Текст книги "Fortress in the Eye of Time"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 29 (всего у книги 47 страниц)

“Father,” The young woman interposed her hands. “Tasien, he mustn’t tire himself. Take this man away from him!”

“I am still Regent,” the old man said, in a voice that trembled. “Lord of Ynefel, I know you, do I not? Did I not meet you just now?”

“He dreams,” the daughter said, but Tristen said quietly, wary of the angers and the grief running wild in the close confines, “Yes, sir. You did.

You helped me. Dare I try now to help you?”

“You cannot draw me from this brink,” the man said faintly. “Far too dangerous to try. But I hoped for you. Oh, gods, I hoped—hoped you existed. I dared not believe it. I feared it gave the enemy purchase on us all.”

“My father is ill!” the daughter said bitterly. “He is in no state for this.

–Father, please, send him away. These are all dreams. They’re only dreams. Cefwyn’s scouts have found us, that is all this proves. We have to move from here as soon as we can.”

“No. Not dreams. Not dreams, daughter. No more than it was dreams that brought us here. Hasufin’s tomb. Hasufin’s burial-place. So that I do battle with him—I must not leave here. I must never leave here!”

“Hasufin is dead!” the daughter cried. “He is dead, Father, Mauryl saw to that here in this very hall. You dream, you only dream. And the Marhanen dares send us this mockery. I will not marry him, father! I shall never marry him!”

The Regent’s white hand lifted, trembling, and smoothed back the hair that fell about her face. “Daughter, but you see, you see, I’m not mad. Is it not the Star and Tower?”

“Wrapped in the Marhanen Dragon. This man is nothing but Amefin—even black Guelen, for all we know—”

“No, the rumors—the rumors—are all true. And this is their evidence.

Look at him, indeed.” The Regent lay back on the pillows. “Mauryl’s student. But not only Mauryl’s heir. You are—Mauryl’s. Are you not?”

“They say so, sir. Master Emuin said—”

“Emuin the traitor,” Tasien said.

“Let him speak!” the Regent said. “Go on, my lord Sihhé. Where have you lived? Where have you hidden from us?”

“With Mauryl. Then Hasufin came and took the balconies down. He put Mauryl into the stones, sir.”

“He knows,” the Regent exclaimed. Breath was coming hard for him.

His eyes wandered from one to the other face hovering near him. “You see, he does know. He was there, just now, in my dream, —were you not, Lord of Ynefel? You drove Hasufin away!”

“I think it was quite the other way, sir. He fled when you appeared.”

“He fled you, young King! I dared tread further then, to find you. Oh, gods, I’ve found you, Majesty. I have found you!”

“Take him out!” the daughter cried, and men seized him by the arms to hasten him away, but the old man cried out, “No!” and motion ceased.

“I am Uleman Syrillas,” the old man said. “I am Regent till I die. And I have waited—I have waited all my life for my King. Are you not that King, Lord Sihhé?”

“Mauryl never said I was a king. Mauryl said I was not all he wanted.” He saw the dark closing about the man and tried to see only the gray light. He fought for it, desperately insisting to see it. “But when Hasufin came Mauryl knew I couldn’t help him. He said I was to leave Ynefel and follow the Road. And the Road led me to Cefwyn. But I think it led me here, too.”

“Mauryl called him,” the old man said. It was scarcely a voice.

“Ninévrisé, daughter, do you hear? Mauryl called him, and he has the Sihhé gift. I see him clearly in the light. I see him. He shines—look, look at him! He shines!”

“Father,” the woman said. “Father? —Tasien, please, please, take him out! He’s making him worse! He dreams. He doesn’t know—”

He wished to take the old man’s hand. He thought he could hold him.

The old man was all in shadow now. He reached, and the guards held him by force.

“He’s fading,” the one man said, looking at the Regent’s face; and the archer at Tristen’s ear said in a low voice, “Just you come along, Lord Sihhé or whatever you are, sir. You come along gently, now. We’ll find you somewhere to sit, something to drink, anything you like.”

They were afraid of him, and of their lord’s illness, and had no choice but to do what the lady said.

The lady. Ninévrisé Cefwyn’s offered bride.

“You granted her Amefel?”

It was very rare that one took Idrys entirely aback.

Cefwyn shook his head and started down the steps to the lower hall, Idrys in close accompaniment, with the other guards. “I see no other course. The lesser lords are all a tangle of Amefin allegiances we do not understand, of blood-relations, disputes of inheritance, jealousies and feuds, one district against another. Worse than a united Amefel is one fragmenting under us in civil strife, with this business on the border. The lady, of course, well knows that point.”

