Текст книги "Fortress of Eagles"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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“East and bending north, if you would know. Between Marisyn and Marisal.”

“Yet Amefel is north of that, too. And Amefel they always reckon south.”

“So they do. And slant their maps out of true to make their own lands seem more level, gods forbid that Ylesuin should tilt.”

“So why should all the land this side of Assurnbrook be called north when it clearly lies due east?”

“Because in the old days, when the Sihhë ruled, one dared not say Men.”

That was a curious notion. It was also more talk on that score than he had had of Emuin since the day Emuin had shown him the travels of the sun. He had a sip of tea and rested his elbow on the scarred table. “And how would that be?”

“Because the Sihhë ruled, and by north, one quietly meant the lands above the Amynys, and thatmeant all that was the freehold of Men. All the provinces the Marhanen held… so when one spoke of the northdoing a thing, it generally and far more quietly meant the Marhanen dukesdid a thing. This was before they became reigning kings, of course. And rather than ever say, the provinces where Men ruled, as opposed to Sihhë, it was the fashion to say, the northern provinces. They were a restless lot, fomenting rebellions. The north did this. The north did that. You’re quite right, of course. But there were the lands loyal to the Sihhë, at Althalen; and there were the lands to the south. All the lands. The Sihhë ruled to the sea, young lord.”

Blue water. An endless water, sometimes blue, sometimes gray or green.

White headlands and low marsh.

He caught himself, bumped the teacup with his elbow—was dizzy for a moment. A Word had come to him. He knew the sea. In this world, the sky thundered and flashed with light, and in the other the waves thundered, and crashed against a shore.

“Guelenfolk came out of Nelefreïssan, a long time ago,” Emuin said, and helped himself to the ham that had come up in the basket, twice over for good measure. “And probably so did the Elwynim, part and parcel with the Guelenmen and even the other sorts of Men, the Chomaggari and the Casmyndanim on the coast, truth be told, but never whisper thatsuspicion in the Quinalt’s hearing, good gods, no, the Chomaggari are twice-damned heathen dogs and the folk of Nelefreíssan are of course distinct even from Guelenmen, who have the gods-given right to have the capital in Guelemara. So Guelessar is ever so much more Guelen than the Nelefreimen… if you ask a man from Guelessar. Ask a Nelefreiman, and he’ll tell you the opposite. But to both the whole coastland is damned. ”

“Do the Teranthines think so?”

“Oh, aye, that the Chomaggari are damned, so any man that raids a Teranthine shrine as the hillmen are wont to do is clearly damned, quite heartily and justly so in my opinion, too. But the Teranthines are rather sure—and I agree with them—that in the very long ago most of Men in the whole world were living up in Nelefreíssan and Isin. Now, this becomes important for you to know, now that you ask. This was at the same time when the Galasieni were lording it in the south and up and down the Lenúalim. Then Mauryl comes into the tale.”

“Was it long ago?”

“Very. Nine hundred years at least. And Mauryl’s magic brought down Galasien, conjuring the Sihhë to do it for him… or he brought the five Sihhë-lords down from the north, as you please, which I think is the truer telling…” Emuin cast him a sidelong glance, head ducked, under a fringe of wind-stirred, grizzled hair, a close, questioning look. “Would youknow how that was, lad?”

“No, sir,” Tristen said uncomfortably, hoping that he never did know. He heard tales of nine hundred years and of centuries of Sihhë rule and hoped that the ancient wars never fully Unfolded to him. “I truly do not.”

“Well, well, but be that as it may, the Galasieni vanished, or whatever befell, Ynefel became as strange as it is, so strange even the Sihhë left it and built Althalen instead. The Guelenfolk and their Ryssandish kin came pouring down from the north like bandits—hence the real root of their identifying themselves all as northern now, if you take my guess, long after they have ceased to be northerly at all; hence the more northerly, the purer Quinaltine. We southerners, we of Amefel—”

“Are youof Amefel?” He was not sure he had ever heard Emuin admit it.

