Текст книги "Fortress of Eagles"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

“Your late father, gods give him rest, upheld the Quinalt, and did not accept a breath of witchery in his court.”

“Nor I! Dare you say so?”

The Patriarch, being a canny old man, was not set back, however lightning-rattled. “I say that wickedness is afoot and it will seek out the unwary, Your Majesty. It will find doors. It will insinuate itself at any opportunity. It was lately potent in Amefel.”

“It was lately potent beyondAmefel.”

“In Elwynor!”

“By news just now arrived, we may spend a winter knowing Tasmôrdensits in Ilefínian killing every man who favors Her Grace’s cause, and if you would surmise where we might look for sorcery, let me remind Your Holiness sorcery killed my lady’s father, killed her loyal men, and made her an exile in this court. If I had had a little less discourse on the height of my seat and the colors of the hangings for harvest-tide, if I had had my reliable reckonings out of the villages faster, and not bungled beyond all redemption, if we had had the enthusiasm of the Quinalt behind this war, we might have done something to prevent this disaster that now confronts us. Sorcery, aye, sorcery—”

“The coin—”

“Did we search every purse? I think not, Holy Father. But I know that Lord Tristen’s gift was pure! I gave him the coin myself, since he had none, Holy Father. I gave him a purse of good Guelen pennies, and such as he had, he gave to you. Wherein some traitor to me in Guelemara attempted to foment disharmony at this hinge point of the year, or whether the enemy of Her Grace had a hand in it, in such dire news from across the river, I hold the action on the one hand impious and hostile sorcery, and on the other hand treasonous, Holy Father!“

He ran out of wind and words alike and lost the thread of his thought altogether. He had heard his father’s rages at his advisers and as those went, this one had its effect; but temper passed beyond policy and overwhelmed his reason. There was utter silence, as his brother and the Patriarch alike sifted through that spate for pebbles safe to pick up. A candle spat. It was that deep a hush.

Two deep breaths forewarned the Patriarch’s intent to speak. “I assure Your Majesty, we are fully in agreement on sorcery, but the Lord of Ynefel isnot willingly Quinalt, however noble Your Highness’s effort.” This last with a nod to Efanor.

“He is no further from us than Bryaltine,” Cefwyn said, straining at the truth, which was that Tristen knew less of any of the three faiths than he did of pig-keeping.

“But a Sihhë soul,” the Patriarch said, “if he has a soul. Which is to debate…”

“If he had not a soul, how could a wizard have gotten him out of death? What did Mauryl bring back to this world, if not a soul?”

“He said the devotions,” Efanor ventured, bending all those years of priestly study, arguing with the Holy Father on Tristen’s behalf: it was a gallant effort, and Cefwyn drew a breath of gratitude.

“Yet,” the Patriarch said, “sorcery gained power with that coin—”

“Bother the coin!” He gathered up the scraps of his eloquence. “Your Holiness, the Quinalt is our strength, our reliance, and to make a breach between Crown and Quinalt, who would benefit? I don’t doubt that one might have ridden the other, but it was not Tristen. Look to Elwynor!”

“Yet…” The old man trembled, wobbled, and still, the adder, attacked: “Yet… to bring that banner into the shrine… Your Majesty, wemay see the worth in the Lord Warden, but the Lord Warden is not even a manin the sense that Men are Men, and to bring those symbols, charged with sorcery, into the very shrine… I did fear, and objected, if Your Majesty will recall. Therefore, our defenses were breached.”

“Nonsense!—Forgive me, Holy Father, but nonsense! A good Guelen lady stitched that banner, as you name it. It did not come from Ynefel, not a stitch that the Lord Warden owns came from Ynefel, no medals, medallions, coins, cantrips, nor spells that Your Holiness ever detected or complained of, which Your Holiness can as well say in public quicklyand in that hall, if Your Holiness has any care of my goodwill.”

“Yet…” the Patriarch said.

