“What say you?” the king said to Tan.
Before Tan could answer, Mienthe said quickly, “But—” She stopped as everyone looked at her, but then remembered Tan saying, You might try trusting yourself a little, and went on, “But, Lord King, if you will pardon me, is it wise to send a small number of men through the pass, when we have no idea what they might find? Even if Linularinum doesn’t have its own agents in the way, which I’m sure it does, wouldn’t it take a terribly long time for men to go all the way to Tiefenauer and then come all the way back here? From the—the word about the Wall and the griffins, can we take so much time?”
The Arobern tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Very well! What do you wish me to do?”
“I want you to send an army into Feierabiand!” Mienthe declared. “You have one; of course you do, with all the, the warnings flying back and forth across the mountains! So you have an army ready, haven’t you, and here it is, right at the mouth of the pass, just where we need it to be! I want you to send an army through the pass and press back the Linularinan forces and confound their mages and make a safe road for Tan to go himself back to Tiefenauer—and me, of course—and then we can get the book and see how useful it might be.”
Tan was staring at her, looking appalled by this idea. “A wise man does not leave be the hart at bay to pursue a glimmering fantasy by moonlight, nor forsake his house of stone to build a palace of sunbeams,” he said, with some force. “I admire your boldness, but you cannot possibly set all your hopes on—”
“I’m not!” exclaimed Mienthe. “If the Arobern sends an army to the Delta, then at least Linularinum will be out of the Delta, which is one thing we want.” She turned back to the Arobern himself. “And if you do that, then you’ll have an army in place to help block the griffins before they can come into Casmantium, which has to be something you want, and if Lord Beguchren is right about that book and about Tan, then we can stop the griffins entirely, and we all want that, don’t we? So why not do everything at once?”
There was a slightly stunned pause.
The Arobern himself broke it, rising to pace several strides away and then turn and come back. He moved with sharp energy, glowering at Mienthe with uncommon ferocity. “I thought of exactly what you say, yes?” he growled. “But you have forgotten: I cannot take men through that pass and march them through Feierabiand, because Iaor Safiad has my son in his court and within his reach! Do you think he will stop to ask me what I do, when he sees the spears of my soldiers flashing in the sun?”
The Arobern flung himself back down in his chair and scowled around at them all. “I could send that girl back to Iaor Safiad, yes, and ask him politely if he would permit me to bring a few thousand men marching through southern Feierabiand. Except there is no time! Who knows whether the griffins have already come through the high pass and down against Tihannad? Nor will Safiad trust me or what I might do! Later, when he sees I kept faith with him, that will be too late!”
“You have another son now,” Lord Beguchren said very quietly.
“A babe in arms does not replace my first son!”
Mienthe stared at both men, utterly horrified. She exclaimed, “But King Iaor would never harm Erich! I don’t care if—if Erich is supposed to be a hostage against you, it doesn’t matter what you do, he would never touch him!”
“He is a king!” shouted the Arobern, lunging back to his feet. “He will do what he must!”
Mienthe jumped to her feet to face the King of Casmantium and shouted back, “He won’t!” She found she was glaring as fiercely as the Arobern. “Who knows King Iaor better, you or I? He’s spent a month out of every year in the Delta, in my cousin’s house, and every year he’s brought your son with him. He treats him like his own son! When little Anlin fell off her pony last spring and broke her wrist, it was Erich who carried her back to the house and sat up with her all night and told her stories so she wouldn’t cry! He told her about the time he broke his arm falling off the roof of your palace in Breidechboden, and she made him promise that someday when she visited Casmantium he’d show her just where. He made her promise she wouldn’t climb out and fall from the same place!” Mienthe stopped. Then she finished with dignity, “It doesn’t matter what you think. King Iaor is honorable and kind and he might have taken your son as his hostage, but when it comes to the moment, he won’t touch him.”
The Arobern was gazing at her now with a very strange expression. “My son has stayed in your house for a month out of every year?”