Fortress in the Eye of Time

CHAPTER 21

Curse his fatherʼs damnable suspicion, Cefwyn thought: and jerked back Danvyʼs reins as Efanorʼs borrowed mount shied into him in the streets of Henasʼamef, missing a potterʼs shelves and a startled dog. Efanor was in no good humor, the high-spirited black Efanor had picked out of the remounts was sideways as much forward, and Efanor, the great horseman Efanor, picked this creature on show, not on common sense, all because Efanor had to cut a princely figure on a cross-country run — damn him, he was going to fight the beast all the way.

Stubborn pride. Stubborn temper. Play every piece against the other. It ran in the family. His father came out here without telling Efanor why, with no trust in planning with any adviser. Haste in execution, with no one, not even his allies advised: Ináreddrin had a reputation for finding information his enemies thought he could never find; and for moving swiftly, for moving ruthlessly, and for striking before a traitor or an enemy looked to see him—

It was legend and it had succeeded as a tactic, in a long life fraught with petty rebellions and uneasy borders on every hand. But to have Efanor aware of their fatherʼs suspicion, and not the son accused; to have their father move so strongly on an Amefin lordʼs word — and against him, after he had sat a year on this cursed, hostile, witch-ridden frontier of the realm, dealing with Heryn Aswyddʼs tax records, and have their father believe Heryn Aswydd instead of him?

That stung. That fairly stung, and he knew not whether it was filial duty, personal alarm or heartfelt outrage that sent him out in his fatherʼs own kind of unheralded haste, the other lords unconsulted and unadvised, save Cevulirn, who had the light horse that might avail something quickly enough.

But what did he say to the others? Pardon, my lords, but my father calls me to task for summoning you to do my fatherʼs business?

Pardon, my lords, but my father the King believes a man whose father before him cheated his own people?

Pardon, my lords, my father believes all men cheat, and if they cheat in ways he knows about he trusts them more?

Is all this because I have called Herynʼs account due, which my father has tolerated for years?

Gods, was that my mistake, Father? Have I stumbled on something you allowed, all to keep the Amefin cowed under a thief and his usurers?

The horses hit a traveling stride as they made the road outside and went along the walls past Cevulirnʼs camp, sending up a cloud of dust in this dry spell that gritted in the teeth even of the foremost. Men of the White Horse, encamped near the gate, turned out to stare.

“Tell the captains,” Cefwyn bade the Ivanim with them, calling them forward, “tell them all you know, bid them saddle a hundred horses against your lordʼs arrival, and follow as you can. This may be a chase for no reason, but it may not.”

“Aye, mʼlord Prince,” the sergeant said, who rode briefly alongside him, and dropped away again, to bear messages where they needed to go.

Peasants working in the fields stopped and stared as they passed. Along the wall-road, the camp of Lanfarnesse turned out men to shout questions at them, asking what proceeded in such haste.

Granted Heryn fell quickly under arrest, they had left Pelumer as senior of lords in the Zeide: Pelumer, then Umanon and, third, gods help them, Sovrag. Pelumerʼs chiefest and most immediate duty would be to keep Umanon and Sovrag from each otherʼs throats; and gods knew where Idrys was, but he would gladly dispose Idrys to duty between Umanon and Sovrag, if Idrys could not rapidly overtake them. The Guard Captain, Kerdin Qwyllʼs-son, had the command second to himself now, a man no stranger to Amefin roads: Guelen patrols had been sent full-circuit of Amefel and its neighboring districts, keeping watch on the Kingʼs subjects — and learning the lay of the land.

Ambush? He looked on his brother, on that damned fancy-footed horse, that had already worked up a lather getting down from the town. Efanor would be heir if something befell him, and, for all the boyhood loyalty they had sworn and all the love theyʼd vowed to hold to — he had to ask himself what would be the case if it were not Elwynim that Heryn had supported, all along, but another, more agreeable prince? A prince who could appreciate Herynʼs gold dinner-plates and his high-blooded horses, a prince who had never slept in mud, never faced a bandit ambush, never discommoded himself from what his religion told him was right.

At least Efanorʼs love of their father, he did not doubt — love and the lively suspicion of conspiracy that ran in Marhanen blood. He saw Efanor cast a glance at Tristen, who came up on his other side, and saw Efanor frown — clearly trying to hold brother-love and Sihhë in the same mouthful.

“Emuin counseled us to do him no harm, brother,” Cefwyn said. “Emuin said deal fairly with him.”

“Emuinʼs advice has not always been godly advice,” Efanor said. “He was the old wizardʼs disciple. What else should he say?”

That, from the prince the Quinalt loved much better than it loved Ináreddrinʼs elder son.

“Emuin should say what benefits the Crown,” Cefwyn shot back as they rode side by side, “not what serves othersʼ revenues and their power. Beware those godly sorts, younger brother. The Quinalt line their nests no less than the rest of their ilk and theyʼve far more nests to line.”

“What do they teach in this province?” Efanor asked him in dismay.

“Clear-sightedness,” he retorted, but the brother whoʼd once traded him barb for barb looked offended and self-righteous. This is Efanorʼs one chance, he said to himself. Should I fall from grace, and Herynʼs charges prove true, then he and his men fly nobly to Fatherʼs side, and I am put to disgrace and worse. The Quinalt would declare festival on that day.

The priests have stirred him up, the cursed priests have shaken Efanor from his meditations and been at Fatherʼs ear, too, once Herynʼs protestations gave them the chance.

Hence Efanor arrives — to do what? rescue me from imprudent book-keeping? What has Heryn said to them?

Good gods grant we be in time. This is Herynʼs most desperate move: attack the King, blame the heir. Gods witness I never thought the man had it in him.

Only Heryn never believed his own arrest was possible. Heryn never believed that I would move. Take that for a lesson for all years to come.

