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have had any manor or town in Isle.” Hal skewered Trevyn again with his icy stare. “Nay, do not mistake me, young man. Rosemary has always been faithful to me. Indeed, I believe she does not know of Ket’s devotion; she is too modest to credit herself with such devotion. And Ket is a man of honor, and my friend.”
    â€œBut you—has he told you?” Trevyn gasped.
    â€œHe knows there is no need to tell me. I saw his love twenty-some years ago, when he and my lady first met. But she was a lass of sixteen, my betrothed, and he was thirty, with a price on his red head. So he guarded her well, for my sake as well as her own, and he has cherished her all these years.” Hal sighed, still staring into the reaches of the west. “I should have let him have her.”
    Trevyn could think of no answer, and left the tower room, shaken. He had thought himself adult, but in the face of adult trouble he felt very much the child. The more so because his own thoughts would cause his father pain, he knew. In days that followed he tried to give up such thoughts of sailing to Elwestrand. But vision replaced his conscious dreams, taking him at its will, day or night, flooding him like water and leaving him shaking. A silver ship, a silver harp, a winged white steed circling above the highest mountaintop.…
    One vision came often. A woman with skin white as sea foam, hair like living gold, claret lips, and azure eyes—a woman as lovely as any elf, and yet not of elfin kind, for passion moved in her white breasts and wine mouth; Trevyn had felt it, lying limply in his bed at night. Around her hands flew ruddy robins and little gold-crested wrens; at her feet nestled leopards and deer, graceful swans—all manner of creature loveliness, even a kingly silver wolf. Hal had once said that the eagle and the serpent were friends in Elwestrand. Surely this woman was a princess in Elwestrand; could there be another place so fair? Trevyn grew certain that she awaited him there. There would be a ship for him, too, a sign to help his parents see that his destiny lay with the sea. His mother, at least, would understand if there was a sign. But Alan might never understand.
    Trevyn avoided thought of Alan, let himself become lost in the dreams. He no longer worried about the wolves, or about Meg, or his uncle. And when Gwern returned from Lee, several days after himself, he scarcely minded his dogged presence. He moved through his days of lessons and training serenely, almost indifferently, with his mind’s eye on the white-breasted sea.
    Lysse frowned at him. “Vision is a chancy thing, Trevyn,” she said to him abruptly one day. “Love or pride or sorrow—any one of them will send you astray like a strong wind. It will be years before you can read the Sight aright.”
    But Trevyn would not be lessoned by her, and soon her attention was demanded elsewhere. Before the winter was over, Hal left his window and took to his bed. He lay there day and night, restless at first, but later unmoving, uneating, unsleeping. Alan came to him often, to shout at him sometimes, but also to reason, and plead, and, Trevyn suspected, to weep. Rosemary came often, to sit silently by with averted eyes. Trevyn came uneasily, and as seldom as he could. But the only person to have any speech from Hal those days was Lysse. She sat by his bedside like the others who tried to care for him, but she did not lower her eyes.
    â€œThat son of yours is dreaming of glory,” Hal said once. She could scarcely hear his voice, but the elves do not always need the words of the voice to hear.
    â€œI know it,” she answered. “Alan and I have expected it for years, and guarded against it, perhaps too well.… Surely you have not forgotten the portent that attended his birth?”
    On Trevyn’s natal morning, great golden eagles had circled the towers of Laueroc, mighty-pinioned eagles from Veran’s Mountain