“Why not add Amefel to the grant of Ynefel?” Idrys muttered as they went down the stairs, banquet-bound.

“I did consider that. But Tristen’s off chasing moonbeams and Orien asked so prettily.”

“You jest in both, I hope, Your Majesty.”

“What? That she asked politely? —A basilisk, seeing that woman, would seek thicker cover. But I have a sure hold on her. When she weds, her title in Ylesuin passes to her husband, whatever the Amefin hold to be the case. I swear if she crosses me once, I’ll give her one who’ll cut her throat if she crosses me or him. Sovrag, perhaps. There would be a match.”

“Take my advice and unsay this thing.”

“I am looking for any excuse, I confess it.”

They came down together into the lower corridor, and, by the back door, in among the lords gathering and milling about in the Ivory Hall.

The herald required attention, the lords bowed and swept a path before him, a storm going through a field, more rapidly than recent habit—it was his dour countenance, Cefwyn thought, and, facing the lords, he tried to better that expression. He took his chair at table, in a room that smelled of food and ale waiting to be served. He still found his appetite lacking, not alone by reason of the Aswyddim: the leg was swelling again, and he looked askance at the food as pages and cooks’ helpers carried in two of the four meat courses, braided breads, dark beer, southern wine, and strong ale. There would be six cheeses, favoring the southern provinces, summer cabbage and sausages, pickled apples, broad beans and buttered turnips, green herbs and peas and pickled eggs. He did not favor the delicate fare of the east and north. He had a peasant’s taste for turnips and cabbage and inflicted it on the court—the King could decree such things. The Amefin lords held out for partridge stuffed with raisins and apricots—which he had ordered to please them and Umanon, who tended to such luxury; Cevulirn particularly favored the pickled apples, and figs from the southern Isles; Pelumer had a fondness for the famed partridge pies, and Sovrag for ham and sausages: cook had searched out their several weaknesses, and was under orders to keep them content.

While Efanor and his Quinalt priest dined by choice on Llymaryn beef and the locally disdained mutton; and Duke Sulriggan of Llymaryn-who had ridden in this afternoon with said priest, two cousins, six men-at-arms, twenty-nine stable-bred horses for which they had no stalls, and a useless handful of servants and grooms who had already antagonized master Haman’s staff—claimed distempers gained of an excess of red meat and brought his own supplies, his own cook, his own pots. Doubtless Duke Sulriggan was surprised to find Efanor not in possession of the province, and Efanor’s brother not in disfavor, but King.

The priest and Prince Efanor had closeted themselves in the Quinalt shrine for three hours of prayers and gods knew what excesses of mourning. Sulriggan had attached himself to the affair and there had been some sharp words between the priest and the local prelate over some niggling purchase of oil in unblessed jars.

Sulriggan’s cook prepared separate fare for Sulriggan and his Llymarish attendants under a canvas in the courtyard: small wonder, that self-established exile, considering the ire of the spurned Amefin-bred cook. It was fear of poisons, he was certain, that underlay Sulriggan’s pretensions of a delicate stomach, but murder all the southern lords at once? Annas was there, supervising all details, his defense in the kitchens, far more gracious than Sulriggan. Sulriggan perhaps suspected him. And did the offended Amefin aspire to poison Sulriggan and his supercilious cook and his high-handed servants—the King could willingly turn a blind eye if they only warned him of the dish involved.

The partridge pies and the bread and cheese found instant favor. So did the dark beer and the ale and two sorts of wine.

Another arrival—the King set his chin on fist, and stared with basilisk coldness of his own.

Late—and dramatic—came Her red-haired Grace, Lady Orien, not considered in the culinary selections, but, then, her tastes were wide. Her coming, with the first course served, startled the barons, who went from the pleasantry of ale and men deep in masculine converse, to stark silence, to a lower murmur in the hall, an assessment, an account-taking, even among the Amefin lords present and the servants about the edges of the hall.

She wore dark green velvet, the Amefin color, and had a bit of funereal black knotted about her right shoulder, like a man; more, she had cut her red hair shoulder-length, like a man’s. That despoilment shocked him as nothing else Orien had done. And the mourning—which by tradition of Selwyn Marhanen no Marhanen King wore—was a direct and silent insult, worn into this hall, at this time, in Heryn’s cause.

There were two empty places, Heryn’s being one, and she went to it, an empty seat at Efanor’s left, the place of the host province in council, court and feast-hall. Her eyes should have been downcast: they were not.