He hoped to the gods, too, that Idrys had found Heryn, and that he had not fled to shelter somewhere troublesome — like Elwynor. Please the good gods he could reason with his father, and not run head-on into that Marhanen tendency to trust blackguards before another Marhanen. Heryn had questions aplenty to answer, questions that he remotely feared might involve Efanor, once he began to talk, even if they were lies; and there might also be talk that his father the King would wish to silence, Cefwyn said that to himself, too, — if his suspicions were true just how the Aswyddim had evaded detection in their fraud for two, perhaps three generations.

He did not want to think that Ináreddrin would sacrifice his own heir to keep Heryn from saying what that arrangement was: he did not want to think his father knew the extent and evil of Aswyddʼs pilferage, the way he still, on the strength of a childhood only intermittently rivalrous, did not want to think that Efanor himself was secretly in Heryn Aswyddʼs friendship.

But he dared not confront anyone around him with such possibilities — except Idrys, damn him, who might have agreed with him, but who was not here for reasons he hoped were duty elsewhere. He was worried for Idrysʼ safety. He knew that Idrys might be the first to suffer in a plot to bring him down. He could not discuss matters with his brother. He did not want the Guelen guard and Ivanim alike to witness the Marhanen at each otherʼs throats.

The hills enfolded them softly on all sides, the same craggy tree-crowned hills that they had passed on a much more leisurely ride to Emwy, and again at the end of a nightmarish ride by night. When they crossed the old Althalen road (though no one spoke the name) where it joined the road to Emwy district, they began to ride over the recent tracks of a fair number of riders — their father had a hundred twenty men with him, Efanor said, and that was where, if their father had wished to pass by Henasʼamef unnoticed and unreported, he would have picked up the Emwy road.

By then they had passed beyond cultivated fields and into pasturages, and into the pastures of remote and smaller villages. They aimed the horses for a brief pause for breath and a limited watering at a stream that crossed the road, and came in on ground trampled by horses and now occupied by sheep. The shepherd was waving his staff and calling his dogs to gather the flock back again. The sheep bleated in panic and scattered from their horses down the narrow banks of the streamside.

“Have you seen riders today?” Cefwyn called out over the racket, as he got down from the saddle.

“Aye, mʼlord,” the shepherd said, with his dogs yapping and his sheep in a panicked knot, climbing over one another at the high bank, “yea, mʼlord, I seen a great lord wiʼ red banners, a great lord, like he was a king…”

“That he is,” Cefwyn said shortly. “How long ago, man?” and the man glanced at the sun and swung his stick at a growling dog.

“Oh, not so long. I was up to there on the height, mʼlord, anʼ I was bringing the sheep down — but ʼis silly ewe had got herself down a bank, anʼ I come down and around the long way, mʼlord…”

The tracks of horses, filled with water where the sheep had not trampled, told their own story. “Not that long,” Cefwyn called out, having walked a little distance up the stream and had a close look. He kept Danvy moving, not letting him fill up on water. But Efanor had not gotten down, and had let his horse stand, instead arguing with the reins — which itself annoyed him. Blessed chance his lordly brother Efanor would ever ask an Amefin shepherd the evidence of his eyes, or understand the manʼs brogue if he did. The brother who had adventured in the sheep-meadow with him had gone; the younger prince of Ylesuin had rather argue with his horse than soil his boots, or deign to company with him and read the clues with him. He did not understand, or want to understand, Efanorʼs state of mind at the moment. “We can overtake them before Emwy,” he said, rising into the saddle. “The horses have rested all we can afford.”

But banners at a distance was not the only thing the shepherd had seen today; he was looking straight at the emblem Tristen wore, and, on the sudden resolution of their remounting, tried to approach him. But Uwen prudently turned Tristen toward the horses and set himself with his back to the man, affecting not to see his approach.

Then Tristen looked back, on his own, staring at the shepherd, who, thus confronted, reached for amulets of gods knew what sort at his neck — until Uwen maneuvered the red mare between, put the reins in Tristenʼs slack hand and gruffly bade him mount at once as Tristen went on staring.

Not one of his fits, Cefwyn prayed, not a lapse in front of Efanor, and not a shepherd going on his knees to an outlawed symbol. They were near Althalen, and cursed ground, and he damned the whole miscarried day, as he rode Danvy between, to head off unwanted peasant adorations.

“Uwen,” he said, leaning from the saddle to catch Uwenʼs attention, “well done. Keep him from all mischief, either speaking or doing. Hear me. Althalen is very near this road. Do not, do not let him ride apart from us, and do not indulge his fits or his fancies if you must take the reins from him by force.”

It was all he could afford to say, for immediately there was Efanor riding close as the column formed. He said, “Good you should mention it,” to Uwen, and put Danvy across the stream, as the standards, his and Efanorʼs, grouped to move to the front.

“What was that?” Efanor asked, overtaking him. “What do you fear? Heryn? Or some other?”

“At Emwy,” he said, “men of ours died for reasons I suspect were Herynʼs malfeasance if not his maleficence. We have men in the region now trying to find answers. Our father may well fall in with them — or fall afoul of them, gods know. But by what this shepherd says we have every hope of overtaking him before he can ride into Emwy. His start is longer but our horses are fresher.”

“What happened there?” Efanor said. “What happened at Emwy? A plague on your evasions!”

“Treason,” he said. “Bluntly, treason, brother. Heryn is dealing with the Elwynim. No evasions. And high time you should ask. Herynʼs a thief and the son of a thief. Heʼs either conniving with certain of the Elwynim to kill me, or conniving simply to keep profitable hostilities going. If I knew which, Iʼd have beheaded him before this.”

“On what proof?” Efanor asked. “On what damned proof, brother mine?”

