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her eyes. But then the glance lowered, all but a bowed head, a meek clasping of hands—an implied acceptance he did not trust.
    "We have no choice," Tarien said in a low voice. "And we have no chance if we go on as we are." Orien's anger flared, scenting the very air of the room, but Tarien persisted: "Good sir, we did hear in the convent that you had been given Henas'amef, else we wouldn't have dared come here. You were the kindest of the Marhanen's friends. I expect nothing good of him, but you would never harm us."
    "Cefwyn didn't harm you," he returned. "And you tried to kill him."
    "To win him," Tarien said, but he knew that for a lie, and Tarien perhaps knew he knew, for the gray space grew dark and troubled.
    "Emuin's here, too, isn't he?" Orien asked. "I heard him quite clearly."
    "He's here."
    "Dry old Emuin," Orien said. "Hypocrite."
    "He says very ill things of you, too," Tristen said, "and I regard his opinion as far more fair."
    It was perhaps more subtle a sting than Orien had expected. Her nostrils flared, but she did not glare. Rather she seemed to grow smaller, and more pliant.
    "We shouldn't quarrel. I never held any resentment for you, none at all. You never had a chance but to fall into the Marhanen's hands, the same as we, and you have far more right to be here: I shouldn't chide you."

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    He felt a subtle wizardry as she said it, and he wondered what she was attempting now.
    He broke off the blandishments and the weaving of a spell with a wave of his hand, and she flinched. So did Tarien, for that matter.
    "Don't," he said, to Tarien as much as to Orien. "Don't press against the walls. You're in danger, and you're far safer here than anywhere else if you'll accept it."
    "Accept it!" Orien said in scorn.
    "Accept safety here. It's my best advice."
    "I need nothing from you or that dry stick of a wizard!"
    "But you do," he said. "You need it very much." Orien turned her shoulder to him, but he went on trying to reach her, in the World and in the gray space alike. "Lady, you didn't only open the wards and the window, you opened yourself and your sister to Hasufin. You thought it might give you a way to rule here and be rid of Cefwyn, but all Hasufin wanted was a way inside the wards."
    "And an end of the Marhanen!"
    "Lady Orien, the truth is, if you had died and if everyone had died, Hasufin didn't care. It didn't matter to him. It doesn't matter to him now—if there's anything left of him. If sorcery finds a way inside the wards, it won't give you back what you had. Cefwyn might have, but Hasufin Heltain never would and never intended to. If you don't know that, you don't know what he was."
    She was angry at what he said, but she might think on it. Perhaps she had already thought on it. Doubtless she had had ample time to think, sitting in a Teranthine nunnery in Guelessar with no fine gowns, no servants, no books, and no one who cared to please her.
    And in this moment of her retreat, he pursued, with a question which had troubled him since summer.
    "You tried to kill Emuin," he asked her, for someone at summer's end had attacked Emuin and left him lying in a pool of blood. He could think of no one more likely than Orien Aswydd, who had commanded all the resources of Henas'amef. "Didn't you?"
    She gave him no answer, but he had the notion he had come very near the truth: Orien or someone sworn to her. And he could think of fortress of dragons.html
    many, many connections she had had among the servants and the nobility of the province, one of whom had perhaps stayed more loyal than most.
    "Lord Cuthan's gone to Elwynor," he said. "Did you know that?"
    Perhaps she had not known it. Perhaps she was dismayed to learn that particular resource was no longer within her reach, when he was sure Cuthan had something to do with Orien Aswydd. Perhaps through Cuthan she had even known about the proposed rising against the king, and the Elwynim's promised help.
    But she said nothing.
    He tried