She stared round at each of the lords in turn as if measuring them as she spread her skirts and took that place.

“Her Grace Orien Aswydd will swear fealty in her brother’s place,”

Cefwyn said in a low voice. “She is my ward; her sister and her cousins will soon depart this court under my extreme displeasure. Amefel is under Crown protection, until Her Grace has a man by her. Or perhaps,” he added, looking askance at her shorn hair, “she will take up the sword in her own defense.”

“I rule,” she said in a voice startlingly level, “until I also meet the Marhanen’s displeasure.”

“You are never far from it,” he muttered, which was doubtless heard at the nearer seats, and he hoped that it was. “Your health, my lords.

Discuss no policy; Lady Often will retire after dinner, by my order, and then we may deal among ourselves.”

There was, then, a marked scarcity of topics for conversation; it drifted, through the various courses, from a discussion of the relative merits of Amefin and Guelen wines, to the breeding of Cevulirn’s horses versus Sulriggan’s, and finally to the hunt, the latter discussion spirited and the gathering good-natured, until it came down to discussion of districts and game.

Then Orien’s voice cut through, soft and high. “I wonder how the hunting might be in Lanfarnesse,” Orien said, “since you border Marna,

Lord Pelumer. Do you see odd things come from there? —Where is the lord of Ynefel this evening? I had rather looked to see him.”

Cefwyn struck his cup sharply with his knife, choosing not to have the public scene Orien clearly wanted. “We have business to settle. Clear the tables. Lady Orien, your guards will conduct you. Your interests will be represented here for you.”

She did not rise. “I am competent to represent my own, Your

Majesty.”

“Then I tell you bluntly that you are still under arrest, and your removal from this council now is for suspicion of your character, not your competence. Must my guards lay hands on you? They will.”

“My lord King.” She rose, pushed back her chair, dropped a deep curtsy, and strode off, her guards moving to overtake her, a long progress toward the farthest door.

Idrys closed the doors and returned to stand at Cefwyn’s shoulder.

“My lords,” Cefwyn said. “You have been patient to remain under hardship of absence from your own lands. Your grace and favor will be remembered throughout my reign. I am about to ask more of you.., that you stay while the northern barons come in for their oath-giving—which means staying during harvest-season. I know the hardship. But for the stability of the realm, and in view of the foreign threat, —I ask you to stay.”

“My lord King,” murmured Umanon, “it is in our interests to remain, if that is the case.”

“But,” said Sulriggan, “will Your Majesty not return to the capital?”

“You’ve not been informed, then.”

It was not the answer Sulriggan had wanted. It set him down. It gave him no ready point of argument.

“No, Your Majesty, I have not.”

“My father was murdered. Murdered, sir. I am not done with investigations, and by the gods, no, I do not go to the capital when the evidence is here.”

Sulriggan said, prudently, whatever the argument he had devised, “I beg Your Majesty’s pardon.”

“But what,” Sovrag broke in, “is this Aswydd woman about? Going as a page?” Sovrag had made a joke. He elbowed his fellow Olmernman in the ribs. “I’d take ’er. And ’er sister.”

“I decline to know what Lady Aswydd does, save she risks excessively.

Our patience has its limits.” He was conscious of the lesser Amefin lords at the lower table, their lord’s head, lately removed from the south gate, rejoined to his body in the Bryalt shrine along with the remains of two earls and their relatives. Three of the remaining earls were in bitter dispute of the Aswydd kingship that went back into the aethelings of the years of Sihhé rule: he had already heard the stirrings of restless lords,

The gray light came all laced with Shadows, now, fingers and threads of darkness weaving all about the horizon, coming near the old man, try as

Tristen would to chase them. Tristen sat where the guards had bidden him sit, on the low wall that surrounded the camp. The horses were eating hay at the end of that wall, Petelly among them and, nearer the tent that sat spider-like in its web of ropes at the heart of this strange and cheerless camp, men sat on stones that lay out across the old parings.

They sat, shoulders hunched, heads bowed together, speaking in voices he could not hear.

He was aware of the sinking of the sun and the gathering of the true night in the world. Now came the dangerous time, when Shadows were strong, but he was determined to hold them until the dawn. He had discovered a power in himself to dismiss certain Shadows, although he knew no Words to speak and he had nothing but his presence and his refusal to let the Shadows have the old man. One would creep close, and he would face it in that gray place, and challenge it merely with his presence—then it would retreat. But there were very many of them, whatever they were, and so long as he was wary and quick enough he could frighten them singly back before they could combine into a broad, fast-moving Shadow that could threaten the old man.