“The books. His books. Iʼd written to Father. If anyone read my reports. Or if my men, gods help them, ever got through to him.”

“And the reports of Elwynim marriage offers?”

“Is that what brought this on?”

“That? That, do you say, as if itʼs nothing?”

“Itʼs nothing until I answer the offer, one way or the other, and Iʼve not answered it, nor would have answered it without Fatherʼs advisement. But that was not my report. Who said so? Heryn?”

“I heard it in Fatherʼs camp. Last night.” Efanor lifted a gloved hand. “I know nothing. No one takes me in confidence.”

He bit his tongue. He did not say what he thought, which was bleak and accusatory: At least you knew Father was coming. At least you heard, brother, at least he aimed no inquiry at you, after setting you to investigate your host.

Or was Heryn to spy on me?

“Was it not,” he said instead, as they rode knee to knee, “the way Grandfather dealt with his sons? And did we not swear together Father should never do the same to us?”

“Yet here we are,” Efanor said. “And you suspect me, and never a reason for it. I swear to you, I did come to warn you, as well as to secure the books, brother.”

“There was no warning of this whim of our lord fatherʼs?”

“None.”

“I believe your word, brother. Forgive my doubting nature.”

Forgive that the desire of their fatherʼs heart was for Efanor to succeed him as King of Ylesuin, and forgive that no few of the northern and eastern lords their father played off one against the other likewise wanted Efanor to succeed to the Dragon throne, for much the same reasons as Lord Heryn would doubtless prefer Efanor.

How could he say to Efanor, They do not love you. They believe you a fool. Wake up from your pious dream. You have duties besides your own salvation. The kingdom needs a prince with his wits about him.

And yet that blunt challenge of Efanorʼs just now had rewakened hope in him. The younger brother he had known in childhood had played their grandfatherʼs game right well, by seeming not to have an opinion. Facing every direction was surely Efanorʼs chief attraction to certain lords, as his piety attracted priests. But he had known his brotherʼs real nature, before manhood added reticences and other considerations, and — dare he remotely hope? — possibly even the veneer of his piety. If that were in any degree a pretense, Efanor might be many things, but not, toward the ambitions of the northern barons, at least, a fool.

Desperate as they were to overtake, they could not push the horses to the limit and have anything left for fight or pursuit: already the column was threatening to string apart, the slower horses and the heavier riders making the difference. They held to their sensible pace, slacked back a little at intervals, then picked up the pace and kept moving, steadily, riding with all the skill they had. The sun declined another hour at such a rate, and it was a question in Cefwynʼs mind whether they dared assume their father had gone to Emwy, and whether they might save more time going overland and through the haunted precinct; or whether the easier going of the road would make up for the distance. He gambled on the road as the better choice, and they went another hour on.

Then as they came atop the rise, with the turn toward Emwy a ridge away from them, there appeared a haze of dust above the hills. Cefwyn saw it at the same moment Efanor and several of the other men called out. There were riders ahead. They could believe it was the Kingʼs party. But they still dared not ask the horses for more than they were giving.

They kept moving, and the interval lessened. They were on the rise of the hill between them and the other force, the horses hard-breathing on the climb when, under the noise of their own horses, they heard the hammering of arms that was like no other sound on the godsʼ earth.

“Ambush,” Cefwyn exclaimed, and bitter fear was in his mouth, for here in one place were both Princes of Ylesuin, and the King was under attack. “Efanor, take ten of your guard and ride clear!”

No, Efanor began to say. But:

“Brother,” he said sharply, “ride back to Cevulirn on the road, and take Tristen and his man with you. Too many of the Marhanen are at risk here. Come for us with that force. You can trust Cevulirn.”

Efanor dropped back then, and Cefwyn turned his head and shouted at Uwen to take Tristen and ride with him. He saw them fall behind, and turned his attention forward, for they were coming over the hill, with the woods and the road and the embattled forces perhaps two, three hundred in number, before them.

He rode hard then, hard as he dared to have his guard around him as he came down toward the fray. He saw light horsemen, well-armed, with no colors evident, attacking the bright scarlet of the Dragon banner. He set his shield on his arm, he drew his sword, and rode into the oncoming horsemen, Kerdin and other men with him.

The meeting was a blur of motion, of bone-jarring impact to wrist and elbow as his sword struck, a flash of bodies in the press, racket of arms and the squall of angry horses on every hand as they plunged into the motley-armed lines.

Like quicksilver, the bannerless attackers melted aside from their charge and let them see the center, where red and motley engaged in a crush that threatened to overwhelm with numbers the knot of men and red banners. There was the King his father. There was the danger.

Cefwyn hauled on the reins to turn Danvy to that quarter and plied the spurs, wishing to the gods at this moment for Kanwy and not Danvy under him. The light horses were faster in pursuit, and they would not have been here in time — but they could not deliver the shock of heavy horse in driving straight for that embattled center, where the Kingʼs banner was, and where the enemy would resist — while the hostile outriders skewed aside from them and let them through. He knew he was riding into a trap and a trick older than the Amefin hills, to fold in on them when they reached that center, but for his fatherʼs life, he had no choice.

“Sound our presence!” he bade Kerdin. “Loud as you can!” He hoped to gain his fatherʼs attention and have his father try to fall back toward him, but he dared not stop his own charge for fear of losing momentum and bogging down in a separate envelopment.

Danvy stumbled and regained his feet on the rutted roadside as Cefwyn pushed him for more speed, and more attackers, nightmare sight, came down from their right flank, down off a hillside.

Then he had view of a red horse, black rider, sweeping along the side of that hill toward those threatening riders — it was Tristen, with Uwen close behind: perhaps Efanor as well, was his instant, frightened thought. He damned them for fools if they had not retreated.

