Текст книги "Fortress in the Eye of Time"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 33 (всего у книги 47 страниц)

It was supposed to keep him constantly apprised of events on the river, and damn it, the system, like any new system, began with problems: the messengers from two of the three sites had come trailing in, one two hours late, complaining of heavy rain, and the other confessing that he had mistaken an intersection of roads in the dark and the bad weather and ridden an hour and more along a road that proved to lead to a sleeping and terrified village.

But the rider from Emwy-Arys never had made it in at all. He hoped it was for as silly a reason, but it was making him increasingly concerned-the man never had shown up, and now, at mid-afternoon, he reckoned he could begin looking for the return of the messenger who had to check on the messenger.

And if that man failed, they could assume that their entire scheme had worked and that something had gone very wrong on the section of border nearest Marna, the section where they had patrols out, the section where his father had been ambushed, and where they had a village of dubious loyalty.

If something had happened to that messenger, (and he was down to asking Emuin whether he could see that matter, once Emuin’s headache subsided) it meant a siege of Henas’amef, he would wager, before snowfall, the Elwynim intending to disrupt the harvest and prevent Henas’amef from storing adequate food, as well as to rampage through the villages during a time when the roads did not make relief easy.

It meant, of course, that the Elwynim disrupted their own harvest by taking men away from the farms, but if in years previous they had had the foresight to hold reserves of their grain, they could bring it from Elwynor, managing the extended supply that Grandfather had declared was the most important item to have secured: Never rely on the farmers for food, was another of Grandfather’s rules; it makes the farmers mad, gives your enemy willing reports, and it never amounts to what you think it will once you most need it.

Grandfather was silent on the problems of feeding the farmers of Amefel while the armies of five provinces and all the enemy camped on their fields and their sheep-meadows—when the Amefin were farmers and shepherds of the chanciest loyalty in all Ylesuin. As well the King did stand on their pastures; holding Amefel otherwise would not be possible.

And damn Efanor’s Quinalt priest, who had been sniffing around the local market, and had this very morning, in these unsettled times, had the town guard arrest a simples-seller who happened to have the old Sihhé coinage for amulets in her stock. Efanor of course supported the priest.

Efanor–    The door opened, a guard holding the door and a windblown, panting page unable to get out his message. “Your Majesty!” the boy said, turning a bow into a hands-on-knees gasp for wind. He had run the stairs, by the look of him. “Your Majesty. The Elwynim—”

It was a cursed bad word on which to run out of breath.

“—with banners and all, coming on the gates, Your Majesty!”

“The whole army?”

A wild shake of the head. “No, Your Majesty. No.” Another space for breath. “With the Ivanim, down by their camp. They’ll be coming in the gates and right through the town next! So the messenger said!”

“Will they?” Cefwyn did not think so. He pushed back from the table and levered himself to his feet. “Boy, run down to the stable, have horses saddled. Taywys—” That for the guard who had brought the boy.

“Advise the Lord Commander, and have men to ride down with me.

Go!” The leg hurt and he did not look forward to the stairs. He had arranged his whole day so that he need not go down those steps today, and now the damned page had gone, the guard had gone, the servants were not at hand, and, needing to dress for outdoors, he was daunted by the prospect of doing it alone: he had begun to measure such small distances as that to the door and back as he had only a fortnight ago measured distances between provinces.

But the whole Elwynim troop could be riding through the gates and measuring his inadequate town walls if he delayed to call Annas and the pages and put on the prudent mail shirt or the elegant velvet coat with the royal crest. If he had to deal with some Elwynim demand for territory or a challenge to combat, he could cut a martial enough figure on horseback with a soldier’s cloak slung about him, and damn what was beneath.

He took the cursed stick in hand, ordered the door guard as he passed to go back and fetch his cloak, and started down the hall without it: he declined to descend the stairs carrying its weight or having it swirling across his view of the steps when his footing was unsure as it was. The one guard hovered while he descended, and the Olmern lad, Denyn Kei’s-son, who had gone back to fetch his cloak, overtook him before he reached the bottom, offering it to him as he went.

“I’11 put it on outside,” he said curtly to Denyn, and to the guard who had dogged him down the steps as if he could have rescued him from behind in a fall: “Don’t flutter ’round me, damn it. If you’d be of use, get in front.” He thought about descending the outside steps without the stick, but he considered the spectacle and, worse, the omen of the King of Ylesuin tumbling down them onto the courtyard, and let prudence rule.

