Cefwyn said in a low voice. “She is my ward; her sister and her cousins will soon depart this court under my extreme displeasure. Amefel is under Crown protection, until Her Grace has a man by her. Or perhaps,” he added, looking askance at her shorn hair, “she will take up the sword in her own defense.”

“I rule,” she said in a voice startlingly level, “until I also meet the Marhanen’s displeasure.”

“You are never far from it,” he muttered, which was doubtless heard at the nearer seats, and he hoped that it was. “Your health, my lords.

Discuss no policy; Lady Often will retire after dinner, by my order, and then we may deal among ourselves.”

There was, then, a marked scarcity of topics for conversation; it drifted, through the various courses, from a discussion of the relative merits of Amefin and Guelen wines, to the breeding of Cevulirn’s horses versus Sulriggan’s, and finally to the hunt, the latter discussion spirited and the gathering good-natured, until it came down to discussion of districts and game.

Then Orien’s voice cut through, soft and high. “I wonder how the hunting might be in Lanfarnesse,” Orien said, “since you border Marna,

Lord Pelumer. Do you see odd things come from there? —Where is the lord of Ynefel this evening? I had rather looked to see him.”

Cefwyn struck his cup sharply with his knife, choosing not to have the public scene Orien clearly wanted. “We have business to settle. Clear the tables. Lady Orien, your guards will conduct you. Your interests will be represented here for you.”

She did not rise. “I am competent to represent my own, Your

Majesty.”

“Then I tell you bluntly that you are still under arrest, and your removal from this council now is for suspicion of your character, not your competence. Must my guards lay hands on you? They will.”

“My lord King.” She rose, pushed back her chair, dropped a deep curtsy, and strode off, her guards moving to overtake her, a long progress toward the farthest door.

Idrys closed the doors and returned to stand at Cefwyn’s shoulder.

“My lords,” Cefwyn said. “You have been patient to remain under hardship of absence from your own lands. Your grace and favor will be remembered throughout my reign. I am about to ask more of you.., that you stay while the northern barons come in for their oath-giving—which means staying during harvest-season. I know the hardship. But for the stability of the realm, and in view of the foreign threat, —I ask you to stay.”

“My lord King,” murmured Umanon, “it is in our interests to remain, if that is the case.”

“But,” said Sulriggan, “will Your Majesty not return to the capital?”

“You’ve not been informed, then.”

It was not the answer Sulriggan had wanted. It set him down. It gave him no ready point of argument.

“No, Your Majesty, I have not.”

“My father was murdered. Murdered, sir. I am not done with investigations, and by the gods, no, I do not go to the capital when the evidence is here.”

Sulriggan said, prudently, whatever the argument he had devised, “I beg Your Majesty’s pardon.”

“But what,” Sovrag broke in, “is this Aswydd woman about? Going as a page?” Sovrag had made a joke. He elbowed his fellow Olmernman in the ribs. “I’d take ’er. And ’er sister.”

“I decline to know what Lady Aswydd does, save she risks excessively.

Our patience has its limits.” He was conscious of the lesser Amefin lords at the lower table, their lord’s head, lately removed from the south gate, rejoined to his body in the Bryalt shrine along with the remains of two earls and their relatives. Three of the remaining earls were in bitter dispute of the Aswydd kingship that went back into the aethelings of the years of Sihhé rule: he had already heard the stirrings of restless lords,

The gray light came all laced with Shadows, now, fingers and threads of darkness weaving all about the horizon, coming near the old man, try as

Tristen would to chase them. Tristen sat where the guards had bidden him sit, on the low wall that surrounded the camp. The horses were eating hay at the end of that wall, Petelly among them and, nearer the tent that sat spider-like in its web of ropes at the heart of this strange and cheerless camp, men sat on stones that lay out across the old parings.

They sat, shoulders hunched, heads bowed together, speaking in voices he could not hear.

He was aware of the sinking of the sun and the gathering of the true night in the world. Now came the dangerous time, when Shadows were strong, but he was determined to hold them until the dawn. He had discovered a power in himself to dismiss certain Shadows, although he knew no Words to speak and he had nothing but his presence and his refusal to let the Shadows have the old man. One would creep close, and he would face it in that gray place, and challenge it merely with his presence—then it would retreat. But there were very many of them, whatever they were, and so long as he was wary and quick enough he could frighten them singly back before they could combine into a broad, fast-moving Shadow that could threaten the old man.

But he was slowly losing. He knew that he was. So was the old man.

There were more and more threads. It would have been easier if he could have held him, clung to his hand, made one defense of the two of them.

He was tiring. His efforts raised a sweat despite the cold of the world of substance. He hoped, though, that if he could last until the dawn, if the old man seemed better-  Then someone said, very close to him,

“Here! What’s he doing?”

“He’s been like that,” one said, and someone drew a sword, a sound that rasped through his hearing with cold familiarity. Metal touched him, a shock like a burning fire, but when he blinked and saw it, the sword had done him no harm. The man had only laid its edge along his hand.

“M’lord, m’lord, be careful of ’im. The Regent said he might be Sihhé for real and all. That he might even be the King. We was only to watch ’im.”

“The Regent says. And what says Tasien?”

“Don’t know, m’lord. Some around the fire say as he’s Lanfarnesse, but the Regent said as he is Sihhé for a fact, m’lord, and ordered us to keep ’im close, and we don’t do ’im no disrespect ’ere, m’lord, please.”

“Some damned Quinalt praying curses on the lord Regent,” another man said. “That’s what he is. A Sihhé come wrapped in a Dragon’s cloak! Not likely, say I.”

They were all shadows to him in the dark, discussing his provenance and his purpose here, which ought to concern him—but in that gray light from which they had called him the Shadows were multiplying so quickly he dared not spare his thoughts for them: he went back. The old man was losing ground quickly. The Shadows had combined into skeins and ropes: they had grown reckless—until he faced them. Then they rapidly unwove.

They became threads again, and tried new tricks to get behind him.

But now the lord Regent turned toward the attack. The old man knew a Word, and spoke it, but he could not hear it, as he had never been able to hear Mauryl’s Words when there was magic about them.

The old man was a wizard, he knew that here quite clearly, but no one else had seemed to know it. He liked the old man in that reasonless, trusting way he had liked Mauryl and Emuin. When the old man, exhausted now, beckoned him close, he longed to go—but it seemed to him that in this respite from the Shadows the old man had gained for them both, he would do better to stand and drive the Shadows back.

—Come closer, the old man said. Come closer, Majesty. Forget them.

They’re small threat to me now. Let me see you. Let me touch you.

—Sir, he said, I might win. Let me try, first.

—No. The old man had grown very weak, and caught his hand in a grip he might have broken. But it was not the strength of that hand that held him, it was the expression, the same gentle, kindly expression that had ensnared him when first they met.