Fortress in the Eye of Time

by C. J. Cherryh

  He had no idea what Emuin meant. He looked to see whether Emuin frowned or not, and in that moment Cefwyn leaned back and folded his arms, regarding him coldly. “You will stay here,”

  Cefwyn said sternly, and then cast a glance at Emuin. “—How much, then, can he comprehend?”

  Heat mounted to Tristen’s face. “Sir, I do understand you.”

  “Do you?” Cefwyn seemed always on his guard, as Idrys seemed to be. Perhaps Cefwyn was angry about his mistakes in manners. He knew he had made them, even in recent moments.

  “Lad?” Emuin said. “What do you understand?”

  “I understand most things, sir, but there are some Words that come slowly, so I lose the sense of them. But,” he added quickly, lest Emuin think he was more trouble than he possibly wished to undertake, even on Mauryl’s wishes, “I am not slow to learn, sir. Mauryl told me otherwise.”

  “Cry you mercy,” Cefwyn said in a breath. “So you do answer for yourself, sir.”

  “Yes, sir.—Yes, m’lord.”

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  “Apprentice to Mauryl?”

  Apprentice. It came muddling up out of somewhere. “I think after a kind, m’lord, but—Mauryl called me a student.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If I give you liberty of the keep, of all this vast building, will you agree to stay within its walls?”

  He suddenly realized Cefwyn was asking him to stay. And Emuin had just said that he had done what Mauryl wished. He began to hope for a turn for the better—that after all he had not failed Mauryl’s order. “Yes, sir,” he said, with all attention, all willingness to obey.

  “You will undertake not to speak to others than myself and Emuin, in any regard.”

  “I will not speak to others, no, sir.”

  “Lad,” Emuin interposed, “Prince Cefwyn means that restriction for your protection. There are some few people about who are not to be trusted, who would use you very deceitfully, and some would do you harm. You must trust the two of us, and only us.”

  “Not Idrys, sir?”

  “Idrys serves Prince Cefwyn. You may speak to Idrys. He is Lord Commander of the Prince’s Guard. And you may always tell the servants what you want and what you do not. His Highness means simply that you should not converse with chance strangers you meet in the halls.”

  “Yes, sir. I understand.” In Ynefel—in all the world before—there had been only Mauryl. He had never had to understand there were safe people and dangerous people, but on his way to this new place he had learned that abundantly, and he was glad to know there was a rule he should follow. It would be ever so much easier to please these men and avoid trouble if he had a rule.

  “Good.” Emuin rose and, as Emuin had done before, patted his shoulder in leaving. Cefwyn got up to go, Tristen rose, and Cefwyn delayed to look back, frowning as he studied Tristen from head to foot.

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  Then Cefwyn shook his head and left, as if he still disappointed Cefwyn’s expectations.

  He stood staring at the door after it shut, hands clenched on the back of the chair. He should not, he told himself very firmly, be angry or upset with Cefwyn, who had given him everything he presently had; who had, in fact, given him everything pleasant and good.

  Everything…but welcome.

  Their leaving was the first time he had been altogether alone since he had come here last night, the first time he had stood in the middle of a room which—he supposed—was to be his. It was a far, far different and grander room than any Ynefel had had to offer, as large by itself as the downstairs hall at Ynefel.

  The whole keep had no wooden balconies, but stone floors throughout, which stayed up by some magic, he imagined, and did not tumble down of their own tremendous weight.

  But the moment he wondered about it with a clear head, he thought of Arches, and Barrel Vaults, and Coigns and all such Words as masonry and mason-work, and the scaffolds he had seen in the town below, all, all those many Words and memories of the town and Ynefel pouring in on him. Like pigeons fighting over bread, his thoughts were, as he remembered the space outside the walls, and he put his hands to his head and turned all about—finding no more Words, at least, everything safe and known, bed and table and chair and Curtain, indeed, there was a Curtain, of which Ynefel had had none such embellishments.