“As near as I am of any place. Aye, say I am of Amefel. And in the Guelen thinking, the pure Guelen thinking, we who are both Men and out of Amefel or anywhere to the south of there are fallen from Guelenish purity. If you want the deepest secret, the one for which the Guelenfolk despise the south, we mingled with the Sihhë and, gods save us all, the lowly Chomaggari.”

“But are not the Elwynim northerly and more north than anyone?”

“But mingled their blood most of all. Yes. Hence may they be damned, inthe Quinalt’s thinking—or that is the house the Quinalt scholars have built themselves into, a house without a door in it, if you ask me. A highly inconvenient house, since you came: they have said very many things they have now to unsay or damn their own king. And thatwould not be good.”

“Damn Cefwyn?” He was appalled.

“Some did wish Efanor to be king. —Is it only your men outside, men you know? Are you sure of them?”

“Yes,” Tristen said, wondering what Emuin might intend to say on this chancy night. Harm seemed to tremble in the air. He found himself afraid for no reason, or perhaps for every reason. “Uwen is there. And Lusin and his men.”

“Good. Good. What are they about out there?” This as a voice outside became a little louder and fell off sharply.

“Ale,” Tristen said, and reminded him: “They have the keg.”

“I’d not have strangers’ ears to the door while I ask you: how did the business this morning go? Are you still damned, or perhaps sanctified and blessed now, perchance? I see that Quinalt trinket of yours. I burnwith curiosity. ”

Would Emuin now say nothing more of the Quinalt damning Cefwyn? Cefwyn had threatened the Quinalt. Were they equally matched? Was there potency to a Quinalt curse? But he had quite forgotten the relic Efanor had given him. He put a hand on his chest, where it rested. It was chill, but very little more chill than his hands, in the gusts from the open window. He hoped it meant no harm, and that it brought none with it.

“Things went well this morning, sir, at least that there was no trouble. Efanor had given me this, if you will.”

“No manifestations. Good”—lightning lit the window and thunder cracked—“ gods!” master Emuin finished, holding his own hand to his heart. “‘ Thatwas a crack, was it not?”

“It sounded as if it hit the roof.” It had shaken the thoughts loose from his head. The rain was blowing, spattering drops clear to the table, and onto parchments where much of the ink was poor and ran. Tristen got up quickly and shut the window the old man insisted on keeping open and dropped the window latch—chilled, when he came back, his clothes wet, the autumn wind having blasted them to his body. “I wonder you keep the window open, sir.”

“I prefer it.”

“If you wish—” He offered with his hand toward the window.

“No, no, one soaking’s enough.”

“Mauryl feared an open window, very much so. He warded every window. I shut mine tight. I open them to nothing after dark. In all respect, sir—”

“At Ynefel I should ward everything in sight. But we have the Quinalt to protect us.”

“You jest, sir.”

“Extremely.”

“Why do you?”

“What?”

“Keep the window open?”

“I invite evil. Ifit should be abroad, I wish to know about it. I’ll not have it slipping about, prying here and there. Let it come here. Let it try me. I’m old, and ill-tempered.”

It was a reckless idea. But the great shadow, the darkest one, Hasufin, was gone. And it made a sort of sense, that if there was any other weaker shadow prying about, or sending out inquiries into Guelemara, then it might be drawn here, to wizardry and an open window, rather than below, to ordinary folk, where it might work far more mischief in an unwary populace before anyone noticed. Wizardry working ill likely would come in small ways, at first, at the most unguarded hearts. At least Hasufin’s malice had started that way… the prompting of ill thoughts, ill deeds, fear, suspicion. It had grown stronger. Ultimately it had killed a king.

