Текст книги "Fortress of Eagles"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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“Much to lose,” Idrys said. “Do not trust His Holiness.”

“Oh, never. Never. He never deludes me. But he quite confessedly finds my brother’s honest devotion far more dangerous to him than a host of Emuins and the entire Teranthine brotherhood. Or the Bryaltine. Did you know my father tried to have me declared a bastard? And His Holiness would not. His Holiness does not want a truly religious man. He does not want my brother, and if he would understand that Tristen is doing this only to please the Quinalt, gods, flatterthe old fox…”

“Yet he must have appearances. By every tenet of the Quinaltine, he cannot countenance a Sihhë-lord beneath his roof!”

“Appearances indeed. His Holiness dares not disillusion Efanor, but no more dares he see Efanor on the throne; and he knows now he cannot cozen me, threaten my friends, and still maintain his income. He damned well willfind a niche in his piety for the Sihhë, such a fine niche it will cover and explain the Quinalt’s murder of them at Althalen and its approval of my grandfather while it explains its acceptance of Tristen of Ynefel whom– whomwe have never proven is Sihhë. It may take Quinalt scholars a month and a wagonload of parchment, but when the Quinalt covers its own sins, it covers them in ink, in seas and oceans of ink, deep enough for fishes. So, yes, yes, Tristen, my dear friend, yes, if you could find it in you to listen to my brother’s pious instruction, learn the forms enough to go through them, gods! if you could publicly wear some trinket of a relic to prove it will not blast you, if you could attend in chapel and not provoke omens… a convert—gods, a Sihhë convert. What would the Holy Father do?”

“One cannot imagine,” Idrys said dryly, and in no greater approval, so that Tristen himself had doubts.

But Cefwyn showed none at all. “A Sihhë convert, a donation, a royal abbey… that would salve the wound of the coronation I wouldn’t let the old fox do over. Gods, more than justify the Sihhë in the Quinaltine. If they make a way in for Tristen, the heresy of the whole of Elwynor becomes a trifle. We could see Ylesuin and Elwynor together accommodated in a doctrine that could admit you, my friend. A month or two, a few donations, is all you would have to endure, attending ceremonies with the court, being punctilious in your observances—”

“Hazardous,” Idrys said.

“But filing in with the court, out with the court, bowing when the court bows, attached to my brother’s well-known, prickly piety… Efanor’sconvert. And my brother is Marhanen. Efanor will know exactly the stakes. Religious that he is, I shall have him simply to understand this is political—he will still try to secure Tristen’s soul, none could daunt him, but Efanor will see this act as exactly what it is, will know why it is, will defend Tristen as a point of honor. In my brother’s keeping, close by his elbow, there’s no way for Murandys to come at him, not a bit! And in the spring, once we launch our forces into Elwynor, then Tristen will ride with me far from the Quinaltine, for the summer long. By next fall, good gods, he’ll simply do what most converts do, attend only on holy days and at funerals. Blessed once is blessed, so far as the commons know and so far as serves His Holiness’s purposes. It’s the door by which we admit the whole oxcart. It’s the gestureHis Holiness wants. And to get it, we make his Holiness accommodate the halfling Sihhë… neversuggest that Tristen is more than that. Halflingis ambiguous enough for any negotiation; and after they admit the halfling Sihhë then they take the whole damned court of Elwynor.”

Next fall. Next summerhad daunted him and he had seen noprospect yet that far ahead of him. Tangled and dubious as it all might be, it did serve Cefwyn, and protected Ninévrisë, and brought him to the spring and through the unimagined summer, even to the fall to come with a use, a purpose, a duty to do. Gray space gave way to imagining a time yet to come, days and months ahead.

“Your Majesty,” Idrys said. “We should consider this at some length.”

“Do youhave objections?” Cefwyn asked, looking at Tristen. It was clearly a request not to hear any. But Idrys’ doubts were not to disregard.

