn wins the war and sets Ninévrisë on the throne, he can do no wrong in her people's eyes and if Ninévrisë has her kingdom back, she may forgive him his old sins. Maybe wewished too hard for Cefwyn's safety and something we've done is looking out for his interests… preventing the rumor reaching home, in fact."

"And those women died for that?'"''He was appalled by the thought.

"Oh, don't count it our fault: it may be no one's particular fault—except the scoundrels who killed the nuns, of course. They have the fault. The rest is blind chance. Water breaks out where the dike is lowest, young lord, never the strongest point. And by now, after what Mauryl's done, what I've done, what other agencies have done—there's a lot of water flowing."

"Are they guilty, without knowing what they did?"

"Oh, they knew what they did. And it may even have been Orien they were after. These were Quinalt men. They served in Amefel when she ruled here. They knew her for a sorceress and they hate sorcery. As for the nuns, they were nuns of mysect, not the Quinalt, and these men were Ryssand's. Maybe they were looking for nothing more than some charge of latent witch-work to lay against the Teran-thines. Ryssand's failed in one assault on Cefwyn's rule; he may be looking for another weak point, and never forget that Cefwyn is Teranthine, and that I am. A sorceress sent among Teranthine nuns to hide her and keep her head on her shoulders—how will that sound among the orthodox and doctrinist Quinaltines?—Ah, me, write you must, but we have to keep this news out of Guelessar in general, if that's possible, yet be sure Cefwyn knows. We've sheltered these Women, we have them, all to our advantage now, and whatever wizardry opposes us will go straight for that babe. Rely on it."

Much of it seemed conjecture, none leading anywhere.

But the part about wizardry and the baby sounded all too reasonable.

"So we," Emuin concluded, "must do something about it."

"What can we do, sir?"

Emuin rose from his chair at the table and picked up a rod that was at the moment weighing down a half a score of scattered parchments. He waved it at Tristen, waved again in what seemed an instruction to stand on the other side of the table.

Tristen did so. Emuin pushed the rod end-on toward him across that scatter of charts.

"Now push it back to me."

Tristen obliged. Emuin received the end, and mildly pushed the other end again toward Tristen's side of the table, while Paisi came and stared dubiously at the proceedings.

"Push it back to me," Emuin said, and as Tristen slid it toward him, Emuin placed a thin, arthritic finger in the path of the rod, with a tap diverting it to the side.

"What?" said Emuin. "Are you suddenly weak? Push it to me, I say."

Tristen drew back the rod.

"Push with all your strength this time."

"It would not," Tristen said. "No more than a sword past an opposing blade. It will miss, no matter how much strength I have."

"A child's finger could do the same."

"At the right point, likely so, sir."

"Paisi?" ;

"Oh, no, sir," Paisi said, tucking both his hands behind him and backing up a step. "I ain't tryin' to stop m'lor' wi' me finger."

"Paisi sees the lesson," Emuin said, "—don't you, boy?"

"As I ain't puttin' my finger in m'lor's way, 'at's sure."

"But you would win," Emuin said.

"As I ain't puttin' meself in m'lor's way by winnin' again' 'im, either."

Tristen smiled, but the lesson was not lost.

"And that's what a boy learns," master Emuin said. "What does the lord learn?"

"That if you set your finger in the way of the rod too late, you lose. And if you have your finger in the way at the right time, the rod can't reach you. And it's not about rods… or swords. It's about wizardry." The grim thought Unfolded itself and cast a gloom over him. "The point of diverting this wizardry isn't now. It was this summer."

"In the early summer, when a prince shared a bed with Tarien Aswydd. If you will know, he was abed with her the night you arrived."

It was like a dousing with cold water. "Me, sir?"

"You came, you diverted his attention, various things changed, and he had no further time for the ladies Aswydd, but not intime, since by then the deed was very clearly done." Emuin picked up one of the scattered charts and cast it heavily onto the table. "Does that Unfold to you?"

Tristen turned it, looked at it, and turned it again in hope it would make some sort of sense. It might have been upside down or sideways for what he made of the scratchings and circles and numbers and intersecting lines. "No, sir. It doesn't."

"Likely because it's wizardry, and not magic. The Sihhë-lords never needed such meticulous proceedings."

"It's to do with the stars and the moon, I see that much. Has it to do with the Great Year?" That was just past, and it had long occupied Emuin's attention in the heavens.

"It's to do with calamity," Emuin said. "Mind, no such chart is infallible. It marks opportunities, moments of vulnerability, moments of power, and, the Nineteen witness! the Sihhë can create their own moments outside of wizardry and throw all our meticulous plans and times askew—gods, but you can, young lord! But I suspect even you find magic easier at certain times and in certain places—or that what you loose flows more readily in certain directions than in others: the river finds the lowest, easiest course, does it not?"

He understood how it explained the twisted course certain of his wishes took, or why he saw some things as easy and direct and some things not.

But he was not diverted by any sleight of hand, not now. His thoughts ceased to skip and turn, and went straight to a single question. He did not even ask it aloud. He wishedan answer, and Emuin's chin went up, and he frowned, opposing Emuin's will.

