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Then I sent out Hiveth and her whole pennon to bring back the bodies and to look out for Emlin and the pennons from Magor.
    I sent a messenger to Dun Morr to inform Lew of Conal's death and Emer's safety. I gave him another message for Govien ap Caw, who was in charge of the pennons stationed there, to tell him to bring them to me as quickly as he could. Then I sent everyone back to work, making sure the guards were alert and that there would be sentries out.
    Then, although I was very tired and it would have been better to wait until after Daldaf had spoken, I began to compose a message to Urdo.
    —3—
    Stir to life, my exiled heart, far down the mountain I see the horse of a messenger bringing letters.

    News is coining to stir my blood, news from ever-bustling Vinca, politics, literature, scandal, and love.

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    No longer is everything I care for out of reach.
    The messenger is drawing ever nearer.
    Outside my window the snow is melting.

    —Naso, "The Banks of the Vonar, Number 61"
    I went into the little accounts room, sat at the table by the east window, and took up pen and parchment. I
    had spent many days in that room in the last five years, working on accounts, writing to Urdo, and watching the square of sunlight creep across the stone flags. Everything in my life was complicated, and only writing to
    Urdo was simple. He had long wrestled with the problems of kingship and knew ways of dealing with questions that had only begun to perplex me. Therefore I wrote to him not just with news but with all the questions that came to me. Angas had told me years before that it was lonely to be a king, and now I felt it for myself. Had it not been for Urdo's letters I do not know how I could have borne it. I went to Caer Tanaga for half a month or so every year, usually at midsummer. The rest of the time duty kept me at Derwen. I had Veniva for company, I had Emlin and the ala, but it was hard and lonely. I was doing work that did not suit me and for which I had never been trained.
    After Morien's death I had suddenly found myself responsible for the whole land of Derwen, for everyone and everything on it. I do not think I was a bad lord, even then, but there was so much I did not know. I learned a new respect for my father and Duke Galba. I learned administration and justice. I tried hard to be fair and to learn how to be a lord. I read Urdo's laws and now I began to understand them. Sometimes things Urdo had said about them years before when he was first thinking about them came back to me. Often our letters were about law and justice; the red-cloaks would carry discussion of some point in Dalitus back and forth for a month.
    Other times I would simply pour out everything that was troubling me in one long letter. Often enough, just writing it would ease my heart, and his reply would set me quite straight again. He always replied, often within a day or two of when my message reached him. Once, when it was a problem with Cinvar ap Uthbad of
    Tathal about the border above Nant Gefalion, he came himself, unannounced.
    Now I sat chewing the end of my pen and slowly stripping off the feathering. I had written the salutation so many times that I didn't have to think: "From Sulien the daughter of Gwien, Lord of Derwen, at Derwen, to the
    High King Urdo, War-leader of the Tanagans, at Caer Tanaga or where he may be, Greetings!" I dipped the pen again and left enough space so that when the sheet was folded and sealed the salutation would be all that was visible. "My sister Aurien," I wrote, and stopped and stared at those three words, alone with space all around them. How many times in the last five years, I wondered, had I written them thus to Urdo? How many different sentences had they begun?
    "My sister Aurien doesn't want her boys trained with weapons—"
    As if there was any choice for a nobly born child, or would she have us all defended against the raiders by monks of the White God? "My sister Aurien objects to my naming