“Yet.” He recovered breath and composure. This was nota religious man. This was a man of temporal power, affrighted by the manifestation of nature, a man frightened into belief in his own predecessors’ creation in these hours of darkness and lightning strokes.

“The Star and Tower are not benign, lord king. There will be talk.”

“Which you can quell at will, Your Holiness.”

“The Crown and the Quinalt must stand together against sorcery, Your Majesty. But that bannercannot be sanctified. I feared no good would come of it. The gods themselves failed to sustain the roof.“

The hell with the roof, he wanted to say, and glared, but dared not. That was the thing: he dared not. There were limits which neither he nor the Patriarch had yet searched out with each other. He only prayed for the pragmatic man to rise to reason with him, the old man he knew.

But that old man had heard the report out of Amefel, and gods forfend he believed his own sermons, to think he and the gods of his sermons could match the real, rolling darkness on Lewen field.

“This is a sign,” the Patriarch said. “Very clearly a sign. Your Majesty, I stood beneath that roof. I heard the strike! My ears still ring with it! The people in the square, sheltering from the rain, they all fled in terror. What will they say around about the town?”

“What the Quinalt bidsthem say,” he said angrily. Gods forfend, too, that the old man should take to faith in his own gods at this pass. “The Quinalt can mend this rumormongering.”

“Not against this, Your Majesty. We cannot lieto the people. We cannot ignore sorcery! We cannot shelter it, or permit it in the sacred precinct. I cannot countenance it.”

“Are you telling me, Holy Father, that you will barthe Lord Warden, in mycourt, from your door?”

“I beg Your Highness not test the gods.”

“This is treason, Holy Father. Look out, or you will discover my grandfather in me. Do not dareto tell me…”

“Brother.” There was starkest fear in Efanor’s face. “I beg you. Isthis what you wish? Dare we have this division? I was not at Lewen field. I had not that honor. But I heard the reports, Holy Father. I know that the Lord Warden helped overcome sorcery.”

“With sorcery,” the Patriarch said hoarsely. “ Sorcery with sorcery, that is the point, lord king. You wish me to bless this marriage, you wish me to say grace over a union with the Lady Regent, which while unorthodox offers a hope of the gods’ grace over the far shore, but in the Lord Warden you have an association I fear owes more to Teranthineadvice than mine. —We are willing to bless this union, Your Majesty, do not mistake me!”

The last was just in time. He had drawn breath to reply.

“—And shall,” the Patriarch hastened to say, all but choking on the words. “And shall, with all our good offices, Your Majesty. But how muchof the strange and sorcerous will you ask good folk to countenance? Where shall we draw the line, —but at Assurnbrook, as we have always drawn it? You say that I can prevent the gossip. What shall we do? Fly to every house, of every common man who ran from the public square tonight as bits of the roof came down, and bid the commons not say a Sihhë presence cursed us? How shall I say, in all observances, ‘ bless the king and his court’when one of that court is Sihhë? How shall I say, ‘ strike down the unbeliever’when he sits in the congregation? How shall I say, ‘ the cursed signs and symbols be far from your houses’when that banner stands in brazen contradiction?”

His Holiness had named the real argument when he had said, more Teranthinethan my advice. Therewas the old fox he knew. There was the old man’s concern: Emuin’sinfluence with the new king. Now they were down to realities.

“Your liturgy is no older than my grandfather. Change the words.”

“Your Majesty cannot ask that!”

“If Your Holiness wants his roof patched, change the damned words! ”

“This is an unseemly discussion! ”

“This is a royal order. A command of the Crown. Dare you deny me? I say Tristen is an ally, Tristen is our friend, and a defender of this realm. Do not attempt my patience, Holy Father. Do not dare do it. He stands where Ynefel has always stood, and I would recommend Your Holiness not tamper with that bulwark.”

