“Your Majesty,” His Holiness said in anguish, “it’s reached a point of danger. There it is. This has come at a very bad time.”

“Then I suggest you draw a distinction between sorcery and wizardry in your homilies, Holy Father, start now, and nudge your doctrine toward some measure of reason on the subject of magic… and soon.”

“I dare not!”

“I suggest you dare, Holy Father. I more than suggest you dare. You have authority over His Reverence. Wield it! Modify his testimony! Be in command! The doubters and the ones who’d follow you are looking to you to know what side to take. Give them a signal, for the gods’ sake!”

“I am an old man, Majesty.”

“Would you be an older one? Act!”

“Yes, Your Majesty. I’ll try.”

“Well that you came tonight. Bravely done. Annas, see His Holiness back to the Quinaltine in good order, and dry and warm.”

“Your Majesty.” It required an effort for His Holiness to rise, between the wine and his exertions on the stairs. Annas assisted, while a page brought the lay brother back, insisted he keep the dry robe, found a dry cloak for him, and helped him on his way.

All the while Idrys had waited; and as the door latched, and they were alone:

“Two letters from His Grace of Amefel,” Idrys said, and drew out a small, unsealed missive from his belt. “Yet another messenger chased the lot of them… a postscriptum, at considerable effort. I did read it.”

“Is it bad?” Cefwyn asked, with a sinking of his heart.

“Only what we know,” Idrys said. “The Lord Tristen realized the danger in the patriarch’s flight.

He arrived home, evidently to find this, and bent a great deal of effort for his second rider to reach us before His Reverence and the guardsmen did. I find it worth remarking that he failed… considering his abilities.”

“I can’t assess his abilities,” Cefwyn said, and took the letter and sat down.

Be careful of the Quinalt father who has left Amefel and gone to the Quinaltine. He did so while I was absent and Uwen had no authority to prevent him, yet I wish we had done so. He is angry with me.

Regarding the fortifications at Modeyneth and elsewhere I mean to pay those out of the Amefin treasury. Many of the earls are ready to lend help. Also the earls are willing to lend me men for an Amefin company, which I will set in order by the spring and send you the rest of the garrison at Henas’amef, as well as Anwyll.

The work on the wall seems likely to go quickly. I hope that in all these things I am doing what you will approve.

Raising an Amefin company for his guard instead of the Guelens was well within sense. The duke of Amefel had that grant of power from his hands. It was the only thing in the message that wasclearly within Tristen’s grant and honor.

“You’ll note the bit about fortifications,” Idrys remarked.

“My grandfather’s decree to bring down their strongholds was a good idea then. It no longer is. I regretted not having them this summer.”

“Will you tell that to Ryssand?”

“Damn Ryssand. Damn the Amefin patriarch.” He folded the letter and tucked it into his own belt. “At least we’re prepared in the south. What he’s doing will turn the war north, when Tasmôrden hears it, mark me. He’s being left no choice. And if he doesn’t move toward him, we’ll be the hammer and Amefel the anvil. Damn Ryssand twice and three times, he and Murandys will catch the arrows if Tasmôrden invades. And as for Ryssand… I may let my brother’s marriage go forward.”

“You jest.”

He swung around and fixed Idrys with a direct stare. “Artisane’s husbandwould inherit, were Ryssand to fall in a ditch. My brother might be duke of Ryssand andduke of Guelessar.”

“Shall I find the ditch?” Idrys said.

“After the wedding.” He found himself well out on a limb, far, far from safe ground. “But maybe not. I’m not my grandfather.”

“Your grandfather died in bed, my lord king, a grace the gods did not grant your late father, who spared his enemies.”

“My grandfather died fearful of ghosts, master crow.”

“And does my lord king fear them?”

“There has to be a wedding, before an inheritance. I’ll think of it then.”

“Think now, my lord king. If not Ryssand, then these troublesome priests. The Quinalt won’t fault you.”

“One doesn’t win by killing priests. They multiply. They become martyrs. Gods know we need none. His Reverence of Amefel will get his comeuppance, when His Holiness wakes up and uses his wits. Then Ryssand will have his, if my brother weds the Ryssandish minx. He far underestimates my brother.”

“As my lord king wishes,” Idrys said, “and again, as my lord king wishes. And a third time, as my king wishes.”

“Plague on you! You don’t approve. Say so!”

“Consider, I say, that Tristen himself would have wished his messenger arrived timely; but he came too late. Our revenant is still fallible. Wizards failed.”

“He asked a man to make up days on His Reverence. He failed. It’s not portentous.”

“His Reverence fell in a ditch. And alas, survived it. Failed, I say.”

“He’d not wish for a death,” Cefwyn said, and wondered in himself why he held his hand. He had not been so moderate once. He followed a wizard’s path without a wizard’s power.

He wished not to be his grandfather, that was the truth. He wished to win his battles on the field, not in some ditch.

He wished not to become the king his grandfather had been. That dark pit was always there, a defensible place, a lonely, loveless place… and he had been on his way there, when he had met Tristen, and met Ninévrisë. He had listened to Heryn Aswydd, adorned his gate with heads of men who might have been his best allies, had he only known how he was deceived.

Then in Tristen’s company, seeing the mystery of forest leaves and the wonder in a water-polished stone, a light had come on him, a bright, bright hope, that this was the true world, all around him, truer than his darkening sight. And ever after that and forever, he hoped for himself, and whenever he thought of dark and practical deeds, why, that light distracted him toward this dream he had, and made him, perhaps, not a good or a reasonable king, but a king who wanted to be better, a king who wanted all his kingdom to enjoy their lives.

“My lord king?” Idrys prompted him, and he knew he had been woolgathering, looking toward that nonexistent but oh, so real light, dreaming, not being responsible toward his duties.

“Let’s trust His Holiness,” he found himself saying, covering that soft part of his soul that could deal with Tristen and his crownless queen, and finding the reason to gloss it over, undetectable by Idrys’ critical eye. “He sees his danger: it’s inside the Quinalt. Let’s see what he can do about it.”

Chapter 9

The wind blew and blew in the dark of night, battering at the windows in the dark, spitting rain, not snow, wailing around the eaves and rattling shutters.

“Like a spring wind,” Lusin said, “an’ us not to Midwinter yet.”

Tristen remembered the gray rain curtains that had swept down on darker gray towers, and knew with a vague edge of fear that at last his year was coming full circle: someone named a characteristic of the coming season and it did not Unfold to him; he recalled very keenly the look and the feeling of it at Ynefel, the crack of thunder, rain, creeping wormlike along the horn-paned window of his. room.

Here, his servants went anxiously about, even Tassand casting worried looks at the besieged windows, and saying it was unnatural.

“It’s only wind,” Tristen said. “A true wind.”

Yet he had wished fair weather on the south and all the ill to the north, on Tasmôrden’s army, and if it rained here, he thought it might snow to the north.