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"I'll imagine the pearls an' such on those gowns just walked out o'

town in purses and tucked in bosoms, and went all the way to Elwynor, or even into noble ladies' dower chests, closer to home."

There had been ladies of various houses near enough the As-wydds to have had access to a wardrobe.

Without the Aswydd sisters in their red-haired glory, the gowns, the jeweled cups, the gold plate on the tables, the hall would never be as fine or as glorious as he had seen it in Heryn Aswydd's reign. He was sad to miss the beauty of it, but not at all sad about the grain it bought for the hungry families, or the army it fed, until hands could let go the bow in favor of the shepherd's staff. Cefwyn had used to say Lord Heryn's court outdid Guelemara for luxury… and that was not true in size, but in sheer brightness, it might well have been so.

"I did promise them jewelry, at least. I thought of the necklaces we found in Parsynan's room. I think those were likely theirs."

" 'At were generous," Uwen said. "But a woman's jewelry is money if she took to the road, an' off to Elwynor, as these two might if one of the guards don't watch sharp. An' one of them jewels is three years'

wage to these men."

"They won't leave this place," he said, and it had the ring of truth in it as the words came out. "Tarien's afraid." He considered who was near them, and knew of a certainty that Emuin was listening, remote in his tower as he told Uwen the simple, the important truth. "Tarien's child fortress of dragons.html

is Cefwyn's son."

"Gods save us, I was afeared so. Ye're sure?"

"A son, and a wizard."

"… An' His Majesty's. Gods save us all."

"They think the nuns didn't know anything, not even that Tarien was with child… but if the nuns did know, word might have gotten to the Quinalt, and to Ryssand, mightn't it?"

Uwen gave a soft whistle. "A chain of ifs, m'lord, but it's a damn short chain, and none of 'em's impossible."

"Ryssand would want them."

"Damn sure he would."

—
To say the least, Emuin said within the gray space, where he had
been lurking the last several moments in utter quiet. Cefwyn took
chances. Now one of them's come home
.

—
What should I do? Tristen asked Emuin, since Emuin had
remarked on the situation. And
: "What shall I do?" he asked Uwen, aloud, attention divided, distracted in two conversations at once.

"Tell His Majesty," Uwen said. "This 'un's worth a letter."

—
Write to Cefwyn, Emuin said, in the same instant. If Ryssand is
behind the raid on Amvyfar, gods save us all, then he's gone far
beyond retreat. This is deadly, if he alleges it. And above all else,
Cefwyn needs to know before the rumor reaches the streets
.

He had no wish to bear that news—but Emuin was right: the rumor spreading was inevitable. The babe would be born in its due course, with all that he was and might become, and would no one know? It was impossible to keep that secret, impossible to keep it with all the wizardous currents running through the world. Tarien, with her sister, had tried to kill Cefwyn this summer—but was that in fact all they had aimed at?

And did that matter now to the truth that grew inside her, a creature, like himself, with its own presence and own will within the gray space?

Mauryl had made him. What had Tarien Aswydd made?

—
The child is a wizard, he said to Emuin. And has he not his own
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reasons
?

—
Weak yet, Emuin said, which in some measure comforted him
.

But not wholly.

Not so much as to give him ease of mind or spirit.

And when they reached the stairs, he and Uwen together, and went down, as one must, to go up again to his wing, it cast him momentarily within reach of traffic in the lower hall—in sight, as it chanced, of the master carpenter, who hurried over with the report of a leak in the archive window, which must be dealt with.

"As it's endangering the books, Your Lordship…"

"I'll attend it," Lusin said, Lusin, chief of his bodyguard, whose business had nothing to do with the master carpenter; but ice forced snowmelt through cracks, and the woes of the world went on.

He hourly—even at this hour—expected the report from Mo-deyneth, of grain headed for storage, safe from Tasmôrden's reach.

He expected another report from Haman, tomorrow, of the horses in pasture. Cefwyn had a child of whom Cefwyn knew nothing, and grain moved, and the library window leaked.

