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"
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 fortress of dragons.html

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.

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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.

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"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?

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One thing was suddenly very clear to him.

"
You
, love, can't stay in their reach."

"Elwynor is no Guelen prize! My land,
my
crown—"

"My heir," he said in a low, determined voice, and with his arms about her. "My love. My very dear love, you're the foremost hostage they could hold… your welfare, above all heirs and all else. I love you. I honor your claim and risk all my kingdom to bring it to you.

But this warning, if I believe it, changes everything."

"I am sovereign in Elwynor! You swore—"

"I
deny
you nothing. I admit every claim. I make myself your debtor when I ask you—I plead with you, for my own peace of mind—to take
our
son and
our
heir out of harm's way."

"Back to Efanor, who has enough to do to defend his own interests, let alone mine!"

"Efanor has men enough and guile enough to keep you safe. I know my brother. I know my brother as he was before he took to priests, and I swear to you there's a man there. If he should take the throne, Ryssand wouldn't like it."

"I believe it all, I never doubted it, but I won't leave you."

"Nevris." He pressed her head still with his hand, hugged her tightly against him.

"I'll not go, thinking I'll never see you again!"

"I swear to you I've no intention of dying, love. I'll deal with Ryssand
and
Tasmôrden. But I can't take you onto the field, and most especially I can't defend myself wondering whether you're safe back in my camp, or held hostage in Ryssand's."

"I'm not a fool!"

"Nor am I! And not being one I can't divide my attention—don't argue with me, not in this. You know I'm right. If you're there I'll be thinking of you, no other thing. I know you'll be suffering all the worry I'd suffer if you were there. But that's your part to suffer, mine to ask it, or I won't have my wits about me—Hear me! I'm king, and it's my damned army! Go to Efanor!"

She said nothing. She held to him. He routinely lost arguments when she said nothing. But this time he would not yield, and he waited, and fortress of dragons.html

waited.

"I'll go to Amefel," she said, prying herself from his arms, and with a rustle of the paper she had abused with her holding him, spread her hand on it, smoothed it.

He had not thought at first of Amefel. But it was fortified. Its people were Bryaltines. Tristen ruled it, and had the loyalty of the people.

It was a better choice. And hardly farther away. Assurnbrook was a deep and treacherous river, once it received the flow of Arreyburn on its way north to the Lenúalim—that was one reason no bridge had ever stood in its shifting sands and soft banks, and the other the fact that Murandys had had no interest in linking itself to Amefel. But Assurnford was not that far south of their camp here, and once across that, Ninévrisë would immediately be in a Bryalt land, safe even in the countryside—not risking the mood of Guelen villages, who, no, would not be pleased that the woman for whom Guelenmen went to war was going back to safety.

He did not mention that hazard, knowing how it would sting her pride: it stung his that his own people were so inclined to hate her.

But he did know a better choice when she laid it before him: safe from the time she crossed the Assurn, not having to brazen it out with the banners and Idrys' authority or slip into Guelemara cloaked and by night, simply to reach the Guelesfort in safety.

"Idrys will see you there."

"Idrys won't," she said. "For one thing, he won't leave you."

"He'll do it if I order it," he said, "and if he wants Ryssand's head, which he does. More than that—he serves the Marhanen. And you carry the Marhanen heir." Then it crossed his mind that where he sent her, Tarien was, and she had to confront that situation. "Tarien's there."

"So is Tristen. And Emuin. Tarien doesn't frighten me. Nothing there frightens me."

"Then you'll go tonight. Now. We'll make as little fuss about this as we can." Her sickness had troubled her, at the Guelesfort and on the march, and she had endured her misery and forced down soldiers'

fare, refusing to have anything more delicate. He had lost all his arguments until now, and he took no chances. "A soldier's tent, a fortress of dragons.html

packhorse, Idrys and four men and their gear. Can you do it?"

The rain rushed against the walls of the tent. The river would be up, and the crossing at Assurnford itself an ice-cold flood of snowmelt.

He knew what a misery that soaking ford might be. But Idrys knew the crossing in all its treachery, and he would get them to safety.

"I've no doubt," Ninévrisë said, and Cefwyn held her tightly, wanting nothing more than to have her with him and nothing less than to see her in a town where no harm would possibly come near her.

"Before the sun's up," he said. "With no fuss, no delay. Idrys will want to come back, and I won't forbid it. I'll see you after this is over, in Ilefínian."

"In Ilefínian," she said. "Don't worry for me. Guard yourself. Do whatever you need to do. Say I've gone to the capital: there'll be less talk, and if trouble comes after us, it'll take the wrong road."

"Wise lady."

"Promise me: don't let Ryssand's men near you. Set him near any engagement: let him bear the brunt of any encounter.—And carry my banner with you."

They had planned the advance from the river through provinces that might be favorable to Ninévrisë. All those plans were cast to the winds, and her banner by all custom should not fly if she were not there: but custom be damned, he had no difficulty agreeing to it, if it saved them fighting Ninévrisë's loyal subjects and killing honest men.

"I will," he promised her. "All I do, I do in your name."

"I'll launch rumor north from Henas'amef, with Tristen."

"See you don't launch
yourself
," he said, for he had a sudden apprehension of her finding Elwynim forces inside Amefel, and the temptation it would be to her.

"Trust me," she said, "as I trust you to take my capital."

"I've no choice," he said. "And I swear to you that banner will fly."

They made a silent farewell then, a lovers' farewell, with the storm flickering and roaring beyond the tent walls, and the rain pouring down.

After that he waked Idrys, and Idrys listened, expressionless, to the fortress of dragons.html

plans they had.

"I'll be riding back," Idrys said, as he had known Idrys would say.

"There'll be no trouble tracking us," Cefwyn said in grim humor. "I trust you'll find me, crow: you never do miss trouble."

CHAPTER 5

After the deluge of rain came the west wind, from the evening of Tristen's day, blowing the clouds from the sky and warming the last piles of snow, drying the fields and banging at loose shutters. The banners atop the South Gate flew straight out, and the pigeons when they came to the window had hard work to maintain their places.

They were still as many as before: Tristen counted them as he did every day, worrying about Owl's appetite, and still they stayed safe.

And still Tarien's babe stayed safe, and slept, as Uwen assured him new babies did, and nursed and slept and slept some more. Gran Sedlyn refused to leave, having mislaid the baby once: she slept close by on the night of that day, and tended Tarien and Elfwyn both. It was passing strange to Tristen that now he must think of a new soul, a creature that had never existed before, but there he was, indisputably a baby.