But he was slowly losing. He knew that he was. So was the old man.

There were more and more threads. It would have been easier if he could have held him, clung to his hand, made one defense of the two of them.

He was tiring. His efforts raised a sweat despite the cold of the world of substance. He hoped, though, that if he could last until the dawn, if the old man seemed better–  Then someone said, very close to him,

“Here! What’s he doing?”

“He’s been like that,” one said, and someone drew a sword, a sound that rasped through his hearing with cold familiarity. Metal touched him, a shock like a burning fire, but when he blinked and saw it, the sword had done him no harm. The man had only laid its edge along his hand.

“M’lord, m’lord, be careful of ’im. The Regent said he might be Sihhé for real and all. That he might even be the King. We was only to watch ’im.”

“The Regent says. And what says Tasien?”

“Don’t know, m’lord. Some around the fire say as he’s Lanfarnesse, but the Regent said as he is Sihhé for a fact, m’lord, and ordered us to keep ’im close, and we don’t do ’im no disrespect ’ere, m’lord, please.”

“Some damned Quinalt praying curses on the lord Regent,” another man said. “That’s what he is. A Sihhé come wrapped in a Dragon’s cloak! Not likely, say I.”

They were all shadows to him in the dark, discussing his provenance and his purpose here, which ought to concern him—but in that gray light from which they had called him the Shadows were multiplying so quickly he dared not spare his thoughts for them: he went back. The old man was losing ground quickly. The Shadows had combined into skeins and ropes: they had grown reckless—until he faced them. Then they rapidly unwove.

They became threads again, and tried new tricks to get behind him.

But now the lord Regent turned toward the attack. The old man knew a Word, and spoke it, but he could not hear it, as he had never been able to hear Mauryl’s Words when there was magic about them.

The old man was a wizard, he knew that here quite clearly, but no one else had seemed to know it. He liked the old man in that reasonless, trusting way he had liked Mauryl and Emuin. When the old man, exhausted now, beckoned him close, he longed to go—but it seemed to him that in this respite from the Shadows the old man had gained for them both, he would do better to stand and drive the Shadows back.

–Come closer, the old man said. Come closer, Majesty. Forget them.

They’re small threat to me now. Let me see you. Let me touch you.

–Sir, he said, I might win. Let me try, first.

–No. The old man had grown very weak, and caught his hand in a grip he might have broken. But it was not the strength of that hand that held him, it was the expression, the same gentle, kindly expression that had ensnared him when first they met.

–You are the one. You are what Mauryl promised. I doubted. Forgive my doubt.

–Sir, he said, I am not as wise as Mauryl wished, nor as strong as Mauryl wished. But I do learn. I am learning, sir.

The old man laughed through his tears, and pressed his band, and laughed again. I warrant you are, that. And Hasufin trembles. I warrant be does. Learning! I bad not expected a brave young man. I expected someone furtive, and bidden and wary. Even cruel. But, oh, there you are, there you are, my dear boy! Bright and brave as you are, whatever you will be, you are my King, you are what we’ve waited for—you are all of Mauryl’s promise.

–But what shall I do, sir? Mauryl never told me what I was to do for him. Can you teach me?

–Teach you, my King? Oh, gods, what first? —First, first and always, beware Hasufin’s tricks. He will use your hopes as well as your fears. He will trade you dreams for dreams. Let me tell you—he came to me in my dreams, oh, years and years ago. He promised me visions, and before I could break away I saw Ynefel, and Mauryl.  —You knew Mauryl, sir?

–Never in the flesh. And not before this. But I knew him, the way one knows things in dreams. I saw Mauryl old and alone, tired and powerless. It troubled me for days. I feared to go back, and I could not, in the end, forbear listening to Hasufin disparage my hopes, and warn me of my own lords, and tell me true things—mark you, true things about their plots—which I think now be engendered. I began to doubt

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 the goodness of the men I ruled, and my doubts changed them. I asked myself whether there was any hope of a King and whether I should not take the crown for myself and forestall the plotters against the Regency.

My doubts, my precautions, estranged the very people who should have stood by me. That was bow Hasufin found purchase on my life. That was how he pried apart the allegiances that supported me. I became unjust in my own heart. Don’t disbelieve your friends, young King.

Never go dream-wandering with him. You dare not. And I know that he will invite you.

–I hear you, sir. I do hear. But you withstood Hasufin. You fought  him.