Meanwhile the boy Paisi, who, a former felon, marshaled two servants to carry firewood for him, passed on his way to Master Emuin's tower. Paisi bowed, and the servants bowed, but Tristen had already set his foot on the step before he even gave a thought to the courtesy, or thought of Paisi as a messenger to bear a quiet word to Emuin, one the twins would not hear.

"Tell him I'll see him this afternoon," he said, and Paisi turned, eyes wide, and bobbed a courtesy, knowing well which
he
he meant: his lord would meet with his master in what quiet and privacy they could arrange in the fortress, but hereafter such moments were difficult to achieve, and all they did in the gray space might flow through it to other interested souls.

Emuin was right. He had to write to Cefwyn. The more understanding of such a child Unfolded to him, the more he knew that Cefwyn must not be caught by surprise with this news. Cefwyn had to break it to Ninévrisë, and to the lords in his own court: Cefwyn had to tell his friends, and break it to them early and with all the facts in hand… before Ryssand heard it and whispered it fortress of dragons.html

piecemeal and had the lords forming a dozen different opinions, each at odds with the other.

To two lords at least he had no need to send a messenger. At the top of the stairs he slipped quietly into a gray space momentarily untroubled by the Aswydds and whispered to Cevulirn of Ivanor, —

Come. Bring all the lords. There's a matter to discuss
.

Likewise he sought Crissand Adiran.

But he did not find him, not in the Zeide, nor in the confines of Henas'amef, or yet in the camp outside the walls. Perhaps he was asleep… but the hour argued against it.

He grew troubled, then, and made his presence bolder, and stronger, and went searching more noisily through the gray space, seeking whether Crissand was indeed simply sleeping, and near at hand, or whether something dire had befallen him.

He did not expect to find Crissand's presence far, far north of the town, struggling through drifts. But there he was.

He did not expect, given all the untoward things that had happened last night, to meet evasions, or to know that Crissand had slipped his guards and risked his life escaping him and his notice.

He did not expect to meet the pitch of anguish, or the fear that shut Crissand off from him.

It was not the action of a reasonable man, but that of a man pressed to the limits of his endurance. And he knew nothing that might have sent Crissand out and away from him in that state— except his bringing Crissand's cousins into Henas'amef, and settling them in the Zeide.

That was the fear. That was the anger and the anguish.

He stopped on the stairs, his hand clenched on the stonework, and looked away past the walls of the stairwell. He was heart-struck that Crissand had hidden his feelings from him so well until now,| and never disturbed him in leaving.

—
Are you well? he asked. Are you safe? Come back. Where are your
guards
?

Crissand failed to answer him… too far a thought for Crissand's scant ability, it might be. And now he did dread the Aswydds' attention, fortress of dragons.html

and feared to make too great a thing of it.

It might be that Crissand had no inclination to listen: the lord of Meiden rode northerly, toward Anwyll's garrison and, in between, the village of Modeyneth, and the building of a defensive wall . . all these things were in that direction. There were ample things in which Crissand had a legitimate interest, in his lord's name.

But nothing about Crissand's self-appointed mission gave Tristett any sense of quiet or surety. He felt only the keen awareness that Crissand was Aswydd himself, and that the quarrels that had split the Aswydd house and brought it down might not be done—for if there was a lord in Henas'amef who had reason to take strong exception to the return of Orien Aswydd to this hall and to the shelter of this roof, Crissand had that reason. He had buried a father thanks to her.

—
Be safe
, Tristen wished Crissand, and continued up the stairs, more than distressed: worried to the depth and breadth of his heart. And he wished Crissand's welfare whether or not Crissand heard him, and whether or not it accorded with other matters he cared for.

—
Be sensible. Trust Modeyneth and go no farther… above all not to
Althalen. And come back to me when you've done what you set out to
do. Be assured I am your friend
.

That, he wished Crissand to know most of all.

CHAPTER 3

The lords came to the summons with snow still unmelted on their cloaks, tracking icemelt through the lower hall and into the great hall itself and delaying not at all for conversation or for ceremony. No one pleaded excuses, except Crissand, who did not appear at all.