“I say I cannot prevent the gossip, Your Majesty! I say no one can call back the lightning bolt, undo what eyes have seen in the square tonight, or on Lewen field. There will be disaster. Mark me, if there is one stain, one taint, now… what if it taint the marriage?”

The old fox, Cefwyn said to himself, seeing the look in the old man’s eyes. The malevolent old fox. The man who had damned near reigned duringhis father’s reign, and the last years of his grandfather’s, at least where peace in the realm was the issue. He was well capable of having dropped that coin in, himself, even after the lightning stroke. He was a dangerous man. He had always been a dangerous man, snuggling right up next Marhanen warmth, looking for advantage from the Marhanen, most chancy in allegiance, seeing he had, now, a hostage.

Ninévrisë. The wedding.

Oh, this was a fitadviser for his grandfather.

Dared he think… daredhe suspect that this priest had always ruled the rulers, by seizing upon and increasing their fears—fears of ghosts, in his grandfather; fears of his own heir in his father, driving the wedge between father and son, brother and brother?

The thought came on him like the levin stroke next door, stopped his breath and robbed him of clear thought. He had hated Aséyneddin, who had slaughtered men of his, but that was war. He had not been fond of the assassins whose heads had graced the fortress gate in Henas’amef, but that was political, and they had been Aséyneddin’s men, following a lord’s orders. He had hated Sulriggan, and Heryn Aswydd. But had thispoisonous man been the author of his father’s fear of him, setting him away from him, always, always at arm’s length, so that Inéreddrin had preferred Efanor to his dying breath?

He looked at his hands, resting joined across his belt, studied the sword scars on his knuckle, the lesson he wouldnot learn, no matter how many times master Peygan had whacked right past his guard with exactly the same move.

He had learned. He needed no one these days to hit him three and four times. He looked up at His Holiness, —smiled his grandfather’s smile, and saw his brother blanch and the Holy Father’s jaw set.

Did he need the Holy Father? The Holy Father might hold his fiefdom from the gods, but he needed the blessing of the Marhanen king as much as the king needed the Quinalt’s.

But later? After the wedding?

“A narrow path,” he said, “a narrowpath, Your Holiness, royal disfavor on one side, in which, who knows, I mightfind a new Patriarch and Your Holiness might suffer a fatal indigestion. Consider your path: royal disfavor on the one hand and a wakening of the Old Magic on the other. Sorcery, you fear—so say I, and I tell you, I will have myself a new priestbefore I suffer any discommodation in my marriage, in this campaign, in the installation of Her Grace as Regent of Elwynor.“

The Holy Father’s face had gone stark and pale as ivory. A vein throbbed in his temple. The thunder still rumbled overhead.

“Your Majesty is close to blasphemy.”

“Dare I suggest, Your Holiness, that Your Holiness has seized marvelously on opportunity tonight. I daresay some priest would confess, if questioned stringently, and, oh, I would not stick at that to get that confession, never doubt me. Such a man would swear that Your Holiness bade him obtain a Sihhë coin among the small practitioners of magics that still flourish, yes, even in Guelessar, even in the heart of Quinalt piety. I know I could find such a man and his tale would be whatever I wish. The lightning was only opportune.”

“Brother,” Efanor said, overwhelmed, “for the good gods…”

“Oh, let us not couple good and gods in this priest’s company. His Holiness would create a breach between himself and me only if he were an utter fool—which he is not. Being no fool, nor dealing with one, he will bless the wedding and make very certain there are no ill omens or offending liturgy in the ceremony. He has overreached himself, coming perilously close to extinction. Let us see if we can arrive at a definition of our positions, we two, tonight. Now.”