But he could not help them — he had to reach the Kingʼs force, a disarrayed mass, banners askew in the midst of a furious assault of light-armed riders, and to that sole objective he put the spurs to Danvy, swearing. He had no time to attend Tristenʼs folly: he was about to lose a friend, and maybe the other heir of Ylesuin — but his fatherʼs lines had been folded in, packing men in on each other so that lances and well nigh swords and shields were useless at the center, around the King. He wrung the last from Danvy to come in hard with what men could stay with him, to batter his way toward the center of that closing entrapment, to open it up and give the Kingʼs men a chance to use their weapons on the envelopment he knew was now coming around both their forces, separately and fatally if he could not break that knot around his father.

Danvy hit shoulder to shoulder with another horse. Cefwyn took a hit on the shield and shoved and swung blindly, felt the sword bite as Danvy staggered, recovered, and stumbled his way over yielding bodies. After that, he hacked and shoved whatever was in his path until it became a solid press of horseflesh and bodies and he could go no further.

He was in danger of being cut off, now, from his own companions. Danvy went almost to his knees on a body, recovered his footing, and a blow came down on the shield, an axe stuck fast in the gap. He struck back at what target he could see past the encumbrance, wrestling with the axe-wielder for possession of the shield until the manʼs sheer strength dragged him into clear sight of the man and half out of Danvyʼs saddle.

One of his men hacked at his attacker, who left the axe and reeled aside. Danvy struggled for footing and Cefwyn tried to clear his shield, laying about him half blind and encumbered, until it was red badges all about him, red banners, and he knew the Kingʼs men as well as his own guard were bringing their forces to bear.

Danvy jolted hard then as a horseman careened into him, and Danvy stumbled and went down. Cefwyn sprawled, rolled from the path of oncoming hooves and staggered up, still owning his sword by its wrist thong, still with the remnant of his shield on his arm. He had wet haze in his eyes, blurring the riders coming down on him.

I die here, he thought with strange amazement, and, clearing the drip of blood from his eyes with a shake of his head and a pass of his sleeve, realized he had lost his helm and the half-shield was the defense he had — his own lines had been driven back and it was only the enemy in his view. He braced his feet among the dead, facing that gray and brown wall of horsemen coming at him, every detail astonishingly clear, as if the last moments of living must be stretched thin till they broke, till a prince had a chance to know he had led his kingdomʼs forces to disaster.

A red horse plunged between. Tristenʼs black form cut across his view, Uwen close on his heels…Tristen swung the red mare about; and Uwen was trying to reach him as Tristen rode Gery head-on into the oncoming riders.

A blade swung. Unengaged, Cefwyn watched helplessly as Tristen ducked under and kept riding, the edge passing over his body by the narrowest of margins — he was going deep in among the enemy; and Uwen accounted for the man who had missed him.

“Mʼlord!” a voice cried near at hand; a second horseman rode across in front of him and slid to a stop. The guardsman leapt off, and Cefwyn swung up to the offered saddle, took a new grip on his sword and braced himself for the onslaught about to come down on both of them.

But it had fallen back. Among those motley horsemen, from the dead or the living, Tristen had found a blade and wielded it, shieldless, turning the red mare with his knees this way and that, the blade swinging dark and deadly in the light, as enemies went down. Tristen kept pressing, a dark and terrible force cutting into the enemyʼs ranks, methodically taking man after man, forcing the red mare further. There began to be space about him — a rider in black velvet, and with a single man beside him and no shield at all.

“Sihhë! Sihhë!” the shout was ringing out from the enemy ranks now. They had seen, Cefwyn guessed, the emblem he bore. But Tristen gave no mercy to the rout that began around him. The red mare did not cease to weave and seek openings in the retreat and the sword did not cease to take lives. The arm was unerring, hewing down men, no move wasted. The clash of blades that did oppose him became a distant music, and the turning movements assumed a strange beauty, like a dance, the movement of a natural force of destruction that swept the enemy back and back.

The scene hazed, with a sting of salt in his eyes. Cefwyn struggled for breath, left with no enemies, no battle for him to face. He sat the saddle, arms limp, battered beyond the strength to lift sword or shield, and he realized a remote sting and swelling in his leg as his strength ebbed. He tasted copper, realized that he had been hit, and that the pain had yet to reach him — but the leg obeyed him when he signaled the horse with his heel, and turned, looking for the King.

More riders thundered up. He looked about in horror, lifted an arm that weighed double, and saw then the White Horse of Cevulirn sweeping onto the otherwise silent field.

A horseman came up beside him. A hand seized him, stayed him in the saddle, and he could not see the man until he blinked his vision clear.

“Idrys.” He recognized his black-armored would-be rescuer, who, late to the field of combat, held him ahorse until others could dismount and come about him. “No,” he protested, not willing to be lifted down. He refused their ministrations and, laying his sword across the saddlebow because he had no strength or steadiness to sheath it, he rode with Idrys for escort this way and that among the corpses and the knots of men still ahorse.

He saw the Dragon banner, then, and put the horse to as much speed as it could make over the trampled, littered ground, realizing that men around that banner were standing silent and with heads bowed. He saw Efanor among the men kneeling there — Efanor would have come in with Cevulirnʼs men — and by Efanorʼs grief-stricken demeanor he foreknew the worst.

He dismounted — Idrys was instantly at his elbow to take his arm, to help him limp forward to where his father lay. The Dragon Guard had fallen thick about their King. He walked over bodies of men whose names he might know well if he looked. But his fatherʼs white hair was the only thing truly clear to his eyes — their father was only exhausted, he said to himself: their father was hurt, not dead; their father was a force of nature, a fact of their lives — he could not die.

Men gave back from him as he arrived, and he saw what he did not want to see, dark blood welling from the gut, a wound beyond any physicianʼs skill. Efanor was white-faced, tears making trails beside his mouth. Cefwyn fell to his knees with a gasp of pain, leaned on Efanorʼs shoulder, and for a moment their father looked on both his sons kneeling over him.