And if some threat came full-fledged, stronger, noisier, larger, rolling in like sunset, it would come from far away, so that Emuin might well have clear sight of it in a tower lifted up above the clatter and smoke of the town. The disturbance he had seen in the Quinalt this morning had no immediacy here, aloft. All he could touch of the Quinalt’s troubles from here was an agglomeration of souls, not an orderly disturbance, and it mustered no threat: it could not get out of its confinement… that was precisely the problem. Even the lightning, a hammerblow from the heavens, had not released them, striking nearby, as it had. Release the Masons’ wards entirely and the souls would scatter like mice when the door was opened.

Came a timid knock. A crack of the door, that made the storm howl through the seams of the shutter. Uwen looked in, ever so carefully.

“Was you all right, m’lord? We got to thinkin’… we should ask, beggin’ your pardon…”

“Yes, quite safe here, Uwen. We’ve shut the window.”

“M’lord,” Uwen said, and gently closed the door.

“So how wasthe Quinalt?” Emuin asked in the settling of a disturbed parchment to the floor. “And did you remark anything odd about the place?”

“You’ve seen the Lines.”

“Oh, aye. A mare’s nest, a thorough mare’s nest. But one cannot say that to the Quinalt. No such things exist.”

“They don’t see them at all?”

“Blind as bats.”

“Shadows are trapped there. Many of them.” But he was sure now that was no news at all to Emuin. “What do you know about the shadows there?” he asked, while he had the old man’s attention and while Emuin was inclined to talk. “Do you knowwhat used to stand there?”

“King Selwyn feared Sihhë ghosts extremely in life. Ironic, his resting place.”

“There are Sihhë there?”

“At least there some that are not wholly—or holy—Men.”

The water boiled, for a second infusion. Emuin got up, measured tea into the cups and poured the hot water. Tristen took his and stared at the floating bits of leaf. He took the spoon in his turn, sank the flotsam in the cup before he sipped the hot liquid. The steam flew away in banners on the persistent drafts. Rain spatted against the shutters.

Here in the Guelesfort itself were shadows, a few in this tower, which crept in the crevices of set stone and along the joins of wooden floor and stone walls. They ran beneath the table and among the shelves of pots and herb bundles and scrolls and codices which somehow the two brothers had never dusted.

“Not Men,” Tristen echoed master Emuin. Often when Emuin had left a subject he would not then go back to it, not for a very long time, and sometimes never. But this was too intriguing a thread to let go. “Was Hasufin—was Mauryl—were they Men?” He had asked that in a hundred ways and never been satisfied. “Am I? Or what isthe difference? Guelen and Galasieni, you say. But what is the difference?”

“Oh, many.”

His shoulders fell. Master Emuin was going to evade the question again.

But then master Emuin said, pensively, “The earth is old. And regarding the shadow at Ynefel, the older a shadow, perhaps, the stranger it grows. There were folk the Galasieni ruled, and there was a shrine of sorts where the Quinalt stands today, so I suspect. One feels it especially in storms. One hesitates—” Emuin looked to the window, as the sounds of thunder rolled above the roof and ale-driven merriment thumped from behind the door. “One hesitates to prod such things, especially when one had really as lief not have the answer, or have to deal with it at the moment. Some things are easier to call than to settle back again, mark me. I do not think these in the Quinaltine are apt to break forth. I have rarely seen them and they are few.”

“They were thick, sir. There were hundreds… behind the Patriarch… every time he walked the line.”

“Are you quite sure?” Emuin was paying full attention now, and the easy feeling had left the room. “I felt nothing of the sort this morning. And I was attentive.”

“I felt you in your tower,” Tristen said. He had assured himself there was no threat. Now he was not so sure. “But you say you saw nothing this morning.”

“No, not I. But I’m not—” Emuin hesitated. “I am not precisely of your heritage. Perhaps some answered you who would not seek me.”

A small chill had come into the tower, perhaps a breeze; and there was quiet for a moment between them.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have gone there,” Tristen said. “I asked, sir. I did ask…”

“I will not prevent you from the things you do,” Emuin said. “Only yourwill can do that.”