The whole descent took long enough that a horse was saddled and ready for him at the bottom—not Danvy: Danvy was down in pasture, recuperating from his cuts and bruises, and Haman’s chief assistant had given him that damned blaze-faced, showy black Efanor had ridden, when they had saddled everything in the stable to remount Efanor and his company: Synanna, —who was a good horse in most points, but tall; and facing that climb to the stirrup, in which he had to use the help of the guard, he thanked the gods it was his right, not his left, leg wounded.

He handed his stick down to the groom with an order to keep it for him, and took the cloak the guard handed up, steadying Synanna’s foolery with his feet and his knees: his right leg hurt with the pains of hell as he slung the cloak about him and used his knee to steady Synanna from a compensatory shift sideways.

More, the horse was sore, having been ridden that breakneck course for Emwy the last time out of the stable. Consequently he had his ears back and was going to take every chance to have things his way on this outing. The horse was looking for excuses as he rode to the gate with five of the guard clattering after—and the King’s standard-bearer riding to catch up, still unfurling the King’s red banner, at which Synanna threw his head and acted the thorough fool under the gate arch.

Another horseman overtook them there and fell in beside him: Idrys, on black Drugyn, this time having heard the summons. The standard-bearer and the bearer of Idrys’ personal banner made it to their position in the same general flurry of riders.  “I had the report,” Idrys said.

“Gods know what this regards,” he said. They passed through the town streets and on the cobbles Synanna wanted to drop into his worst gait, which took work to prevent; it hurt, and stopping it hurt, and he was in far less pleasant a mood as he reached the lower town and saw the town gate standing wide—to welcome the Elwynim, one supposed. He was not thoroughly gracious as first Cevulirn and a small number of riders, with the White Horse standard and pennons and all, rode up and joined them at that open gate.

Then Umanon and three of his lieutenants arrived, making a collection of banners enough to make a brave show for a King whose wounded leg and whose temper could not stand much more of Synanna’s jolting trot.

But his two loyal lords might have shut the gates and met the damned Elwynim where they could not get a good look inside or a head count on all the camps down that lane.

“Pass the word to all the watches,” he said to the gate-guards. “No foreign banner and no foreign courier is to pass this gate until an officer of the Dragon Guard comes down himself and takes charge of them. Do you hear that?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” came the answer; “Yes, Your Majesty,” came in awestruck tones at his back as he rode out westward with his growing company.

And there on the muddy road, plain as a horse in a henyard, were the Elwynim, with the banners of three earls behind the black and white and gold Tower banner of the Regent of Elwynor.

And with them, the pennons of six squads of the Ivanim light horse.

That was much better; Cevulirn’s men were escorting the visitors in.

There was Uwen Lewen’s-son, up at the fore. And best of all, Tristen, thank the blessed gods: he had no idea how all three elements had gotten together, but he was both vastly relieved and disquieted anew, and for the same reason.

Synanna went into his bone-jarring trot in his momentary lapse. He corrected it, and in the abating of pain, and past the cracking satin of his own red banner, saw a black-haired woman in a mail shirt and a billow of mud-spattered blue skirt that blew back on white linen—a woman, his startled gaze informed him, who rode preceded only by the Regent’s standard-bearer, ahead of the other banners; more, the Regent’s crown flashed in that mass of dark hair—and he knew that hair, that heart-shaped face that had resided for months in a keepsake chest in his bedchamber.

“The Regent’s daughter, in the flesh,” Idrys said, coldest reason. “No sign of the lord Regent. And with Ynefel. What have we knocking on our gates, m’lord King?”

“I’11 wait to see,” he muttered, while his thoughts were flitting wildly to Tristen’s safety, bridges spanning the Lenfialim, the missing messenger, the whereabouts of the lord Regent Uleman, the young lady’s distractingly pretty and apparently unconscious display—and her reasons for approaching the gates of Henas’amef.

To pursue a royal marriage by passage of arms? He did not think it likely. But she was certainly far deeper into Amefel than any lordly delegation reasonably ought to come without his leave. It was an extravagant challenge of his good nature, which the Elwynim might guess was not good at all at the moment.

And Tristen showed up in this business?

Trust Tristen’s naive confidence. And damn Idrys if he dared remind him now he had predicted Tristen’s blithe honesty could be his bane someday.

