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So Selwyn Marhanen quietly accorded the Aswydds guarantees of
many of their ancient rights, including their religion, and including
their titles. By that agreement, while the Aswydds became vassals of
the kings of Ylesuin, and were called dukes, they were also styled
aethelings, that was to say, royal
—
but only within their own
province of Amefel. This purposely left aside the question of whether
the other earls of Amefel bore rank equivalent to the dukes of Guelen
and Ryssandish lands
.

Selwyn thus had Amefel… or at least the consent of its aetheling… by
the first winter of his rule, and he still had ambitions to go further.

But the opposing district of Elwynor formed a region almost as large
as Ylesuin was with Amefel attached, and, undeceived by the
apparent truce, Elwynor's lords used that winter to gather forces. By
the next spring, with Selwyn in Amefel and Elwynor armed and
strong enough to make invasion costly, both sides assessed their
chances and declined battle. The river Lenúalim thus became the
tacitly unquestioned but still unsettled border.

The Elwynim meanwhile, declared a Regency in place of the lost
High King at Althalen. They chose one of their earls, himself with a
glimmering of Sihhë blood, who styled himself Lord Regent, and
waited, taking it on stubborn faith that not all the royal house of the
Sihhë-lords had perished, that within their lifetimes a new Sihhë-lord,
some surviving prince they called the King To Come, would emerge
from hiding or come down from the fabled northern ice to overthrow
the Marhanen and reestablish the Sihhë kingdom. This time the Sihhë
kingdom would have faithful Elwynor at its heart, and all the loyal
subjects, foremost the Elwynim, would live in peace and Sihhë-

blessed prosperity in a new golden age of wizardry.

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The Elwynim, therefore, cherished magic, and prized the wizard-gift
where it appeared. But outside the Lord Regent's line there were far
too few Elwynim who could practice wizardry in any appreciable
degree. Certainly no one in the land possessed such magic as the
Sihhë had used, and there were few enough wizards left who would
even speak of the King To Come… for the wizards of this age had
had firsthand experience of Hasufin Heltain, and they remained aloof
from the various lords of the Elwynim who wished to employ them.

Those few Elwynim who had any Sihhë blood whatsoever were
likewise reticent, for fear of becoming the center of some rising
against the Regency that could only end in disaster.

So the Elwynim, deserted by their wizards and by those who did carry
the blood, became too little wary of magic and those who promised it.

They failed to ask the essential question
: why
the wizards remained
silent and
why
Mauryl and Emuin both remained aloof from them,
and thus they failed to know the danger that still existed in the
shadows and among the Shadows
.

So the years passed into decades without a credible claimant to the
throne in Elwynor, and without the rise of another great wizard.

Selwyn died. Ylesuin's rule passed to Selwyn's son Indreddrin, who
was a middle-aged man with two previous marriages and two grown
sons.

Now Indreddrin was Guelen to the core, which meant devoutly,
blindly Quinalt. That was his mother's influence. As a young prince,
he had had no love of his uncivil warlord father, but had a great deal
of fear of him. And under this dual influence of his mother's faith and
his father's disinterest, Indreddrin grew up with no tolerance for
other faiths, despite the exigencies of the Amefin treaty… and with a
superstitious fear of wizardry, based on his observation of his father
Selwyn's terrors in his declining years. Indreddrin fell more and
more under the influence of the Quinaltine, and exercised little
patience with his wild eldest son, Cefwyn
—
for Cefwyn took his
grandfather's example and clung to the Tera'nthine tutor, Emuin (that
same Emuin who had aided Mauryl at Althalen), whom Selwyn had
appointed royal tutor for both his grandsons
.

This was no accident, first because of wizardry, where little was
accidental at all; and secondly because Selwyn saw superstition
rising in his son and wished to stop it in the next generation. If
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Selwyn as a reigning king had found priests and the Quinalt a
convenient resource, and to that end had supported them, he never
forgot what he had faced at Althalen. Selwyn knew he had lost his
son to the priests' influence, but be wanted his grandsons never to
dread priests or wizards
—
rather to understand them, and to keep the
best on their side
.

This matter of the royal tutor was a source of bitter argument within
the royal house: the queen died, Indreddrin grew more and more
alienated from his father, and the very year Selwyn died and
Indreddrin became king, Indreddrin persuaded his younger son Efanor into the strictest Quinalt faith
—
lavishing on him all the affection
he now angrily denied the elder son
.

So did the highest barons
—
notably the dukes of the provinces of
Ryssand and Murandys
—
lavish attention on the younger prince,
Efanor. There was even talk of overturning the succession
—
for the
more religious and proper Efanor became, the more Cefwyn, the
crown prince and heir, consoled himself with wild escapades, sorties
on the border, and women… very many women
.

Still, by Guelen law and custom, even by the tenets of the Quinalt
itself, Cefwyn was, incontrovertibly, the heir, and it was no light
matter to set Cefwyn aside: in that, even the most conservative of
priests hesitated.

So Indreddrin, either in hopes that administrative responsibility
would temper Cefwyn
—
or, it was whispered, in hopes some assassin
or border skirmish would settle the matter and make Efanor his
heir
—
sent Cefwyn to administer the Amefm garrison. To do that,
Indreddrin bestowed on Prince Cefwyn the courtesy title of viceroy,
thus keeping a firmer Marhanen hand on that curiously independent
province and insinuating a closer Marhanen presence into a very
troublesome district
.

Now, since ordinarily and by the treaty, there was no such thing as a
viceroy in Amefel, the duke of Amefel, Heryn Aswydd, was not at all
pleased by this gesture, but Heryn dared not protest and give the
Marhanen an excuse to send a larger garrison. So Duke Heryn kept
his discontent to himself, even agreeing to report to Indreddrin
regarding the prince's behavior, and on the worsening situation
across the river.