“Advice, sir. Advice, if I ask it—”

“Only onewill should guide what you do… Mauryl’swill, in all that he laid down, is sufficient. I have known it longer than you, young sir, who still deny it, but perhaps not.”

“I have done all Mauryl’s will.”

“Nothing that regards living men is ever finished– Living men, in whatever sense. And gods know, nothing that regards wizards is ever settled, and Mauryl Gestaurien, twice so. No, I cannot advise you, especiallyif you will take instruction from Efanor.”

“But you knew I was meaning to speak to Efanor, sir. If you even in the least feared I shouldn’t go this morning, could you not at least have advised me of those fears? Could you not have advised me at least of your will? Can you not say… as Mauryl would say, young fool, here is a thing you should not do?”

“Did harm come today, all the same?”

“None that I saw, sir.”

“And did anything break forth?”

“Nothing. Nothing did that I saw, sir.” He had never yet admitted his glance into the west and his misgivings.

“Would you have permitted harm to break forth in the sanctuary?”

“No, sir. Not if I saw it.”

“And are not your eyes and ears sharper than mine?” Emuin did not wait for his answer. “Then Ishould by no means have stood in your path, should I? Oh, aye, to the contrary, you would have done whatever Cefwyn asked, come fire, come pestilence, you would do all heasked.”

“Did I not swear to do all Cefwyn asked? He is the king. I swore to him.”

“A folly, but one that had to be. One that will have your fate bend you orhim until it has what it wills, will I, nill I. I advise you, but you will not hear me.”

“Then what is this fate? What is my fate? A word, a word. You say it, sir, and I hear it, but it will not Unfold to me, it never will Unfold. Tell me! If I cando as you say I can do, then thisI will, and, will I, nill I, my wishing does no good at all. You never answer me.”

“Fate? A chance word, a folly, an empty word like Efanor’s gods. I shall never advise you beyond what I do. Abandon hope of that. Inform you, perhaps I may, if’t will serve Mauryl’s will, as may be, or may not. Shall I listen to you, when you become willing to inform me of your will? —or his? Aye, that will I, also. But I would be a fool to say to you, desist. To the wind out there, perhaps, but not to Mauryl’s Working. You must govern yourself, young lord. Do you understand what I am saying? That no wizard made cangovern your lightest whim. And did I tell you the wrongthing, and divert you from Mauryl’s Working, gods know where we should be. Swear no more oaths to anyone, if you are wise. If you wish my advice, I give it you in this one thing. Do not bind yourself. Fealty you had to swear. Every man must have a master and every Manmust have a lord. But as you love Cefwyn, be careful of your oaths and, as you are not a Man, beware of making promises. Mauryl’s will is a burning fire. And it lives, young lord, oh, it lives.”

“Mauryl is dead! I have done all that Mauryl willed me to do. Have I not, sir? Answer me! If I have power over anything, answer mel”

That silence resumed. There was only the crackling of the fire, Emuin meeting him stare for stare.

“And I still can defy you, young lord, and do, by whatever effort.”

“Why? Why do you not go down that stairs and stand in the hall tonight and advise Cefwyn, if not me?

What do you hear up here in the wind and the weather that you will not tell anyone?“

“It is not cowardice that keeps me at this post,” Emuin said, and gestured toward the window. “What might come by that route, I will face. Not your thwarted will, sir, that I will not. And yet I willsay no to you when you harry me for answers.”

I would not touch what Mauryl wrought, Emuin had said to him once and again tonight. And that was in its way a damning stroke of terrible, lasting loneliness. If not Emuin… if not Emuin, to touch him and comfort him and advise him… then who? Who would there ever be?

There was Cefwyn, that friendship, that faith. But even that grew thin.

“Do you fear me, sir?”

“Not you,” Emuin said somberly. “Not your heart. Not your intentions toward Cefwyn or Uwen or myself. And what didyou see in the Quinaltine? And what was your sense of the place, you of the far sharper sight?”

“Nothing I felt I should fear, sir, in so many words. I had thought I would fear it. I looked for gods.”