“There are shadows in that place,” Tristen said. “So you should know, sir.”

“I don’t doubt there are,” Cefwyn said, and gave a short laugh. “Gods know my grandfather’s crypt is likely the bait for them—he feared the dark excessively. Chandlers have never been so prosperous as in his reign, good faith.” He patted Tristen on the arm. “But do you understand what we are about? My brave friend, my very brave friend, if you can do this—if you can do this… and not affright this priest… gods forbid the Patriarch should ever meet the like we met on Lewen field… then we can accommodate Her Grace and her whole realm in the exception we craft for you, who arethe Warden of Ynefel, which isand has always been the legitimate title of a lord of Ylesuin. They have to regard the current Lord Warden, and to treat youas lawful and entitled, and exempt from requirements that bind other lords: we have a precedent, good gods, we have a precedent in Mauryl Gestaurien, what wasdone can bedone, and our penny offering, if we can do this, will create this niggling little exception through which we can settle the whole question of Quinalt doctrine andthe status of halflings, hedge-wizards, Bryaltines, sprites, spirits, shadows, ghosts, and gods know what! Good great gods, we have a precedent!”

“Consult Emuin,” Idrys said. “My lord king, I beg you ask him before you undertake anything with His Holiness.”

“Ask Emuin to your satisfaction, but if he finds no urgent reason against it, and if Tristen can endure my grandfather’s ghost, —dear blessed gods, I would find it convenient if you could walk in with the royal procession.”

“I will, sir,” Tristen said, and Cefwyn proposed they go aside for a last cup of wine, a seal on their agreement. “Sit with me a moment,” Cefwyn said, and, Idrys being absent about business with his lieutenant, and still less than pleased, the two of them sat beneath the tall windows in the hall, in this set of rooms so very vast the servants always arrived out of breath. Night had long since filled the high window above the little table, and candlelight danced on the imperfections of the glass as on the embossings of gold cups that were the ordinary of Cefwyn’s household in these days.

“You have been very patient in my neglect of you,” Cefwyn said, “and I know how difficult it has been for you in Guelessar—difficult for Her Grace, too, with no assured rank or title, gods know what her people believe is her condition among us. Yet I have had to leave my friends to fend for themselves for a while. It is so important, what we do, simply to assure I have the power to launch this war, this one chance to catch the moment. We have the rebels across the river, building forces by the day. If Tasmôrden moves to take either the bridges or the capital before the winter closes in, he will have all winter to consolidate his hold. He will gain followers and Her Grace will lose them, murdered the day Tasmôrden sets foot in Ilefínian. But I have never needed explain war to you.”

Uwen and the guards had told him Ylesuin would not wage war in winter. But Tristen himself wished the contrary… nor at all the hesitant, difficult sort of warfare he kept hearing proposed as winter raids. He knew who and where Tasmôrden was: the strongest of the rebel claimants to the Regency of Elwynor camped on the road that led equally to Guelessar or to the Elwynim capital of Ilefínian. Tasmôrden was thus able to go either direction, and to go quickly. Cefwyn hoped Lord Elfharyn in the capital, loyal to Ninévrisë’s father Uleman, could hold the capital in her name through the winter… and divide Tasmôrden’s attention. But if Tasmôrden ceased to believe their feints at the bridges, and if Ilefínian fell to Tasmôrden quickly, and he was then able to secure himself behind Ilefínian’s walls before the snows, then… then it was a far grimmer situation, with many of Ninévrisë’s people in a way to suffer for it, and many to pay with their lives.

“We should have camps across the river,” Tristen said to Cefwyn. “We should cross the bridges now. We should make the threat so strong he will have to regard it, and not dare move on Ilefínian.”

“ IfLord Brysaulin can find me wagons. I have had some moved in. But how many others might I rely on? Gods know. My chancellor counted haystacks, not wagons.”