  There was Leading, and Gilding and when, on a quieter breath, he dared look out the window, one knee upon the bench there, he saw, distorted through rippled glass, slate roofs, and chimneys, and, oh, indeed, there were pigeons walking on the ledges.

  He went at once to the table and the remnant of his huge breakfast and took bread, and carefully unlatched the little 165

  section of the diamond windows that had a separate frame and latch. The pigeons flew away in alarm when it opened, but he put the bread there on the ledge below the glass and trusted they would find it soon.

  He was very glad to find them. He wondered were any of them his pigeons, that might also have escaped from Ynefel.

  He wondered whether Owl would come, and what place there might be in this place that would be possible for Owl to sleep by day, as Owl preferred to do. Perhaps there was a loft somewhere in the buildings nearby. Perhaps there was a loft even in the Kathseide itself. He stood and watched, and, certain enough, the pigeons gained courage to come close, and then advanced to the roof slates below the window, and landed on the sill beyond the diamond-glass panes. He was very still, as he had learned to be in the loft at home, and watched them make short work of the bread.

  He brought them more, and frightened them again, but they would come back: pigeons could be quite brave, he knew, where bread appeared.

  After that, he explored every detail and secret of the room and (none too early) the practical necessities in an unlikely cabinet with a most ingeniously made swinging shelf, a shelf which could, he found on his hands and knees, be reached from the outside hall. But that door could be latched from inside by a very strong latch.

  And bothering that small door must have alerted men outside, guards in brown leather and red cloaks, who came in immediately through the foyer and the inner doors to ask if he wanted anything.

  “No, sirs,” he said, embarrassed. And then asked if he might go outside a while.

  “His Highness give permission, m’lord, excepting to talk, that ain’t permitted, even to us, begging your pardon, m’lord. And us is to be wi’ ye wherever, to keep ye out of difficulties.”

  M’lord, they called him, and respected him. That was a different thought, and relieved him of fear somewhat.

  He decided to take it for granted, then, that he was set free 166

  as Cefwyn had said, and he did venture into the hall. Idrys was not there, to his relief, and he walked down the hall with two guards remaining behind at the room and two guards trailing him, guards who declared they were not to talk to him and who seemed also forbidden to walk beside him. He wished that they could do both. There were questions he would have liked to ask them. But there was, his consolation, a great deal to see in all this great place.

  He explored the polished upstairs hall, where echoes rang with every step. None of the servants returned his attempts to smile, but shied from him as the townsfolk had, and he supposed that they had had their orders, the same as the guards had, not to speak with him.

  He went cautiously downstairs, and met the stares of finely dressed men and women who stood in groups, stared with cold eyes and spoke words guarded behind hands and turned shoulders. They seemed to measure him up and down and did not want him among them, that was clear. He had as fine clothing as they, but no gold, no embroideries—he supposed that as they saw things what Cefwyn had given him was very plain. And perhaps they knew that he was from Ynefel, which no men but Emuin seemed to trust. The men when he did walk past them gave him only cold faces. But the women, some of them, looked over their shoulders at him, and one, with remarkable red hair, did smile.

  He stared longer than he sho
uld have, perhaps, drawn by that one pleasantness and wishing to speak to her. But he remembered Cefwyn’s instruction, and the woman walked away with a swaying of remarkable bright skirts. Men that witnessed the exchange gave him very cold, very angry stares and made him certain that he should not have smiled back at her. There seemed to be a rule against looking at him. Perhaps Cefwyn had made it.

  “Was I wrong, sirs?” he asked his guards. And they looked confused, and one said,

  “Certainly not by us, m’lord.” At which the others laughed, but not in an unpleasant way. So he felt he had not 167

  done wrong, at least not so the guards could tell where the fault was, and he continued right in their eyes.

  But he had, the moment he thought of it, broken Cefwyn’s commandment to him, just by speaking to them. And he heard Mauryl chiding him, saying, Can you not remember, boy?