“For gods.” It was almost a laugh. Or a sob for breath. “And did you find them?”

“No, sir. —Not Efanor’s gods. I saw no sign of them. But you say there are wizards’ gods. There are the Nineteen. —Are there not? Do you notspeak to them?”

Emuin shrugged and evaded his eyes.

“ Arethere, sir?”

“You are a most uncomfortable young man.”

“And everywhere I go I am uncomfortable and uncomforting. Everyone says so. So do you.”

“You have your lessons in discourse from Idrys, none other, gods save us.”

“You say, gods, sir. Do you say it for no reason?”

“Oh, always for reason. In my frequent amazements. If Iwere not a Man, I would be amazed less often, perhaps, and perhaps I would know your answers as surely and smugly as the Patriarch. But I am a Man, and therefore say I, gods! this and gods! that and good merciful gods! at least several times daily. The sad truth is that I don’tknow your answer, young sir. If I were all a Man, I would have faith in the gods. But a wizard’s soul is outside the pale. That is the price one pays.” Emuin drew a heavy breath. “I have hope. I still have hope of the gods, that is the true answer.”

“But not hope of the Quinalt?”

“Have youhope of the Patriarch? I have not. Tell me what you did see, what you did feel when you were there?”

“Discord.”

“Like hearing trumpets all out of tune. That kind of feeling.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You have given your penny tithe and you wear that.” Emuin indicated the medallion, with the dark substance at the center.

“I have the other one, too, that Cefwyn gave me ₅the one bound to my sword. The Teranthine one, that he said was yours. I would not part with it. Efanor says two is surer than one. But ought I to wear his at all? Is there harm in it?”

“Now you ask.”

“You would not answer me before!”

“Blood of the martyrs, indeed,” Emuin scoffed. “There’s no harm in it, except to the sheep that bled for it, I’ll warrant that with no difficulty.”

The slaughter of sheep disturbed him. The thought of blood inside something he was wearing even more disquieted his stomach. “I shall take it off if you—”

“No, no,” Emuin said with a wave of his hand. “His Highness gave it. Therein is its virtue, young lord, no other. A gift in love is impervious to ill wishes. Even if it harmed the sheep. Children doubtless enjoyed the mutton for their suppers. And Efanor does love you, in his way. Such is the way of the world.”

“He gave me a book of devotions. I left it downstairs. I might bring it—”

“Harmless, too. I can judge from here. The Quinalt has no power.”

“The Quinalt say the gods made the world.”

“Perhaps. Lacking witnesses, I would not say whether it was made or found. The Quinalt credit the gods for all good, their enemies for all harm. It keeps things tidy.”

“So was the world always here?” He felt himself still on precarious ground, but he warmed to the exchange, cautiously. The tower chamber felt warmer since he had shut the window, at least by comparison to the earlier, wind-blasted chill, and the rain, after its initial violence, made a pleasant spatter against the shutters. He found his limbs relaxing out of their hunched and shivering knot.

“And where is here, pray?” Emuin cheerfully answered question with questions. “Is it where you and I are? Or might it be where two other men sit, and if it is, where is the center of it and when did it begin?”

“I have no idea, sir. Iwas found. Or made. Or Called.” He could use such levity. He had learned it in Cefwyn’s company, and he had the satisfaction of seeing Emuin look askance at it.

“Yet have eyes, and ears, and senses all. Is Efanor so certain and can the king always be so dubious?”

“Cefwyn himself never seems to regard the gods.”

“Nor did his grandfather.”

“But Efanor said one could hearthe gods. The Quinaltines think so. Is it true?”

“So say the Quinalt priests. I’ve never quite heard them. Nor expect you to.”

“Because of what we are?”

“Because I doubt the Quinalt priests ever do.”

“Then should I read what Efanor gave me, this little book? Should I go to the shrine on special days as Cefwyn wishes? Or not?”

“I dare not,” Emuin said then, and losing all good humor, sketched some figure in the spillage of water on the table.