The Kingʼs feeble hand reached out and closed on Efanorʼs.

“My son,” Ináreddrin said.

No look, no single glance to spare for him. Cefwyn bided silent as in that instant the light faded from Ináreddrinʼs eyes and the strength from his hand. The watching circle of men waited.

A moment more. A last breath. Quiet, and that sudden relaxation no sleep could counterfeit.

“Help me up,” Cefwyn muttered angrily. He had lost his sword — dropped it, forgotten it, he cared not except he had nothing to lean on to get up, and was trapped, kneeling in the dirt. He reached out his hand for Idrys and Idrys raised him up by a heavy effort as the pain of grief in his heart and the numbness in his leg together all but overwhelmed him. He had a desire to lay about him, striking anyone, everyone remotely witness to his fatherʼs spite, to his fatherʼs lying there in the shameful dirt, among the mortal dead.

But there was no enemy. There was no argument. He was the object of attention now. Guelen guard and Ivanim together, Cevulirn, among the others, all looked to him to know what he thought, what he was, what he would be and do next.

Then Cevulirn bowed the knee, and went down, stiffly. Others knelt. Someone — he was not certain who — took the battle-crown from his fatherʼs blood-stained head and offered it to him in a grimed fist.

Cefwyn took it in one hand. It was a gold band. He could bend it if he chose. He could cast it in the mud and grind it under his foot and bid them have Efanor. But he took it in both hands, solemnly set it on his brow — it rested on the cut, and hurt, but he was all but numb to it. There were no cheers.

Efanor had risen, and stood by, doing nothing, only looking down at their father, tears running on his face. The Kingʼs guard and his own awaited some first move, some gesture of omen, some order to bring the world into sense again. He reached, cold-bloodedly conscious of his choice, and took his brotherʼs hands, which he woodenly held as Efanor knelt, as Efanor dutifully, going through the play, kissed his hand, as Efanor rose and looked him in the face. He made his eyes distant and void of anger as he kissed Efanorʼs bloody cheek in turn and let go his hands, which were cold as ice. Their fatherʼs dying slight seethed in him with bitter, burning jealousy, and armored Efanor with self-righteousness and sacrifice before these men, in whose witness — damn them all — he would shed no tears.

But why feel the sting? he thought then. In death, no different truth than in life. Father loved him, never me.

Father practiced Grandfatherʼs tactics down to his dying breath, and gave Efanor his one victory, his sole recompense to be by one year not the heir.

But no man on the field chose to regard that last gesture as negating the sworn succession. Cevulirn, the Duke of the Ivanim, was a southern man, and his own. And Efanor had knelt, and kissed his hand, and owned to the legal truth — righteous priestling that he was; though he had been nowhere—nowhere when their father was fighting for his life, not priestly Efanor.

But that was manifestly unfair. He had sent Efanor for Cevulirn. Efanor had followed his orders. He had brought Cevulirn — too damned late. Efanor had come to the field with Cevulirnʼs men, on a horse heʼd just worn down with a ride back to reach the Duke of the Ivanim and then, anxious for appearances, would not, he would personally swear to it, have sensibly bidden Cevulirn leave him ignobly on the road and make all haste to their fatherʼs rescue without him.

Which was also unfair to suppose. He was looking for someone to blame.

Idrys steadied him. Someone had found a linen pad to tuck into the gash on his leg, and a bandage to wrap about his leg, over the reinforced leather. The pain as the man jerked a knot taut hazed his vision, then lessened, over all, as the wound found firm support.

“Get me to a horse, Idrys,” he said, and with a sweeping glance about him at the Ivanim, and to Cevulirn, he said, “Well that you heard my message and followed. I thank you.”

“My lord King,” said Cevulirn, and sent a chill through his blood.

“I heard late,” Idrys said on his other side. “Your message did reach me.” Idrysʼ hands were gentle as he helped him.

“Is Danvy gone? Did he go down?” He heard himself sounding like a small boy asking after a favorite pet, knowing as a man knew, that miracles did not happen on a field of battle.

And he remembered then, upon that thought of miracles — or of damning wizardry: “Gods, Tristen. Whereʼs Tristen?”

“Heʼs well, Your Majesty,” Idrys said calmly, coldly. “Iʼll have men look for Danvy.”

“Stay,” Cefwyn said thinly, and caught a breath, insisting to stop at an ankle-high hummock on which he could stand and where Cevulirn and his fatherʼs officers could both see him and hear his orders. “Take up the King. Make a litter. Weʼll carry him—” He lost his breath and his clarity of thought both at once and stood shaking like a leaf.

“To the capital, Your Majesty?”

The notion dazed him, as for the first time he considered that he had personal and royal obligations suddenly far wider than Amefel. The capital: Guelemara. Halls safe from Elwynim assassins.

And, at least for a while, safe from a rebellion in Amefel. Or from any incursion across its borders.

But this was a murder from which a King who meant to reign long — could not retreat.

Delegate their fatherʼs funeral, in the capital — to Efanor, with the Quinalt orthodoxy free to stage everything to their satisfaction, and say what they liked?

Let Efanor go home to the capital? Let him stand alone with the Quinalt to bless the proceedings and the northern lords to stand with him, bees around Efanorʼs sweet-smelling, pious influence, with their lips to his ear?

“No,” he said. He would not give up his brother. He would fight for Efanor, if nothing else. “To Henasʼamef,” he said, and saw looks exchanged, subtle consternation among his fatherʼs guard.

And no one moved.

They question me, he thought in anger. And then in utter, wild overthrow of his reason: They came here on Herynʼs accusations of me. And my father is dead. They think I—I—am at fault for this.

