Regarding that condition, however, Cook's was not the only advice he needed now. Master Emuin was awake, and knew, and had known about the ladies even before they reached the town gates.
— What shall I do? he asked Emuin now within the gray space wizards used. The Aswydd women might hear him, this close, but in this moment he did not care. Where do you say should I put them?
— I'm sure I don't know, Emuin said, and as the gray place opened wide, they stood, in their wizardous aspect, in a place of cloud and wind, equally wary of the Aswydds— who were there, unabashedly eavesdropping on them. This is inconvenient.
They had feared the stars, had gotten through the perilous time of change with no worse calamity than the arrival of Owl, who was somewhere about, and they had hoped that Owl was the end of the last troubled epoch and the beginning of a more auspicious age.
But, perhaps on the same night, counting the time it took to travel so far—for so it turned out—Orien and Tarien had left their exile and set out to reach Henas'amef and their former home.
— With child, no less, Emuin said, and turned a fierce and forbidding question toward Tarien Aswydd.— Whose, woman?
It was harshly, even brutally demanded, so uncharacteristically forceful that Tristen flinched. In the same instant Orien flung an arm about her sister, who shied from answering and winked out of the gray space like a candle in the wind.
Orien's was a swift, defiant retreat.
Emuin's abrupt question rid them, if only momentarily, of the Aswydds' wizardous eavesdropping, and for Tristen's part, he was no little chagrined that he had never asked so important a question in all the long walk back with the women. In his own defense, his attention in those hours had all been to the simple struggle with the snow, and with Orien's challenge to him… and then with the dismay his allied lords, down in the camps about the town wall, had felt very keenly, simply to see Orien back in Amefel. That Tarien was with child had seemed to him one of those things women could arrange, and one of those states women at times maintained—consequently had he, a wizard's Shaping, born of fire on a hearth, asked himself that one simple, essential question before bringing the women here?
No, he had not.
Whose child, indeed, begun in a nunnery, where, as he understood, there were only women?
Or perhaps not in the nunnery.
He felt a shadow pass in the gray space, and at the same moment, in the world, felt the wind of Owl's wings pass him and sweep on.
So Owl, who had guided him to find the sisters in the storm, was still abroad in the world. And magic was. And everything that had seemed simple now became a series of choices, each one with consequences.
"The west wing," he said to the men waiting for their orders. "Lodge them there." He knew the house had at least one set of rooms vacant in that wing, since Cevulirn had chosen to camp with his men. And no one lodged in rooms fit for the duke of Ivanor could complain of being slighted; but anything less than her former state as duchess of Amefel was too little in the estimation of Orien Aswydd, who had attempted Cefwyn's life and on that dice throw, lost everything. He thought twice and made a firm choice. " Cefwyn'srooms."
" His Majesty'sold apartments," Uwen repeated to the servants, as a row of frightened maids and men met them at the inside stairs. "An' hurry about it. Careful on them marble steps. Mind the ladies' boots is wet."
A slip on the stairs, Tristen thought, an untimely, fatal accident would not happen to a wizard outside of wizardry… he had no fear either would slip. But a true accident might save the whole kingdom the consequences of his charity. He had brought them here. He had acquiesced to whatever sent them, and being what he was— a lord and a wizard who could wish harm on the ladies and perhaps ought to—he had never learned to do such things. He nevertheless warred in his own thoughts about the wisdom of having brought them into the citadel at all, and had a frowning look from Lady Orien, back from the stairs.
Orien knew he was thinking about harm, at least, she who could wish harm back at him, and perhaps had, often. He feared warfare was inevitable if she would not accept less than her former honors— his magic opposed her sorcery, for sorcery it was. She knew it, she had already met it, and he hoped she might come to reconcile with the situation as it was—but he did not readily see how that might be.
He regretted his act of mercy now, and he wished, if not harm on Orien, at least safety for his staff and all the friends, allies and townsfolk his charity had set at risk by bringing her here. Fool, he was ready to think, as often he had been a fooclass="underline" but Owl had led him, and Owl, that chancy bird, knew nothing of reason.
Lives had been at risk already, among those he loved. Uwen had come out into the storm searching for his foolish lord, trailing after him Lusin and the rest of his bodyguard, honest men immeasurably distressed to have lost track of their charge outside safe town walls.
And not only his household had ridden out to search for him. Crissand Earl of Meiden and the duke of Ivanor had both come searching, the latter two having wizard-gift enough to find him in any storm… and wizard-gift enough to know for a truth what dangerous guests he had brought home.
From those two he was sure that by now the word of the Aswydds' return would have slowly, discreetly spread among the lords encamped near the walls. From the servants here on the hill, it would go like wildfire through the staff, some of whom had served the ladies and their brother Heryn. And word would leap from there into the Bryaltine shrine, too, a random thought informed him, to the nuns, who had been maids to Lady Orien and who now repented their lady's war with the Marhanen through their charitable acts and pious prayers.
From there, for very little good and a great deal of ill… rumor of the Aswydds' arrival in Henas'amef would reach every corner of the province, from the border with Guelessar, which had sent the ladies to him, to the borders with the other lords, and northward to those who already distrusted Amefel.
And it would go northward in Amefel, too, to Captain Anwyll's camp, Guelenmen, Dragon Guard, who would wonder what to make of it. Anwyll well knew the ladies were supposed to be under ban, and was sworn to uphold the royal decree that kept them so. Word would run to Modeyneth, where the men of Bryn built a wall; and to Althalen, where fugitives out of Elwynor established a settlement under his protection—and was the lord of Amefel's power that sure, the fugitives must ask themselves, if he housed the sisters of Heryn Aswydd?
The news would go to their enemy, Tasmôrden, sitting in his newly won capital of Ilefínian, up in Elwynor. He had tried to stir the Amefin to rebel against Cefwyn, with the promise of reestablishing the Aswydds and supporting them in war. What must he think?
And not last or least, word would reach Cefwyn, telling him that wizardry or the malice of Men had overturned his sentence and freed the two most dangerous prisoners in his kingdom… for they were that. They certainly were that. Sorcerywas their crime, not to mention an attempt on Cefwyn's very life, and on his kingdom.
Forgive me, should he write to Cefwyn, but I could think of nowhere else to send them?
The only place he could think of to send them, indeed, at this hour, was to hasten them upstairs, into rooms fit for the royalty they claimed to be… aethelings, of the old noble house of Amefel, with wizard-gift strong in their blood.