“I advised two kings, most gracious Majesty, I counseled your grandfather and your father. I advise you now for your good, that the Quinalt can find exception for everything you ask. Everything but one. Nor can I unsay what is being said in half the houses in Guelemara tonight. If Your Majesty wishes not to see a breach between Quinalt and Crown, let him not place the Quinaltine at odds with him! The northern barons are in doubt of this marriage. The Quinaltine, on Your Majesty’s part, would stand firmly with Your Majesty, but cannot do so with the presence of that banner and such allies! ”

“I shall value Your Holiness’s view,” Cefwyn said, coldly purposeful as the old man was purposeful in every well-prepared word. “Her Grace has a strong right to inherit of her father the Regent, and now this new Usurper is advancing on her capital… with wizardous assistance, Holy Father. Threatening all of us. As witness your roof. Tristen it was who came to us with the first warning of sorcery, Mauryl’s heir, and would I had understood that warning earlier than I did, but I suggest if Your Holiness canmuster the wherewithal to turn sorcery from the Quinalt roof, Your Holiness should consider doing so quite urgently. Even so great a wizard as Mauryl Gestaurien did not withstand what assailed us at Lewenbrook and could not safeguard his tower from destruction or his own life from extinction. Dare you take up the battle—without the Warden of Ynefel?”

“The prayers of the righteous are not to be despised.”

“Excellent. Pray away and keep a supply of roof tiles. Meanwhile we stand a chance of settling the Elwynim succession in a lasting peace, gods send us common sense. As Mauryl’s heir, Tristen opposed hostile sorcery by force of arms on Lewen field. And did Your Holiness wish to hear us who wereon Lewen field, I do strongly believe that we are appointed one vital chance, byMauryl’s defense, and that the gods have guided us to this marriage, these unlikely allies—”

“Do not lesson us on the gods, Your Majesty!”

“Do not lesson meon policy! Sorcery has bent all its strength to prevent this marriage!”

“To gainthis marriage, equally well!”

“Oh, no, no, no, you dare not say so much, Holy Father. I assure you, you dare not say so much. I was there, Holy Father. Sorcery threw the rebel Aseynéddin at us, at Lewenbrook. That failed. Now it advances on Ilefínian through Tasmôrden’s attack; and ifthat lightning bolt that descended on your roof is sorcery, then the prayers of the righteous did damned little to prevent it. Sorcery tried once to overthrow us. It tries to cast misfortune in the path of a marriage it does not want, Holy Father, and if there was by any remote chance some sorcerous transformation of a good Guelen penny, I suggest sorcerydid so precisely to discredit the heir of the Warden of Ynefel, who has fought against an enemy that—by the gods!—I shall send you to face in his stead, if you wish to replace Ynefel in the battle line. How say you to that, Holy Father? Dare you?“

Thathung in the air, and occasioned immediate reconsiderations and retrenchment: “Your Majesty is in our devotions constantly. We only suggest possibilities.”

“We value your goodwill, Holy Father.”

“And who will say, if this is sorcery, that there may not be another, fatal attempt? If it is sorcery that directed the lightning, I pray Your Majesty come to sober thought that, as you may believe, Idid not direct it. Your Majesty wishes a wedding free of omens. I cannot again countenance the banners in the holy sanctuary, my lord king!”

“ Youcannot countenance!”

“ In the name of the gods, I cannot countenance them. The gods bless and keep Your Majesty and Her Grace of Elwynor. The Tower and Checker will have our blessing. But I cannot abandon every principle of the faith! Even the Star and Tower we will bless at need… and, yes, defend as an ally, perilous though it be.” Was it a shudder he saw? Had the man sensibilities and scruples after all? “But not in every service, on every holy day dare we keep that banner in the sanctuary, Your Majesty. We dare not provoke wizardry to cross the river, if wizardry it was, as I do very much fear And alliance with the Lord Warden may cost us far more than we yet reckon. These things have a cost! ”

Fear. There was the word. His Holiness was not the young priest who had stood with his grandfather, or exorcised ghosts from the Guelesfort stairs.

Cefwyn stared at him in bleak consideration, leaned forward, chin on fist, and stared longer.

