Fortress in the Eye of Time

by C. J. Cherryh

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  No one in all these days had broken Cefwyn’s rule and spoken to him. He watched the lords and ladies in the assurance of safety here and studied their manners and their better graces such as he could puzzle them out, thinking that if he were more like them, he would become more acceptable in this place. Since in all these days, neither Cefwyn nor Emuin had troubled to call him, and the servants, the cooks, the archivists, and the granary keepers all dealt with him as quickly as possible and in silence, it did seem to him that it might please Cefwyn if he were more mannerly, and more like the people who lived here.

  But he would not abandon the birds, who chattered to him, and buffeted his ears with their wings.

  Came a day he sat, as often he would, by the pond, once he had exhausted the birds’ appetites; and he had two books to read—one being Mauryl’s, of course, which he would try every day until his eyes grew tired. But the other was a book he could truly read, and which spoke about Truth, and Happiness, and he daily lost himself in that, once the birds were well fed and the fish in the pond were sated. Each afternoon, now that his guards had found occupation to themselves in the old stone arch, a comfortable place where they sat and tossed knives idly at the dirt and talked freely to each other, he read, laboring over the Words that concerned the manners of men and of Philosophy and right and wrong, tangled reasonings, not all of which made sense to him. Words came but slowly out of that maze. But they seemed to be very important Words, and he chased them where he could.

  He was thinking of Justice when a shadow across the page startled him, and made him look up in alarm.

  He had not been listening for any approach. He looked around at brocade skirts and dainty slippers and up into a fair lady’s face that smiled on him, red lips and dark eyes, and masses of auburn hair. It was the lady who had smiled at him before.

  “Good day,” she said.

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  He laid his book aside and quickly gathered himself up, having now to look down at her, for she was not so tall as he. She was beautiful, bright and dainty, with a light in her eyes that seemed mirth just about to break forth. He was entranced, delighted—and dismayed, because he very well remembered the condition of his freedom, and spread his hands in apology.

  “I cannot,” he said.

  “Cannot what, sir?”

  “Talk with you. Cefwyn forbade it.”

  “Did he, indeed?”

  “Forgive me. Please go. My guards will be unhappy.”

  Auburn lashes swept over dark eyes and lifted again, restoring an intimate moment. She smiled at him, such a smile as held friendship and mockery at once. “Your guards will be unhappy.—I am Orien Aswydd. And who are you, sir, that Prince Cefwyn keeps so isolate in my house?”

  “Your house?” It upset all the order he had made of things; and his question immediately brought a frown from her.

  “My house, indeed, sir, and what is your name?”

  “Tristen,” he murmured, and m’lady was what he thought one called a lady, be she a thane’s lady or an earl’s, but he feared offending her, having made one mistake already.

  “Tristen of Ynefel? Do I hear true? Mauryl’s—what? Apprentice?”

  “Student, m’lady. I was his student.”

  “And Prince Cefwyn keeps you prisoner here. Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What, don’t know?” She laughed and lost the laughter in gazing past him, where someone had walked close.

  His guards had moved, and one put an arm between, wishing him to turn away. He bowed slightly before doing so. He knew that he had lingered longer than he should.

  “Lady Orien!”

  Emuin. Tristen looked, dismayed as the old man came strolling down the path.

  “Your Grace,” Emuin said, also with a nod, “good day to 174

  you.” And after a silence, and sternly, “Good day, Lady Orien.”

  Orien stared at Emuin with what seemed intense dislike, whisked her beautiful skirts aside and walked away with small precise steps down the gravel path. The sun on her auburn hair shone like a haze of fire.

  Tristen stared after her, and Emuin set a heavy hand on his shoulder, demanding his full and sober attention. “What was said?” Emuin asked.

  “I told her my name, sir. She asked why I was a prisoner. She said this is her house. I thought it was Prince Cefwyn’s.”

  Emuin seemed slightly out of breath. Emuin drew him to a bench and sat down, drawing him to sit beside him. “Do you feel yourself a prisoner?”

  “I promised Prince Cefwyn I would not leave, and I—”

  “Do you wish to leave?”

  “I know nowhere else, sir. But if I am not welcome here, I know how to go back to the Road—if you give me leave.”

