“But without preparation, and wearing down their strength—”
“We’ll rest in time. I’ve had a letter from my brother and one from Amefel, and I’ll not wager our lives there’s not wizardry in the stew—wizardry helping Tasmôrden deceive our scouts, make foul seem fair, right seem wrong… no disparagement of your scouts, none! Lewenbrook showed us all what wizardry can do on the field, and gods send we don’t see the like of that again.”
“Gods save us from that, Your Majesty.”
“But it’s a possibility. Something went on at Lewen field, something beyond Aséyneddin’s wizardry, that Emuin never has told me… Tristen, gods save us, tried to explain, but he doesn’t seem to know either, and that worries me.”
He had never been so frank in council, not with the good Quinalt lords pricking up their ears and ready to bolt. But to Maudyn and to Anwyll, who had served with Tristen, he delivered the truth that, before, only the inmost circle of his advisors had dealt with. And Lord Maudyn heard it in attentive silence.
“Mauryl died,” Cefwyn said, “and sent Tristen in his place. Tristen was there at Lewenbrook, but neither he nor Emuin seems to know what was in the cloud that rolled down the field. Tristen said he went to Ynefel during that battle—I don’t know the truth of that. Emuin was lying abed in Henas’amef, and has no idea. And all along, everyone’s assumed because we came off that field alive that Aséyneddin was the center of it alclass="underline" that he’s in hell and that’s the end of it. I wonder.”
“Lightning struck the Quinaltine,” Maudyn said.
“That it did.”
“A Sihhë coin turned up in the offering,” Maudyn said further.
‘‘That was a damnable piece of trickery! And it obscured the real fact.”
“Which was, Your Majesty?”
“That lightning struck the roof of the Quinaltine!… and robbed me of Tristen, of Emuin, of Cevulirn, ultimately, all of Ryssand’s connivance.”
“The lightning surely wasn’t Ryssand’s doing,” Maudyn said.
“That’s the point, isn’t it? The lightning was something Ryssand couldn’t manage. But it happened, and damned inconvenient of it to hit there and not the Bryalt shrine, wasn’t it?”
It was too far remote from the lives of ordinary men. Lord Maudyn regarded him as if willing to agree with his king, but unsure to which proposition he should agree.
“I suppose so,” Maudyn said.
“It stole Tristen from me. Emuin would warn me that was no accident. Do you think Tasmôrden can move the lightning?”
“I have no knowledge of Tasmôrden himself, except as an earl of Elwynor, a traitor to his lord…”
“Exactly! Exactly so. No knowledge of the man except as an earl among other earls, a traitor among other traitors, no special gifts, no repute, no great allegiance among the Elwynim, would you say?”
“He pays his troops. He hires brigands.”
“The Saendal. And pays them with the goods they loot from Elwynim they’ve attacked. Is this a man to inspire loyalty? Is this a king?”
“I would say not, Your Majesty.”
“I would say not, as well. No king, no great man, no man loved by the people… would you not say a wizard, if he devoted himself to lead his own people to war, might not…” Cefwyn waggled the fingers of his off hand, Danvy’s reins lying in the other. “… conjure better?”
“Master Emuin hardly fits the model.”
“Ah. Master Emuin. Mauryl. Leave aside Tristen. He’s his own creature. But wizards, now!”
“I don’t follow Your Majesty.”
“The Sihhë-lords ruled. Ruled, with an iron hand. But do you see ambition in Emuin? Did you see it in Mauryl Gestaurien?”
“Kingmaker, they called Mauryl. And Kingsbane.”
“But did you see him rule?”
“I saw the man not at all, Your Majesty.”
“You see?”
“I don’t see, Your Majesty.”
“He didn’t rule. Nor would Emuin. Gods, you couldn’t persuade him to be king if you tossed in a shelf of books and a wagonload of parchment… when would a wizard practice his craft, if he ruled?”
“The Sihhë ruled.”
“But that’s just the point. The Sihhë don’t have to study. Tristen doesn’t have to study.” The conclusions poured in on him like a fall of stars from the heavens—or levin bolts on a priestly roof. “Wizards spend their whole lives at it. So if Tasmôrden’s sotted in Ilefínian and has to hire his soldiers, because the peasantry’s run to Amefel and the other lords are in hiding, such as survive—is this wizardry? If I were a wizard, I’d do better than hire my troops. I’d bespell them to adore me.”
“Yet does Emuin, Your Majesty, improve Ryssand?”
“I don’t think it occurs to him to improve Ryssand.”
“I think he would do what he could.”
“Yet what he can do is limited by what he will do, and what he will do is bounded in the stars, and books, and charts, and seas of ink. He’s the greatest wizard left alive, and I’d have him improve Ryssand, yes, if Emuin would, or could. On that score I know something, and the answer is that he can’t, not really, not directly, not so a man couldn’t rise up and march contrary to wizardry, else what chance would we have stood at Lewenbrook? Can you riddle me that?”
“I daresay,” Maudyn said in a quiet voice, and by now they were coming among the tents of Maudyn’s settled camp. “I daresay Your Majesty understands more of that than I do.”
“Take it for the truth! There was no going into that shadow if a man didn’t believe he could, and did, and those that went under it, died; but those that faced it never could have faced it except that cold iron and shed blood do avail something, sir, I swear they do. And I know by all the signs I see in the sky there’s more than cold iron at work against me. I’m not mad. I see the trouble among us, and I see the lords who served my father acting like fools, and believing a man who can’t charm his own peasantry into taking the field for him.”
“I don’t understand,” Maudyn said.
“Wizard-work doesn’t rule. Mauryl was Kingmaker, not a king. Emuin doesn’t rule. Wizards don’t. What they want is something more than earldoms.”
“And what is that, Your Majesty?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it? What do they want? What does Emuin want?” What did Mauryl want when he sent me Tristen? That was the silent question, the one he failed to pose for Maudyn and Anwyll, the one he posed himself alone: Tristen himself was that puzzle, Tristen who could scarcely fend for himself, now at the head of the southern army.
Tristen armored in black, on a black horse, his gift, and attended by that damned bird and a flock of pigeons… what did he want?
That was one thing. What Mauryl might have wanted was another matter: Mauryl was an ally of convenience and a wizard’s evident frustration with his Sihhë allies… or that thin blood to which the line had dwindled.
To prevent this Hasufin Heltain having any success: that was the evidence of Lewenbrook. He had no illusions it was any love of the Marhanen or fear for his continuance.
And what had happened, but this damned bolt of lightning that had sent Tristen from him, by his own order.
Cevulirn had gone.
Then Nevris… and Idrys. And now he was alone, between these two, Maudyn and Anwyll, good men, both; alone, with his guards. Alone, with the lords of the north… and Ryssand.
Mauryl had sent Tristen, Emuin had received him.