“Surely,” said the Commander of the Dragon Guard — Gwywyn was his name—“Surely we should send word to the capital, Your Majesty.”

His heart was beating fit to burst. He was angry. He was shaken to his soul, and in pain. But he stilled the shout and the anger he wanted to let loose. His hands were still shaking and he tucked them in his belt to hide the tremor.

“Lord Commander, surely we shall do that, but we shall send to Guelemara from Henasʼamef, where this attack was ordered. I will have answers as to Heryn Aswyddʼs involvement. He is the source of the message my brother advises me brought you here. Credit my brother for my presence on the field.” He gave Efanor his due. Entirely. And aimed a stroke straight to the heart of Herynʼs false report of him. “I rode here from Henasʼamef, as hard as I could. I would to the gods youʼd sought me there, Lord Commander, not here.”

“I would to the gods, too, Your Majesty.” The Lord Commander seemed both overcome by the loss and relieved in his mind by that small though significant piece of information, and went on his knees and swore him fealty and kissed his hand as he should have done earlier; but this was an honest man, Cefwyn said to himself. He had not known Gwywyn well, but this courageously late acceptance told him this was a man well worth winning to his side. He lifted the man to his feet, confirmed him as continuing among his high officers, and Gwywyn gave orders to his fatherʼs men.

To his men, he thought in anguish.

There was more to do, quickly, much more, — but first the necessity to move them clear of further attack. “Cevulirn!” he said. “Men of yours to ride ahead on the road, men to lag back, by your grace, Ivanor! Weʼve yet to know whether this is all they have in reserve in this cursed place. Either they swam these horses across, or weʼve a bridge decked and in use — and weʼre not in strength to find it out now.”

“Leave it to me, Your Majesty,” Cevulirn said, and gave orders more rapidly and more astutely than he had managed. He had babbled. He had given not commands, but reasons. It was not a way to order soldiers, or lords who might be tempted to give back contrary reasons and not actions. It was not his fatherʼs way. It was not a kingʼs voice he had, or a kingʼs confidence-inspiring certainty on the field.

But the things he ordered were being done. He tried to think what he might have omitted to do. The crown worked at the wound on his head when he clenched his jaw or when he frowned, and was its own bloody misery.

“Efanor,” he said, and his brother came to him. Red-eyed, Efanor was, pale of face, still leaking tears, like the little boy whoʼd suffered tragedies enormous at the time — the little brother whoʼd been his constant ally in the house. On an impulse he embraced his brother, as he had rarely done since theyʼd become men. “Efanor, with all my heart — I would we had all come even moments sooner.” He said it consciously and publicly to remove any sting Efanor might have felt in his late arrival, and to remove any doubt Efanor had had of his acceptance. But Efanor was stiff in his embrace.

“My lord King,” Efanor said through the tears. The face had hardened in that instant of that embrace. The voice had gone cold. It was clearly not a time to press Efanor on anything, least of all with an appeal to familial loyalties which Efanor had ample familial reason to doubt. He had loosened his hold on his heart once: he could not risk it twice, or he might break down in the witness of these men, and perhaps Efanor felt the same. He made himself numb, incapable of further grief or astonishment, in favor of calculation that told him that trouble for Ylesuin was far wider than the loss on this field. He felt sweat on his face, that began to dry and stiffen on his cheeks, and he did not let expression fight against it.

“I will grieve for this tomorrow,” he said then. “Forgive me, Efanor.”

“You have no tears.”

“I shall have. Let be.”

“Where is your Sihhë wizard, Cefwyn king?”

He was still dazed, conscious of Efanorʼs attack on his associations, and of the bitter nature of that attack — and at the same time keenly reminded of the question of Tristenʼs whereabouts. Looking about, he saw no sign of him.

“My lord King,” said Idrys, “we can make a litter for you, too, if you need. You need not ride.”

“No,” he said. “Where has Tristen gone? Where is he?”

“Majesty,” Idrys said, “weʼre searching for him. No oneʼs seen him since the fighting.”

“The man saved my life, damn it — saved the lot of us! I want him found!”

The buzz of flies hung in the air. Men coughed, or cursed or grunted in pain, bandaging their hurts. Men and horses wandered at apparent random through trampled, bloodied grass, seeking order and direction. One such whisper through the grass and accompanying jingle of bits brought him Danvy. A man had found him, Danvy showing a cut on his shoulder but nothing that would not heal, nothing that even precluded him being ridden home, and he wanted not to part from Danvy again: he patted Danvyʼs neck and gathered up the reins, guilty in recovering a creature so loved, so dear to him, amid other, more grievous losses to the realm.

A man helped him into the saddle. Other men were mounting up. Their dead were too many to take with them, the danger in the area too great to detach more than a squad of Cevulirnʼs cavalry from their main body to stand watch over them against village looters. He had heard Idrys give necessary orders for the removal of weapons from the dead, so as not to meet them coming back in hostile hands — and to search for clues of allegiance among the fallen enemy.

But that was Idrysʼ concern and Idrys was giving all the orders for those that stayed: Cevulirn and Efanor were ahorse. Still he saw no sign of Tristen, and could not ask again, petulantly, like a child: Idrys was doing all he could to be sure of the area, and who was in it, and if Tristen and Uwen were among the fallen or the wounded, the men staying behind would advise him and do more than he could do.

The Crown meanwhile had other obligations too urgent, among them to secure his own safety, and Efanorʼs, as the only two Marhanen, and them without issue. “Shall we move?” Efanor asked him, prompting him to issue orders which no one but he could give, and numbly he said, “Letʼs be on our way.”