"Forgive me," Tristen said. "I wish to know, and not to oppose you… not at all to oppose you. I know how hard you've tried to keep all your plans in shape around me, no matter how often I cast them all down. But now I want the truth, master Emuin, with all good will. Inform me, and perhaps you'll have less patching to do. I mightagree."

Emuin let out a slow breath. "Cefwyn proposes to set out this spring against Tasmôrden. Before the trees break their buds, there is ^an hour, a day, on which what Men call luck will more than ebb: it will turn utterly against him. That is written in the events he himself set in motion, and written in the stars."

"Then I should be with him!" Tristen said.

"Or—perhaps you shouldn't. Perhaps you can do more from a Distance, where you have a better view of what's happening, and where you can lay hands on the very things that threaten him. Possibly you're doing exactly what you should do. Before the trees break their buds, too, that child will be born, here, in Amefel."

He had thought only of weapons. What Emuin said appalled him.

"The child."

"Here, I say, the child will be born."

"And I brought her here!"

"Perhaps it was the best of intentions. She's not in a worse place. Parsynan isn't in charge here, Cuthan's not here to help Orien, and Tasmôrden's men aren't pouring across the border to raise the whole province in rebellion. All the things you've done have put her in your hands, not the other way about. I don't say this child's the only danger. What Cefwyn may do when once he hears the news: that is a danger. What Her Grace may do is likewise a danger, and what her people may do is a danger, all approaching that moment Cefwyn's luck—luck! so men call it, and nothing further from the truth—his luck will turn. The flow will all go against him, for a certain number of hours. I confess that all along, I've thought constantly of the battle with Tasmôrden, and that manner of threat. But again, the river may have taken the easiest course. It was natural these women come to their home, to their people. They say the nuns didn't know. And there's a fifth possible agent of the situation at Anwyfar… you, young lord."

"I would never wish what happened!"

"But you know that you have effect."

"I know that I do, sir."

"We aren't masters of howa thing happens. So likewise we must be careful how our letters will inform Cefwyn andHer Grace, and do it well. You're quite right to come to me. You're quite right to approach this with caution."

"You know how to tell him. You see the danger. Twice over, it should be you that writes that letter."

Emuin's brows lowered. "Oh, I know these things, I know them too well. Mauryl called on meto kill a young prince in his sleep. And I did, young lord, and have bad dreams all my life. Now I see that dream one more time."

"Hasufin Heltain." Tristen drew a great breath, knowing well how their enemy—Mauryl's enemy—had entered a dead babe in Althalen, King Elfwyn's son… and nothing might have prevented him, except he had grown too sure of himself, too early… a boy's faults of haste, betraying a very, very dangerous spirit to the only wizard capable of dealing with him… of killing him, before his adulthood.

"He's dead," Emuin said. "But he was deadbefore he fought you at Lewenbrook. That's only mild inconvenience to him. A woman dabbles in sorcery, far past her knowledge. A foolish woman lets down the wards, in all senses, and bargains for power… and what better chance has a wandering spirit? You caught Orien at her sorcery once. We don't know how often and to what ends she opened that window in your apartments. We know Hasufin used Aséyneddin on the battlefield, but that was the right hand of his effort, and it fell too quickly, far too quickly. I suspect this babe for the left, his second and surer gateway, one he already knew he had, and which he didn't risk at Lewenbrook. That babe is half-Aswydd and half-Marhanen… wizard-gift matched with all the Marhanen faults—and strengths."

"I hear the child in the gray space. Surely you do."

"I hear him. A son, I do agree with all you said, below in the hall, though I'm a little less reckless in inquiring."

"There seems no harm in him."

"Oh, indeed there isn't. Right now he's Tarien's child… an innocent. What better way to breach our defenses? What better way to gain entry to this warded fortress? What better way to defend himself, than by our virtue, and our scruples, and our reluctance to do harm to innocence? If we harm him… we damn the virtue that's in us, and we turn ourselves down a bloody dark path. If we kill this child.– Hush, boy!" It was Paisi he meant, for a startled shiver had leapt into the gray space, and Ernuin whirled about and seized Paisi by the shoulder.

"We ain't to kill it!" Paisi cried, wincing from Emuin's grip, and the danger of flying into the gray space with Orien and Tarien only a few stone barriers away from them brought Tristen's sharp no! and with it he imposed a hush so deep Paisi struggled for his next breath, mouth open, eyes wide.

"Be calm," Tristen said, and made his wish gentler, so the boy could get his wind. "Be calm. You mustn't go therewith what we say here. Be very quiet. Listen to what Emuin's saying to us. Listen. Understand him."

"I brung Gran Sedlyn up th' hill, an' she had a look at the lady, an' she says it's an Aswydd babby an' a wizard. But she ain't sayin' it's evil!"

'Gran Sedlyn is the midwife," Emuin reminded him. "And canny as they come. No, boy—" This, to Paisi, whose eyes were round as moons. "—we haven't any ill intent: that's the point. Wizardry. Wizardry, lad, is a matter of seasons and timing, and this… this one event is set. That child will be born in his time, and as much as Gran Sedlyn can assure it, it will be the child's time, not Tarien Aswydd's wishing. It won't please her, but it pleases me, and it gives the child his best chance."