–Oh, yes. But came the time I would not follow down his trail of questions and doubts. I said to myself—no, I need no more visions: my foresters would go to Ynefel and see what was the truth. But my foresters lost themselves in Marna and never came back. So after all I had only my doubts to keep me company; and I bartered with Hasufin. I said—take a year of my life, I’d see Ynefel again—if he would let me ask Mauryl two questions. He showed me the tower. I thought I was so clever. I asked Mauryl in this dream: Lord Wizard, when will you keep your promise? And Mauryl was angry, because he knew at once how and with what help I had come there. He told me the price was far too dear. But I asked my question, all the same: I asked him when he’d keep his promise, and I asked him how I should recover my faith; and he said only, I shall keep it when I will, and when I must, no sooner. As for your faith, it matters not to me. After that the dream stopped. All the dreams stopped. But after all that, I was never sure even of that answer, you see, because it was Hasufin’s magic that had taken me there, and Hasufin’s voice that whispered ever afterward in my dreams. I lost all certainty, that was what it did to me. Mauryl was right, that my faith was my affair. My faith was that you would not come in my lifetime, no more than in my father’s. My faith was that I should die sonless—and I shall; Hasufin foretold to me that Elwynor should be thrown into civil war when I die—and I had faith in that. So two of my lords have raised armies, and now a third bids to do so—all demanding my daughter so that they dare claim my place. In desperation I sent even to the Marhanen, as my last hope to secure my daughter’s safety and to preserve the realm against a Marhanen conquest by arms. I hoped—I hoped—he would come here.

The Regent’s voice faded.

–Sir? Tristen called to him, and took a firmer grip on his hand, which became like gossamer in his, and impossible to feel. —Lord Regent, what will you? What shall I do for you?

–I must not become a bridge for Hasufin to any other place. I listened to him too long, you understand, and I fear—I fear he will lay hold on me. For that reason I came here. I must be buried here in Althalen, where Hasufin is buried. I came here to fight him—on ground sacred to him. Make them understand. Make my daughter understand—

–Sir! The old man slipped from his hold. He reached out, and the old man caught his hand again, but oh, so weakly.

Then it seemed to him he saw Althalen standing as it had once stood, and that years reeled past them, or that they spun together through the years.

–Listen now, the old man said, compelling his attention. Listen. In my father’s time, in the reign of the Last King’s father, an infant died; and came alive again when they came to bury him. Do you know that story?

–No, lord Regent. Shadow had wrapped close about them both and the old man seemed dimmed by it, sent into grays—but his own hands blazed bright.

–Hasufin could not do for himself what Mauryl did for you. Hasufin could only steal the helpless, infant dead, and grow as a child grows-but you—you are a marvelous piece of work, a theft from Death itself, flesh and bone long since gone to dust—Oh, gods! Oh, gods! —Oh, gods protect us! I know you! You are not that lost, dead prince—you are not. I do guess what Mauryl has called!

–What is my name, sir? Who was I? Tell me! Don’t leave!

But the old man broke free of his hold and the Shadows drew back in turmoil. The old man blazed bright, held his hand uplifted and said a Name he could not hear, a Name that went echoing out into echoes the sounds of which he could not untangle, and for an instant he feared the old man had deceived him about his strength: the old man was fearsome, and blinding bright.

–Most of all– the old man said, do not fail in justice, lord King!

Love as you can, forgive as you can, but justice and vision are a king’s great duties! Never forget it!

The Shadows began to circle in like birds, alighting about them, thicker and thicker—bad behavior, he would chide his pigeons in the loft.

He would chase them like pigeons—he would call on Owl and rescue the old man–    “You!” someone said, and seized his arm and shook him. “You! -This is wizardry! Stop him! Someone for the gods’ sake stop him!”

He looked up, startled, exchanging the rush of Shadows for surrounding night and a murmur of angry voices about him. “Guard the old man!” he called out to anyone who would hear. “He’s in danger! Help him!”

He could not tell if they understood at all. He heard voices declaring he had worked some harm on their lord, and some spoke for killing him.

Lines on the earth, Mauryl had said. Spirits had to respect them.

Windows, Mauryl had said to him, windows and doors were special places. Mauryl had spoken of secrets that masons knew. And masons had built these ruins. When he looked for other lines, those lines showed them selves, still bright in the gray space, clear as clear could be, glowing brighter and brighter to his searching for them. He saw one crossing beneath him as he began to follow the tracery they offered, lines far more potent than the hasty circle unskilled Men had made, lines of masons offering him a path along them, to doors and windows that masons had laid.

