The priest and Prince Efanor had closeted themselves in the Quinalt shrine for three hours of prayers and gods knew what excesses of mourning. Sulriggan had attached himself to the affair and there had been some sharp words between the priest and the local prelate over some niggling purchase of oil in unblessed jars.
Sulriggan’s cook prepared separate fare for Sulriggan and his Llymarish attendants under a canvas in the courtyard: small wonder, that self-established exile, considering the ire of the spurned Amefin-bred cook. It was fear of poisons, he was certain, that underlay Sulriggan’s pretensions of a delicate stomach, but murder all the southern lords at once? Annas was there, supervising all details, his defense in the kitchens, far more gracious than Sulriggan. Sulriggan perhaps suspected him. And did the offended Amefin aspire to poison Sulriggan and his supercilious cook and his high-handed servants—the King could willingly turn a blind eye if they only warned him of the dish involved.
The partridge pies and the bread and cheese found instant favor. So did the dark beer and the ale and two sorts of wine.
Another arrival—the King set his chin on fist, and stared with basilisk coldness of his own.
Late—and dramatic—came Her red-haired Grace, Lady Orien, not considered in the culinary selections, but, then, her tastes were wide. Her coming, with the first course served, startled the barons, who went from the pleasantry of ale and men deep in masculine converse, to stark silence, to a lower murmur in the hall, an assessment, an account-taking, even among the Amefin lords present and the servants about the edges of the hall.
She wore dark green velvet, the Amefin color, and had a bit of funereal black knotted about her right shoulder, like a man; more, she had cut her red hair shoulder-length, like a man’s. That despoilment shocked him as nothing else Orien had done. And the mourning—which by tradition of Selwyn Marhanen no Marhanen King wore—was a direct and silent insult, worn into this hall, at this time, in Heryn’s cause.
There were two empty places, Heryn’s being one, and she went to it, an empty seat at Efanor’s left, the place of the host province in council, court and feast-hall. Her eyes should have been downcast: they were not.
She stared round at each of the lords in turn as if measuring them as she spread her skirts and took that place.
“Her Grace Orien Aswydd will swear fealty in her brother’s place,”
Cefwyn said in a low voice. “She is my ward; her sister and her cousins will soon depart this court under my extreme displeasure. Amefel is under Crown protection, until Her Grace has a man by her. Or perhaps,” he added, looking askance at her shorn hair, “she will take up the sword in her own defense.”
“I rule,” she said in a voice startlingly level, “until I also meet the Marhanen’s displeasure.”
“You are never far from it,” he muttered, which was doubtless heard at the nearer seats, and he hoped that it was. “Your health, my lords.
Discuss no policy; Lady Often will retire after dinner, by my order, and then we may deal among ourselves.”
There was, then, a marked scarcity of topics for conversation; it drifted, through the various courses, from a discussion of the relative merits of Amefin and Guelen wines, to the breeding of Cevulirn’s horses versus Sulriggan’s, and finally to the hunt, the latter discussion spirited and the gathering good-natured, until it came down to discussion of districts and game.
Then Orien’s voice cut through, soft and high. “I wonder how the hunting might be in Lanfarnesse,” Orien said, “since you border Marna,
Lord Pelumer. Do you see odd things come from there? —Where is the lord of Ynefel this evening? I had rather looked to see him.”
Cefwyn struck his cup sharply with his knife, choosing not to have the public scene Orien clearly wanted. “We have business to settle. Clear the tables. Lady Orien, your guards will conduct you. Your interests will be represented here for you.”
She did not rise. “I am competent to represent my own, Your
Majesty.”
“Then I tell you bluntly that you are still under arrest, and your removal from this council now is for suspicion of your character, not your competence. Must my guards lay hands on you? They will.”
“My lord King.” She rose, pushed back her chair, dropped a deep curtsy, and strode off, her guards moving to overtake her, a long progress toward the farthest door.
Idrys closed the doors and returned to stand at Cefwyn’s shoulder.
“My lords,” Cefwyn said. “You have been patient to remain under hardship of absence from your own lands. Your grace and favor will be remembered throughout my reign. I am about to ask more of you.., that you stay while the northern barons come in for their oath-giving—which means staying during harvest-season. I know the hardship. But for the stability of the realm, and in view of the foreign threat, —I ask you to stay.”
“My lord King,” murmured Umanon, “it is in our interests to remain, if that is the case.”
“But,” said Sulriggan, “will Your Majesty not return to the capital?”
“You’ve not been informed, then.”
It was not the answer Sulriggan had wanted. It set him down. It gave him no ready point of argument.
“No, Your Majesty, I have not.”
“My father was murdered. Murdered, sir. I am not done with investigations, and by the gods, no, I do not go to the capital when the evidence is here.”
Sulriggan said, prudently, whatever the argument he had devised, “I beg Your Majesty’s pardon.”
“But what,” Sovrag broke in, “is this Aswydd woman about? Going as a page?” Sovrag had made a joke. He elbowed his fellow Olmernman in the ribs. “I’d take ’er. And ’er sister.”
“I decline to know what Lady Aswydd does, save she risks excessively.
Our patience has its limits.” He was conscious of the lesser Amefin lords at the lower table, their lord’s head, lately removed from the south gate, rejoined to his body in the Bryalt shrine along with the remains of two earls and their relatives. Three of the remaining earls were in bitter dispute of the Aswydd kingship that went back into the aethelings of the years of Sihhé rule: he had already heard the stirrings of restless lords,
The gray light came all laced with Shadows, now, fingers and threads of darkness weaving all about the horizon, coming near the old man, try as
Tristen would to chase them. Tristen sat where the guards had bidden him sit, on the low wall that surrounded the camp. The horses were eating hay at the end of that wall, Petelly among them and, nearer the tent that sat spider-like in its web of ropes at the heart of this strange and cheerless camp, men sat on stones that lay out across the old parings.
They sat, shoulders hunched, heads bowed together, speaking in voices he could not hear.
He was aware of the sinking of the sun and the gathering of the true night in the world. Now came the dangerous time, when Shadows were strong, but he was determined to hold them until the dawn. He had discovered a power in himself to dismiss certain Shadows, although he knew no Words to speak and he had nothing but his presence and his refusal to let the Shadows have the old man. One would creep close, and he would face it in that gray place, and challenge it merely with his presence—then it would retreat. But there were very many of them, whatever they were, and so long as he was wary and quick enough he could frighten them singly back before they could combine into a broad, fast-moving Shadow that could threaten the old man.
But he was slowly losing. He knew that he was. So was the old man.
There were more and more threads. It would have been easier if he could have held him, clung to his hand, made one defense of the two of them.
He was tiring. His efforts raised a sweat despite the cold of the world of substance. He hoped, though, that if he could last until the dawn, if the old man seemed better- Then someone said, very close to him,
“Here! What’s he doing?”