“Indeed,” Cevulirn said, and they reined about and Cevulirn with them. The wind came more comfortably at their backs as Tristen began to thread his own column again back through itself, and Ivanim sorted themselves out among Guelenmen and Amefin.

“Does His Majesty need me in Guelemara?” Tristen asked, first and clearest of his worries once they were faced about and headed home. “Are you here because things are going well, or because they aren’t?”

“Well and ill. His Majesty sent me south for my health. It’s high time His Majesty’s friends put their heads together.”

Cevulirn did not readily give up words, not before strangers, most of all. He only knew that Cevulirn had purposed to stay by the king this winter, to report to the southern lords any untoward demand of their rivals of the north, and to make it clear to the ambitious north that the south would not see its interests trampled. Yet Cevulirn had heard of the wedding only from the vantage of the monastery at Clusyn, and had come home contrary to his firm intentions.

So whatever had happened in the capital, it was not according to plan.

“Earl Crissand is trustworthy,” Tristen said. “What do you mean we should put our heads together?”

“The northerners are rid of me,” came the answer. “As they are of you, and yet they could not prevent the wedding. So at least half their plans came to naught, but gods know what Ryssand’s done.”

“Surely lightning hasn’t struck the Quinalt.” He was half in jest, but that was how the barons had been rid of him: he could not imagine how they had proceeded against Cevulirn, who was one of the greatest men in the land.

“Would lightning had struck Ryssand. No. But Istruck him a grievous hurt, hence my ride south, hence a winter for us to arrange things more to His Majesty’s liking. Hence my visit to you. How have you fared here?”

There was far too much to tell, and much of it bitter to Crissand, of whose witness he was entirely conscious. “Well enough,” Tristen said, “considering all that’s happened. Meiden lost a good many men. There were Guard killed. I sent Lord Parsynan out afoot, since he stole Uwen’s horse; and I sent His Majesty’s wagons to the border to fortify the bridges—or I had sent them this morning. The weather may have prevented them going.”

“Have you, indeed?” Cevulirn’s tone was flat, implying neither approval nor disapproval, only, for him, query. “Has there been difficulty there?”

It was another matter that touched heavily on Crissand’s pride.

“My father, sir,” Crissand said before he could speak, “had correspondence with Tasmôrden. The rebels offered to come in to support rebellion, and rebellion there was, to my father’s grief and misfortune, sir.”

“But no sight of Elwynim,” Tristen said. “Yet I fortify the bridges, and kept the Guard, having no Amefin troops. The wagons… Cefwyn can spare them a fortnight more, so I hope, if nothing happens northerly.”

“A fair risk,” Cevulirn said after a moment of silence, leaving Tristen less than certain Cevulirn approved all he had done.

“Cefwyn told me,” he said, “that he wishes to attack Tasmôrden from the eastern bridges and not the south, for glory to the northern barons. And I’ve no wish to take any glory at all, or to have another battle at planting time, when the last was at harvest.”

So Crissand had just told him, but Crissand was by no means the first to explain that with men drawn away from their farmsteads season after season, no crops grew and the lambing this spring would already go hard… he had not drawn men off the land, not yet. Amefel’s losses had been heaviest, at Lewenbrook, a muster of peasant farmers and herders, where other provinces had sent well-trained troops.

“So I don’t intend to cross the river,” he said, “but I intend they shan’t cross here, either.”

“His Majesty’s plan is to set Murandys and Ryssand and Guelessar in the field, all the heavy horse and all the gear,” Cevulirn said. “It’s the warfare Guelenfolk know. And I’ve urged His Majesty have a thought to the light horse, and getting a force over those roads, which by all Her Grace has said are none so fine and broad as those in Guelessar. Mud. And difficulty for those wagons His Majesty sets such store by, with all that heavy gear. March to Ilefínian and bring them to bloody battle… with all respect to your good captain, Amefel: the heavy horse will suffer in that plan, every league they travel. It’s too far a march, too many hills that give vantage to archers.”

“A bloody passage it’ll be,” Uwen said in a low voice, for Cevulirn he knew well. “An’ I agree wi’ Your Grace, and wi’ my lord, I’d send the light horse.”

“I’ve said the same,” Tristen said.

“But that’s not the king’s wish in the matter,” Cevulirn said, “for his Guelenfolk. So bloodily they’ll win through, granted Ryssand doesn’t stab our king in the back. The king sets all hope on Ryssand and Murandys, where least it should rest, and here am I in the south, where least I should rest, and His Majesty never so in danger from a knife in the dark when he was sleeping in Henas’amef, his guards notwithstanding.”

A great deal was amiss. Tristen heard that very clearly as they rode. Cefwyn had wished to set Ninévrisë on her throne with no war at all, deeming the rebels broken at Lewenbrook. But a lesser lord, Tasmôrden, had leapt to the fore of the rebellion, and the rebels that had not yet crossed into Cefwyn’s battlefield had simply swept aside and fortified a camp inside Elwynor, raising an army out of the stones there, as best they could surmise: certainly it had taxed the villages hard to raise the force it was now.

Set Ninévrisë on her throne Cefwyn would.

But Cefwyn averred he had no choice but exclude the south from the war and call this time on the north. Ryssandish folk and Guelenmen were the heart of his Guelen kingdom: the south was of taintedblood… had he not heard it from Cefwyn’s lips?

And did that not still shiver through his memory? So thoroughly had Cefwyn remembered he was Guelen, and wanted their favor, when he could have called on the likes of Cevulirn and Sovrag. Having Cevulirn and Sovrag with him, he had sent home the Olmernmen; and him; and now Cevulirn?

The gray space remained untroubled; Tristen’s heart did not.

Was it a visit without meaning, that Auld Syes guided? He thought not. They two were the king’s friends, and Crissand had pledged himself through him, and so all the earls of Amefel, and Auld Syes herself had heralded Cevulirn’s coming to him. Was it without meaning?

He was Lord Marshal of Althalen, Lord Warden of Ynefel, titles all but lost in his assumption of the dukedom of Amefel… meaningless and vacant of inhabitants, men said.

Men said. But might those be the honors Auld Syes called him to attend… when she as good as hailed Crissand aetheling?

The King he come again, she had said to Prince Cefwyn in his hearing, and that lanced through his memory like a lightning stroke.

Had not Uleman, who stood for a King, Lord Regent of Elwynor, also come to Amefel, and died? Young king, Uleman had called him, when he was dying, but in the gray space all things had questionable meaning. Uleman had charged him with defense of the innocent, Uleman, who lay now in ward of Althalen, a power not quite departed from the earth. Cefwyn made him lord here, in Amefel… the keystone in the arch that held Elwynor off Ylesuin’s soil.

“Look, will ye?” he heard Uwen say as they passed the hill and rode down past the road to Levey, and all through the ranks men blessed themselves or spoke softly to their gods, for the old oak had fallen, its roots uptorn from the muddy ground, great clods fallen all about, and the branches cracked and ruined.

“Ain’t no wind might topple an oak wi’ that girth,” a Guelenman said. “Gods bless, here were sorcery.”

“Quiet wi’ your ’sorcery‘!” Uwen said sharply. “Wet ground an’ a gale an’ an old tree, aye, and a wizard-woman, but sorcery’s another thing altogether. My lord don’t dabble in that, so careful how ye use words.”