And longer, while his heart beat hard with anger and his eyes refused to see except through a dark pall. Something thumped into place; it felt that way. Safety for Tristen—power to his southern lords—comeuppance for Ryssand.

“Amefel is vacant,” he said at last, out of that moil of shadow, and saw his brother open his mouth.

And shut it.

“Tristen might do very well in Amefel,” Cefwyn said with a deeper breath, and leaned back in the seat of judgment, regarding all before him. “What says Your Holiness?”

“To make this creature lord of a province?”

“He is already lord of Althalen and Ynefel, within the selfsame province. You wish no untoward doings; I wish a peaceful wedding and an end of talk about the roof. Dare we agree that we agree?”

Again, a hesitation. A quaver in the voice. A man who had danced with lightning was, whatever his other faults, grateful for simple things, “Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Never mistake me,” Cefwyn said, and left a long silence. “Never mistake me, Holy Father. As I shall never mistake you. We each have our domains. Never cross into mine.”

Stare met stare. But the Patriarch did not state the converse. There was a measurable difference, then, in what they dared.

He had, he hoped, just made that everlastingly clear. And he would have himself wed, and Tristen—

Tristen.

“Tomorrow,” he said. Wounds were best done quickly, thoroughly. He had no wish to contemplate the issue. And knew what he had done, in anger and what he had to do, for a winter’s peace. And did his enemies know, as Idrys knew, what Tristen was? “Tomorrow, in the Quinaltine, he will swear. Roof or no roof you will witness his oath.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Good rest, Holy Father. I trust you have adequate escort. A wrap against the weather outside.”

“Completely adequate,” the Patriarch said, and took the cue, saying nothing regarding prophecies, Kings to Come, or the Elwynim Regency.

Efanor saw the Patriarch as far as the door, but he lingered. Idrys did not remotely think of leaving.

“My lord king.” Idrys broke the silence. “ Amefel?”

“Tristen has a chance,” Efanor cried, “a mere chance, to rescue his soul. And you are damning him! You are giving him over to a sorcerous province, where he has no shield but magic, when here he had a chance at holiness!”

This last was a curious proposition, the only genuine question of faith he had heard in the last quarter hour. The first was only the surface of the question that ran, at depth, Has my king taken leave of his wits?

“Where elsecan I secure him a livelihood, if you please? Ynefel and Althalen are ruins. I have him where my servants and my guards can provide for him… but that also places him near me, near Ninévrisë, near very sensitive matters. I can call him back at need. I shallcall him back, and meanwhile I provide him a banner they cannot fault.”

“Many another man in difficulty,” said Idrys, “one appoints a small pension and a village sinecure. A province does seem extravagant.”

It was perhaps the measure of his mood tonight that only Idrys could set him in a better humor. And Idrys did not say the half of what he was sure was on Idrys’ mind.

“He cannot fend for himself”Efanor said. “How can he manage a province two hundred of the king’s best troops cannot keep in order?”

“And where elseshall he be safe?” The temper rose again. “If you were less familiar with priests and more with me, brother—” No, that was not fair. “Forgive me. But this entire business is connivance.”

“The lightning stroke—”

“Bother the lightning stroke! It happened and that old fox had already planned to trot out that blaspheming coin! I’ll warrant he had one in the hoard he keeps, his own coffers.”

“Brother, that is blasphemous.”

“Mark me, mark me, that is a villainous man. You heard him. I shall have my wedding if I banish Tristen. Does that measure the true depth of his conviction? Mark the day. I shall have within a fortnight a request for his cousin Sulriggan, his reinstatement in my favor.”

“You need not grant it.”

“Did you not hear? Threats fell left and right. That is a malevolentman, who hounded our grandfather with fear of hell, our father with fear of me, and drove our father to his death with his suspicions, brother! Piece the account together, for the gods’ love! Our father would not have trusted Heryn Aswydd if he had not trusted the Holy Father first.”

