“The others—”

“May have relevance. The Aswydds living and dead Cefwyn exiled from this province. Dug them up, hauled them out of their tombs, and sent the whole lot over the border to hallowed ground in Guelessar. Thatfor necromancy. The only one missing is Taryn, in some tomb or grave in Elwynor.”

“I need your advice this time. I know you wish me to think of things for myself, but in this, I ask you, sir, tell me most solemnly what you see.”

Emuin breathed deeply. “Advice? I’ll cut through all the cords at once. One stroke. As I advised Cefwyn to win your friendship, I advise you… win his.”

“Have I not… his friendship?”

“Win his.”

Emuin at his most obscure, most informative, and most obdurate and maddening. A dead Aswydd in Elwynor, live ones in exile in Guelessar, Elwynim down in the stable, and Emuin talked of friendship. Cefwyn had lamented that trait of obdurate silence, and cursed it, but Tristen did neither, at the moment. Curious strictures bound Emuin, he had begun to know that: to know somewhat, and not to know enough, and to know that naming a thing had power… that was a burden. He had let loose a wish for snow and fair weather and had almost loosed disaster, unthinking.

The narrow escape sobered him, chastened him, made him think twice how he railed on Emuin, who did very little and that after long, long thought.

“Thank you, sir.”

“For what?”

“For your constancy. Your silence. Your thinking things through.”

Now Emuin laughed, of sheer surprise, it seemed. “Mauryl said I was fickle as the breeze.”

“As hard to catch.” Now the boy Paisi was on the stairs, thumping and gasping, carrying something heavy, and their time of privacy was ended.

Win his. Win Cefwyn’s friendship, of all tasks Emuin might have set him the dearest to his heart, and perhaps the thorniest. He had come here almost in despair, and now opened the door for the boy with a light heart and a consciousness that, no, he no longer was the boy, the wizard’s fetch-all and carry-all. Master Emuin had set him a task he could do, and wished to do, a great task, a lord’s task.

Paisi had baskets with him… supper, meat pies, by the delicious aroma. “Shall I fetch for you, m’lor’?” Paisi asked in dismay. “I didn’t see your guards, m’lor’.”

“I escaped them,” Tristen said, and went his way out the door and down the steps as if his feet had wings.

Below, far down the hall, two of his exasperated guards did find him. So did importunate workmen, pleading that the doors had to be finished, and they were fine carpenters, not makers of stables.

“Yet it’s stables and barracks we need,” Tristen said in all patience, “so we needn’t have axes at these doors again, if you please. Finish your carvings later. Make them fine when there’s time. Now we need beams up, and roofs.”

“Get along there,” Lusin said… only Lusin and Tawwys had come for him. “Shame, to be pestering His Grace with plaints and preferences, gods bless!— M’lord, the Elwynim has come up the hill, or Aeself has. The others… master Haman’s seein’ to ’em, sayin’ they’ve the look of fever an’ he don’t want sick men in the town.”

Disease and all the ills of war, Tristen recalled the warning. Would an unscrupulous wizard unleash that against them? Any gap in their armor had to be seen to.

“Master Haman can deal with fevers,” he said, “but all the same, go up and tell Emuin. He’ll have something for them, to prevent it. He’ll know.”

“Aye, m’lord.” Tawwys was up the stairs in a trice, but Lusin stayed below with him, and the two of them walked toward the stairs. “Cook’s sent supper to the little hall, m’lord, an’ a small table set, countin’ the visitor.”

“Set out the maps,” he said. “Not allthe maps, but sufficient to ask the man where he went and how he crossed, and where Tasmôrden might be, and doing what.—And I’ll want a clerk, to have it all written down.” The whole day had passed in one rush after another, and Lusin caught a passing servant, sending her running for the archive and the clerk.

He would write to Cefwyn with what he learned. He would deserveCefwyn’s friendship.

Meanwhile Uwen was coming down the stairs, and Crissand joined them from the west, in from the stable-court, with his bodyguard. Durell was close behind him.

Likely curiosity had spread through the court, until he had as well have used the great hall for his welcome to Aeself and the rest. Lords he had not summoned were finding excuses to come, and obtain an invitation.

“Here, and here,” Aeself said, a noble conversant with maps and charts, a commander willing, in the carrying-away of the dishes of their simple supper, to move a trembling and much-injured hand over the canvas map and show them all what he knew.

“There,” he said, drawing a line by Ilefínian to note the presence of Tasmôrden’s forces, and the road that led up to the border and the riverside Cefwyn defended, all but one of its bridges destroyed. “The Guelenmen move with heavy wagons,” Aeself said, “and this Tasmôrden expects.” He had a cough, himself, and took a sip of wine laced with one of Emuin’s potions. “So Lord Elfwyn believed the reports we had. My lord is dead, now, almost beyond a doubt… and so all this army…” Aeself passed his hand over the region of the town. “The gates did not withstand him. They opened.”

“Force of arms?” Tristen asked. “Or did he use other means?”

“My lord…” Aeself lost his voice a moment, in coughing. “I don’t know. They opened at night, and if a man of ours would do it, then damn him for it, but we don’t know how, otherwise, except wizardry, and that we don’t discount.”

“Is he known to have such help?”

“He’s known for one himself, my lord.”

That was not quite a surprise, counting that the claim to be a High King meant Sihhë blood, however thin.

“But sufficient for that?”

“No one knows. Some say it’s all trickery, to fulfill the prophecy. Some say he hides what he does have, and sheds his soldiers’ blood when he could win past without a battle, all to hide his wizardry from us. To this hour we don’t know.”

Either a strong wizard or not: again, no news, and Tristen had no knowledge of his own on the matter.

“We were on the outside of Ilefínian,” Aeself continued, “had been, attempting to bring relief to the town, back from the north. But when we came there, we found the gates breached, the earl’s men inside looting the town. We attempted to turn the tables on him, and besiege the besiegers, but he was cannier than that, and we rode into archers at the east gates. So twenty-two of us died, and the Saendal, the damned brigands, dragged two more of us down. It was no honor to us that we ran, my lord, but I looked to save something, and we’d no prospects there. There was no knowing then where the earl was. They knew where we were, they always knew, and if that was natural, he’s a clever man.”

“What do you think?”

“He claims the Kingship, and he claims to be Sihhë. He has to have the blood, so he has to say so, true or not. He has somewhat the look.”

“Does he?” asked Crissand, and Aeself faltered.

“Not so much as m’lord does,” Aeself said faintly. “Seeing him, one knows the difference, as I’ve neverseen, not in my life.”

“Tasmôrden’s army,” Tristen said, unwilling to allow that to go further. “Where?”

Aeself touched the map, the circle around Ilefínian. “Here’s the most of his forces, which with the loot and the taverns, isn’t likely moving. And here to the east, there’s a shred of Her Grace’s men under arms, that the earl hasn’t gone to take yet, but the loyal army is thin, they’re thin, my lord. There’s force on the earl’s side and force in his hands, and there’s some who say he iswhat he says, and has the blood, and the magic in him, but if he has, he can’t keep his men out of the wine stores. That saved us, if anything.”