“What do you not say to me?” Tristen asked him, and received the quick, bright, and utterly intent look of Emuin’s eyes.

“You looked west, did you not?”

How had Emuin known?

“Why?” he asked Emuin. “Why? Ought I not?”

“You looked west, I say. What did you see?”

“I saw… nothing that alarmed me.”

“Is that so?”

He was uneasy now—he recalled with shame his rapid retreat from that place. His subsequent preoccupation with a fallen log, a curious fungus. He had stopped thinking about the west. He had simply stopped thinking about it, unwillingly preoccupied with a curious log… as he had learned to use a preoccupation to wall off untidy thoughts. Was it wrong to remember Ynefel? Was it wrong, sometimes, to think of being there, where he had been happy, —even when he knew it was dangerous?

“I thought,” he confessed, “I thought of Mauryl. Of last spring.”

“And was there a shadow in this thought?”

He tried to remember, troubled by Emuin’s delving into what he had woven into a day of distractions. He was unwilling to remember. His wits refused him. And he knew that was dangerous. He drew a deep breath and tried to seize the threads of it. “I saw the shadow of a shadow. I remembered days and nights at Ynefel. The window of my room. Later—I remembered seeing weather on the horizon. Or thinking it might rain.”

“It never rained that day.”

“You didn’t ask me when we met at supper.”

“I forgot it,” Emuin said, and that was itself a disturbing statement… natural though that was in the confusion of guests and a festive evening.

“So did I forget to tell you. And you were asleep. And I had forgotten it.”

“It never rained that day,” Emuin’s voice was flat as if it was no surprise “Yet you saw weather. So you say. And did it see you?”

“I think not, sir. I took care not.” Now he could not remember the sky that day. The chill seemed deep for a moment, and it was very difficult to confess. “Yet I confess I took care that you failed to see me, too.”

“Was it the first time?”

“No. The first time in a while, sir, but not the first time. You never—” He began to say you never advise me, but that was no excuse. There were no excuses in wizardry or, though only he knew the laws of it, in magic. He strongly suspected“ that magic was even less forgiving and he knew his folly, that he had thought back, and back, and it had felt so safe… at first.

“I still can catch you out,” Emuin said, not unkindly.

“It was not a long moment that I stood there. I offer no excuse, sir. I can’t even promise not to do it again. It seemed—safe at that moment.” He struggled to remember all the sequence of things, but that was one of the mazes on which wizardry could lead: that they would not assume an order, or a right sense of importance against what seemed far more urgent. Around the tower things seemed to change by the moment, both things that had been and things that might be. “I felt afraid and I ran.”

“Did you>”

“I was afraid. Afraid I might bethere in the next moment.”

Emuin drew a long slow breath and leaned back. “Is it so, now?”

He had no words to say what had happened to him. The words Men used hardly compassed it. “It felt—” Still there were no words. He hadwords. But they were not in the common tongue and they stuck in his throat. And he had never, strictly speaking, told Emuin all that had happened at Lewenbrook. “I felt in danger. I felt myself in danger. If I thought it came near anyone else, I would have said so at supper that night.”

“Your goodwill is our shield, my young lord; it was Cefwyn’s shield in battle and it stands so, now, with all of us. I trust your looking west and I trust your going to the Quinaltine, little I can do about it.” Emuin had shut away all mention of that disturbing hour as firmly as he had shut the window. No, he wished to say. No, I have more to say.

Yet he could find none of it to say. And despaired, then, that he never would. Emuin had ceased to listen.

164 – C.J. CHERRYH

“—Would a game of draughts suit you on this noisy, rattly, windy night?” Emuin asked him lightly. “I fear the Quinalt and their bonfire are drowned by now, half-burned sins and all. Quinalt sins, to boot. Gods send they make no omen of it.”

“There. You said it again.”

“Said what?”

“Gods send.”

“Plague and pest. A manner of speaking. Men do have them.”

“Gods, sir?”