So the Kingʼs litter began to move. The elements of Cevulirnʼs men and the Guelen guard sorted themselves into order, the Kingʼs Dragon Guard with their tattered red standards, the men of the Princeʼs Guard, who now — he realized with faint shock — must attach to Efanor as heir to the throne (but not Idrys, he swore to himself: Efanor should never inherit Idrys). The two red-coated Guard units came first, with the gray and white contingents of Toj Embrel and Ivanor at large riding under their own banners and under their own lord.

At some length Idrys overtook him, and rode beside him, apart from Efanor, who rode with Gwywyn.

“You are not fit to ride,” Idrys grumbled. Idrysʼ face, whitened by the road dust, was a mask. “You should have taken the litter. The bleeding is worse.”

“Where were you?” Cefwyn snapped. His leg hurt him, now, swelling against the bandage, muscles stretched by sitting the saddle.

“Heryn almost eluded us. He led me a chase. We did overtake him. And he dispatched another messenger. Herynʼs man babbled treason — and will say more.”

It was news that flooded strength into him. Vindication. Proof, for his fatherʼs men. For all the realm besides. He drew a deep breath. The hooves scuffed deadly slow in what had become a warm day, belying the clouds in the west. The flies pursued them. The band about his head seemed a malicious and burning fire.

“He will believe me,” he said, thinking of Efanor. “My brother will believe me now.”

“My lord?” Idrys asked.

They came up behind a pair of horsemen on the road, riding ahead of them so slowly that even at their pace they were gradually overtaking them. Cefwyn watched them from his vantage at the head of the column, and knew who they were, long before the interval closed enough for anyone to see the red color of the mare, and the black of her rider, and the stocky figure of the man on the bay.

“Your Majesty.” It was Gwywyn. “Shall we ride forward and find them out?”

“No,” he said, “I know who they are. Let be.” So the Lord Commander fell silent riding on one side of him with Efanor, and Cevulirn arrived beside Idrys on the other, to hear the same. They drew steadily nearer.

“Majesty,” his fatherʼs Lord Commander whispered, justifiably apprehensive, for there was indeed an eeriness about the pair, who had never looked to know what rode behind, as if a kingʼs funeral cortège and the procession of his successor were nothing remotely of interest to them.

The stocky man looked back finally. The other did not, but rode slumped in the saddle, dark head bowed.

He is hurt, Cefwyn thought in anguish, and yet — and yet — in the trick of the setting sun and the dust the two horses raised in the trampled roadway, it was as if two ghosts rode before them, beings not of this time or place, nor accessible to them.

Not Elfwyn, he thought. Whatever soul Mauryl had called — it was surely not Elfwynʼs unwarlike soul that had ridden to save their company. It was not the last Sihhë king whose hand and arm and body had found such warlike skills as drove armored enemies in panicked retreat.

Sihhë! their attackers had cried, falling back in consternation. He would never forget that moment, that the enemy about to pour over him had given way for fear of two men, one of them having ridden out unarmed but for a dagger.

Tristen rode loosely now, as if sorely hurt, as if he expected no help, Cefwyn thought, and would rebuff what aid might be offered him. But gingerly he moved his horse forward, while the main column kept the pace it could best maintain.

He rode alongside, met Uwenʼs anguished face…saw Tristenʼs profile in a curtain of dark hair. Tristenʼs head was bowed against his breast, as if only instinct kept him in the saddle. His face was spattered with blood like his hands, and the black velvet was gashed, showing bright mail underneath. Blood had dried on the velvet, and on the mane and neck and feet of the red mare. Tristenʼs hands did not hold the reins. They clenched a naked sword, on which sunset glinted faint fire, and blood sealed his hands to it, hilt and blade across the saddlebow.

“Tristen,” Cefwyn said. “Tristen.”

The dark head lifted. The pale eyes behind that blood-spattered mask were unbarriered and innocent as ever as they turned to him.

Cefwyn shuddered. He had expected some dread change, and there was none.

“This, too, I know,” Tristen said distantly, and raised the bloody sword by the hilt in one hand. He let it down, then. And without any expression on his face, without any contraction or passion in the features, tears welled up and spilled down his face.

“You saved my life, Tristen.”

Tristen nodded, still without expression, still with that terrible clarity in the eyes, fine hands both clenched upon the sword.

“My father is dead,” Cefwyn said, and meant to say in consequence of that — that he was King. But suddenly the dam that had been holding his own tears burst when he said it, as if with his saying the words, it all became real. He wiped at his face, and the tears dried in the dusty wind, as he became aware of the witnesses closing up around him.

“Are you hurt?” Cefwyn asked.

“No,” the answer came, faint and detached. Tristenʼs eyes closed as if in pain, and remained so for several moments.

“Uwen, care for him.”

“Your Highness,” the soldier whispered, and fear was in his eyes as he corrected himself. “Mʼlord King.”

Riders had come up behind him. Only the leaders had overtaken him: the column was falling behind them. The pace they had taken was a hardship on the wounded.

“My lord,” said Idrysʼ cold voice as he reined back with Efanor and Cevulirn. “The Sihhë should not precede you, not in this column, not into the town. It will not be understood. You have fostered this thing. Now it grows. Better it should vanish. Kings need to allies such as he is. Send him to some quiet retreat where he will be safe, and you will be.”

“He was by me,” Cefwyn replied bitterly. “He rode between me and the assassins. He almost saved my father. Where were you?”

“Serving Your Majesty, not well, perhaps. Better I had left Heryn to others. I deeply regret it. — But, all the same, he should not precede you. For all our sakes, my lord King.”

It was truth. It was essential, even for Tristenʼs future safety. He surrendered, still angry at himself, at Idrys, at fate or the gods or his father for his dying act: he was not sure. “See to it.”

Idrys rode forward. Cefwyn watched as Idrys spoke briefly to Uwen, and immediately after the pair went to the side of the road and let the column pass.