  He seemed to have learned very little, over so much time.

  Mauryl would still despair of him. Mauryl would still shake his head and say he was a fool, chasing after butterflies again, and forgetting to mind the many, many things he was supposed to remember.

  But he did not retreat to his room. There were things still to see and things still to know. There could be no learning if he did not try new things, and there could be no safety, he thought, if Cefwyn did not will him to be safe: Cefwyn was clearly lord of all these people as Emuin was master, and if either of them said that he was free to walk where he would, then he went where he would, trying to ignore the angry looks that came his way.

  He walked further, to a place in the downstairs hall where the marble pavings changed to worn flagstones. That dividing line in the plan of the building struck him like a Word: it felt that strange, that important to him. He stopped still, and looked about him across that Division at walls less ornate than the walls elsewhere. He expected doors where there were no doors, he expected a hall—and found one, but hung with Banners out of place there, and the stones were plastered over and painted. It was not right. The doorway was not Right.

  There’s a magic to doors and windows, Mauryl had told him.

  Masons know such things. So do spirits.

  “M’lord?” he heard his guards say, faint and far to his ears.

  He heard the clank of armed men walking. He saw Shadows there, and turned a frightened look to the men with him.

  The hall changed. It was only the hall again.

  “Are ye well, m’lord? Will ye walk back again? There’s no outlet by this way.”

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  There was not. Not now. The Place he knew had had a further door. But the door let them only into what seemed a blind end, bannered and hung with weapons of every sort. He knew another Name, but clearly it was not the right Name, as Kathseide was not right, and men knew what he said, but named it differently, so they thought him a fool, too, and simple. That was what they called a man who lost himself in hallways and stumbled over sills that to his reckoning did not belong there.

  He feared that flagstoned hall. He was glad to leave it. It felt wrong, in that doorway. It was fraught with the chance of Words, and he had had enough of Words for a few days: he truly hoped to settle the ones he had, and perhaps to find Owl, if Owl could find his window.

  He did not know why the place down there had made him think of Owl. And then he knew: it had been like the loft. There had been a high, peaked end, and exposed rafters. Sunlight had streamed in where now there was stone. Birds had gone in and out that opening that did not exist, Hawks had lived there, and fed on pigeons and on mice, being birds fierce as Owl.

  Those were the shadows he saw, the bating of wings, not the still, straight display of dusty banners. Owl might have come there. But Owl could not find an entry, no more than he had found a way to summon Owl.

  He thought the more time passed, the stranger and wilder Owl might grow, until Owl quite forgot him.

  He wished he could ask his guards if they had seen a large lump anywhere about the eaves, a very unhappy lump, Owl would be.

  But, no talking to them, Cefwyn had said. He had learned something. The place where Owl might have been at home in the Kathseide was shut to him, with the coldness with which shoulders turned to Owl’s master.

  Again…no welcome. No hint of welcome, not for him, nor for Owl. They would become lost from one another. The windows were too tight, except for here, and here it seemed 169

  things should be wood and very little stone, there should be an airy passage, and it should smell of straw. It frightened him.

  Words and Names had never betrayed him before. It made him doubt other things he thought were sure.

  But there was, absent Emuin, no one he thought might advise him what he saw.

  And Emuin did not come that day or the next, nor the next.

  The size of the building was deceptive. It sprawled its wings and corridors in unexpected directions, and made courts and narrow shafts and mazes of halls in which it was easy, except for the presence of his guards, to become lost.

  But six days was sufficient to wander every permitted hallway of it. There was a tiny cramped library filled with parchments and codices, occupied by two old men who had no love for each other. There was, on a seventh day, when his guards became involved in a dice game in the hall below, a great room of sunny windows where brightly dressed ladies sewed and infants played, but he was not welcome there, and he distressed his guards, two of whom he did not see the next day; he counted it his fault and sent in writing to beg Cefwyn’s pardon, but Cefwyn sent back to him, also by written message, saying they were men, not children, and they knew their duty.