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The duties Cefwyn had, however, were not a sham. Indreddrin had
indeed felt a need for a firmer Guelen presence in Amefel, for the
Regent in Elwynor had no children but a daughter of his extreme old
age, and now the lords of Elwynor, weary of waiting for the
appearance of a High King, were now saying the Regent should
choose one of them to be king. They saw that the only way for one
earl of all the earls to gain any legitimate connection with royalty
was by marrying the Lord Regent's daughter.

The Regent of Elwynor, Uleman Syrillas, refused all offers from his
earls, swearing that his only child, his daughter Ninévrisë, would
wield the power of Regent herself. It was unprecedented among the
Elwynim and by chance unprecedented among the Sihhë Kings
themselves that a woman should rule in her own right. Uleman had
nevertheless prepared his daughter to rule… and when the day came
that a suitor tried to enforce his demands with arms and carry
Ninévrisë away, the Regent refused to yield.

But the earls' guards were the army, the only army, that the Regent
could draw on, and now some earls sided with the suitor and some
sued for themselves while others sided with the Regent.

Elwynor sank into civil war… and that war insinuated itself across
the river into Amefel, where Elwynim families had historical ties and
relatives.

So it was into this situation that Indreddrin sent Prince Cefwyn.

And it was entirely characteristic of Indreddrin that he told Heryn he
was to watch Cefwyn and told Cefwyn to watch Heryn, who was,
after all, a heretic Bryaltine and a man with ties to the Elwynim
earls.

Unbeknownst to the king, in fact, Duke Heryn was in league with the
rebel earl Caswyddian, in Elwynor… and
that
gave the edge to
Caswyddian over his own chief rival, Aséyneddin
.

And Hasufin Heltain, once again dead, as Men knew death, was
waiting only for such a moment of crisis and a condition in the stars.

Through the situation in Elwynor, that ancient spirit found his way
closer and closer to life… he saw Aséyneddin as his ally.

Mauryl, however, had foreseen the hour Hasufin would make another
bid for life, and had saved his strength for one grand, unprecedented
spell, a Summoning and a Shaping. So he brought forth his creation
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from the fire of his hearth
—
not a perfect effort, however, nor mature
nor threatening. To Mauryl's distress the young man thus Summoned
lacked all memory of what or who he had been
.

Mauryl gave his Summoning a name
—
Tristen
—
and taught him with
more patience than Mauryl had accorded any other student, until the
day Mauryl lost his struggle with Hasufin once and for all
.

So Tristen, a young man with the innocence of the newly born, set
forth into the world to do the things Mauryl intended… if only he
could guess what those things were.

He came not to a wizard, who would teach him, as Tristen had
hoped, but to Prince Cefwyn, on the very night when, despising his
host, Heryn Aswydd, Prince Cefwyn was sleeping with Heryns twin
sisters, Orien and Tarien.

Now Tristen was as innocent a soul as ever Cefwyn had met… a
youth seeming incapable of anger, feckless, and utterly outspoken,
but wizardous in his origins at the very least, for he confessed he was
Mauryl's.

Cefwyn's curiosity was immediately snared; and once Cefwyn began
to deal with Tristen personally, he found himself snared indeed
—
for
having suffered his grandfather's angers and his own father's cold
dislike of him, after the northern lords' wish for Efanor and Efanor's
desertion toward religion, this was the only offer of an utter
stranger's friendship he had ever encountered, and from a kind and
innocent heart
.

Meanwhile Tristen continued to learn… for he was a blank slate on
which Mauryl's spell was still writing, Unfolding new things in
wizardous fashion, at need; and providing him knowledge
unpredictable both in its scope and in its deficiency. Tristen
wondered at butterflies… and asked questions that shot straight to
the prince's much-scarred heart.

Cefwyn's affection toward this tvizardous stranger made Duke Heryn
Aswydd hasten his plans for war
…
for Cefwyn was growing fey and
difficult. Heryn used King Indreddrin's suspicion of his son to lure
both the king and Prince Efanor to Amefel… hoping then to do away
with Cefwyn and the younger prince in the same stroke as King
Ináreddrin. Thus he would overthrow the Marhanen dynasty, end
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wyddian to become High King in Elwynor, and establish himself as a
riding aetheling, a power in the new Elwynim court
.

Prince Efanor, however, had not ridden with the king. Fearing for his
father's life if the accusations were true, yet willing to give his
brother a last chance to confess, he had ridden straight to Cefwyn to
find out for himself the truth ahead of their father's arrival, to spring
any trap upon himself if one existed. It was a brave act of a religious
man, and of a brother Cefwyn had once loved.

And when Cefwyn knew his father had listened to Lord Heryn and
was proceeding with Heryn's full confidence into Amefin territory, he
was horrified, and rode at once to prevent the ambush he foresaw, no
matter the danger.

He arrived too late, and was almost overwhelmed by the force that
had killed the king. Heryn's plan would have come to fruition but for
one thing: the knowledge of warfare Unfolded to Tristen that day, on
that battlefield, and in that knowledge and with a sword in his hands,
the gentle stranger turned warrior. He rescued both the princes and
defeated Heryn's allies.

When Cefwyn reached Henas'amef not only unexpectedly alive, but
king of Ylesuin, Heryn paid with his life for his treason. Tristen,
however, wounded by his own self-knowledge and by witnessing
Cefwyn's justice, strayed into the hills, where he fell in with the Lord
Regent of Elwynor. Lord Uleman was dying, and in hiding from his
rebel earls. The old Regent's last wish was to bring his daughter
Ninévrisë to Cefwyn Marhanen, as his bride… for the only hope for
the Regency was peace with Ylesuin. The Regent died, his spirit
possessing the ruins of Althalen, and he was buried there.