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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 Tasmôrden’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, Ilefínian, 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 Emuin’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