Wagons. Always there was the consideration of moving in force, never striking with the light cavalry, which Tristen would have wished, against this quick-footed enemy. He had believed from the first day in Guelessar that they should move at once and not delay for marriages and swearings and musters and the objections of all the northern barons. He had thought the first time he had heard of Tasmôrden rising against Ninévrisë’s claim to the Regency that they should be straightway across the river on the southern bridges out of Amefel, march to the capital with light horse, receive it from Elfharyn, who would almost certainly yield it to Ninévrisë as soon as she appeared at the gates, and only afterward hold the land by drawing heavy forces across from Guelessar… but, no, Cefwyn had to receive the oaths first. Then it was deep autumn. Then they dared not launch a campaign, because it was bound to be laborious and slow in rainy autumn. Tristen frowned at what he heard now, which only confirmed what he had already thought; and now he saw the map as if it were before him, the bridges that led from Amefel to Elwynor repaired this summer; likewise those that had once led from Murandys to Elwynor in the north repaired this fall. “We might still move. Open an attack from Amefel, now. Cevulirn can carry it. You have the oaths. The north may be unready, but the south could march and the north could move as soon as they can. In the meanwhile Tasmôrden will not have Ilefínian.”

“We have to move as planned. The eastern and northern barons must come in…”

“No.”

“No?” Cefwyn looked wryly astonished, not angry; but only then did Tristen recall that no one said no to Cefwyn these days.

“No, sir,” he said doggedly, compounding the offense, such as it was, out of his friendship and the fact that for a month he had had no chance to give his views. “Move Ivanor in from the south, out of Amefel. That would save Ilefïnian. It lies far closer to that border. Tasmôrden would knowa force out of Amefel could come at his back at the river, and he would race to reach the capital to prevent us taking it. We could move faster, with only the light horse, out of his east. If he besieged the town, that would put him between two and even three forces if you brought in the heavy cavalry from the north and the Lanfarnessemen came in from the southwest.”

He thought that Cefwyn would agree. The resolution seemed there for an instant, the fierce enthusiasm of the summer. But worry and doubt worked there, too, and he saw Cefwyn’s deep unhappiness and disbelief in his own answer.

“We cannot.”

“But if we had the Guelen cavalry and the Ivanim, moving quickly—before the snow—would the north object to winning the war, sir?”

“The south must not be the source for a move across the river.”

“It only makes sense—”

“The south is tainted with sorcery, do you see?”

“Not since Lewen field—”

“In Guelen minds it is tainted with sorcery. Amefel is full of heretics—in Guelen minds. Her Grace must win based in the east. In the eastof Elwynor are folk strongly kin to Guelessar and Murandys, Guelen in all but name, and even some Ryssandim. I know, I know you see the way clear, you do have a strong argument, and if it were all a soldier’s reasoning, Tristen, I would entirely agree with you. It would save lives, and very precious ones, particularly of Her Grace’s best advisers. But it is not a soldier’s reckoning; it never was. It is a king’s reckoning, and a new king’s at that. I must come at this war from the north and east for the same reason I ask Efanor to make a staunch Quinaltine out of the least likely man in my kingdom. It is appearances, Tristen, all appearances. For very good reasons the northmust win significant victories in this war. Then it will be their victory, not the south’s, and because it is their victory, and their northernglory, they will support the agreements we make and help me forge a peace out of this long war. No. It is not all a soldierly reckoning. But it is the one that will have a peace at the end of it.“

Not if Ilefínian falls first, Tristen thought to himself, seeing a walled city, a towered city as vividly as he saw it in his dreams. And for this instant he dreamed of it in hostile hands, and saw the war dragging on in what might notbe easy victories for the Guelenfolk. He saw blood flowing, and knew that the satisfaction of the northern barons would wait into summer, and into greater and greater hazard.

“Does Her Grace agree with the plan?” he asked Cefwyn pointedly; and Cefwyn frowned darkly.

