Текст книги "Fortress of Eagles"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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“I Tristen holding Hen Amas,” the clerk read out for him, and Tristen repeated… Hen Amas, the old name, as before the citadel had become simply the Zeideit had been the Kathseide. The name Hen Amas conjured a tower, not a town, to him, conjured a village and orchards against familiar hills; more, the next words Unfolded to him, and he had no need of the clerk to say, at the second swearing,

“… to defend your rights against all claims and incursions and to judge rightly as your sovereign lord.” His part was all the same, while the reciprocal oath was longer for some, shorter for others, ending with, in all cases,

“And so you are true to your oath so I hold to mine before the gods. ”

But it seemed to him those last few words the clerk had given him were the wrong words, and that it should not be before the gods. Despite the book he had against his ribs he could not truthfully swear to Efanor’s gods, nor even to Emuin’s Nineteen, the wizards’ gods. How could he bind himself by that, as Men did?

And why should he think he had ever said differently? he asked himself, and why should he remember orchards where the lowermost streets of the town now stood, and where the outlying stables were?

And why should he remember thisthe lesser hall as the great hall, and choose this for the oath-taking– except that it was the right place? In his earliest days things had Unfolded so rapidly and with such force he had fallen in fits. Now a kind of dizziness came on him. He received other oaths, he said the clerk’s words without objection, and hands clasped his hand, hands hard with weapons practice and hands soft with age, hands missing first fingers… swordsman’s bane… and hands so ringed and jeweled they were all but armored in wealth and power. Rustic Amefel did have rich men, and these earls, like Henas’amef, had had wealth unplundered since earliest days.

Love them? No. Not yet. He armored his heart against them as he had learned to do with the lords of Ylesuin. He looked steadily at them as they swore, and some few looked back, but he remembered that Edwyll had not done what he had done in disregard of the rest of the province.

The last of them in the order of precedence was Lund. Crissand still stood, pale and set of countenance, awaiting some word, some acknowledgment, some dismissal or decision. Once the first and the second had sworn, then he had surely known he would not be the third, or the fifth, but that he would swear last, if at all. The order of precedence was not an empty matter. It was like a banner, like the device on a shield, the land rights, the claim on mutual defense, and not a man in the hall could have forgotten that Crissand stood waiting and empty-handed.

Might anger guide this young man to imprudence? He would know it, if that became the case. Ought he to do differently, or show more mercy? He had been generous, until now.

“Crissand, thane of Tas Aden.”

He knew trials: Mauryl had set very hard ones; and now he set a severe one, and knew not what way Crissand might turn in the next moment, but now, too, he understood how greatly Mauryl had struggled to restrain himself from wishes and wizardry, not to constrain or create what he would draw out. Cuthan was wise and clever, a great treasure in a hall. But this young man… this was the one that touched him. This was the one of all of the earls who would dare his wrath to his face or stand by him to the last.

“May I trust you?” he asked Crissand.

“Your Grace.”

“May I trust you?” he said again. He had not heard my lordfrom Crissand Adiran or any man of Meiden. Not yet.

There was a small silence, and the hall was cold, evoking shivers from weary bodies.

“What does Your Grace ask?” Crissand said in the deep silence of all the lords.

“Truth.”

“And will Your Grace believe me, whatever I say?”

He reached into the gray space, just a breath of a touch, and Crissand flinched.

“Yes,” he said to Crissand, thought, So, and saw a glimmering of fear staring back at him.

“My lord,” Crissand said, half a whisper, and no more.

“ Nowyou say so.” He let the silence linger a moment… did not draw Crissand deeper into the gray space. But this was a young man with wizard-gift. This was an Aswydd, in a hall where his kin had been kings, dispossessed now, and he, at least tonight, was the agent of that dispossession. The silence went on, and on, and the wind blew through that other place, but softly so. “Will you tellme the truth?” Tristen asked.

“My lord,” Crissand said, with a lift of his chin, “ what truthwill you? Truth of my father’s life? Truth of his death? Whichtruth?”

“ Thetruth. No other. Nothing less. Did your father deal with Tasmôrden?”

The earls were thunderstruck, caught on the outskirts of treason, all, all of them but Cuthan, who clenched his staff tightly, and set his jaw like granite. The hands of king’s men strayed closer to their swords. And none else in this room were armed.

But Crissand spoke in firm, clear tones. “ Yes, my lord, he did—Her Grace the Regent being betrothed to the Marhanen, my father dealt with the likeliest rebel in Elwynor.”

