“Time will come,” said Niall, “when I am gone; and men will talk—mark you, son, I love you. But true it is you are my son by love and not by blood. The King’s own cousin: never you forget it. But Evald’s too; you are my cousin and not my son. There are those faithful who will stand by you come what may: you know their names. But men will whisper and try to bring you down, that being the way of men.”

“Then I will fight them,” said Evald. “And you will not be gone. Never speak of it.”

“That would not be wise.” Niall reached for a pitcher and poured wine into his cup, poured another for him. “So. I have a match for you in mind.”

The color fled Evald’s face and flooded it. He took the cup. He was sixteen and until that moment he had been a boy, thought like one, mostly for the hunt and games and dreams of glory in the skirmishes with An Beag; but he shared a cup with his father, rare honor, and asked quietly: “Who?”

“Dryw’s daughter.”

“Dryw!”

“His daughter, I say, not the man.”

“Dryw is—”

“Not the cheeriest of men that were my friends. But the youngest and well-gifted with sons—a fierce lot. He has one daughter, dear to his heart. His sons have one sister. And they care for their own. I could set no truer folk at your back than Dryw’s. It would ease my mind.”

“Because the man who sired me was one who killed the king.” Evald lowered his head. He had never said as much, but he had heard.

“Because you are my heir,” Niall said sternly. Then more gently: “I would not see the alliances I made slip away from you. Dryw I trust; his sons I would trust if you had a bond to them. Her name is Meredydd.”

“What does Mother say?”

“That it is the wisest thing to do.”

“What says lord Dryw?”

“He is yet to ask. First I ask my son.”

“So, well,” Evald said uncomfortably. “Yes. If it’s right.” It was unfair. There was nothing Niall could not have asked of him. For love of Niall and his mother he would have flung himself on spears, this being the direst kind of fate he had imagined for himself, warriorlike to keep Caer WielL He had never thought that there were other ways. This dismayed him more than enemies, that he had to suddenly become a man in many ways, and to be wise, and to get children of his own.

“This year,” said Niall.

“So soon.”

“I do not count my time in years.”

“Sir—”

“ ’Twould please me and please your mother. I think of her. I would see you with the strongest allies I can find—for her sake, if I am gone.”

“She will always be safe.”

“Of course she will.” Niall drank and put on a merrier face, and smiled for him, which was always like a stone that had learned to smile, so lean and hard he was.

But looking at him Evald grew afraid, perceiving for the first time that he was, after all, old; and that his riding out of the hold was growing hard for him, and his limbs were not so strong as they had been. So Banain had begun, growing thinner, bonier in the knees, until she stopped being young, and they took her to the hills. Evald believed no fables: Banain was dead; his pony had died this spring leaving his sisters heartbroken, and he cherished no illusions.

Why must things die at all? he thought. Or grow old? And he thought with terror that the curse was on him too, that now he must be a man and learn to trade in councils what men traded, and that fighting for the King when he should rise might be something less glorious and more the slow and lifelong battle it had been for Niall.

Evald’s son, they would call him, and never trust him without the claim of his mother’s blood and Cearbhallain’s allies to support him. He lost his boyhood in that thinking, and knew what, somewhere in the depth of his heart, he had always feared: that he might lose Cearbhallain himself, and slip back into the dark from which Cearbhallain had rescued him. They sang songs of Cearbhallain, of bloody Aescford, of bravery and wit and gallant deeds; and this man fostered him and shielded him and his mother, which he was old enough to understand was not the least of the gallantries of Cearbhallain. He remembered the harper, if very dimly, a golden vision and bright songs; he remembered mostly pain of his true father, blood and pain and a harsh loud voice; and one night of shining metal and hands with the blood of all those who had ever hurt his mother. She had laughed that night, and ever after smiled, and Niall had let no more blood come near her—he washed when he had come home from fighting on the border and never would see them until he and all the men with him had put off their armor and all the manner of war—because this is Caer Wiell, Niall said, not a robber hold like An Beag. And so the men about him learned to say.

But that was years ago. Before the tower rose.

It is for me, Evald thought, full of dread, and looked up at the scaffolding and the jagged stone against the sky. He builds it for me, not for himself. And then the foreboding came on him that it was the last thing Niall might do.

I do not reckon my time in years, he had said.

So month by month of summer the tower rose toward its roofing, and in all those months Niall rode but seldom, and ached much of nights: Meara tended him gently in his sometime illness, and Evald saw how the gray had touched her hair as well, and how worn she grew as his father failed. Only Niall smiled and won her smile from her. But most times Meara wore a worried look.

Month by month the messengers went back and forth with Dryw; and that grim man came, all grayed himself, a lean clamp-jawed man with young men about him who looked little more than thieves—his sons. “So, well,” Dryw said having looked Evald up and down, “I have had my spies. They report well of the boy.”

“My father speaks well of you,” Evald said, which impertinence brought the mountain lord’s cold eye back to him and gained a frown.

“Which father?” Dryw asked with Niall there to witness.

“The one who calls you friend,” Evald said sharply, “and whose opinions of men I honor.”—Which pleased Dryw and made him laugh his dry chill laugh and clap Niall on the arm.

“He is not easily at a loss,” said Dryw. And so they sent him away and arranged particulars together, Dryw and Niall, like two farmers chaffering over sheep.

So it was done, and Niall reckoned he had done the best he could. Spring, Dryw promised; Meredydd should come by spring. So Dryw and his sons went home again before the winter snows and Evald walked about with that stricken, panicked look about him that he had had that day of the talk in the hall—but it was well done, well done, Niall told himself, and so Meara said—For, said Meara, now he has kin of mine on the one side and friends of yours on the other.

“And he has Scaga,” Niall said. “He has Scaga, truest and closest,” which eased his heart to think on.

But that, with his tower, seemed enough. It seemed too wearying to bundle into heavy garments and go riding in the autumn chill; the fire was comfort. Many things which he had done of duty he left now to younger hands, and while he thought it would be splendid, as the snow fell, to saddle up and ride, to hear the hooves crunching the snow, the steady whuff of breath, and to feel the keen edge of the wind against his face—it would not be Banain under him. And to wrap up to take a ride to exercise some horse his men could do as much for seemed pointless, when his men must shelter him from any hostile meeting, when the most that they might look for was a cup of cheer at some farmhouse—but that put him all too keenly in mind of other things he missed. So he forever thought he would like to do these things, and the wanting was joy enough, not to be spoiled by doing. The best thing was his fireside, and listening to the harper who had come to his hall (but nothing like Fionn Fionnbharr, so even that joy paled). At last there was the fire’s warmth against the cold that crept into his limbs, and good food, and Meara’s kindness and his folk about him. He was fading, that was all, a gentle fading, so that he went all to gauntness.