“No,” Cefwyn said. “She does not agree. But the plain fact is, we simply must not seem to encourage the tainted south. The entire question regards Elwynor’s fate, Elwynor’s freedom, and the treaty. It’s not a great war, it’s a little war, and we must run the risk to give the north its importance.”

He was entirely appalled. The tainted south, as of Cevulirn, and Sovrag, and Pelumer, even proper and rigidly Quinalt Umanon, who had stood with them at Lewenbrook? The tainted south? Cefwyn spoke in disparagement of others’ opinions of it, he was sure of that. And, a little war? Men would die, and the longer they drew this out, the more men would die.

“The same as the penny,” Cefwyn said, “the same as our agreement with the Quinalt. It is appearances. And, forgive me, I have to command and lead the northern barons in the field. Because of appearances, since the Aswydds, I have appointed no lord in Amefel and left the province vacant. I will elevate noneof the Amefin earls to power on that southern border, because I will not have the entire south, with an Amefin duke, playing ducks and drakes with policy by urging their views, meddling with those bridges—or leading armies and forcing a fight. I have a viceroy there, and I keep it so. I will nothave help from the south, above all else.”

“Yet you had Cevulirn stay at court. Is he the tainted south?”

“Never! Never in my heart. I trust him. I do trust him. He knows the game. He knows what I have to contend with. As Idrys knows. As you are most surely learning. We cannot always do what is most soldierly. We have to do what is politic. And what is politic is a northern victory, and an advance through these specific villages that will settle appearancesfor the Guelenmen I lead; gods help me.”

He was not done with questions. Too much was cast in doubt. “You trust Lanfarnesse. And Olmern.”

“Lanfarnesse commits to nothing. Olmern… fartoo unsubtle.”

Sovrag was only recently a lord, and indeed, would not be at home in the Guelen court. Sovrag had nearly caused a duel in his few days here, except the king had forbidden it. Lanfarnesse, old Duke Pelumer, would protect his own folk first, but even so, Pelumer would have been a strong support to Cefwyn, stronger by far than Murandys.

“No,” Cefwyn said further. “Believe me in this.

Hard enough that I swore all the south to me before I took the northern oaths, hard enough that I came back with a wedding sworn, sealed, and sure before the north ever had wind of it. And this last I say to you in secret, a thing that only Idrys knows… only Idrys. Once the wedding is done, once we have the Quinalt seal on that document, we shall indeed advance to the river and set up martial camps, not only on this side, following exactlythe path you suggest, and threaten Tasmôrden before the snow lies deep.”

“And shall we move in Amefel as well?”

“Not in Amefel. We’ll have men under canvas in the snow, come what may, making sure of those eastern bridges, distracting Tasmôrden and his conspirators from Ilefínian.”

Driving him inevitably toward Ilefínian, Tristen thought unhappily. Pushing him toward the south. Denying him the bridges made it sure he would go against Ilefínian. And if onlysomeone were there to face him—

“—bitter work,” Cefwyn said, “hardship for the men; but if we could bring the eastern provinces of Elwynor to welcome Her Grace next spring and rise against Tasmôrden, she might sweep unchecked across the east like a triumphal procession. Thenwe might cross from the south shore of the river, too, and come from two directions, up and down, to Definian. It would fall in a moment.”

“I might go to the Amefin shore when the army goes to the river,” Tristen said. The prospect of winter in tents did not seem so impossible or so unpleasant to him as a winter idle in Guelemara, taking lessons from the Patriarch. He had longed for employment, for some reason for his existence, and still the notion of next fallwafted in front of him, the thinnest of promises. There were so many mistaken decisions in the wind, any one of which could rise up to bring disaster to Cefwyn’s fortunes. Cefwyn said he must be here, and learn religion, and appear to be Quinalt—but if the army was, in fact, to move, he should be ready to move as soon as the wedding was done. The northern barons’ vanity, their quarrels with each other thus far had not fielded an army, but rather kept the one they did have home until a wider bloodshed of Elwynim and Guelenfolk alike was all but inevitable. On his life he tried not to wish for things, and he distrusted his own desires, but he wished Cevulirn to the fore and Murandys in obscurity. “Far more gladly would I sit in a tent than in the Quinaltine, sir. If it were possible, this I would ask to do, myself, more than anything.”

