Tristen sent Lord Ryssand's letter posthaste to Guelessar, while Cuthan, revealed for a traitor to both sides, and possibly guilty of more than anyone knew, took advantage of Tristen's leniency to flee to Elwynor.
In the capital, Corswyndam Lord Ryssand knew he had to move quickly to lessen the king's power or lose his own. It happened that one of his clerks had reported that the office of Regent of Elwynor, which Ninévrisë claimed, included priestly functions. So at Ryssand's instigation, certain conservatives in the Holy Quinalt rose up in protest of a woman in priestly rites. This objection would break the marriage treaty.
Cefwyn countered with another compromise and a trade of favors with the Holy Father: Ninévrisë agreed to state that she was and had always been of the Bryaltine sect— that recognized, though scantly respectable, Amefin religion. She agreed to accept a priest of that faith as her priest, leaving aside other difficult questions, and on that understanding, the Quinalt would perform the wedding.
The barons now came with the last and worst attack on Ninévrisë: charges of infidelity, Ninévrisë's with Tristen, laughable if one knew them. But Ryssand's daughter Artisane was prepared to perjure herself to bring Ninévrisë down. So Cefwyn learned when Ryssand's son Brugan brought the charges to him secretly— along with a document giving much of his power to the barons, which was clearly the alternative this young lordling presented his king.
Therein Ryssand overstepped himself: it gave an excuse for a loyal baron, Cevulirn of Ivanor, to challenge Brugan. By killing
Brugan, by popular belief, Cevulirn proved Ninévrisë''s innocence. If Ryssand should make public the attack on Ninévrisë, that fact would come out to counter it: Brugan had died a liar.
But if it should come to public knowledge, someone would surely challenge Cevulirn, and if he won again, another and another would challenge him until they could cast the result in doubt. Cefwyn still hoped to deal with the other barons, and would trade silence for silence, casting the killing as a private quarrel to prevent the destructive chain of challenges and feuds that would tear the court apart.
But that meant Cevulirn had to leave court, avoiding Ryssand's presence, and Cefwyn girded himself for a confrontation in court with a powerful baron who had just lost his son to a man who had not stayed to face challenges.
Into this situation Ryssand's incriminating letter arrived secretly into Cefwyn's hands… and Cefwyn thus had the means to suggest Ryssand also retire to his estates immediately, or have all his actions made public to the other barons.
So the treaty stood firm, Cefwyn and Ninévrisë married, and Tristen settled in to rule in the south as lord of Amefel, lord of the province containing old Althalen and bordering Ynefel and Elwynor across the river.
But on a day that Tristen, with Earl Crissand and Uwen, set out to visit the villages, they came across an old shrine, where the apparition of the Witch of Emwy, Auld Syes, appeared as the precursor to a terrible storm. Lord of Amefel and the aetheling, she hailed them, as if those titles were not one and the same thing. She bade them ride south to find friends, and then to feed her sparrows.
Further, she asked permission to visit Tristen at some time in the future— in effect, asked passage through the magical wards of the Zeide of Henas'amef. Tristen granted it, to his guards' great distress.
South they rode, then, in the rising storm, and encountered Cevulirn, who had turned banishment to good use, riding north to inform Tristen of those matters too delicate to be entrusted to couriers.
The two of them took counsel how to use their resources to help Cefwyn in the spring, and agreed to call in all the other lords of the south— which Cefwyn could not dare. Their plan was to set a camp across the river and divert Tasmôr den's attention southward. Cefwyn had forbidden them to win the war, because the Quinaltine northern barons were already distressed about his reliance on the Teranthine south… but together Tristen and Cevulirn saw what they could do to bolster Cefwyn's cause without violating the letter of their king's orders.
Tristen and Cevulirn set out then toward the river to view the situation firsthand. On the way they made a stop in the village of Modeyneth, where Tristen raised the local thane, Drusenan, to the rank of earl in Cuthan's place, and commanded the raising of an old Sihhë wall to hold the road. In so doing, they found that Drusenan had concealed a number of Elwynim who had fled the war. For want of any other safe place to settle them in his lands, Tristen authorized them to build a refuge within the vacant ruins of Althalen… where no settlement was permitted, under Crown law, but where they were out of the way of traffic coming up and down the vital road to Elwynor.
Having done those things, Tristen and Cevulirn rode on, and were at the river when Tristen realized, through that gray world only wizards could touch, that the Elwynim capital, llefinian, had fallen.
So there would not be a winter's grace to prepare: the situation was immediately more grave.
Meanwhile in Guelemara, and to the discomfiture of Murandys and Ryssand alike, Cefwyn invited his former lover, Luriel, Murandys' niece, back to court. With considerable inducements of land and favor, he arranged her marriage to the son of Duke Maudyn, lord of Panys, his commander on the riverside.
In this manner and at one stroke he shone a light on his consort's generosity and his own reformed habits… and undermined the confidence of his opponents in each other. This marriage allied Murandys' interests with those of the lord of Panys, who firmly supported the Crown.
In Amefel, meanwhile, in a reunion of a far different sort, Tristen rescued from prison a young thief, Paisi. This was a street boy who had once guided him to Cefwyn's justice: Paisi's fate, he was convinced, was linked to his own, simply because the whole web of incidents leading him to his present allies was a series of linkages, and those linkages were a likely target of hostile wizardry—simply put, those once connected to him at points of critical decision could connect to him again, at points of critical decision, for good or for ill.
This one looked already to have a taint of ill about it— for in saving Paisi, Tristen had a falling out with the Guelen Guard, the garrison in Henas'amef, for it was from them that Paisi had stolen, and Tristen would not see him hanged. Instead, Paisi went to Emu-in's tower to become his assistant… and certain guardsmen and even the patriarch of the local Quinalt left Tristen's court in anger. Tristen had been right: the boy once involved at a crisis of decision was involved again, and whatever would have happened had Paisi hanged, would not now happen. Some other event was now in progress in which Paisi had some part to play, and he trusted Emuin to keep as much order in that event as anyone could keep.
The disgruntled soldiers and the patriarch went to Guelemara, and their reports when they reached Guelemara created a storm in the Quinalt. They accused Tristen of serious breaches of Crown law, usurpation of royal authority, and the promotion of wizardry in Amefel. Strict northern priests, supported by Ryssand, had already preached doom in the streets, and as this further attack gained momentum, Cefwyn moved secretly to silence the most outspoken of these priests, one Udryn, as one of Ryssand's men.