Treason, treason laid out plain to see. The lord viceroy had advised him of the truth, after all.

But not an irredeemable truth. These lords had sworn. So had he. And all the truth and all the misdeeds that had existed an hour before were in the past, sealed.

“I dismiss your truth. I forgive it,” he said to the thane of Tas Aden. “And what say you now?”

“That the Sihhë are back in Hen Amas.” The gray space shivered, settled with final force. And Crissand bent the knee and knelt there on the steps of the dais, with the earls and the Dragon Guard for witness. “That you are my lord andmy king.”

Breath might have ceased in the hall.

But it was no more nor less than the Amefin oath, stripped of niggling words like aetheling.

“I Crissand, Earl of Meiden, swear so…” It had become the oath of fealty, an Amefin lord kneelingbefore him, and what in turn was he to answer? Prudence said he should stop the proceeding, set the self-made earl on his feet by main force, and bind himself to nothing. But he felt the little shiver in the gray space that Ninévrisë could make, or now and again someone passing near him.

The Sihhë are back in Hen Amos.

Dared he say so? Dared Crissand? And dared an aetheling kneel in this hall, as to an overlord?

The clerk frantically searched his pages, a crackle of paper in the stillness, and looked up in consternation. The earl of Meiden finished his brief swearing, with: “So I will be faithful to you, on my oath and my honor,” and the hapless clerk searched for his place in an appalled silence.

“I Tristen…”

Another flurry of the clerk’s pages.

“… swear you arethe earl of Meiden, and have the governance of the land of Meiden, and its villages and rights and privileges. I shall defend you and your rights and lands as you defend me and mine. To all this I swear by my life.”

The clerk looked up openmouthed, and he realized he had not said the clerk’s words. He drew Crissand to his feet. He ignored the stares of the clerk, the earls, the priests, and of his own men, and looked the heir of the Aswydds straight in the eye.

“Tell me true, Meiden: areElwynim forces across the river?”

The rustle of pages had ceased. Everything had ceased.

“The rising would signal them to cross,” Crissand said, and he knew he had heard the truth, more, that what Crissand confessed was no surprise to any man in this hall.

“Then I fear you are deceived,” Tristen said. “I suspect Tasmôrden would nothave crossed, not with His Majesty set to plunge into Elwynor from his northern frontier. But he would gladly divert Cefwyn’s attention south to Henas’amef over the next fortnight or so while he takes Ilefínian, which he has just moved to do. Once there, he will slaughter Her Grace’s men and winter in more comfort, recovering his forces. He would leave youto engage Cefwyn this winter, all to his profit, and aid you only sufficient to keep the king fighting here until the spring.” He was as sure as he said the words, as if they had Unfolded, but even the guess he made was not as great as the hazard to their lives he felt in the gray space. “Tasmôrden opposes me, and he would never have crossed the river until he was sure Cefwyn was here and weakened by the encounter, in a hostile province. Then, yes, he would fightin Amefel and spare his own fields. You have provoked the lord viceroy only to Tasmôrden’s gain and none of your own.”

“My lord Sihhë,” Crissand began, and would have sunk back to one knee.

And must not. Tristen seized him by both arms this time and looked him straight in the eye. “ Your Graceis the title I own. I hold it from His Majesty, his gift, no other.”

“My lord, then,” Crissand said faintly as Tristen set him back. “At your will.”

“What I willis a secure border. Heryn Aswydd collected too much tax and spent too much money on dinnerplates. Amefel will muster in the spring and set the Lady Regent on the Regent’s throne in Ilefínian. Thatis what I will, sirs.”

The latter part was certainly no news to them. Cefwyn had made no secret of his plans, not even from Tasmôrden. He looked out over the assembled earls, saw great sobriety and consternation at his bluntness and at Crissand’s, and perhaps a reassessment of Tasmôrden’s offers of alliance.

“Some think me foolish,” he said to the earls, “and that may be; but I am a fool far less often these days than I was this summer, and I do learn, sirs. I know, for instance, that many Amefin houses have far closer ties across the river than to Ylesuin. If Ylesuin sets Elwynor safely on her throne, then your villagers will walk across the river bridges by broad daylight and trade as you wish. But if Tasmôrden comes, he will make Amefel his battlefield. That is the truth, sirs.”

There was not a word of objection.

And he had nothing more to say or do here, and wished nothing more now than to go to his own bed, and to have ease of the belts and weapons he had borne now for a day and a night… or was it morning?… with no ease of them. Crissand’s loyalty would stay or it would go. The gray space was utterly roiled, seething with yea and nay and hazard, and he wished Crissand Adiran out of his vicinity before his unsteady wits did lasting harm and willed something unwise.