Their two parties reached a distance at which their banner-bearers mutually stopped for protocols, and he rode up even with his banner, with Idrys riding beside him and Cevulirn and Umanon and their standard-bearers staying behind him. The young woman similarly advanced to the Regent’s standard, and one man rode to her side.

“We’ve come to speak with the King,” that man called out.

“Stay back,” he said to Idrys, and raised the wager by riding forward of Idrys. Only his banner-bearer advanced with him.

There was consternation on the opposing man’s part, a frown on the lady’s face as her captain put out a hand, clearly wishing her to make no reciprocal advance. But the young woman rode forward alone, and the Regent’s standard-bearer advanced with her.

“I am King Cefwyn,” he said as she stopped her horse within a lance’s length of him. The portrait-painter had not lied, never mind the mud and the mail coat: the image that had haunted his more pensive evenings was facing him in life, a face pale and wind-stung and afraid, and a resolve not giving backward a step.

“The lord of Ynefel has made himself our hostage,” she said, “against your grant of safe conduct for me and my men back across the border.”

“I shall certainly grant that. I would be obliged, however, if you returned me the lord of Ynefel and accepted my simple word to that effect, gracious lady. Am I correct? Do I recognize you, or have you a sister?”

“I am the Regent.” The voice quavered slightly. “My father is dead, last evening, Your Majesty. I have come to ask your forbearance for our presence in your lands, and your permission to fortify a camp in your territory.”

So Emuin was right. It was a sad event for the lady to report, a grief more recent than his own. It was, moreover, a very precise military term, doubtless her advisors’ idea, which she had been told to ask in its precise wording. He wondered if she understood it.

“To fortify a camp,” he echoed. His view of blowing skirts and white, mud-spattered linen was competing with the consideration of Elwynim in view of his very vulnerable town. “I give you my sincere condolences, and ask why fortified, Your Most Honorable Grace.”

“I understand that Elwynim crossed the river against your father the King up in Emwy district.”

“Yes,” he said, not seeing how this answered his question. “They did.

In collusion with the Aswyddim. We recovered shields from that field, and wounded now dead, three of them of Lower Saissonnd.”

“Caswyddian,” she declared without hesitation. “Lord Caswyddian of Saissonnd. A rebel against my father—a rival of Aséyneddin.”

He had heard rumors, he knew that name and had marked it down as a man who would pay in Heryn’s fashion, did he turn out to have been on that field at Emwy, or to have known of it—and did he ever fall into his hands; but he did not wish to tell her what he had heard or how much he knew. “So you bring Elwynor’s troubles onto Amefin soil, and want to fortify a camp, making us, I suppose, your allies of a sort, certainly as Aséyneddin will see it. That could cause us trouble. And, forgive my suspicion, Your Grace, but of how many men do you propose to make this camp?”

“These men—” There was the least tremor in the lady’s chin, the first thorough fracture in her composure. “—these fifteen men, sir. Thirty-three were camped with my father. A band we think was Caswyddian’s attacked us last night and half my men stayed to guard our retreat, so that I might remain alive to make this request—in which regard, I would ask you, if you would, if you would be so gracious, should they chance into your hands—place them under the same safe conduct.”

That last seemed both sincere and from a lady not used to asking abject favors of strangers.

“I shall,” he said, “most gladly, and I shall advise my searchers to be careful. I must, however, advise you, Your Grace, that fifteen men hardly constitute a fortified camp, certainly none to strike fear into your enemies.”

“Fifteen men is what I have, Your Majesty. But if we could make that camp as a secure point, and send into Elwynor—”

“You can gain more men for your camp?”

“I am confident, sir.”

Confident, he believed not in the least. But it was a sensible plan, and a far better one than he had expected of a young woman in such a desperate situation. Whether or not it was her idea, she presented it with authority, used the right words—arid did know why the camp should be fortified. It was the Sihhé entrenchment, plain and simple: dig deep and hold on, then spread out.

More, she had not once appealed him in terms of the marriage proposal lying just uphill in his bedchamber, not so much as acknowledged it existed, nor asked for troops, nor requested alliance with Ylesuin. The mischief the artist had put into the eyes was all iron and fire today—gray, was the answer to what the artist had made ambiguous.

They were still ambiguous. Gray as morning mist. Gray as new iron.