“No,” Cefwyn said, though gently. “No. My good friend. There you may not, not now, not yet. We need no wizard-work on the river shore, I assure you, not at this stage of affairs. We needyour agreement with the Quinaltine. Your peace with the Holy Father.”

“Then when I have peace with the Quinaltine– thenI could go down to Amefel. From the south I might cross the river with a small force this winter, a very small, a quiet band, and reach Ilefínian. The Patriarch will wish me gone. So let me go. Give me a single troop and I shall be no trouble to you.” The plans, the very detailed plans, were clear to him. The gray space was gone, in favor of a vision so clear to him his heart beat high with thinking of it.

“No, no, and no.” Cefwyn’s hand descended on Tristen’s wrist where it rested on the table. “You must have nothing to do with the taking of the capital, not a thing, do you see? It must not be by wizardry that Ninévrisë wins her throne. And that is what everyone would say if you did that on your own.“

“I am not a wizard.”

“No,” Cefwyn said, and pressed his hand hard. “No, my brave, my good friend. No. But you are not the lord of Murandys, either, and the Guelen duke of Murandys and the Ryssandim must give Ninévrisë her throne. Then they will support her rights and make peace with her kingdom.”

He perceived to his discontent that the reason of Cefwyn’s fear was still the Quinalt, always the Quinalt, a fear which he had discovered prevailed over all better sense in Guelessar; the Quinalt, and the like of Sulriggan, whose work he had seen in Amefel. The Holy Father, Sulriggan, Prichwarrin of Murandys, Corswyndam of Ryssand, none of them were friends of his nor ever would be friends of the king. That was the worst harm the Quinalt did, maintaining Sulriggan and his kind in influence because it needed to have a threat in order to bargain with Cefwyn, whom otherwise it could not frighten. For two months it had had the wedding to threaten. Now Cefwyn asked him to defend Ninévrisë by turning its attention on himself, just long enough for the marriage to become a fact. In a soldierly way he understood such a diversion.

But would the Quinalt improve its actions once the wedding was over? Would it become Cefwyn’s friend simply because Cefwyn flattered it? He thought not.

His situation and Cefwyn’s had grown very tangled, but dearest to his heart, at least tonight he was again in the king’s close counsel, and therefore and for the first time in weeks he saw hope, hope of the same sort that Cefwyn himself saw: only let there be a wedding, only let them have the agreement of the Quinalt, Cefwyn said; and now he thought the same. Let there be a wedding, and then he would have men and weapons and then he would make Cefwyn’s kingdom safe.

And thenthere would be peace and safety and all Cefwyn’s friends would be together for a thousand thousand such evenings. Dared he hope so? He had grown wiser, and dared trust less in the world.

“I shall send Efanor to you,” Cefwyn said. “Tomorrow.”

“I shall expect him,” he said to Cefwyn.

“Was it a fine evening?” Uwen asked him as they walked back, Uwen with a moderate glow of ale about him. “Was it all to expectation?”

“Very fine,” he said. “Very fine, thank you. Efanor will come tomorrow, to teach me the Quinalt’s manners.”

Uwen coughed, which he did not take for a cough at all.

“For Cefwyn’s good,” Tristen said. “Like Wys. Very like Wys. To please the northern lords and the Quinaltine.” He thought that told Uwen enough.

“Well, mostly, aye, ye puts your head down at the right times and does as others do, and there ain’t that much to it.”

“Cefwyn gave me a purse of pennies to give. For the roof.”

“Ah.”

“I have two days. The court will go there, and I will go, all together. And you must tell me what to do.”