“Good night,” he said. No one moved for a breath or two, and then one and the other bowed and edged cautiously backward, as if they were each hesitant to be the first to leave. Crissand gazed at him, and in the gray space, winds blew, changing direction on the instant.

Then Crissand bowed his way away from the dais, the guards that had brought him in all standing in uncertainty.

Tristen shook his head at the sergeant, wishing him not to detain the earl of Meiden, or to interfere with him.

And for the rest, he knew no more elaborate ceremony or more ready escape than Cefwyn’s habit, which was to walk out by the lord’s door, that nearest the dais. He gathered up Uwen, Anwyll, a trail of guards, the clerks, and then Tawwys and Syllan outside in the hall at the same time as the earls and clerics had to sort themselves out by the other door a small distance away.

None of the earls, however, ventured near to trouble him, and shielded what they said with turns of their shoulders and furtive glances as they hurried to be away, either seeking safer nooks of the Zeide in which to gossip, or going home as the court would, by the stable-court stairs and the West Gate.

Tristen walked, instead, aware of the dismay of his own guards, toward the center of the building, where the South Court doors let in and where the confluence of stairways gave a choice of upward directions.

“What shall we do wi’ Lord Meiden?” Uwen asked him as he approached that point of choice.

“Let him go,” Tristen said. But all his soul said there was profound danger in Crissand Adiran… Crissand Aswydd, for Aswydd he surely was. “Let him go where he pleases.”

So he ordered. But if Uwen were Idrys, and if he were Cefwyn, then he would know that Meiden would not do anything unwatched, and he would never have to hear of it or trouble his soul unless there was reason.

But Uwen was not Idrys, and he realized only then that he truly had no check on his mercy, and no man to do the dark, the unpleasant things. Uwen asked, perceiving the threat, but Uwen would be grieved to slip furtively about when his lord had made a public show of setting Crissand free on his honor. He had to order it if it would be done, while Idrys would have done it even if his liege had strictly forbidden him.

And he found himself at a pass that Cefwyn with his resources would never have come to. He had given a pledge. Was he now to break it himself? Such things, he being not a Man, had more than ordinary consequence, and he, not being a Man, had more than ordinary need of a Man to do the unpleasant work and examine the dark corners.

They walked by the light of stub candles in sconces up and down the lower hall. The Zeide’s servants had appeared out of whatever holes they had hidden in, and candles were not everywhere, as yet, but there were enough lit at enough points to show the servants working end to end of the hall, sweeping and polishing evidence of death from the stones of Hen Amas.

Theywere the true caretakers of this Place, he thought: lords proposed and disposed and worried about the proprieties and the rights of things, but they mopped the dust and the blood away and made it possible to forget the worst of events.

It was one more change of lords for them, in this year yet unended. There had been four, already, since summer, counting the lord viceroy—who might be the departing rider he heard out in the courtyard, through weapon-scarred doors now closed for the sake of warmth.

The lord viceroy was gone.

He was the fifth lord, in one year.

And in that realization he found himself approaching a scatter-witted weariness. Was it hunger he felt at this hour, or thirst or merely winter chill? His body failed to inform him. Down the corridor ahead, past the great hall, was the ghostly boundary of the mews. There were dead men in the ducal apartment above. There was the lord viceroy’s ungathered baggage in the other lordly residence, that which Cefwyn had used up the other stairs. He longed for his own old, modest dwelling on the uppermost floor, but he who had to fear that wizardry supported his wishes had no hope of recovering that apartment save by arranging a calamity to someone else… as surely someone else was residing there now. He was equally sure the duke of Amefel had to occupy some other residence: Uwen would never let him choose something so small and modest and entirely adequate, nor would Emuin.

Nor, for that matter, would Cefwyn.

Cefwyn. Cefwyn. Cefwyn. Therewas the question tonight. But it was not a question he could solve by thinking on it, not with wits muddled with a day’s riding and a night such as they had just spent. He felt tremors in all his body, a desperate need of sleep.

“Which rooms shall I use?” he asked Uwen, as they reached that choice between the stairway on the left, that led to Cefwyn’s former rooms, and that on the right, that led up to the Aswydd bedchambers. “Where shall I sleep?” His own question sounded plaintive in his ears. He was lost as a child, and Uwen shepherded him toward the right-hand stairs.