The mouth had dimples at the corners, but they were part of the set of a determined jaw, which he would like to see in that other expression-gods, he knew this face. He had lived with this face. He was fascinated out of his good sense—so fascinated he had imagined beyond her proposed camp and her proposed recruitment of an unspecified number of Elwynim onto his side of the river to launch a war from his territory against her enemies—and not asking the number of men this Caswyddian and gods-knew-who-else might have across the river up there, and where his post rider might have disappeared to.

He needed to ask Tristen what he had seen. He needed to talk to the Ivanim captain about how what he had seen agreed with what the lady now Regent was saying. His leg was hurting and he was distracted by Synanna’s restlessness.

But it was toward late afternoon, the lady herself was the potential source of a great deal he wanted to know about the intentions of Elwynor, and he could hardly ask the Regent of Elwynor to camp in the orchard next the lord of Lanfarnesse, in the mud and the midst of apple harvest, with—he could see—no tents and a couple of horses with very scant baggage.

“Your Grace,” he said, “I shall consider your proposition. May I ask an indelicate question? Are you aware of a proposal and a medallion that your father sent to me?”

Her cold-stung cheeks were already blushed. The pink reached the rest of her face, and the frown stayed. “Since our messengers did not return to us, Your Majesty, and since you mention it, I can only surmise it did reach you, and that your silence spoke for you.”  “The messenger did not return to you.”

“No, sir. As others did not. Do you say this was not to your knowledge? That there are no Elwynim heads above your gates?”

Heryn, he thought, and damned him to very hell. “Lady, on those terms your courage in dealing with me is amazing. Will you marry me?”

The color fled. The lips parted—and clamped tight. “Sir.”

“Will you marry me?”

“You are mocking me.”

“On my most solemn oath, Lady Regent. I by no means mock you.

Your state cannot be more desperate. On the other hand, the bloody Marhanen does have troops at his disposal and wishes to assure peace on this frontier. What terms would you wish?”

The lips had relaxed, as if she were about to speak one word, and then another, and finally, on a deep breath: “I would agree to nothing, Your Majesty, without the advice of my own lords. They have given up their safety and risked their families to come here.”  “Their advice, but not their consent?”

“Majesty, I am in my own right Regent of Elwynor. And if you ask my terms, sir, they are that I be Regent of Elwynor, in my own right, and not subject to any authority of yours.”

“You have the most extravagant eyes.”

The eyes in question widened and sparked fire. “I am not to be mocked, sir.”

“I am a King more absolute, and can agree without my advisers, who will damn me to hell if I take such terms from you.”

“I shall take my safe conduct and ride to the border!”

“I said I agreed.”

The remarkable eyes blinked. Twice.

Cefwyn asked: “Did you talk to the lord of Ynefel? Do you find him pleasant, agreeable—somewhat mad?”  “You are mocking me, now.”

“I mock myself, dear lady; I see war inevitable if your rebels have their way, and wizardry is already with us. Things will not be for us what they were for our fathers. Mauryl Gestaurien is dead, my friend yonder is beyond all doubt Sihhé, and possibly your King—some do think so-who may be bent on having his kingdom, if he does not tomorrow take a fancy to some other pursuit.”

She took a large breath. “Sir! I—”

“But should you find yourself in that event without a realm to rule, I shall be glad to reconsider our pact of separate rule.”

“You are the most outrageous man I ever met!”

“Since you’ve met Tristen, I take that for a sweeping statement. —Do you accept?”

“You are mad, sir!”

“And?” He had almost seen the dimples. The look was in her eyes.

“I—shall consider it, with my advisers.”

“Your name is Nin6vris& Am I right?”

She stared, in deep offense. Then she laughed. “You know that!”

“One should always be sure. —In the meantime, while you’re considering-” He left all banter, and turned completely serious. “Will you and your advisers be my honored guests? I swear to your safety.”

Her anxious glance traveled to the heights and back again. “I put you on your honor, sir.” She gathered up the reins, began to turn her horse.

And looked back. “—Cefwyn. Is that your name?”  With which she rode briskly back to her men.

He shut his mouth, and rode back to his—to Idrys, in the main, but Umanon and Cevulirn were moving in.

“I’m going to marry her,” he said.

“My lord is not serious,” Idrys said.

“Tristen’s upstairs room for the lady—Tristen’s belongings are all downstairs, are they not? The adjacent quarters for the lords, the men disposed with them or elsewhere at their wish. Send ahead of us and set reliable servants to work on the details. The betrothal within a day or two, I swear to you.”