“That is extravagant.” Efanor’s face was white as death. Efanor had seenthe Holy Father at his political worst and heard the truth tonight.

“Words kill, brother. They need not be sorcerous.”

“But the lightning stroke, I say—”

“Brother, —”

“My lord king,” Idrys said in his calm, even voice, “the court, meanwhile, will be in doubt.”

The hall and the dancing. He drew a breath. “Brother,” he said more moderately, even pleadingly, “open your eyes. I grant you your lightning bolt if you grant me that this coinis political, not godly, and we are in mortal danger of this man’s ambitions and his determination to keep what power he has. Your priest may be godly. But the Patriarch is no honest priest.”

“I think you provoked him too far, sir.”

“ I? Iprovoked?”

“My lord king,” Idrys said.

“We have the court to settle,” Cefwyn said, shoving aside all fruitless argument. “My decision stands. Lord of Amefel, successor to the Aswyddim, him and his issue, as they may be, in fealty to the Crown, which he will freely swear. Idrys, send a messenger to him; send to the Patriarch, officially, that tomorrow afternoon, come wrack, come ruin or a hole in the Quinalt roof, we will stand before the altar, that the banner of Amefel will stand there above those of Ynefel and Althalen, which will be all the comfort we afford His Holiness, and the court will attend in theirgoodwill on such an occasion.”

He rose, then, and in Efanor’s shocked silence led the way back through the short passage and into the warmth and motion and music of the royal ball.

He had resumed his perch on the stone-propped seat, alone, before the musicians saw him and tinkled to a stop, with the dancers.

He stood up. The dancers bowed. The one whose head only nodded was Ninévrisë, who came to his outstretched hand, Cevulirn attending her, and received his smile… on which he was conscious the whole room hung.

He handed her toward her seat: she stood beside him.

“The Quinalt roof is not as serious a matter as one might have feared,” he said, and with coldest, most matter-of-fact address of policy, he let his face frown. “But it was meant by Her Grace’s enemies to be far more serious than it was. Sorceryhas done its worst, and now, with the Patriarch’s blessing, we shall answer it. We shall ask the Lord Warden of Ynefel to march south to bring Amefel into our hand and to give these sorcery-dabbling rebels a pause for reflection the winter long. To that intent, with the Patriarch’s blessing—” How he loved taking the Patriarch’s name in vain! “—we create him duke of Amefel and grant him all titles the Aswyddim held. And, with the Patriarch’s blessing, we bid him hold the southern marches.” In the general impression, by his fondest hopes, it was now not for the Lord Warden to defend himself against charges of sorcery, but for the Lord Warden to deal with allsuch sticky questions of sorcerous attacks, as was the Lord Warden’s post when Mauryl had held it. He had, at a stroke, settled Tristen in the one place he had never considered it possible to settle any friendly lord, but where it was most reasonable to settle Tristen, in a land which would welcome him, at a moment when the court, reeling from sorcery, wished protection of a sort that might be effective, but not in their witness.

And in a place where prophecies and sorcery could do their worst: win his love, Emuin had advised him.

There was confused approbation from the young, there were far more sober looks from the old, and perhaps even looks of relief in several faces, Murandys and Ryssand chief among them, who were glad to have the Lord Warden south of them, or in hell, whichever would come soonest. They had won their assault… the king’s friend was leaving. But the king, let them realize it soon, was not pleased with them.

He sat down. Ninévrisë sat beside him.

“Are things as well as that?” she asked softly, who did not know her capital was under attack, and he held her hand and kept a pleasant face to the court, as he waved them to resume their dancing.

“Be brave. Tasmôrden has moved on the capital.”

There was silence. The fingers in his clenched slowly, but he trusted she kept her serenity, as he trusted her in all things else.

