He rose, showing no signs of a strenuous day, or his years, and formally blessed the man kneeling beside him in prayer. He reclaimed his wine cup, subsiding happily onto the stool nearest the window. It was generally believed that the night air was noxious, carrying poisons and unholy spirits, but Ceinion had spent too many years sleeping out of doors, on walks across the three provinces and beyond. He found that he slept better by an open window, even in winter. It was springtime now, the air fragrant, night flowers under his window.

"I feel badly for the man who yielded me his bed."

His companion shifted his considerable bulk up from the floor and grasped his own cup, refilling it to the brim, without water. He took the other, sturdier chair, keeping the flask close by. "And well you should," Brynn ap Hywll said, smiling through his moustache. "Brynnfell's bursting. Since when do you travel with an escort?"

Ceinion eyed him a moment, then sighed. "Since I found a Cadyri raiding party looking at your farm."

Brynn laughed aloud. His laugh, like his voice, could overflow a room. "Well, thank you for deciding I'd sort out that much." He drank thirstily, refilled his cup again. "They seem good lads, mind you. Jad knows, I did my share of raiding when young."

"And their father."

"Jad curse his eyes and hands," Brynn said, though without force. "My royal cousin in Beda wants to know what to do about Owyn, you know."

"I know. I'll tell him when I get to Beda. With Owyn's two sons beside me." The cleric's turn to grin this time.

He leaned back against the cool stone wall beside the window. Earthly pleasures: an old friend, food and wine, a day with some good unexpectedly done. There were learned men who taught withdrawal from the traps and tangles of the world. There was even a doctrinal movement afoot in Rhodias to deny marriage to clerics now, following the eastern, Sarantine rule, making them ascetics, detached from distractions of the flesh—and the complexities of having heirs to provide for.

Ceinion of Llywerth had always thought—and had written the High Patriarch in Rhodias, and others—that this was wrong thinking and even heresy, an outright denial of Jad's full gift of life. Better to turn your love of the world into an honouring of the god, and if a wife died, or children, your own knowledge of sorrow might make you better able to counsel others, and comfort them. You lived with loss as they did. And shared their pleasures, too.

His words, written and spoken, mattered to others, by Jad's holy grace. He was skilled at this sort of argument but didn't know if he would be on the winning side of this one. The three provinces of the Cyngael were a long way from Rhodias, at the edge of the world, the misty borders of pagan belief. North of the north wind, the phrase went.

He sipped his wine, looking at his friend. Brynn's expression was sly at the moment, amusingly so. "Happen to see the way Dai ab Owyn looked at my Rhiannon, did you?"

Ceinion took care that his own manner did not change. He had, in fact, seen it—and something else. "She's a remarkable young woman," he murmured.

"Her mother's daughter. Same spirit to her. I'm an entirely beaten man, I tell you." Brynn was smiling as he said this. "We solve a problem that way? Owyn's heir handled by my girl?"

Ceinion kept his look noncommittal. "Certainly a useful match."

"The lad's already lost his head, I'd wager." He chuckled. "Not the first to do so, with Rhiannon."

"And your daughter?" Ceinion asked, perhaps unwisely.

Some fathers would have been startled, or offered an oath—what mattered the girl's wishes in these things? But Brynn ap Hywll didn't do that. Ceinion watched, and by the lamplight saw the big man, his old friend, grow thoughtful. Too much so. The cleric offered an inward, mildly blasphemous curse, and immediately sought—also silently—the god's forgiveness for that.

"Interesting song the younger one sang before the meal, wasn't it?"

There it was. A shrewd man, Ceinion thought ruefully. Much more than a warrior with a two-handed sword.

"It was," he said, still keeping his own counsel. This was all too soon. He temporized. "Your bard was out of countenance." "Amund? It was too good, you mean? The song?"

"Not that. Though it was impressive. No, Alun ab Owyn breached the laws for such things. Only licensed bards are allowed to improvise in company. Your harper will need appeasing." "Spiky man, Amund. Not easily softened, if you are right." "I am right. Call it a word offered the wise."

Brynn looked at him. "And your other question? About Rhiannon? What sort of word was that?"

Ceinion sighed. It had been a mistake. "I wish you weren't clever, sometimes."

"Have to be. T o keep up in this family. She liked the… song, you think?"

"I think everyone liked the song." He left it at that. Both men were still awhile.

"Well," Brynn said finally, "she's of age, but there's no great rush. Though Amren wants to know what to do about Owyn and Cadyr, and this…"

"Owyn ap Glynn isn't the problem. Neither's Amren, or Ielan in Llywerth. Except if they cling to these feuds that will end us." He'd spoken with more fire than he'd intended.

The other man stretched out his legs and leaned back, unruffled. Brynn drank, wiped his moustache with a sleeve, and grinned. "Still riding that horse?"

"And I will all my life." Ceinion didn't smile this time. He hesitated, then shrugged. Wanted to change the subject, in any case. "I'll tell you something before I tell it to Amren in Beda. But keep it close. Aeldred's invited me to Esferth, to join his court."

Brynn sat up abruptly, scraping the chair along the floor. He swore, without apologizing, then banged his cup down, spilling wine. "How dare he? Our high cleric he wants to steal now?"

"I said he'd invited me. Not an abduction, Brynn."

"Even so, doesn't he have his own Jad-cursed holy men among the Anglcyn? Rot the man!"

"He has a great many, and seeks more… not cursed, I hope." Ceinion left a pointed little pause. "From here, from Ferrieres. Even from Rhodias. He is… a different sort of king, my friend. I think he feels his lands are on the way to being safe now, which means new ambitions, ways of thinking. He's arranging to marry a daughter north, to Rheden." He looked steadily at the other man.

Brynn sighed. "I'd heard that."

"And if so, there goes that rivalry on the other side of the Wall, which we've relied upon. Our danger is if we remain… the old sort of princes."

There were three oil lamps burning in the room, one set in the wall, two brought in for a guest: extravagance and respect.

In the mingling of yellow lamplight, Brynn's gaze was direct now. Ceinion, accepting it, felt a wave of memory crash over him from a terrible, glorious summer long ago. This happened more and more as he grew older. Past and present colliding, simultaneous visions, the present seen with the past. This same man, a quarter-century ago, on a battlefield by the sea, the Volgan himself and the Erling force they'd met by their boats. There had been three princes among the Cyngael that day but Brynn had led the centre. A full head of dark hair on him then, far less bulk, less of this easy humour. The same man, though. You changed, and you did not change.

"You said he's after clerics from Ferrieres?" Picking up the other thing that mattered.

"So he wrote me."

"It starts with clerics, doesn't it?"

Ceinion gazed affectionately at his old friend. "Sometimes. They are notoriously aloof, my colleagues across the water."

"But if not? If it works, opens channels? If the Anglcyn and Ferrieres join to push away the Erling raiders on both sides of the Strait? And mayhap a marriage that way, too…?"

"Then the Erlings come here again, I would think." Ceinion finished the thought. "If we remain outside whatever is happening. That's my message to Beda, when I get there." He paused, then added the thought he'd been travelling with: "There are times when the world changes, Brynn."