Fortress of Dragons

So, with that border established, the matter settled… save only the troublesome question of Amefel, the province on the Guelen-held side of the Lenúalim River, the population of which was not Guelen-ish, but close kin to the Elwynim. Selwyn's hope of holding his lands firm against the Elwynim rested on not allowing an Elwynim presence on that side of the river… within a population virtually the same in accent, religion, and customs.

Now the history of Amefel was this: Amefel had been an independent kingdom of Men when the first Sihhë-lords walked up to the walls of its capital of Hen Amas and demanded entry. The kings of Amefel, the Aswyddim, flung open their gates and helped the Sihhë in their mission to conquer Guelessar, a fact no Guelen and no Guelen king could quite forget. In return for this treachery, the local Aswydd house had always enjoyed a unique status under the Sihhë authority, and, alone of Men, styled themselves as kings, as opposed to High Kings, the title the Sihhë reserved for themselves and their successors.

So now Selwyn had severed Amefel from Elwynor and claimed it… but at least for this approaching fall season, he foresaw that his own uneasily joined kingdom of Ylesuin, with barons at least two of whom had already tried to claim rule over the Guelens, would fall to internal quarrels the moment he looked elsewhere. If he became embroiled in a dispute with the Aswydds over their prerogatives, that would lead to his own barons scheming and plotting while he was distracted, and that situation might encourage Elwynor to break the unofficial truce… leading to war next spring from one end to the other of the lands of Men.

So Selwyn Marhanen quietly accorded the Aswydds guarantees of many of their ancient rights, including their religion, and including their titles. By that agreement, while the Aswydds became vassals of the kings of Ylesuin, and were called dukes, they were also styled aethelings, that was to say, royal— but only within their own province of Amefel. This purposely left aside the question of whether the other earls of Amefel bore rank equivalent to the dukes of Guelen and Ryssandish lands.

Selwyn thus had Amefel… or at least the consent of its aetheling… by the first winter of his rule, and he still had ambitions to go further. But the opposing district of Elwynor formed a region almost as large as Ylesuin was with Amefel attached, and, undeceived by the apparent truce, Elwynor's lords used that winter to gather forces. By the next spring, with Selwyn in Amefel and Elwynor armed and strong enough to make invasion costly, both sides assessed their chances and declined battle. The river Lenúalim thus became the tacitly unquestioned but still unsettled border.

The Elwynim meanwhile, declared a Regency in place of the lost High King at Althalen. They chose one of their earls, himself with a glimmering of Sihhë blood, who styled himself Lord Regent, and waited, taking it on stubborn faith that not all the royal house of the Sihhë-lords had perished, that within their lifetimes a new Sihhë-lord, some surviving prince they called the King To Come, would emerge from hiding or come down from the fabled northern ice to overthrow the Marhanen and reestablish the Sihhë kingdom. This time the Sihhë kingdom would have faithful Elwynor at its heart, and all the loyal subjects, foremost the Elwynim, would live in peace and Sihhë-blessed prosperity in a new golden age of wizardry.

The Elwynim, therefore, cherished magic, and prized the wizard-gift where it appeared. But outside the Lord Regent's line there were far too few Elwynim who could practice wizardry in any appreciable degree. Certainly no one in the land possessed such magic as the Sihhë had used, and there were few enough wizards left who would even speak of the King To Come… for the wizards of this age had had firsthand experience of Hasufin Heltain, and they remained aloof from the various lords of the Elwynim who wished to employ them. Those few Elwynim who had any Sihhë blood whatsoever were likewise reticent, for fear of becoming the center of some rising against the Regency that could only end in disaster.

So the Elwynim, deserted by their wizards and by those who did carry the blood, became too little wary of magic and those who promised it. They failed to ask the essential question: why the wizards remained silent andwhy Mauryl and Emuin both remained aloof from them, and thus they failed to know the danger that still existed in the shadows and among the Shadows.

So the years passed into decades without a credible claimant to the throne in Elwynor, and without the rise of another great wizard.

Selwyn died. Ylesuin's rule passed to Selwyn's son Indreddrin, who was a middle-aged man with two previous marriages and two grown sons.

Now Indreddrin was Guelen to the core, which meant devoutly, blindly Quinalt. That was his mother's influence. As a young prince, he had had no love of his uncivil warlord father, but had a great deal of fear of him. And under this dual influence of his mother's faith and his father's disinterest, Indreddrin grew up with no tolerance for other faiths, despite the exigencies of the Amefin treaty… and with a superstitious fear of wizardry, based on his observation of his father Selwyn's terrors in his declining years. Indreddrin fell more and more under the influence of the Quinaltine, and exercised little patience with his wild eldest son, Cefwyn— for Cefwyn took his grandfather's example and clung to the Tera'nthine tutor, Emuin (that same Emuin who had aided Mauryl at Althalen), whom Selwyn had appointed royal tutor for both his grandsons.

This was no accident, first because of wizardry, where little was accidental at all; and secondly because Selwyn saw superstition rising in his son and wished to stop it in the next generation. If Selwyn as a reigning king had found priests and the Quinalt a convenient resource, and to that end had supported them, he never forgot what he had faced at Althalen. Selwyn knew he had lost his son to the priests' influence, but be wanted his grandsons never to dread priests or wizards— rather to understand them, and to keep the best on their side.

This matter of the royal tutor was a source of bitter argument within the royal house: the queen died, Indreddrin grew more and more alienated from his father, and the very year Selwyn died and Indreddrin became king, Indreddrin persuaded his younger son Efa-nor into the strictest Quinalt faith— lavishing on him all the affection he now angrily denied the elder son.

So did the highest barons— notably the dukes of the provinces of Ryssand and Murandys— lavish attention on the younger prince, Efanor. There was even talk of overturning the succession— for the more religious and proper Efanor became, the more Cefwyn, the crown prince and heir, consoled himself with wild escapades, sorties on the border, and women… very many women.

Still, by Guelen law and custom, even by the tenets of the Quinalt itself, Cefwyn was, incontrovertibly, the heir, and it was no light matter to set Cefwyn aside: in that, even the most conservative of priests hesitated.

So Indreddrin, either in hopes that administrative responsibility would temper Cefwyn— or, it was whispered, in hopes some assassin or border skirmish would settle the matter and make Efanor his heir— sent Cefwyn to administer the Amefm garrison. To do that, Indreddrin bestowed on Prince Cefwyn the courtesy title of viceroy, thus keeping a firmer Marhanen hand on that curiously independent province and insinuating a closer Marhanen presence into a very troublesome district.

Now, since ordinarily and by the treaty, there was no such thing as a viceroy in Amefel, the duke of Amefel, Heryn Aswydd, was not at all pleased by this gesture, but Heryn dared not protest and give the Marhanen an excuse to send a larger garrison. So Duke Heryn kept his discontent to himself, even agreeing to report to Indreddrin regarding the prince's behavior, and on the worsening situation across the river.