“Yet,” Cevulirn said before Tristen could answer, “I havesent riders to Lanfarnesse and Olmern, and even to my neighbor Umanon in Imor.”
Emuin was less pleased with that news.
“Also,” Cevulirn went on, “I’ve left my second-in-command clear instruction to take the dukedom and swear to Cefwyn in the field should aught befall me untimely on the road: I’ll not risk my successor by sending him to Guelemara as things sit now. In good truth, I expect Ryssand to attempt my life before the year’s out, and I advise my allies as well as my appointed successor to look to their own backs. To you I came personally, as you see. To Idrys I have already spoken, and you know his opinion of Ryssand. To the risk of his own life, Idrys would proceed against Ryssand and Murandys; but not if Ryssand moderates his threats, and I understand that reasoning. It’s Ryssand’s compliance the king needs. Ryssand’s gone as far as the king will permit, and Ryssand knows his head doesn’t sit securely. Let him worry of nights whether Idrys will act in absence of orders. It will keep him out of mischief.”
“To the kingdom’s peril if Idrys should take it on himself to act,” Emuin said darkly. “There’s no succession in Ryssand now, once Corswyndam’s gone.”
“Tasmôrden has already attempted to divide Amefel from the rest of the kingdom,” Tristen said. “And he may well seek some means to unsettle us. Wouldn’t he rather see Ylesuin fighting inside its own borders instead of crossing the river in the spring?” All the uncertainty of the day brimmed up in him like flood. “And wizardry, if it does work on Tasmôrden’s side, would press for that. Wouldn’t it strike at the stone that will move, if it wants to bring the wall down?”
Cevulirn cast him a stark, a calculating look.
“Oh,” said Emuin, “you would be astonished what understandings come to our young lord in dreams these days.”
“I’ve understood nothing in dreams,” Tristen said, disturbed even to think of them. “I dream of dragons, sir. And Owl.”
“You don’t dream as men dream, no,” Emuin said, “yet all the same you do find curious notions, young lord, and keep me in continual suspense what understandings you may come by. You ask advice. In this I’ll give it. Don’t encourage Ryssand to greater adventures. That’s considerable advice, young lord. Kings could profit by it. I pray ours does.”
“That’s what I must notdo,” he said. “But what shall we do, sir?”
“Why, you both shall do wisely, I hope, as each event demands.”
“Wisely.”
“But tell you what to do or what to purpose, that I will not, young lord, storm as you will. You say I don’t listen to you; I assure you to the contrary. I have beenlistening.”
“I do not storm, sir!”
Emuin held up a palm to heaven. “I think I felt a raindrop.”
“I assure you, sir, I am not demanding.”
“Ah,” said Emuin, and reached for his cup, from which he took a slow sip of wine in a deep silence at the table. “Then let me be less humorous, at your pleasure. Cefwyn will ride among the first troops across the river. Not prophecy: he’s Marhanen, and that sort of folly is his notion of kingship. If all else went well and if Cefwyn fell, it would very likely prevent any crossing at all, and it would make Ninévrisë a widow without a king to enforce her rights. Thereis your danger. Against all prudence, Cefwyn will afford Tasmôrden that chance at his life… if he ever comes to the river. Yes, Tasmôrden’s made one try here in the south, not a great one, with no expenditure of men. But I do agree: it shows the inclination of the man to proceed by indirection and tricks. He’s more subtle than his predecessor, Aseyneddin. He doesn’t go straight to his objective, but in a slow and curving path. In many regards, he’s more dangerous than Aseyneddin.”
“The south will not rebel, thanks to His Grace,” Cevulirn said. “That’s failed, let us hope, and now our enemy has to take Ilefínian and subdue it before he can turn his attention to other objectives. But he has shown the ability to pursue two courses at once.”
Cevulirn said that, and said something more, but the candlelight had gone to brass and the sound had dimmed. Tristen sat still, saw Emuin looking at him, and yet was not in that gray space. It was as if the ordinary world had slid from under him. He felt his senses slipping from him, and fought to have them back again… he was not the youth who had slipped away in sleep when too great things had Unfolded and startled his senses, but it was like that. He clenched his hand on the arm of the chair and drew a deep breath as darkness closed in.
He saw a dim cell that he had known, himself, first of all places in the fortress of Henas’amef, save the gatehouse. He did not know what the gatehouse of the stable-court and the west stairs should have to do with Tasmôrden and sieges and intentions, but it did.
And he saw the lower hallway, that in front of the great hall, with light of day broken in where no light should be in the middle of the night, a dusty great light coming from a boarded end.
He heard a sound like the sound of his own heart beating in his ears, as if he had been climbing a high, high stairs, into dark, and. into the gray space, where someone waited for him.
He would not go.
There was that Place.
And there was the cell beneath the west stairs. It was a different thing. It was related, but only discernible because the lower hall had disturbed him. Things tottered, chances poised that might go amiss tonight, and he felt flaws in his own safety. He had a lump on his head and had just waked, in fear, and in pain.
“M’lord?”
Uwen’s voice, Uwen, whom he had given the gift to Call him, Uwen, whose hand seized with gentle strength on his shoulder, so that he became aware first of Emuin’s presence, bright and glowing, and Cevulirn’s, dimmer, and Uwen’s, common as stone, and as inert, and as solid. Of them all, Uwen was plain, unequivocal earth, strong and constant.
“It’s one of his takin’s,” Uwen said. “He ain’t had one o’ these in a while. M’lord, do ye hear me?”
He did, perfectly well, but he could only press Uwen’s hand for the moment. Then he found a breath. “I’m going to the west stairs cell.”
“The west stairs cell?” Emuin asked sharply.
Uwen’s face, close to his, showed deep concern, but no refusal. “Aye, m’lord, if ye will, and shall we do something in particular while we’re there?”
“I think so,” he said, and knew that Uwen would keep the rest of them from thinking him mad, but he had acquired something he had been looking for, and he refused to let go. He was acutely aware of Emuin weaving a tight net about them all, a safety within this dreadful room; and aware of Cevulirn, whose attention was wary and sure as a sword blade… no wizard, but no easy venture for a wizard, either, edged with a gift he had never himself brought forth into use.
“I’ve seen a shadow of sorts before this,” he said to Cevulirn and to the two he trusted readily with such information. He tried to look at them as he spoke, and yet could not look away from the brazen dragon that loomed across the entry to the next room; it drew his attention, and his heart beat in his fingertips. He could scarcely muster his voice, and had half lost command of his limbs. The dragon meant something. It had something of its own to tell him, one more clamor for his attention.
“M’lord,” said Uwen, and almost pried him from that wide awareness, but not quite. It was not that he was bound: it was that it was important, that matter in the cell, inside the wards that defended them.
“We should, perhaps, go,” said Cevulirn, “and let His Grace rest. We were the second encounter of the day, so I understand.”
“No!” Tristen said, then realized that utterance had been too fierce. He moderated it, with the vision of the dragon in his eyes: “No. Hear this. Hear it and remember it for me, for I shall forget once this is past. It’s not the same as the Shadow at Lewenbrook, but all the same it troubles me. I see it to the east, at times… mostly east, sometimes to the west, like the storm today. Emuin says if it’s a storm, it must come from the west, because storms do, and that’s only sensible: I believe him. But I’m not sure that’s the only reason or that it’s always the same shadow. Shadows exist within the wards, in the hall below, too… I saw them in the first days I came to Henas’amef. Emuin knows what I mean. Emuin has seen them. There’s something there. And there’s another thing in the cell beneath the stairs, by the stable-court.”