“Does Your Grace see any stir out of Elwynor?” Pelumer asked. “—Counting that the owl might, as’t were, fly abroad.”
“Where Owl goes I don’t myself know. Nor the pigeons.” They saw the birds as spies, he was aware, and were wrong in that, attributing to Owl what he might learn from the gift. But that Owl guided him in his dreams, and that his dreams were less fair than the condition of the land he knew around him… that he still kept secret until he knew what to make of it. “I don’t know their number, daily at Althalen, but I know it’s defended. Aeself and his men have my leave to guard the camp, and they do; and Drusenan guards Modeyneth.”
“Nothing’s troubled them,” said Cevulirn.
“Not that I know. None of Tasmôrden’s men have tried the bridges that I know, either. And Tasmôrden himself is still in Ilefi-nian, but a great many who survived have left it and come toward our border villages. This I’m sure of.”
A silence had attended his words. It persisted, a little fear, and a hopeful confidence.
“And Your Grace knows this,” Pelumer said, the third attempt on his secrecy.
“I know,” Tristen said, more than knowing—aware of the gift, though a very small one, in Pelumer himself, and Pelumer’s asking as an uncertainty perhaps keenly self-directed.
“Far less a trouble than riders and horses,” Sovrag said under his breath.
“Is Your Grace ever mistaken?” Umanon asked: Umanon did not have a shred of the gift, the only one among the lords who had not the least glimmering of it.
“Yes,” he said, “I’ve made mistakes. A great many of them. But not so many now.”
“Wizardry or magic,” Emuin said, “alike has its weaknesses, and worst when one commits one’s entire plan to them. Lean on a single staff . . . and another wizard or some traveling tinker can tip it right aside in a heartbeat. That there are more settlers at Althalen, yes, that’s so, and he knows, does His Grace, who put them there. That they’re a resource, yes, I have no doubt. That they’re any sort of an answer to Tasmôrden and his army, no. If they were strong enough to fight him, they’d not have lost Ilefínian in the first place.”
“But the weather,” Pelumer said. “There’s some that have weather-luck… as the Sihhë Kings had. Is that so? And that great storm and the Aswydds—was that in Your Grace’s intentions?”
“I wished good weather for us,” he said, keenly aware that the land lay deep in snow, and that at this very moment Crissand struggled through a windblown drift, remnant of the Aswydds’ storm, leading a strange horse, fearful and berating himself for his plight. Now he heard the thought in Crissand’s heart—or perhaps Crissand had heard him a moment ago. “I didn’t wish the storm, no, and I don’t think Orien could.”
“Then who?”
“I don’t know. It might have just needed to snow. The weather’s like that. It lasted a fair time, but whether the snow would have its way or just what turned it, I don’t know. I think I can turn the weather good again. But so very much has happened since yesterday I haven’t wanted to confuse things further.”
“Wise notion,” Emuin muttered.
“It can snow a while,” Pelumer said, “so long as it snows hard in Elwynor.”
“If you enter on that,” Emuin muttered, “be advised of the danger. Wish for good.”
“Pray for it,” said Umanon, the Quinalt among them.
“That, too,” Emuin said, laying a hand to the Teranthine sigil he wore. “Prayers. Wishes. Many of them. Candles by the gross. Gods bless all of us.”
Gods remained a mystery to Tristen, but no one had flinched from the questions or the answers.
And he had never depended on mastering the weather.
“The granaries are full,” he said. “I can’t say whether the river may freeze; but we have the wall at Modeyneth if it lets the enemy across. I can’t say whether Tasmôrden may turn east or south, but there’s Cefwyn to one side of the hills and us to the other, and when the weather does serve, we’ll not receive an attack: we’ll bring one.”
“And camp that night in Elwynor!” Sovrag shouted out. “There’s the word! In Elwynor!”
“In Elwynor,” others echoed, and, In Elwynor became the word throughout the hall.
Then Owl let out an eerie cry that came from every place and no place. Some laughed nervously. Umanon blessed himself.
Tristen wished the recreant bird back to him, and Owl plummeted down and settled onto his arm, turning his head backward to look at the assembly.
He had intended to quiet Owl and make him less a disturbance.
But he doubted his effort had had that effect.
As for the lords’ wishes for the weather to improve, he hoped, no, wished with all his might for fair skies and a warm wind out of the south—and he wished that Cefwyn might begin to move against Tasmôrden sooner if the weather bettered itself.
It was time. It was indeed time.
And Sovrag was right: a camp just the other side, by the riverside and still within the compass of his orders not to undertake to win the war, could discomfit Tasmôrden.
More than that, considering rumors of internal weakness in the steady arrival of fugitives at Althalen… he hoped his disturbance at the edge of Elwynor might search out the hollow heart in Tasmor-den’s power, the ones only marginally loyal to the usurper, most in fear for their lives. Those Elwynim who would turn again and swear to Ninévrisë Syrillas as liege lady might in such a presence find a place to stand, and Tasmôrden then would find his strength melting away, as the commons found the Lady Regent more to their liking.
In point of fact, it was not alone the weather he wished to change, and had no compunction at all about wishing Elwynim to serve Ninévrisë Syrillas. She had the right to their allegiance, and the good heart to mend the land after its years of war and waiting. There could be no better fate for the Elwynim.
“Time, then,” he said aloud, “time for us all to set to work.”
So the lords agreed. They were pleased when they left. He had accomplished that.
He remained seated a moment, Owl spreading his broad wings and settling claws into his flesh. “Go,” he wished the recalcitrant bird, and encouraged him with a toss, but Owl only moved to his hand, and drew blood, and clung.
“You were very plain, young lord,” Emuin advised him, neither approving nor disapproving. Emuin had stayed, along with Uwen; and Lusin and his men. “Some of your army might be afraid. Not the great lords, perhaps, but some of your ealdormen looked green as new apples.”
“Cefwyn says I’m a poor liar.” Wind brushed his cheek, distracting him with a flap of wings as Owl flew up to his other favored perch, up on the cornice. “When should they discover the danger, master Emuin? On the field?”
“And what will you? When will you make up your own mind?”
“To what?” He was genuinely bewildered.
Emuin’s glance followed Owl’s course, and came back to him, dark and direct under his snowy brows. “That you lead this army.”
“I know I lead it.”
“That you rule this province.”
“The man who should rule is freezing in a snowdrift right now, between here and Modeyneth.”
“Crissand.”
“Yes, Crissand. In this one thing I’m certain. About the war itself I won’t wish. I observe caution. I learn, you see, I do learn, master Emuin.”