He could not see Uwen and Tristen, then. He must trust that they would come in safely, that Uwenʼs good sense would fend for them both, however far back they had been pushed by the succeeding ranks, and that Tristen would find his way home with the rest of them, when of all persons he most wanted to know was safe, it was Tristen. He was King. And he could not protect the things he most wanted safe.

A wind began to blow at their backs, a chill wind out of the north, kicking up dust in clouds, flattening the grass beside the road and making the broad Marhanen banners crack and buck at their standards, so that the standard-bearers fought to hold them.

Idrys dropped back into place. He said nothing. Efanor was on the other side.

The sun was rising as they came into Henasʼamef, with the gate bell tolling, and the Zeide bell picking up the note as they rode the cobbled streets.

A Marhanen king, Cefwyn thought, seeing the townsfolk gathered. A Marhanen king is visiting this town for the first time since the massacre of the Sihhë.

Now the Marhanens bleed.

He had sent Idrys ahead, to deliver word up to the Zeide. But, perhaps uninformed, the townsfolk had run out to gawk and cheer as the column came in with banners flying and numerous strangers to the town. The crowd was excited, then struck silent and sober at the sight of wounds; they muttered together at the Kingʼs banners; and as the cortège passed, somewhere a voice cried out, “The King is dead!” and the cry went through the town, with an undertone of fear — well it might be fear, if the province were held to blame.

And hard upon that, “Sihhë!” went rippling through all the rumors, beneath the tolling of the bells, until he knew that Tristen had likewise come within the gates — knew that it was more than Tristenʼs presence that stirred the people. A Marhanen King was dead and a living Sihhë had ridden in from battle. To them it might be omen, even verging on prophecy.

The Zeide gates up the hill gaped for them; the grim skulls looked down victorious from the south gate, and the Zeideʼs many roofs behind that arch were a mass of shadow against a pearl-colored sky. “I will show you justice here,” Cefwyn said to Efanor as they came beneath the deathly gate. “I promise you an answer for the treachery responsible for this.”

Efanor did not look at him, nor he at his brother. They preserved funereal decorum as the procession labored its way up and around the front of the Zeide, to the east façade and the holy and orthodox Quinalt shrine where — he had already given orders to Idrys — the body would lie in state within the Zeideʼs walls.

“Promise me another answer,” Efanor said finally, when they had come clear of bystanders, in the cobbled courtyard, “an answer for the questions that brought our father here.”

Now, now the bitterness came out. And the suspicion.

“Was it not enough, what you saw, Efanor? They were lies that Heryn used to lay a trap for you — playing on our familyʼs cursed suspicions. There was nothing true in anything Heryn reported. Our own distrust was his ally, Efanor. Do not go on distrusting me.”

“I saw brigands without a crest. I do not know why our father is dead. But you need not work over-hard to please me, brother. I am obliged now to be pleased at whatever you do.”

It was the bravest, most defiant speech he had ever heard from Efanor as a man. It gave him as thorough a respect for his younger brotherʼs courage as he had for Lord Gwywynʼs. And it grated on his raw sensibilities.

“Stay by me, Efanor. I beg you. I am asking you. Courage is well enough, but face our enemies with it. Not me. We swore not to be divided. We swore Father should never do it.”

Silence.

“Efanor.”

Torches were lit in front of the Quinalt shrine. Fire whipped wildly in the dawn. The bier was loosed from the horses, a loose, soldierly thing of spears and belts and cloaks. Men took it up and bore it toward the doors. A priest confronted them, as ritual demanded he do. Wind whipped at his robes, rocking him in his hooded and faceless decorum.

“The King is dead,” Cefwyn said, disturbing the thump and flutter of banners and fire. “He perished by assassins on the road to this town. Have it proclaimed. Make prayers for his soul.”

His fatherʼs body entered first. The bearers laid it on the altar and disposed the banners on either hand, those of the Dragon Guard, the Marhanen house, of Guelemara, Guelessar and Ylesuin.

He went inside to burn incense and make prayer, feeling the words for the first time in years. He kissed the worn silver letters set in the stone altar and rose, stopped dead as he saw a dark figure standing in the shrine door, with the flash of the silver Star and Tower on black velvet. A second figure joined it: Uwen.

“Lo, your ally,” said Efanor, at his shoulder.

Tristen waited. Cefwyn limped a step toward the foreboding figure, conscious of Efanorʼs witness. The family curse, he thought, feeling trapped. Alive and with us.

“Cefwyn,” Tristen said. The voice was faint and bewildered. He heard only terror, the childlike quality that was the gentle man he knew.

He embraced Tristen as he could not embrace his brother at the moment, he rested his aching head on Tristenʼs shoulder, looked up at him then and saw in Tristenʼs eyes all the compassion and tenderness he longed for in his own brother.

I have nothing but this, he thought. In all the world there is no gentleness toward me but this. Efanor will not reason with me.

“My friend,” he said to Tristen. “You should not have come here. — Uwen, take him to his room. I have other business tonight.”

Tristen lingered, but Uwen tugged on his arm and, like a tired child, Tristen yielded and went where he was bidden.

The priestsʼ chanting echoed in the vaulted hall. Torches fluttered and scattered sparks of windblown fire about the bier, stinging where they chanced against living skin.

Cefwyn turned and met Idrysʼ grim stare.

There was duty. Idrys had something on his mind.

“The messenger,” he remembered then. “Heryn.”

“Both under arrest,” Idrys said. “My lord, see to necessities and mourn later. The messenger could not have been going to the ambush on the road. It was too late for that. It was surely elsewhere he was sent.”

Cefwyn delayed a moment, his eyes on the haze of wind-whipped torchlight and then on Efanor, standing among the silent Crown officers.

The great bell of the Quinalt shrine began to toll, solemn and terrible.

“Learn where,” he said to Idrys.