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“He said the devotions,” Efanor ventured, bending all those years of priestly study, arguing with the Holy Father on Tristen’s behalf: it was a gallant effort, and Cefwyn drew a breath of gratitude.
“Yet,” the Patriarch said, “sorcery gained power with that coin—”
“Bother the coin!” He gathered up the scraps of his eloquence. “Your Holiness, the Quinalt is our strength, our reliance, and to make a breach between Crown and Quinalt, who would benefit? I don’t doubt that one might have ridden the other, but it was not Tristen. Look to Elwynor!”
“Yet…” The old man trembled, wobbled, and still, the adder, attacked: “Yet… to bring that ba
“Nonsense!—Forgive me, Holy Father, but nonsense! A good Guelen lady stitched that ba
“Yet…” the Patriarch said.
“Yet.” He recovered breath and composure. This was nota religious man. This was a man of temporal power, affrighted by the manifestation of nature, a man frightened into belief in his own predecessors’ creation in these hours of darkness and lightning strokes.
“The Star and Tower are not benign, lord king. There will be talk.”
“Which you can quell at will, Your Holiness.”
“The Crown and the Quinalt must stand together against sorcery, Your Majesty. But that ba
The hell with the roof, he wanted to say, and glared, but dared not. That was the thing: he dared not. There were limits which neither he nor the Patriarch had yet searched out with each other. He only prayed for the pragmatic man to rise to reason with him, the old man he knew.
But that old man had heard the report out of Amefel, and gods forfend he believed his own sermons, to think he and the gods of his sermons could match the real, rolling darkness on Lewen field.
“This is a sign,” the Patriarch said. “Very clearly a sign. Your Majesty, I stood beneath that roof. I heard the strike! My ears still ring with it! The people in the square, sheltering from the rain, they all fled in terror. What will they say around about the town?”
“What the Quinalt bidsthem say,” he said angrily. Gods forfend, too, that the old man should take to faith in his own gods at this pass. “The Quinalt can mend this rumormongering.”
“Not against this, Your Majesty. We ca
“Are you telling me, Holy Father, that you will barthe Lord Warden, in mycourt, from your door?”
“I beg Your Highness not test the gods.”
“This is treason, Holy Father. Look out, or you will discover my grandfather in me. Do not dareto tell me…”
“Brother.” There was starkest fear in Efanor’s face. “I beg you. Isthis what you wish? Dare we have this division? I was not at Lewen field. I had not that honor. But I heard the reports, Holy Father. I know that the Lord Warden helped overcome sorcery.”
“With sorcery,” the Patriarch said hoarsely. “ Sorcery with sorcery, that is the point, lord king. You wish me to bless this marriage, you wish me to say grace over a union with the Lady Regent, which while unorthodox offers a hope of the gods’ grace over the far shore, but in the Lord Warden you have an association I fear owes more to Teranthineadvice than mine. —We are willing to bless this union, Your Majesty, do not mistake me!”
The last was just in time. He had drawn breath to reply.
“—And shall,” the Patriarch hastened to say, all but choking on the words. “And shall, with all our good offices, Your Majesty. But how muchof the strange and sorcerous will you ask good folk to countenance? Where shall we draw the line, —but at Assurnbrook, as we have always drawn it? You say that I can prevent the gossip. What shall we do? Fly to every house, of every common man who ran from the public square tonight as bits of the roof came down, and bid the commons not say a Sihhë presence cursed us? How shall I say, in all observances, ‘ bless the king and his court’when one of that court is Sihhë? How shall I say, ‘ strike down the unbeliever’when he sits in the congregation? How shall I say, ‘ the cursed signs and symbols be far from your houses’when that ba
His Holiness had named the real argument when he had said, more Teranthinethan my advice. Therewas the old fox he knew. There was the old man’s concern: Emuin’sinfluence with the new king. Now they were down to realities.
“Your liturgy is no older than my grandfather. Change the words.”
“Your Majesty ca
“If Your Holiness wants his roof patched, change the damned words! ”
“This is an unseemly discussion! ”
“This is a royal order. A command of the Crown. Dare you deny me? I say Tristen is an ally, Tristen is our friend, and a defender of this realm. Do not attempt my patience, Holy Father. Do not dare do it. He stands where Ynefel has always stood, and I would recommend Your Holiness not tamper with that bulwark.”
“I say I ca
The old fox, Cefwyn said to himself, seeing the look in the old man’s eyes. The malevolent old fox. The man who had damned near reigned duringhis father’s reign, and the last years of his grandfather’s, at least where peace in the realm was the issue. He was well capable of having dropped that coin in, himself, even after the lightning stroke. He was a dangerous man. He had always been a dangerous man, snuggling right up next Marhanen warmth, looking for advantage from the Marhanen, most chancy in allegiance, seeing he had, now, a hostage.
Ninévrisë. The wedding.
Oh, this was a fitadviser for his grandfather.
Dared he think… daredhe suspect that this priest had always ruled the rulers, by seizing upon and increasing their fears—fears of ghosts, in his grandfather; fears of his own heir in his father, driving the wedge between father and son, brother and brother?
The thought came on him like the levin stroke next door, stopped his breath and robbed him of clear thought. He had hated Aséyneddin, who had slaughtered men of his, but that was war. He had not been fond of the assassins whose heads had graced the fortress gate in Henas’amef, but that was political, and they had been Aséyneddin’s men, following a lord’s orders. He had hated Sulriggan, and Heryn Aswydd. But had thispoisonous man been the author of his father’s fear of him, setting him away from him, always, always at arm’s length, so that Inéreddrin had preferred Efanor to his dying breath?
He looked at his hands, resting joined across his belt, studied the sword scars on his knuckle, the lesson he wouldnot learn, no matter how many times master Peygan had whacked right past his guard with exactly the same move.