“Oh, well, as to that understanding don’t ye fret, lad.” Uwen alone could call him that, generally not until they walked clear of Lusin and the others, as they did now. And Uwen had seemed much reassured about his visiting the Quinalt when he heard it was the penny offering. “Say what the lords say an’ do just what they do. ’At’s the straight and simple of it.” Then a frown. “—There ain’t any small shadows like to come out, is there? No untoward appearances.”

“No,” Tristen said fervently. It was what Cefwyn had asked. “No.” He was worried about the visit to the Quinaltine, but Cefwyn had directed him smoothly through the confusion and movements of the court before this, and he was the more reassured to know he was also under Emuin’s advisement. If Idrys talked to master Emuin and neither of them found strong objection, he feared nothing in meeting with Efanor, at least. Efanor was tedious, but genuinely learned, and intelligent, and well-disposed, and he was indeed puzzled about the gods and the other manifestations the Quinalt here claimed to see, far more than in Amefel, along with miracles and some sort of magic. The priests never wanted to call it magic, and perhaps it was not: if spirits so potent as regularly came and went in the Quinaltine, he would have expected to notice them in the gray space. Above all if there were common appearances of gods within the Quinalt, not an arrow-cast from the walls wherein he lived, he thought Emuin would have warned him not to stray there.

Yet Emuin hadforbidden him the gray space, so long as he was in Guelemara.

Emuin, however, had affected to take the priests all lightly… and Emuin wasa priest, though not Quinalt, but Teranthine. He never saw Emuin pray and he never heard Emuin blessing this or that as Efanor did. He found it all very curious, and the prospect of gods both intrigued him and posed him questions. Dared he ask Efanor to show him a god, or to teach him how to find one?

But perhaps gods were furtive spirits and refused to visit where there were crowds. Some shadows were like that. Perhaps priests met gods only when they were alone and the lights were dim.

Perhaps gods were a special kind of shadow. If that was the case, then that might be the reason he always felt uneasy when he looked at the Quinaltine. He was curious about the priests, too, and wished to learn why they both tolerated shadows, which was dangerous, and feared wizards in general, who were not.

Idrys came back. Idrys had not gone far. “So?” Cefwyn said, when Idrys and he were without servants, in the private, the guarded, hall. “Out with it, crow.”

“I?”

He flung a glance at a face that had no expressions, but two, the arched eyebrow and the rarer play of mirth. There was the one, but not the other, tonight, and had not been from the time he had spoken to Tristen. He had brought his wine with him. He drained the cup.

“You, crow, you know, you think, you guess, and you suppose. Wherewith? On what account? And do you dispute me?”

“Not I, m’lord, oh, no, not I.”

“Out on it! You reek of disagreement. You breathe disagreement.”

“I fear no manifestation of mice and demons in the shrine when he appears. I do look for opposition. To set the lord of Ynefel as the focus of the barons’ discontent denies that they have weapons. And that he does.”

He set the cup down hard and picked up the pitcher. He set down another cup beside it, he, the king, servant to them both. He filled both, and gave one to Idrys. “Stand down from your watch, crow, and unburden yourself. I saw you frowning through supper. Plague on you! Can you not be festive?”

“About the safety of my king? Rarely these days.”

“And wherein am I threatened?”

“The mooncalf isthe prophecy, my lord king. You cannot deny it. We all know it and Her Grace knows it. The Elwynim look for a King to Come. And you pretend there is no danger.”

“Tristen is exactly right in his advice, you know. Plague on the northern barons. These dithering fools will cost us lives, they will cost my lady’s men lives, and by the Five if an incursion out of Elwynor lands boats on Murandys’ shore, I’ll send troops to Prichwarrin’s relief by way of Ivanor. Lord Maudyn sends me anguished letters. Damnation! Men will diebecause Lord Prichwarrin insists on delays and Lord Brysaulin mistakes my reports.”

“If it was a mistake.”

“Do you say it isn’t?”