“There is no other word from the river,” he said. “Meanwhile the Quinalt roof has a hole in it and the Patriarch calls it sorcery. I am sending Tristen south for all our safety.” He almost said, until the wedding, and then with full force it came to him that, while the appointment at last gave a friend an income of his own and a living land to stand on, it entailed obligations that would keep Tristen from court for far more than a season, if he saw to them in earnest. Win his love, Emuin had advised him. And Emuin himself would not oppose the force that Called a Sihhë-lord from the grave.

Knowing Tristen as he did, yes, Tristen would indeed take those obligations seriously. When had Tristen ever failed an obligation, once he had taken it up? It came to him, among other, more tangled considerations, that he might not so easily get his friend back once he had sent him out—and that thought afflicted him with a sudden melancholy.

Of course he had Tristen’s friendship. Of course he had his loyalty. That was unquestioned. Of friends he had ever had, there was none so sudden, so close, so maddening… none had made such a place in his heart as Tristen had, none ever let him rest so confident as he did, that he could neglect Tristen even a little and take him up again, as bright, as faithful as in the summer– or send him into the heart of wizardry and get him back again untarnished. Of course he could rely on Tristen. Of course they would always have their friendship. Of course Tristen could come back again, when court was gathered about the king—and if Tristen did rise to rule Elwynor, why, what loss? His bride, all his, her home unharmed, but her loyalty turning entirely to him. That, with Tristen for an ally, a loyal man. It was beyond planning, now. He had advanced the first piece on the board.

But if Ilefínian fell easily to Tasmôrden’s forces and left time before the snows, and if Tasmôrden had some notion of securing southern bridgeheads to outflank Ylesuin’s incursion from the north—two curs chasing each other’s tails, yapping and snapping—why, that lightning strike, if it was Elwynim-sent, had just put Tristen square in Tasmôrden’s path. Then let wizardry do its worst; he had no more effective weapon and no stauncher friend.

It still had a cold feeling about it, to have done it all at a stroke, loosing Tristen to do what he would in the south, when he had before this had warnings from Emuin that what Tristen willed to do subtly bentthe affairs of other men. Tristen willed very little and had his desires generally satisfied by feeding pigeons.

Dangerous, something still said to him. He should surely have asked Emuin.

And did sorcery strike the Quinaltine and Emuin not send him a warning?

It was the late hour. It was the accumulation of bad news that so set his worst premonitions to wander.

“We must stay an hour, no more,” he said to Ninévrisë. She, better than he, had full cognizance of all it meant when Ilefínian should fall, all the tally of names of men who might be in peril of their lives when Tasmôrden rode in. “Whatever happens, the court must not say we were cast down by the news.”

“This movement of my enemies was almost certain to come,” Ninévrisë said in a faint voice. Her fingers warmed in his hand, and kept a light hold. “The beacon was lit?”

“That is all we know,” he said. “Idrys is trying to learn more, but there is nothing we can do to prevent Tasmôrden’s march, save hope the skies open and the road bogs.”

“And that certain ones would run for safety,” she said. “But they will not.”

“On the other hand,” he said to Ninévrisë, and closed his hand on her fingers which had become rigid, “if there is a bright spot in this, it means Tasmôrden has not lingered to fortify the east shore against our crossing. Tristen coming to the south may disturb his sleep further. I doubt he will have foreseen that. And gods know, Tristen can deal with sorcery.”

“Gods, that we had another month. Or that the snows would come.”

“Gossip be damned. I should get you from this hall.”

“No, my lord. No. Otherwise, I shall have to endure the ladies’ gossip, and their questions. Not yet. Not yet, please you. I wish to be much more settled than I am.” Nails impressed his palm. “On the battlefield one knew one’s enemies. I know them here, but have not a weapon against them, none.”

“Name me them!”

“Oh, Artisane. Artisane, chiefest.”

“Of her I cannot relieve you. Not until—”

“Not until the wedding. Nothing until the wedding. Oh, I mark them down, every one, every petty remark. Men in the field have far more manners.”