“My lord King,” Idrys began, and, in the presence of witnesses, fell prudently quiet.

“Oh, I’ve thought about it, Idrys. I have most seriously thought about it. The woman demands sole title to the Regency of Elwynor. I have more imminent concerns.” He cast a look at Umanon’s frowning face—and Cevulirn’s, but Cevulirn showed no more expression than usual. “I am not mad, sirs. This lady is an ally who has importunate suitors raiding our territory to have the better of each other. That will stop. I had far rather, if I must go to war, go to war to settle a permanent peace on this border, and if a marriage is the price of that peace, I shall.”  “They are Elwynim!” Umanon said.

“Patently. That is their use, Your Grace. A pious Quinalt lady will not get me a peaceful border. This lady will.”

Cevulirn had never batted an eye. As for Umanon, he knew how to reason with him: make it a plot, a scheme, a stratagem. Then Umanon understood.

He had thought, however, that shadow in the wind and sound of a horse moving quietly up beside him was Idrys’ standard-bearer. It was a different horse. It was Tristen on him, Tristen unshaven, mud-flecked and shadow-eyed.

“Gods,” Cefwyn said. “You startled me.”

“You will marry her,’ Tristen echoed, as if assuring himself of what he had heard. Tristen’s eyes were unwontedly opaque to him. Guarded.

Gray as the lady’s: he had never thought it until that instant, and a chill went with that awareness.

“I shall indeed marry her. —Ride with me. Tell me later what happened.” Whatever Tristen had been up to, he did not think it a story for Umanon’s sensitive ears and gossip-prone mouth. He wanted nothing of any of Tristen’s doings or the lady’s until he had Tristen in private. “Are our Elwynim going to ride with us, or not?”

There was apparent consternation among the Elwynim bunched together on the road. He could guess that at least one of the three lords was unconvinced of their safety and argued for a camp outside the walls.

“Lord Tasien is anxious about coming here,” Tristen said with his accustomed bluntness. “But she will do what she wishes to do.”

“And what is that?” he asked, before he remembered he wanted no news.

“To find men to fight the enemy, sir. Mauryl’s enemy.”

There was consternation on Umanon’s face. Even Cevulirn gave Tristen a troubled glance.

“A matter for council,” Cefwyn said quickly. Religious anxiety would be far more potent among the common soldiers than among their lords, but their lords’ response forecast the commons’. A moment ago he had been half in love. Cefwyn, the lady had said, as if their meeting were chance and he were any would-be lover with not a thought in his head but that pretty face.

The fact was she need not have been pretty. She needed to be the Regent of Elwynor. Better yet if she were at least publicly Quinalt.

Best for his peace of mind if he had not found those eyes suddenly so familiar, and so disturbing. He could not imagine why he had not realized in their ambiguity even in the portrait, that they might be gray—or recalled, when he had fallen under their spell and offered himself in marriage, that they were reputed, like that mass of black, black hair, as a Sihhé trait.

It was nothing he need fear, but, gods! how the whispers would run, even in Amefel, even by this evening.

The Elwynim joined them, and names were named, Lord Tasien of Cassissan; Lord Haurydd of High Saissonnd; Lord Ysdan of Ormadzaran ... names hitherto belonging to aged parchment and crooked trails of ink.

“My lords,” Cefwyn said, and could not resist a bow, ironic mockery of their clear apprehensions. “The bloody Marhanen bids you all welcome and hopes for your good opinion. Bear the Regent’s banner next to mine. Such are the terms the lady Regent requests, and Ylesuin will honor—whatever the lady requests. I cannot daunt her. I am resolved to please her.”

The Elwynim bowed. The lady, to his astonishment, blushed.

But he said to Idrys, as Synanna, on his casual mistouch of the reins, brushed Drugyn’s shoulder: “The west gate, for the gods’ sake, not the south. Bid someone remove the heads tonight.”

Cefwyn was completely occupied with the lords around him, and Tristen thought it a good time to keep silence. It was comfortable enough to ride with Uwen; and it was comfortable to be riding up a street he knew, among people who knew him.

But it was a long ride up that hill, with the townsfolk of Henas’amef turned out to stare and talk together, wide-eyed, at the display of Elwynim banners that he was sure they had never expected in their streets.

Then someone cried out, “Lord Sihhé!” and others took it up, crying

“Lord Sihhé!”

