But her father had taught her to say less than she knew, so she gathered up her dignity and her freedom and left with them.

It was not a movement of her own child she felt in the doorway of that place, but his presence at least, an awareness of a life within her, and a life bound to all the events on the river and northward.

"Lady!" Paisi cried. Emuin himself had roused at the malice Tarien flung, wizardous malice, and he struck it down, with the firm intent to take Tarien's babe from her care.

—No, Ninévrisë said, steady in her place.

But guards clearly had their orders. At that outcry they had moved. Ninévrisë pressed herself against the wall as armed men rushed the room and from then matters went from bad to worse, wards flaring, wizardry striking, wizardry countering wizardry, Emuin's, hers, Tarien's, even Paisi's, and the guards oblivious to all. Tarien's shrieks pierced the very walls, stirred the shadows in the depths, rang through the very stones—a mother's cries, a mother's curses, that lanced through to the bones of another woman with child.

"Have a care!" Ninévrisë cried, as in her witness a guard wrested the child from Tarien's hands, and another pulled Tarien away toward the window. Ninévrisë reached for the child herself, as Paisi did, and to her arms the guard yielded the infant.

The baby moved and cried, upset amid all the anger. She held the small bundle, and looked at Tarien's white face, pitying, finally, after her fright and her anger: pity, against Tarien's grieving rage.

"No one will harm him," Ninévrisë assured her. "Be still. Be still! You may yet have him back. Only wish no harm, yourself. Hush."

With great breaths Tarien grew calmer, and reached for the child, which she would have given, but Emuin would not, and the guards would not, and Tarien struck at them with curses Emuin turned.

"I'll call Gran," Paisi said. "She ain't far."

Indeed there was an old woman aware of the child, and already on her way, out of breath and distressed. Ninévrisë turned away hugged the unwanted and crying child close against her, trying to stop the strife within the room and within the gray space, with Tarien's cries still in her ears.

An old woman arrived, the nurse, to whom Ninévrisë willingly ceded the child, and that alone seemed to quiet Tarien.

But the gray space quivered with wrong and with grief, and if a mother's just grief alone could rend the wards of the fortress apart, Tarien attempted it.

"The nurse may have him here to be fed, while the guards wait in the foyer," Ninévrisë said; it was the only mending of the situation she could think of. "And the nurse may care for him next door. If you mend your wishes, Lady Tarien, perhaps you can win more. But make your peace with Emuin, not with me. Ask Tristen when he comes. Don't cast away all your chances, only to spite me and Cefwyn."

"He will die"Tarien said.

"No," she said, more than determined, "he will not."

They both wished, each roused the winds in the gray space and, parting company, did not part. There was battle joined, harm with help, and Ninévrisë walked away with her child still her own.

Tarien, however, could not say so… and warred against them now. The wizard-threat from the north had turned away from her, and she might have won compassion. But jealousy would not let her accept charity from a rival: nothing had ever prepared Tarien Aswydd for kindness, and she resented it as she resented all things exterior to her own will.

By that she set a course and nothing would divert her.

CHAPTER 1

From the height of Danvy's back Cefwyn cast a long look on the Lenúalim, a view that included Lord Maudyn's long-defended bridge and water running higher than he had ever seen it, dark, laden with mud and debris from the unseasonable thaw.

But thank the all-patient gods and whatever friendly wizardry intermittently supported his own plans, the rains had stopped, the debris had not damaged the pylons and the high water had not delayed the installation of the bridge decking. His fast-moving couriers had bidden Lord Maudyn start that process early, well before his arrival.

The last section was in place as of yesterday. Lord Maudyn had immediately enlarged his camp on the far side of the river—a camp he had had in place for months, placed and supplied by small boats and rafts, to be sure of that far bridgehead.

And as late as this morning when the main army had arrived, the far bank had still produced no hostile action against that camp, which now was due to enlarge.

To Cefwyn that far shore remained a mystery of ancient maps and his wife's best recollections, a land veiled in brush and scattered woods—Ninévrisë had assured him the land was much the same as the land this side, rolling hills, a north shore rugged with cliffs which were the same as the high banks on the south.

That was the troublesome spot, those cliffs to the west of this bridge. There the Lenúalim ran deep and turbulent, and bent sharply around in its course through the stony hills as it turned toward Amefel. What tantrum of the all-wise gods had split that great ridge of rock and sent a river through it he was not certain, but on the hither side of that ridge two moderate-sized rivers flowed into the Lenúalim's current… one from the Elwynim side of the river, and the other here, their own tame Assurn. The northern river entered as clear water. The Lenúalim was usually murky green and the southern Assurn a pale brown stream. The colors habitually stayed distinct for a time until they merged into the Lenúalim's flood… so Lord Maudyn informed him, Lord Maudyn sharing a scholar's curiosity about such things.

And on any other venture, even his skirmishes in the south, he would have been curious to see whether the melt and flood had left any vestige of that three-colored joining… but he had grown grimly single-minded since he had kissed his wife good-bye.

That he now fought a war against his own side as well as the enemy had not so much divided his attention as sharpened his wits and made him scour up the good advice he had had from counselors now absent… advice which, ironically, he might have been less zealous to follow if they were with him. He became responsible for himself, alone in a host that took his orders and offered him protection. But Ryssand's influence went into unexpected places.

Mindful of that fact, wary of Ryssand's spies, he kept his ordinary guards close to him… men in the scarlet of the Dragon Guard, men sworn to protect his back from any assault. If he was horsed and watching the river, so they were. If he dismounted to go among the troops, they dismounted and went close to him, in case some man of another lord's guard had some unguessed connection to Rys-sand and his allies.

But they had come this far without incident or assault, and with remarkably few delays. This morning he watched the collapse of the last tents, and the movement of carts within the lines of last night's camp gathering up the bundled canvas in neat order.

Even yet there was no motion from the enemy, but he kept a wary eye toward the far bank. The last information Lord Maudyn relayed to him had Tasmôrden still enjoying his victory at hapless Ilefínian, and taking no action toward the steady enlargement of Lord Maudyn's forces… but Tasmôrden could not be ignorant of all that was happening here: Ryssand would not permitTasmôrden to remain ignorant, by what he suspected.

So was this Elwynim earl an utter fool, lazing in Ilefínian, or was he a man trying to make his enemy commit himself too far, too fast?

He sat Danvy's restless back, with his guards around him. He watched, wishing above all else that Ninévrisë were here to see this morning, the fulfillment of the hotly argued marriage treaty and most especially of his personal and far more tender oath to her. He wondered, since wizardry accounted for so much that mere Men called coincidence, whether by some remote stretch of the imagination she might know where he was at this moment.