“I would never accuse the Lord Chancellor as to the reason he sent that report to Prichwarrin. It would hardly be politic. And I have become a politic man. I must be, else I will surely offend you.”

“Politic.” He drank a mouthful and found it flavorless, the result of too many cups before. He set the cup down, gently, this time. “Damn him.”

“Damn Prichwarrin? Or the Lord Chancellor? Or Mauryl Gestaurien?”

“Leave Tristen out of this damning. He is not a political man.”

“He is Sihhë,” Idrys said, “he is Mauryl’s heir, he is most indubitably Mauryl’s parting gift to the house of the Marhanen and the house of Syrillas…”

“All these things we admit.”

“And dare I say you have had my advice, but you follow master grayrobe’s by preference. Now what will Your Majesty do?”

Win his love, Emuin had said, regarding the danger Tristen posed. Win his love.

“Now are we afraid?” Idrys asked. “Now do we wish we had done otherwise?”

“No, we do not!” He cast Idrys a scowling look. “Mauryl prevented harm to us once. And twice. Tristen is my friend. They are rare in this climate. Exceeding rare.”

“Mauryl Gestaurien, Mauryl of Ynefel, Mauryl Kingsbane, Mauryl Kingmaker…”

“Crow, what point are you making?”

“I wonder what point my king is making. You will win Her Grace her throne back. And then what? Twice on a week, boats will ply the Lenúalim to bring the king his bride, his bride the king…”

Idrys came very near the mark. Dangerously near. Cefwyn looked elsewhere, into the shadows, of a mind to forbid the topic, but wondering how much the man closest to him had assembled out of bits and pieces.

“Go on.”

“Because she will not sit the throne?” Idrys ventured. “Because you havethe Elwynim King to Come sworn and sealed to you in fealty?”

Things had such a dull sheen in Idrys’ hands, sheen of gray iron, sheen of well-oiled metal, knives, and swords, and sharp-edged daggers. He could turn even friendship to base, cutting metal.

“The oath between us is fealty, not homage. I left him free. Ignorant that he was at the time, I left him free!”

“How ignorant is he now, more to the point, Majesty? How much does he fail to guess? And while we discuss the intricacies of Her Grace’s oaths and pledges, promises and prayers… by what is Lord Tristen sworn, and how is he bound?”

“By friendship if nothing else!” He answered in haste, because he was stung; but it echoed of Emuin’s advice. Win his love. Win his love, because nothing a king wielded would ever constrain him.

That which a wizard wielded… perhaps. Perhaps it could. But Emuin could not.

Idrys lifted his cup with a quizzical expression, a tilt of his head. “Forgive the northern barons a certain bewilderment: you are the king of Ylesuin, and do not agree that the throne of Elwynor is a Regency? And if a Regency, for what king? And if not for a Guelen king, for whichking, pray? Has Your Majesty explained that point to Her Grace?”

“You tread now where you have no welcome.”

“But he is your friend,” Idrys said, “and so all things can be resolved.”

“Yes, they can. They canand they will be.”

“The barons of Ylesuin will not accept him as a leader on the field. It will create dissension. And the commons of Elwynor rally to Lady Ninévrisë? Some may. Some may not. How will you restrain Guelen soldiery from provocations? There will be bloody battle, my lord king, far bloodier than you wish to contemplate. There will be slaughter. You rely on the northern barons as you are determined to do, and look to it: there will be slaughter when Guelenmen march across those bridges. Do not delude yourself. There is no gentle war. Aye, yes, Tristen is right: come from the south, come from the south because you will have such allies, you will make such bargains, and you will do better to parade your allies in front of southern troops, not northern.“

It was not the first time for that argument. Cefwyn still held to the other side, the one that sought to reconcile Murandys and Ryssand to the war, and not to split the kingdom in bitter division… as perhaps he could not avoid; but he tried to prevent it. Looking to the day of an allied Elwynor, he tried to avoid it.