But search as he would through this maze, he could not find the old man. There were abundant Shadows, flitting about in confusion, and he could see nothing but the lines, nothing of company in his vicinity. He had never asked the old man what the Shadows were, and it seemed now a grievous omission. He called out again, Lord Regent! Do you hear me?

He heard a murmur then like the sound of voices. He looked back in the direction from which he had come and did not see the place he had left until he looked for it to be there. And in the blink of an eye—he was overwhelmed and buffeted with voices, and tried to know where the old man was, here, as well as in the gray place.

–Where is the lord Regent? he asked, and there came to him, echoing like the axe blows off the walls, the answer: Dead, dead, dead.

“Wizard!” Voices came through the dark. “He killed him! He bewitched him!”

Then one shouted,

“Send Cefwyn’s man with the lord Regent!”

“Hold!” someone cried then, and silence fell.

It was the man called Tasien, with two other lords.

“He killed the Regent!” a man said. “Ye didn’t see ’is eyes, m’lord. He was sittin’ and sittin’ and starin’ like to turn a man to stone. He’s cursed him. Kill ’im before he kills us all!”

“The lord Regent is scant moments dead,” Tasien said. “For the gods’ good grace, do your lady the courtesy of awaiting her orders.”

“Wrapped in Marhanen arms,” one of the lords said. “A wizard, besides, and have we not suffered enough from wizards? Strike off his head! This is no king of ours. It’s a Marhanen trick!”

It was clearly his head in question, and he knew he must do something desperate if it came to that, but Tasien—Tasien, who did not like him—said, “Wait for the lady’s word. Keep this man safe, I say, or answer to me.”

Tasien and two other men went away toward the tent, and left him in the care of the others in the starlight. He only knew individuals by the edges of their clothing and their gear. They had no faces to him. They spoke to him in quieter, more respectful terms: “Lord,” they called him, and said, “You sit there, lord wizard,” directing him to sit again on a section of the old wall, under their watch.

He saw no gain in arguing with them. He had had experience of guards who had orders, and he avoided looking at them—nor did he venture into the gray place: he only remained subtly aware of it.

But the Shadows had gotten their comeuppance, that was one of Uwen’s words: he felt that the old man was safe in some unassailable way, and had crossed a threshold of some Line invisible to him and unreachable. The old man had not lost. And perhaps, he thought, this time with a tingle of his skin and an inrush of breath, perhaps Mauryl had not.

Perhaps he had come where he had to be, and perhaps he had not failed, either. He no more knew where to go from here, and how to persuade the Regent’s men—nor dared he think that the Shadows of Althalen were powerless to do harm to him or to Mauryl’s intentions.

Hasufin marshaled and commanded the Shadows in this place—but it seemed to be the Regent’s purpose to contest him. The old man had been fighting Mauryl’s fight for years. And waiting for him. His King, the old man had called him. What was he to do with that? Clearly these men had no such notion.

More, there were dangers attached to this place, both in the gray place, and in the world of substance. Uwen he was certain was looking for him, and in the dark, and with their distress over the loss of the lord Regent, the archers might not restrain themselves for an ordinary-looking soldier and a band of Cefwyn’s guard. The lady might prevent disaster, if she would listen, but she was refusing to see what the old man had seen—she had been refusing steadfastly, trying to hold him in life and to keep him with her, and, wrong though that had been, it was not as wrong as other things she might decide to do. Removing the lord Regent from this Place, if he understood what the lord Regent had tried to tell him, would free Hasufin to act as he pleased and work whatever harm he pleased without whatever hindrance the lord Regent might have been to him. These men must not listen to Hasufin. She must not.

Cefwyn’s Ninévrisé. That was the other matter. Somehow and suddenly there were too many Kings.

He had ridden out to listen to the world and not the clamor of voices. He had ridden out hoping to understand answers—but another world opened under his feet, and purposes he had never guessed turned out to involve him.

I shall not harm Cefwyn, he had sworn to himself. I shall not harm

Uwen.

And even that simple, desperate promise came back to him tangled and changed.

Bridges, for certain: with decking in one case hidden near them on the Elwynim side of the river, and with new timbers stained dark and with smith-work cleverly concealed along the stone oak the old bridges, making a bed ready to receive decking. That meant the bridges which looked stripped of surface and unusable could become a highroad into Amefel within hours of the engineers setting to work, and which of several bridgeheads the Elwynim might use could be settled in strategy at the very last hour it was possible for them to move troops into position.