It needed no magic to know why they had been so quick and why the summons had met with immediate compliance. Cevulirn would have come, regardless, out of friendship, and Sovrag, who detested to be left out of any proceedings, would have come, for one thing, to be sure he was not the object of the council.

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But Umanon, the stiff, Quinalt lord of Imor, had come with as great a haste, and so had Pelumer, who viewed schedules as mutable at need.

Together with Amefel these four comprised the muster of the south.

War was their agreement, war with the rebels in Elwynor, supporting Cefwyn's intended attack from the east.

And now with neither preface nor prologue the exiled duchess of Amefel had turned up and gained admittance to the center of their Preparations?

Folly, they might well be saying among themselves.

Certainly they were due an accounting.

In all sober consideration of that fact, Tristen took his seat on the dais that dominated the great hall, that seat which had been the throne of Amefel when Amefel had been a petty kingdom. Around him hung the tapestries that portrayed the triumphs of the Aswydd line, figures stitched in stiff rows, conspicuous in the Aswydd personal heraldry of gold and emerald. He was conscious of that, too: the Aswydds'

long dominance in this hall—and in that consciousness he wore the red of the province of Amefel itself, with the black Eagle crest, the colors of the people, not the Aswydd house.

He had Uwen by him on the one side, Uwen being his captain of the guard, and he had master Emuin, who generally held to his tower.

That Emuin had come down was in itself remarkable, and a sure sign of the seriousness of the situation—but Crissand, who should have been here, on his right, was at least a day away by now, a perpetual, worrisome silence.

Crissand was not the only absent earl of Amefel—there was in fact a general scarcity of local faces, not that the earldoms had no interest in the current matter: indeed, they had a more acute concern in Orien Aswydd's return than did the dukes of the southern provinces, who had never been under her rule. But most of the Amefin court had gone out to see to their lands and villages after Midwinter Day, attending ordinary needs and necessities, and traditional observances—in truth, more than one of them simply disappearing from court much as Crissand had done, with no more leave: Tristen reminded himself it was the habit of the court, that no one had ever held them to any different courtesy, and that it was not so different with Crissand—but he knew and Crissand knew that there was an fortress of dragons.html

assumption between them that demanded a leave-taking, and that had not been satisfied.

So, too, likely Crissand and likely the other absent earls would be slower returning than they had planned, thanks to the unexpectedly heavy snow: and there was serious business to do out in the villages, plans to make for the spring, justice to hear, even winter weddings…

all such things the earls had under their hand, and reasonable enough they rode out after the Midwinter festival to see to their duties—if Crissand had ridden to his own lands, to Meiden.

He had not.

So now with Crissand and Drumman both out among the snowdrifts and the wretched roads, it fell to old Earl Prushan to stand by his duke's right hand, an honor usually several degrees of precedence removed from that good old man… in fact, beside Prushan, next, were only a handful of the lesser earls and the ealdormen of the town, a set of faces all grave and curious, all come to hear the circumstances of Lady Orien's uninvited return… but not the representation of the highest lords in Amefel that Tristen would have wished. It was instead the gathering from Lewenbrook, the southern army, the neighbors, who came to him at his call.

How many of the earls had gotten wind of Orien Aswydd and absented themselves?

Fearing what? Had they not seen Auld Syes enter the hall on Midwinter Eve? Had they not seen enough strange things in this turning of the year to send them uneasy sleep?

A whisper of wind wafted past Tristen's head. Owl swooped down and lit on his forearm, piercing his flesh with sharp talons, caring not a whit for his discomfort, it was certain. He was more and more distressed, and yet refrained from a general call into the gray space, a shout to rouse all that was his against all that was Orien Aswydd's.

"Last night," Tristen began, addressing those who had come, the locals, and the southerners, "last night I heard travelers in the storm, and I found Orien and Tarien Aswydd walking toward the town.

They say armed men burned the convent at Anwyfar, and killed their nurse along with the nuns there. They say they had a horse at first, and lost it, and walked the rest of the way, hoping for shelter here. I don't think it's a lie, how they came here. But they're not welcome fortress of dragons.html