He should not favor Amefel alone. If there were fish, they should also come from Sovrag’s people, who caught them downstream of Murandys, when they were not engaged in petty brigandage. It was a poor province, when it was not raiding; and a royal purchase of fish might give relief to Sovrag’s neighbors, among whom was Cevulirn. If there was grain, the south had that. If there was timber and stone, there was sullen Imor. Damnedif he would sit helplessly nodding to the demands of the north. They had set him at odds with them and declared their war against his friends in pettiness and shadows. He knew them, and he knew their taxes and wherein they chose to pay the Crown in bags of grain and barrels of salt fish, which they took from the hands of their peasantry.
Refuse Murandys’ salt fish? Levy instead a demand for timber and labor? To glut the fisheries without warning would lower the price of fish, which the people could eat as well as sell, but it would threaten Murandys and force him to look to Ryssand for the timber. Diminish the requirement for timber the king could not: he needed it for bridges.
Best consider carefully which of his lords he wished to push at the other, and for what goods, and who would cheat whom, if he demanded, say, goldof Murandys, declaring a royal distaste for barrels of fish. And where would Murandys obtain gold? Selling that fish to Guelessar at, perhaps, a lower price.
Perhaps merely opening the discussion tonight of a distaste for fish would so alarm Murandys as to make him far more amenable. Or there was another possible topic of interest, which he had never mentioned, awaiting its usefulness.
“Do you know,” he remarked to Murandys, “Lady Lurielsent me a letter. Several of them, in fact.”
He saw the intake of breath, as Murandys, his mind set on the Patriarch’s cousin, realized he had an overlooked piece on the board, his niece, who did not love him, who had been writing letters on the eve of the king’s marriage and risking the king’s perhaps unfavorable interest. Cefwyn smiled his grandfather’s smile quite consciously, and rose from his chair.
“We’ll discuss it,” he said. “The tables are laid, I’m sure, gentlemen. We expect your company.”
Nestled between two hills, a Quinalt monastery occupied that small wedge of flatland created by the road’s branching to Marisal in the south and to Amefel to the west. Clusyn was its name. It was a waystop the king’s party had used on its way to Guelemara; and thanks to its provision for travelers at any season Tristen found no need to make a camp under canvas, a great benefit, which obviated the necessity of unloading a significant amount of canvas in a rising damp and, worse, loading all that canvas up again in the morning, when the air was bitterly cold.
Instead a traveler met safe walls, and their company even found meals waiting. The king’s messenger, on his way to Amefel by post-horse ahead of them, had advised the monks such a number of men would be following him by evening, and that news had had the honest monks baking up leavened bread, entire baskets of it coming hot from the oven right at sunset. Monks had swept out the sheds and the space along the south wall, provided hay for their horses, and managed their arrival as a marvelously efficient process, one monk directing their wagons to the end of the yard, where at another brother’s direction each set of drivers might unhitch its team on the spot and lead them to the appropriate area by the stables, oxen to one side, mules to this place, horses to that. The next wagon went beside that one, and the carts in the order of march, and so on, all by the wan light of a setting sun and shadows lengthening over the modest walls… walls the purpose of which seemed to fence out hungry deer, not hostile men.
The men of the Guard found their accommodation in a disused drying shed, where a fireplace provided a welcome warmth. The drivers shared canvas-sided lean-tos provided with a bonfire in front; but for the lord of Amefel and his captain and his servants, and for the king’s officers, there was the guesthouse, which boasted four proper rooms besides the warm common room. But supper was waiting for all of them, and they were able at last to put off the armor they had worn since before dawn, and to set aside their weapons and sit down to a hot meal. “These are countryfolk,” Uwen said approvingly of the monks. “These are good countryfolk, no rich city men. They put the soldiers and the muleteers and all right into walls, which with this wind startin’ up and the damp and all is a fine thing, a very fine thing.”’
The wind had become very bitter at the last, nipping noses and making riders’ toes cold as the sun went down, marking a night of small comfort for anyone beyond a safe fireside and in the open.
Master Emuin, on the road (asleep, as seemed, in a wagon, as Tristen felt from moment to moment a slight uneasy balance) would not fare half so well, and despite master Emuin’s tenancy in the drafty tower, the unfettered gusts outside were bitter and strong.
But there was nothing he could do to lend wings to oxen, and he knew no way he could hurry distant wagons. He only hoped the axles bore the weight of master Emuin’s load of baggage and brought him here as soon as might be.
With a waft of cold air from outside, Anwyll came in to join them midway through their supper, reporting everyone under cover and the soldiers exceedingly grateful for grain and water they had not had to carry for themselves—water which had healing virtues for man and beast.
“The shrine is famous for the water,” Uwen explained in a low voice. “It heals, so it does, the stomach complaints. His Highness…” Uwen cleared his throat quietly. “His Highness’d set great store by it, on account of the holy precinct.”
The water tasted of sulfur, to a tongue familiar with the powders of a wizard’s workshop; but Uwen’s quiet tone and hushed reminder of His Highness advised him it was a matter of gods, which Efanor would revere.
“They sell amulets,” Captain Anwyll added, “which have the virtue of the water. And the local blessing.”
“This is a safe place,” Tristen said, since some acknowledgment of the virtues of it seemed called for. “It feels so.” And to the rescue of the moment, the monks brought ale, three pitchers of it. “From Marisyn,” the chief monk said, and they finished their supper, with sweet buttered cakes, and talked of safe things like wagon wheels and harness until Anwyll was through with his supper and left them.
The sulfur-tasting water satisfied thirst. Tristen much doubted the amulets, after Emuin’s dismissal of Efanor’s; but some mark of courtesy seemed due. The monks had done far more for his comfort than ever the great shrine in Guelemara had done.
“What shall we do to repay the monastery?” he asked Uwen at length. “Shall we give them gold?”
“It’s the custom to give a gift.”
“Then will you do that?” he asked, and gave Uwen the purse Idrys had given him, supposing that that was enough: the rest of their money was not in purses but in that great chest the company quartermaster guarded.
“ ’At were a good thought, ” Uwen said. “I’ll see to it. ”
“Do. But,” he added, “make sure of the coins as you give them. Idrys cautioned me strongly.”
“That I will,” Uwen said, “and have the lord abbot bless ever’ one of ’em as I deal it out.”
“A very good thought,” he said. He was here because of a Sihhë coin as well as a lightning bolt, he well understood so, and he no longer trusted everyone he met, even when he made a gesture of friendship and respect to them. It seemed a sad and sorry way to proceed. But he sent Uwen to pay a coin and test the balance of the heavens tonight, in the very unlikely chance that wizardry had truly transmuted his last one.
He sat sipping the remnant of his ale before the fire, aware of monks who tiptoed close among the columns to stare at him, and aware of Anwyll and his men, who in pursuing duties in the cold kept letting the wind in.