They did not cry out that way for the other lords. He had had his fill of being conspicuous, last night. He was tired, he was aching and, as certain as he had been not so long ago that he could not possibly bear the confines of his rooms and the mundane chatter of Uwen and his servants, he thought now that nothing could be more dear or more welcome to him.

The rain had come down on them most of the night and again during the morning. Petelly was switching his ears and clearly had honeyed oats in mind, and Uwen’s borrowed Ivanim mount had protested strenuously at the gate, knowing that he belonged down in the Ivanim camp, as all but a few of their Ivanim escort went aside to their well-earned rest. The Ivanim had come with provisions, as the Elwynim had, so they had not gone hungry; and they had rested on the journey—at least three times; but only once, toward dawn, had they stopped for enough time for men and horses alike to catch a little sleep.

It had not been enough—nor real rest. Tristen had feared sleep as he had not feared the ghosts that walked the earth of Althalen, and sat half drowsing, content to watch Uwen’s rest as Uwen had sworn himself willing to watch his—but Uwen had very quickly nodded off in the quiet and the stillness of the wind that, after the gale against their wet clothing, had seemed like warmth.

The lady had dreamed. The lady had dreamed of children’s games, and children’s songs, and the childish voices haunted him no less than the ghosts, rhymes about blackbirds and skipping steps, and memories of rain-puddles and gray stone.

They terrified him. He knew that they were her memories and not his.

And in them she had felt small, which he never had. Their memories were so much the same, or hers had delved into his, and diverged again, into being she, and being he, and living in a bright hall and fearing the dark, and living in a keep that always ran and rippled with it.

Ynefel touched his drowsing thoughts with poignant warmth, with longing to see his familiar loft and the stairs to his room, and to hear Mauryl’s familiar step-and-tap; but the lady had waked from his dream with an outcry, afraid of the stone faces, and Tasien had asked her what was wrong.

A nightmare, she had answered Lord Tasien, and hugged her cloak about her and shivered.

That had more than stung: it wounded him; and he had sat watching her while she fell back to sleep, thinking, in his own fears, how very strange it was to have been so small as she had been, and to have weighed so little on the earth, and yet to have enjoyed the same pleasures as he treasured—except, except dodging around the stone walls, and looking at the faces, and thinking of them as familiar.

She had never known her father was a wizard.., or whatever it was that gave her father the strength he had to travel that gray place. He had wondered once if everyone could go there. He had wondered whether it was a place Emuin had made for them alone-or that Emuin had let him into; and here at least was someone as surprised and dismayed by that place as he had been.

It made him feel.., older, somehow. It made him wish he could give her in one instant all that he knew, and have someone then who would always understand the things he saw and how he saw them; it made him wish that he could leave all the others behind in camp and go somewhere alone and tell her and ask her.., so many things, so many questions that stirred tonight in the grass, in the leaves, in the memories of Ynefel’s creakings at night, the force of a gathering storm of Words and Names and so, so much about the world that he might almost understand if events and dangers had not swept him from one thing to the other. It was like the pigeons carried on the storm: they stayed aloft, they flew, but they rode the gusts, not choosing their own path so much as choosing the violence that went where they wished to go; they dived at the last into the safety of the loft on the blast of the rain, and a boy who was never truly a boy waited for them, with the wind blowing straws about and blasting the rain in through the broken boards—that boy called them home to the loft, waved his arms and called out Hurry! hurry! never knowing they were helpless to do more than they did.

He could not have been different than he had been. He could not have been the child that the lady had been. He could not remember the long ago that people kept attributing to him. He could find only dark before the light in Mauryl’s keep.

The banners snapped and thumped in a wind that had never warmed with the sun. He saw, past their intersecting folds, that they were coming to the western gate, the stable gate. They passed beneath the arch, and into the stable-court by the shortest way, and to the western steps of the Zeide, where grooms ran to take the horses, Cefwyn’s first, and the lady’s, Cevulirn’s and Umanon’s, and the other lords’. A boy came running to take Petelly’s reins.

Tristen dismounted quietly, and Uwen got down. He saw a boy hand Cefwyn a stick, which he did use, and seemed for a moment to be in pain, but Cefwyn was at hand as Ninévrisé slid down in a flurry of skirts: so was Tasien there to take the lady’s arm. Cefwyn and Lord Tasien were polite to each other, and Lord Haurydd and Lord Ysdan were there, all of them being polite, all of them concerned about the lady.