“They’ve been preparin’ the Aswydd rooms,” Uwen said. “The servants ha’ been at it for an hour now, a great lot of ’em. It’s safest. We ain’t searched every hall and nook, nor will have, maybe for days, so’s ye should have a care for the dark places an’ never go wi’out me, not even wi’ Guelen troops: wi’ me, lad, or maybe Lusin an’ the rest, but no others, noothers, no matter how well ye know ’em.”

CHAPTER 3

The apartment smelled of burning cedar and polishing oils. The chair by the tall, green-curtained windows might never have held a dead man—all the dead were gone, to what burial place Tristen had not asked. The servants, working under close guard, had indeed changed the place in very little time, and most significantly there was not a cup, not a bowl, not a vessel or utensil to be seen on any shelf. Guards were in every room, too, standing watch, so that the rooms had not the desolate feeling they might have had after the events of this bloody night: Syllan had taken command of the detachment at the door, while Lusin was off inquiring into things that had to be inquired into regarding the horses and the stables.

Servants passed, with massive copper buckets that foretold a bathtub being filled with hot water.

Clean, hot water. If dead men had been end to end of the floor, Tristen thought, he would have longed for that bath, and he abandoned his last reluctance about the place.

“I want you, and our men, with me,” he said to Uwen as they walked through the inner rooms. “I take all your warnings. I want the doors shut. Use only the food and drink we brought in.” His voice had become a thread. He could not muster more than that. “Let us hope for a quiet rest.”

“The captain’s had the town watch shut down the taverns,” Uwen said, “so the captain says. Can’t any man roam the streets carrying his pot of drink with him, and Lord Cuthan’s got his household men standin’ watch by the tavern, gods save us, so’s no crowd gets to barrels of it. Men can be great fools when they’re happy.”

“And are they happy?” He paused. He was astonished, in the light of the lord viceroy’s actions and all else that had gone amiss.

“Oh, indeed they are, m’lord. Folk as feared the town might lie under siege all winter, they’re right happy. They don’t care if ye’re a wizard or ye ain’t. By them, ye ain’t Guelen, ye ain’t any viceroy, and Sihhë ain’t any unlucky word hereabouts, either, so to say. Here, if ye call down lightning on the Zeide roof, why, they’ll take no offense by’t. Aye, they’re happy, lad, they’re right happy about a peaceful winter. Ye’ve come home, an’ may ye have a long and a happy stay here, m’lord, wi’ all my heart, dare I wish so?”

A long and a happy stay. And a cheerful, even a bantering and wistful wish from Uwen, who had heard everything in the hall below.

“But may I say, gettin’ far above myself, m’lord, ye was right to chide the earls.”

“Was I?”

Uwen colored to the roots of his hair. “Sayin’ as I’d know,” he said with a downcast look. “But ye done well, m’lord. Only—”

“Only?”

“Ye was right, too, about them sayin’ lord Sihhë. ’At’s trouble. The Quinalt father was standin’ there with his hands in his sleeves and lookin’ to have swallowed a bad bite.”

“Idrys says to make a gift to the Quinalt. I think we should for all of the priests, and have them happy.”

“If ye went yoursel’ an’ made it, they’d be happiest of all.”

“We have the gold.”

“Aye, m’lord.” Uwen laughed. “Ye have the whole damn treasury… which ye should look into and take account of, at least I would, seein’ the lord viceroy was packin’ jewels which might have been her ladyship’s.”

“Orien’s?” He had by no means imagined.

“Her ladyship bein’ duchess of Amefel, I don’t know, but she wore some right fine green ’uns when she were lady here. An’ I don’t know the color of what the viceroy was packing.”

“Twice, then, tonight, Orien.”

Uwen’s face had gone quite sober. “I’d say so, m’lord, an’ right cautious I’d be wi’ anything that lady owned.”

Tristen passed a glance around them, the draperies, the ornate doors, the penchant for dragons.

“So I am,” he said.

They walked back to the entry, and there he stopped and gazed at his domain: heavy chairs, massive tables, tapestries wrought in silk, fanciful globes worked in gold and silver. There were tables covered entirely in gold leaf, and a dining table the legs of which were strange, hostile beasts. With the servants’ best efforts he still found the dimly lighted room, with its dark green, gold-tasseled draperies over the windows, stiflingly oppressive, as if air had not moved here, and could not move again.

He walked across the room, surveyed the green fabric that he associated with Heryn and Orien and the Aswydds—rightly associated: it was the Aswydd heraldry. He gave it a tug to draw the drapery back. It slid freely and unexpectedly on its rods, showing diamond-paned glass, and night, and dark—

Stark terror, beyond the window, a shattering of light and dark on glass.