  He took that for severest rebuke, and a sign that he was not himself a man, in Cefwyn’s opinion.

  He had found the kitchen, a ready source of food at any hour, Cefwyn’s orders refusing him no luxury.

  There were Barracks which he avoided, where the guards exchanged long and easy conversation with their fellows, but he could not speak, and he found it tedious and uncomfortable, and full of harsh and disquieting Words.

  There was the Armory, which smelled and echoed of Weapons, and his guards said that was no place for him. But there was the Forge not so far from it, where the master Smith and his helpers worked metal glowing bright and 170

  almost transparent, making it grow and change, and where sparks flew like stars.

  There were Stables, which excited his interest the moment he saw them, but soldiers barred him and his guards from that yard, saying they had had orders. So there were exceptions to Cefwyn’s grant of freedom, and one involved Weapons, which did not appeal, and the other involved Horses, which were a Word of Freedom itself, a Word of Hay, and Leather, and soft noses. They were a cascade of Words—Heavy Horse, and Light; Mare and Foal; Hoof and Hock and Pastern, and he could have stayed and watched for a long time and drunk in those Words, but the guards had their orders, and he had no more than a glimpse of creatures that set his heart to racing and his hands itching to touch and know.

  There was a long wing of Warehouses dusty with grain, a place of pleasant smells and an occasional furtive rat; he liked to be there, and he had discovered it on the third day, but the records keepers of that place seemed likewise anxious to have him gone, and the guards were bored, so after the fifth day he came no more to the granaries.

  In all his explorations, he found no loft, only upper floors, and they said there was nothing higher, no place better than his own windows from which he could see the other roofs and a narrow space of courtyard. His windows could not be opened, except the small square that could let a breeze in; he supposed that was for safety.

  He did not like it that the windows had no inside shutters to latch, and reading by candlelight or lying abed in the dark, he cast looks askance at that glistening dark glass on nights when the wind blew and sighed about the eaves, but evidently the Zeide had less fear of Shadows, and no one but he seemed worried about the matter. He even opened the window one night and left a bit of sausage out on the ledge, closing t
he little window quickly. He hoped Owl would find it and he would know by its being gone in the morning that Owl had been there—but it was still there when the sun

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  rose, and by the next afternoon it was gone, after the servants had been there tidying up, so he thought that they and nothing baneful had found it.

  One sanctuary he discovered where he could walk and sit at will: the west garden—which he came upon quite by accident, and which he most loved of all the places he could go. It was like a small, safe woods grown within walls, the trees carefully trimmed, even the pond neatly bordered. Birds from beyond the walls came and perched in the trees and hedges as he could not imagine they would do in the cobbled streets of the town down the hill. His pigeons came down, too, five at least that he recognized from his ledge on the other side of the building, and with the freedom of the garden and no opening pane to scare them, they began to take bread quite fearlessly from his hand.

  But others disapproved the pigeon-feeding, and showed it by their looks. The lords and ladies of the Court resorted to the garden in the shady hours, jeweled and beautiful to see, at distance, in clothing with gilt threads that flashed and sparked in small patches of sun; but their stares at him were disdainful when he sat on the ground feeding the birds, which, when he thought about it, they, in their fine clothes, could never do.

  The pigeons came to him now when he simply sat on the bench by the pond—there was a pair of titmice that grew more and more clever, and he fed them and fed the fish that lived there, while the lords and ladies (for those were the titles one did call them) along with earls and ealdormen and such, simply ignored his presence, and he theirs. He read his Book in the bright sunlight—or dutifully tried to read it—and on further days tempted the birds with grain that he asked the servants to bring him.

  They were, he said to himself, mostly town birds, never so trusting as the birds of Ynefel, and would not bear a sudden movement, except the tits and the pigeons, who became entirely sure of him and very daring.