So Tarien defended herself, and wove her little spells around and around her, like a lady spider in her den.
Ninévrisë found herself not even angry, the spells were so small and so many and so desperate… made of fear, every one.
“Good day,” she said, “Lady Tarien.”
Tarien did not look up, only hugged her child against her, her prize out of all that had happened. Tarien knew who visited her, and inasmuch as Tarien was aware of anything but her own child, knew there was another son, the son of two birthrights, when her son had no claim or right of even one.
They had no need to speak. She had no need to have come here, except to enter the center of Tarien’s attention instead of wandering its peripheries. She had nothing to gain: it was Tarien’s child who entered the world a beggar and hers who owned it all.
She felt an unexpected compassion for the two of them. And perhaps Tarien knew it, for she did look up, on the sudden and with an angry countenance.
“I offer you no spite,” Ninévrisë said. “No threat to your son. May I stay?”
Tarien turned her face away, but without the anger, only seeking escape.
“Then I shan’t,” Ninévrisë said. “But may I see him?”
Tarien unfolded the cloth about the baby’s face and shoulders; and it was a tiny, wizened face like any newborn, harmless to see him, but oh, such possibility of calamity, or of fellowship for her son.
She let go a sigh, and would have offered her finger to the baby’s tiny fist, but Tarien turned him away and hugged him close.
Cefwyn’s son. Elfwyn, he was named, like the last High King, and half brother to her own babe, when he was born.
She might summon her guards, exert her power, seize the baby, bring him into her own care, for good or for ill, and Tarien’s history made her think that might be a wiser course… wiser for them all, Tarien’s welfare discounted.
But her father had dinned into her the principles of wizardry, if not the practice of it, that action brought action, that an element out of Place strove until it found that Place. Striving was not what she wished from this child, only peace, and in peace she was willing to leave him, with only a parting word to his mother.
“He has one hope besides his mother’s love,” Ninévrisë said with all deliberation, “and that will be his father’s grace.”
“Cefwyn will die in Elwynor,” Tarien said fiercely. “Lord Tristen will be my son’s protector. They hail Tristen High King. High King! And he favors my son.”
She had not intended to be nettled by the lady, or to take omens from anything the lady said or threatened; but that claim struck too near the mark, far too near.
Paisi quietly tugged at her sleeve. “Master Emuin’ll have me hide for bringin’ ye here. Come, lady. Come away.”
“The lady deceives herself,” Ninévrisë said, both in anger and in utter, steadfast conviction, and it occurred to her to say more than that, that Cefwyn would come alive out of the war, and that Tristen would keep his word, and that nothing the Aswydds had ever done had helped them: all this generation of Aswydds had done brought one long tumble of fortunes toward Tarien’s solitude and imprisonment.
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 rivaclass="underline" 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.