With that name, the name of the last Sihhë High King, he had claims to gods knew what more.
Is this, he asked himself, the King To Come? This child? Mine? It was not what he had thought. Tristen was what he had thought, and trusted Tristen’s complete lack of ambition. But this? Did Tristen name his own heir, in this child?
“It’s not all,” Ninévrisë said faintly, holding to him, “it’s not all. Ryssand’s with Tasmôrden.”
He laughed, untimely, unseemly given the circumstances. “That’s no news.”
“He means to kill you.”
A second time he laughed, this time because he was already set to laugh and wanted to deny all fears tonight and reassure her… but on his next breath he fully heard what she had said, and knew it was part of that letter, and felt cold through and through—not believing, far from disbelieving a warning from Tristen—and in the context of this newborn child, potential heir, potential pretender to more than two thrones.
“Here?” he asked.
“Tristen overheard some sort of plot, I don’t know how, but I think the way wizards know. Tasmôrden’s courting Ryssand—he’s persuading Ryssand, with all sorts of promises if you should die, if we should die… that they’ll make peace, for lands, all the bargain to be good no matter who makes it. Efanor would have no way to rally an army.”
“Does Tristen say that?”
She hesitated. “I think it’s been there a while. It doesn’t feel part of the rest, but I only heard it tonight. I think it was the disturbance there. And I wasn’t sure of it before, but now I know it’s there… I don’t think I thought it was different, thinking you by no means trust Ryssand, or Cuthan, either. But it’s different now, and I know, and I don’t know how I know, except it’s from the letter. But Tristen doesn’t know where we are, he doesn’t know we’ve marched—”
“He’s not received my message.”
“Not yet. It’s not yet there. But what Tristen knows, in the letter… and what I know in my heart… I’m not sure which of us knows it, but between us, I do know, and Ryssand is coming. He’ll pretend to have a change of heart. He’ll count on your welcoming him. And he’ll betray you, and I don’t know how I know!”
“Do you know it for the truth?” he asked. “Are you absolutely sure?”
“I’m afraid,” she said. “And I don’t know why, except this letter.”
A paper blank except for seal and signature, and no more readable for him than before… wizard-work. Magic, Emuin insisted. Perhaps it was even bound to the truth of the situation, reporting when the world grew chancy enough and the barriers that divided them from Tristen and from their enemies grew thin.
Lightning made shadow play on the canvas walls, the outline of other tents close at hand. It felt like dawn, but the clouds were so thick and the rain so intense no light reached them. Idrys, Lord Commander, but still in his intentions his bodyguard, slept, or pretended to sleep, in the other chamber of this tent, among the maps and the armor. Waking guards sat duty there, too, out of the rain, men who had been with him even in Amefel. Close by their tent was the entire Dragon Guard, trusted men.
Could he fear for his life and hers tonight, so protected?
So too, he had claimed the mass of the Guelens and the rest of the common levy, and held a camp on its way to war. Osanan had joined them. Marisal was sending men. He had rallied more men than he had hoped.
Were there traitors already insinuated among these men?
They were bogged in a lightning-shot deluge that had followed sun and then snow. The heavens were utterly confused—and that was surely wizardry or the worst weather-luck a campaign ever had: and here they were bound for the river bridge, and as yet had seen nothing of the contingent from Murandys, when Murandys was the land through which they traveled.
Nelefreissan and Ryssand had farther to march, and it had not been certain they would come, since Ryssand’s storming out of court and out of the capital, but would they now, if Ryssand meant some act against him?
There was no one else he could summon. His missives southward he had sent in a bundle, all to Tristen, to give to the lords with him, for he knew now that letters to their capitals would not find them at home, but rallied at Henas’amef, to come by the southern bridge, for the stony hills of Gerath lay between, a wedge of land that had no straight trails, and all too many blind valleys: it had swallowed armed force before now and given nothing back. Tristen could not reach him.
And was the north to betray him?
Thank the gods at least the southerly bridge, the one Tristen held, would not become the sally port for Tasmôrden to start a diversion in Amefel.
“So Ryssand will come,” he mused aloud, “with nefarious intent. And dare I say his message with Cuthan passed both ways, and he passes all we do to Tasmôrden? Who knows? Tasmôrden might have such a letter as we have.”
“Ryssand intends to kill you,” Ninévrisë insisted, more directly, more urgently. “If he does, Tasmôrden will let the army retreat from the field, and Ryssand, and Murandys, and all of them… all under truce… they will deal with him. They will sign a peace. The army will march home, owning part of Elwynor. They’ll crown Efanor.”
This was no idle threat, but a well-formed plot. He found himself perversely intrigued by the mechanisms of what might be his death. Did men often have such a vision of events to follow their impending demise? It was like a taste of wizard-sight.
“No dagger in the dark,” he surmised. “Nothing so definite. That leaves witnesses and evidence. But men lose heart on a battlefield. Ryssand takes the field, his heavy horse fails the charge—breaks and falls back. The wing they’re in collapses. The enemy sweeps around. Our army makes haste in retreat… and the rest follow. Hard for a man to stand when his neighbor’s flung down his shield and bolted. Never count the good men that will die in such a maneuver.”
“Tell Idrys. Kill Ryssand before he even arrives here!”
Ah, for his gentle bride. “Not that simple.”
“It is that simple. This man will kill you!”
“Out of a dream and a letter with nothing written on it? Gods, all of this is such a flight of ifs!”
“Don’t make light of me!”
“I do hear you. I take it in utmost seriousness.”
“Is Tarien’s baby an if? Is Ryssand, then?”
“No.”
“If we seem about to win, then what will Ryssand do? Someone may tell more than Ryssand dares have known if you take prisoners of Tasmôrden’s side. He daren’t have you win! He’ll only grow more desperate to strike at you, a knife, or poison—witnesses won’t matter then. He’ll want to set Efanor on the throne, see him wed to Artisane, and then Efanor’s gone. Look at all he’s done! He’s severed you from the southern army. He’s dared bring Cuthan to court. He’s affronted you and stormed out. If he comes to join you now, you’ll know what he intends. Be rid of him! Gods, be rid of him!”
Idrys advised it. Now Ninévrisë advised him the same.
And yet—and yet he had no evidence to justify himself to the rest of the barons. He had no proof of Ryssand’s actions, more than that damning letter to Parsynan Tristen had sent him, and that was old proof. A great deal of water had flowed under the bridge since then… most significantly that he had let Efanor court Ryssand’s daughter; now if he ordered Ryssand’s head on a pike, would the rest of the orthodox north still take the field with good will? Would they fight to the uttermost to support a king who had just killed the foremost of them?