The resultant murmur of voices quickly died in the crash of the chamberlain’s staff. Cefwyn lifted a hand, unhurried, unmoved, satisfied in the attention.

“He was Mauryl’s, but no servant,” Cefwyn said. “And indeed the old man was Mauryl Gestaurien and indeed he had neither wife nor natural heir.”

There was silence, profound silence attendant on that announcement, and about the room no few of the hearers made pious signs that rapidly became a contagion. The patriarch of the local Quinalt made the same signs, and stared round-eyed and set-lipped at the proceeding. The rival and obscure Bryaltine abbot, close to the earth of Amefel, stood his ground among his supporters, a knot of three black robes in the shadows. The Quinalt patriarch looked to be gathering himself to speak.

“Please you, my lords,” Cefwyn said before that could happen. Least of all did he want the priests to fling pronouncements into the charged and anxious air. He caught the eye of the patriarch and glared a warning. The old man, w. ho was, only yestereve, the recipient of a truly munificent Crown donative, closed his mouth and continued to glare. “My lords, Heryn has said there is no sufficient cause to have summoned you; in some quarters of Heryn’s domain, my motives are suspect, it seems—and surely he but reports the sentiment of his lords; but consider how you will fare, my lords, if bridges are being built in secret, and if the Elwynim do plan incursion—as certain ones would urge on me is the case. Mauryl has fallen, our borders to the west are undefended; and now assassins work to remove me from command and lately to defy Mauryl’s will and succession. Lord Tristen himself could tell you what he has seen. Question him if you will.”

Utter silence; Heryn first, Cefwyn thought, he will attack.

“How came Mauryl dead?” Sovrag leapt in first, daring where even Heryn had caution, and Tristen turned in that direction.

“The wind came,” Tristen said, “and the balconies fell. It was wicked, that wind, sir.—And Mauryl said I should follow the road. That was what I did. The road brought me here, and I came to Prince Cefwyn. And to master Emuin.”

There was silence still. Cefwyn realized his hand was clenched painfully. He relaxed it. The spell of Tristen’s voice had fallen over the hail. He knew then that he had not misjudged Tristen, that Tristen’s very artlessness had power; that there was ensorcellment in his look and in his voice that had stopped far less gentle men in their tracks; and most of all that Tristen would, if asked, tell exactly what he believed to be the truth, come hell, come brimstone, wizardry, or the Quinalt’s blanched faces.

“Do you intend to send him to Ynefel, my lord Prince?” asked

Pelumer suddenly. “Is he to take Mauryl’s place?”

“No,” said Tristen. That was all, in a silence made for a much longer remark.

Sovrag cleared his throat. “There’s been no immediate trouble, I can say. Aye, we trade with Mauryl, aye, there being no King’s law against it,

I’ll own to it, a boat to the landing by Ynefel’s bridge, and by morning the goods are gone and them’ll be a batch of simples and weight of gold in the boat, our own man never knowing how .... “

There was a murmur, Umanon with his guard, but it died.

“And by morning, I say, the goods’d be gone, but now—now, I sup pose, there’s an end of that trade.”

“Not Sihhé gold, of course,” Cefwyn said softly, the Crown claiming all such hoards, where found.

“No Sihhé gold, m’lord Prince, no Star on ’t. But fair weight of gold she were. And we give tax on it, as m’lord Prince can know by the accounts, same as any trade: we writ ’er down wi’ the King’s man. But I say this: there were peace with Mauryl and peace with the border yonder, only so’s we stayed out of Marna Wood except as we was supplying him.

I know men of Elwynor to try to come south and never come through.

Not a year gone, some of mine got greedy and came off the boat and tried the old man’s gate, but no one that went in came out—and I got the word of the man that stayed wi’ the boat that there was shrieking and screaming aplenty in the keep, fit to chill his blood. But no harm come to him, and he fell into a sleep as always and waked wi’ the goods gone, and the gold and the simples as always in the boat with him. The men that left that boat never come back. I can swear to ye, and so would that man swear, that that were Mauryl indeed, that old man in Ynefel. And I say, too, Mauryl’s demand of flour and oil and all did double this spring, to the wonder of us all.”

A murmur went through the hall, at that. Cefwyn paid sharp attention, thinking to himself that here was a source very few consulted—a source on that river that saw more than he admitted to seeing, because he was most often breaking the King’s law and hedging on breaking Mauryl’s partition of the river into two parts eighty years ago—north for Elwynor’s commerce, and south for Ylesuin’s, to the profit of Olmern and Imor.

“Thank you, m’lord of Olmern,” Cefwyn said. “And, Tristen?”

“My lord?”

“Will you offer peace to all the lords assembled, for Ynefel and Althalen?”

“Most gladly, sir.”

“And be a loyal subject of the Marhanen Crown?”

“Yes, m’lord Prince. Most gladly.”

“And a pious subject of His Majesty?”

“Most gladly, m’lord Prince.”

It was very quiet, for a questioning of rite and ritual. It was more quiet than attended a royal heir’s investiture, he could attest to that; more quiet, more sobriety, and more careful attention to implications of words the lords all, at one time or another, memorized and mouthed, believing in the oath, it might be, but never understanding as applicable to themselves the prohibition against sorcery.

A second kneeling, a second impression of Tristen’s lips against his hand and placing of hands within hands: he raised Tristen up, set a brotherly kiss on his cheek, and the whole hall breathed with one breath.

There was a move at his left then, and he glanced aside in alarm, recoiled a step sideways as Heryn cast himself to his knees at his feet—his first thought was for the hands, a weapon, but the hands were empty, and there were Guelen all about as alarmed as he, whose hands were on weapons. Pikes had half-lowered.

“My lord Prince,” Heryn said in the dying murmur of alarm. “I beg forgiveness of you and of him. I thought—I most earnestly thought this was a sham meant against this hall. Gods witness I was wrong. I am a loyal man to the King, and to his sons. Gracious Highness, forgive my suspicion.”

“It is late for that.”

“I withdraw my protests, and will swear so.”

“I do not withdraw my Guelen, and will swear so.”

“I must bear that, then,” Heryn said, and when sarcasm might have prevailed, there was no apparent edge to his voice, only anguish.

Something must be done with him; the whole hall waited, anxious, skeptical of Heryn alike, perhaps embarrassed in Heryn’s fall from dignity, perhaps thinking of their own weapons: Cefwyn knew the volatility of the region all too well; but he considered rejecting Heryn and his offer, and his tax records, a moment or two longer than he might ordinarily contemplate a move to fracture the peace.

But after such a delay, enough to make Heryn’s face go to pallor, he beckoned the man to rise, and, still frowning, gave him the formal embrace courtesy and custom demanded after such an accepted capitulation.

Still there was a cold feeling next his heart while Heryn touched him.

He was very glad of the leather armor he wore, and he said to himself angrily that he had indeed been in bed with but two of the Aswydd whores, and them less shameless.

He set Heryn back coldly and turned his shoulder to him as other lords and their adherents came to the steps, quick to protest their support in more dignified terms than Heryn’s example. Even dour Cevulirn came and offered more than ritual support against, Cevulirn said, the rumors of bridge-building.