“Manners of speaking! ”

“Yes, sir,” he said. Emuin had closed off the subject. Emuin tried to joke with him, he tried to joke with Emuin and now he had gotten a rise of Emuin’s eyebrow. And a spark of humor in his eye. He fanned it. “Dare I have them, too, then?”

Emuin rose from the table, sighed, walked toward the shuttered window. And stood there. “The winter stars are rising and the rain and the foolish fire blinds all my observations. —But all they do down there changes nothing.” Emuin looked at him, and that spark was back, defiant, when a moment before he had seen a weary old man. “You and I are here. And chance is abroad tonight. So are a paltry few shadows. They gathered by the fire down there, too. They danced. Poor fools. For a few hours they were not enemies.”

“Who, sir? The shadows are not our enemies?”

“Nor are we our own, for a few hours at least.” Emuin came back, filled the teakettle. “Best we two sit together, drink tea, and play draughts till dawn. Bid kiss my hand to the Quinalt, and their gods. I don’t advise you, understand! I inform you the course that Iwould take; that I have taken, gods know, simply to live in Guelessar. Do all that Cefwyn recommends regarding the Quinalt—since you don’t consult me in such things I gladly provide no advice. I do not object to your wearing the silly medal, nor talking to His Highness, but finish going to the shrine as soon as you can. Thatis not advice, either, young lord, only good sense.“

“Yes, sir.” He accepted the chastisement, and the advice.

“Plague and pest, I say. Deliberately you did not ask me.” Emuin found his cheerfulness unexpectedly. Mauryl had used to swear at him, sometimes in despair, sometimes in laughter. And Emuin was very like him, in important ways. “Bother the tea,” the old man said. “Steal us two cups of the ale from the guards out there. To be sure of its safety, understand.”

CHAPTER 8

Wine flowed, along with the traditional ale and beer. The drums and the harps and pipes played through the rumble and crack of thunder, and the lords of Ylesuin and their ladies, their sons and their daughters, all moved in their sprightly, graceful patterns through the dance, safe and dry, immune to the storm that reports said had drowned the bonfire and dispersed the wilder celebration in the square for good and all this time.

The king had been wont to be down in the square at harvesttide, dancing the bawdy peasant dances in his misspent youth, oh, two long years ago, committing new sins while burning old ones. If one were lucky, one could burn them all by morning, new and old, and wake with a light conscience, an empty purse, and a well-earned headache.

This year, crowned, having spent last winter in Amefel, Cefwyn sat a thinly cushioned chair of state on a stone workmen had brought in at great effort, to raise that chair of state a handbreadth above the chair of the woman he could not make queen of Ylesuin, a hand-breadth of difference which the king had to remember every time he and his bride-to-be stepped down to dance, a handbreadth of a separation and a symbol of his good fortune not to be in Ninévrisë’s position, a beggar at a foreign, a hostile court. He would not, by his own will, have accepted the damned stone; but he had accepted it all the same, marking down the lord of Ryssand, Corswyndam, in his personal disfavor—for some future time.

The Quinalt had begun to yield until, today, with Ninévrisë casting in her own penny with her own hand, acknowledging Quinalt authority, doing as other lords did with the Quinalt countenancing it, there had been a tacit agreement on the conservative side that she was indeed a head of state and a lord among lords– Ninévrisè wore her circlet crown of office tonight, another point of debate, so he wore the heavy state crown of Ylesuin, and their respective peoples’ honors were preserved by a hand-span stone block.

His grandfather had set himself on the Dragon Throne by murder, baldly put, —had turned on his sworn lord, Elfwyn, the halfling Sihhë, and burned the palace at Althalen, enriching those who followed him. His father, too, had been notoriously jealous of his power, bewilderingly blind to lords fattening their purses by any means they could devise. His courtiers were sure the new-crowned king meant to do something clever, and betray his word to Elwynor, and enrich his faithful barons with new lands beyond any dream of acquisition they had had under his father.