Reflections. Mere reflections. His heart had leapt. And settled.

But it had been real, once. On a certain night this summer he had surprised Lady Orien and her sister in sorcery at the very table as that now in the corner of his eye, with the dragon candlesticks alight, the window vents open and unwarded before her, her sister Tarien, and a small cluster of her ladies. In his imagining at any moment he might hear the rustle of Lady Orien’s skirts, smell her heavy perfume.

For an instant he longed to flee this room at least until daylight.

But if he could not master this room, and its shadows, himself being forewarned and wary and far more potent than the earl’s thin Aswydd blood, then how could he ever master the Zeide? The threat was negligible, if he met it, dealt with it, banished it.

And what would Emuin say now of this night’s doing? Not praise for his foresight, he much feared. He would not compound his discreditable actions by hieing himself and his guards to a dusty, unused bedchamber, all for fear of Aswydd curses, he, who was Mauryl Gestaurien’s heir.

“M’lord?” Uwen had come up close to him. “M’lord?”

The window reflected a dark man and an older, worried one, silver-haired, behind him.

Then by a trick of the eyes he was looking out into dark, and night.

Shadows rushed against the window, a solid wall of black. A second trial of him.

He lifted a hand, startled, and a second time saw only the window again, the ordinary night.

Lady Orien had invited shadows into this room repeatedly. She had treated with them, opened this window, compromised the Lines on the earth that Masons had made when they declared the foundations of the Zeide; and it was a dangerous breach to have made. She had sought power to come to herself… but being bound inside the Zeide, had either acted in folly or overweening pride. This window had become a gateway to Orien’s ambition, her hate, her anger, going out… and that had become worse, a highroad to far older spirits entering. Hasufin Heltainhad almost entered here. That ancient, dispelled spirit had needed only a tiny breach to begin its entry, but fortunately for everyone, it had needed a far, far greater one in order to enter any place as warded as the Zeide had been, and as far from Hasufin’s own center of power. Hasufin or whatever passed for Hasufin in this place had not quite succeeded in breaking the wards.

At Ynefel… it had done so. And Ynefel, warded by the most potent wizard alive, stood in ruins. Dared anyone think a tiny crack should be disregarded?

The one beneath the horn-paned window… had thatbeen the entry?

Or had his own young curiosity breached Ynefel’s wards?

He touched the side of the window, and drew his finger from that side across the sill, all the way across to the other wall. He touched the metal frame of the little side pane that opened, and ran his fingers across the latch. He repeated the action. Three times, Emuin had said. Once was an accident, twice was divisible, three was neither accident nor divisible. Three was a maze spirits could not bend themselves through with any ease at all.

The reflection showed a dark man and a silver-headed one. Uwen watched his actions, saying not a thing.

“I treasure you above all my household,” he said to Uwen’s reflection. “I wish you well, Uwen, and I wish you very well. I wish you well.”

Three times he said it, and if, as Emuin said, he had an unbreakable hold on magic, he attempted it as consciously as anything he had done in the hall tonight. Uwen was silent a moment. And shadows drifted, no longer potent, on the other side of the glass, fading from the edges of the day.

“I’m glad of that, m’lord,” Uwen said finally.

The drapery smelled of incense, unpleasantly so.

“Red,” Tristen said, and gathered up a fistful of the green velvet, pulled at it, looked up, where the rod supported it. It would assuredly fall if he pulled it, but it would endanger the wrought panes of the window and the dragon-held tables on either side. No matter his distaste for the place, it was the wealth of Amefel, which he had sworn to increase, and tend, and not to cause harm to it.

But the color meant something among the nobles of Ylesum, and these, and the draperies downstairs… all this green said Aswyddat every glance.

“Will Lord Heryn’s gold dinnerplates buy new draperies, do you think?”

“They might, m’lord. Might well.”

He saw a servant standing then, waiting to be noticed, a reflection across the room. He turned and acknowledged the presence.

“Your Grace, the bath is ready.”

“Heat more water. Bring more towels. My men and I all will use the bath.”

“ ’T ain’t lordly,” Uwen said, “m’lord, and lord ye are, now, lad. The men and me can wash in the scullery.”

“Not tonight,” he said. “No. Here,” he said, and that was an end of it. He went to his bath, and afterward found the servants had stripped the bed in the adjacent chamber, laid on clean bedclothes and strewed herbs over them, crushed, dried petals, as well as set pomanders in silver dishes everywhere, until the place smelled of last summer’s flowers… or a woman’s perfume.

But the air smelled of cooked sausage, too, and when he walked out to the fire to surrender the bath to Uwen, his guards, sitting at the fireplace, offered him hot tea, bread, and toasted sausage. “From our own stores, m’lord,” Syllan said. They had toasted it on a knife blade that he was sure had not come from this room.

So Uwen had his bath, and they camped, he and his men, like wayfarers in the splendor of the Aswyddim.

The door opened, and someone came in… Lusin, it proved to be, back from the stables, with straw clinging to his cloak. “Bath is waiting,” Uwen said.

“Captain,” Lusin said, “a word with you, sir.”

Uwen got up, and went to hear the report, and no one’s attention was quite for the fireside, then. Tristen listened, but heard nothing, only saw Uwen’s face grow grim and glum, and saw Uwen shake his head as he answered Lusin, no good news, it was clear. Uwen’s shoulders slumped in a second shake of his head.

The cheer had gone out of their gathering. They all watched as Lusin left again and Uwen trudged back to the fire to sit down.

“What news?” Tristen asked.

“His lordship the viceroy is on his way an’ out of the town for good an’ all,” Uwen said. “Didn’t stay for a man to go with ’im.”

“And are you sad on that account?” Tristen asked.

Uwen heaved a deep sigh. “No, m’lord, not to see his lordship’s back, good riddance.”

“Then what more? Uwen?”

“His lordship rid out on Liss.”

Tristen had been at an ebb of his energies, and now found himself awake and angry.

“We might send a messenger,” Syllan said, “m’lord, and ask her back.”

“The stablemaster ain’t master Haman,” Uwen said glumly. “It’s some man the viceroy put in charge, and the damn fool let some boy give him Liss, who’s been on the road hard going all yesterday, and if he don’t run ’er to ruin in the hour, it’ll be a wonder.”

“He will not,” Tristen said. He was never so indignant, and never so sure of a thing. He sawa roadway, feltthe shift in the gray space, felt the world shaken and his breath grown thin. The mare shied away from under her heavy burden, her rider flew over her shoulder, and hoofbeats echoed in the hazy gray.

“M’lord?”

The mare slowed, weary as she was, drew the cold air into her nostrils, and smelled grain and warm straw on the wind out of the west. Footsteps and curses approached her. She shied from reaching hands, turned, bolted off to follow that waft through the dark, freed of weight on her back, freed of spur and rein.

“M’lord?” Uwen said, and the mare, Liss, turned north again, across open meadow.

“Find out,” he said to Uwen, against all honor, “find out who is in Edwyll’s household, and to whom they send messages.”

There was a small silence. Uwen had looked tired and distressed. Now the distress grew. But the understanding was there, too, what was required of him, what the exchange was.

“Yes, m’lord.”

“I don’t trust even Captain Anwyll in this,” he said, and included Syllan, Tawwys and Aran in his glance. “You are my guards. You I trust. Find out everything about Crissand. What is shaken is apt to slide loose. Emuin says so, and he knows. Wizardry will always find that unhappy man, that book on the shelf, that cup too near the edge.” To no other Men these days would he have spoken so plainly, but with them he had no longer any doubt. “Guard Meiden. Watch him. Name me all his friends, all his enemies. —And find us all the old servants of this hall, so we afford no more chance for such mistakes. Find master Haman, find Cook, the maids in the kitchens. Find those people, and put them back where they were, and restore the Zeide as it was this summer. There was a boy…” He had given orders regarding almost all the world within his power. But thinking of all the potential pieces, he cast back to his first day in Henas’amef, and the boy who had guided him into a trap. There, too, was an element that once had moved to some wizardly direction, and he wanted all such pieces within his ken and under his hand. “Paisi is his name. The gate-guards know him. Tell me when you find him.”

“M’lord,” Uwen said, and Tawwys, and the rest, with bows of heads and solemn attention.

“He will not keep Liss,” Tristen said with equal solemnity.

“Yes, m’lord,” Uwen said very quietly.

The dismay had quieted. Or had become better hidden. He had brought Uwen to something very different than Uwen would have ever chosen, and offended against Uwen’s sensibilities and Uwen’s heart. But he saw no other way for all of them to be safe in Amefel.

He sat, in this strange encampment of his men, in front of a fireplace in a place lately full of dead men.

The mare moved at a walk now, weary and aching in her steps. But she smelled apple trees and thistle. She smelled summer, and the wind continually told her lies.