  Emuin studied the gravel at their feet. “Do not,” he said at last, “trust that lady. She is one of the chiefest Prince Cefwyn meant when he warned you not to speak to strangers.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. He must say. Emuin commanded Orien, and Cefwyn perhaps commanded Emuin; he had tried in all he heard to make sense of it. Emuin was still out of breath, and he suspected that his guards, less attentive to their talk than he had thought, might have called Emuin, or Emuin might have seen what was going on from the windows above. He had never seen master Emuin in the garden before.

  “As for going back to the Road,” Emuin said, “believe me that you are ill-prepared to wander it, young sir. There are very many dangerous people to account of.”

  “Like Lady Orien?” He truly wanted an answer to his question.

  But surely Emuin remembered what he had asked, and chose not to answer.

  “Lady Orien,” Emuin said, “and her sister, are Amefin, and this is, in good truth, their brother’s house. Heryn Aswydd is Duke of Amefel, and lords of Amefel did formerly style themselves kings—petty ones, but kings. Now they style 175

  themselves aethelings, which is the same thing—but they do so quietly. Prince Cefwyn is Lord Heryn’s guest, by the will of the King in Guelemara, who is not a petty king: Ináreddrin is King of Ylesuin, which is eighteen provinces, most of them far greater than rustic Amefel, which he also rules, above any duke. Prince Cefwyn is King Ináreddrin’s heir, and he does the King’s will here in Amefel as the King’s viceroy, which means the Duke of Amefel is obliged, being a loyal subject, to quarter the prince and his court, and his Guelen guard, both the Prince’s Guard, and the regulars. It also means the west wing of the Zeide is Prince Cefwyn’s so long as Prince Cefwyn pleases to remain in Amefel, which he will please to do so long as the King wills it.

  So you are the prince’s guest and ward, by right of Mauryl’s title in Ynefel, which His Highness chooses to honor at least by courtesy. So you are not answerable to Lady Orien except through him.”

  There were a confusing number of Words in what master Emuin said. But it meant Prince Cefwyn had taken care and charge of him. That was comforting to know. And he supposed that if he had to choose who was telling him things most true, it would most likely be master Emuin.

  “I am glad to know that, sir,” he said.

  “What are you reading? Is that Mauryl’s Book?”

  “Yes, sir. But I still make no sense of it. The other the archivist lent me.”

  Emuin picked the other book up from beside him and looked at it. “Philosophy. Hardly a novice’s book. And you read this one, do you, with no difficulty with the words?”

  “It seems a great deal of argument.”

  “Argument, indeed.” Emuin seemed both thoughtful and amused. “Do you like the scholar’s argument?”

  “It seems to me, sir, the book is about Words, and I learn them.”

  “And how else do you fill your hours?”

  “I feed the birds. I walk.”

  “You must be lonely.”

  “I wish Mauryl were here. Or I were with Mauryl.”

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  “You Miss him.”

  His throat went tight. “That is the Word, yes, maste
r Emuin.”

  It was difficult to speak more than that. He looked away, wishing to speak, now that he had someone, if only for a moment, to speak to. But the words stuck fast. He thought Emuin would leave him in disinterest.

  But Emuin set his hand on his shoulder, and left it there while he struggled to clear the lump in his throat, a strangely difficult matter now that there was someone beside him to notice.

  “This morning,” Tristen began, as calmly as he could, “this morning I was thinking that, in Ynefel, I knew very little. I thought things changed a great deal. But now that I’ve been Outside, things inside the Zeide seem to change very little.”

  “Very perceptive.” Emuin lowered his hand. “Things do change.

  But mostly common and noble folk alike live their lives inside safe walls, and never seek to go outside or travel as you’ve traveled ever in their lives.”

  “Are most folk happy, sir? I see them laugh. But I can’t tell.”

  “Nor can I,” Emuin said somberly. “Nor can I, Tristen.”

  “Emuin, I’ve seen children.”

  “Yes?”

  “A man should have been a child. Ought he not?—And I never was.”

  Emuin did not move, but stared at him with that troubled look any appearance of which he had learned to dread in people: it presaged fear. But as if to deny it, Emuin smiled warmly and patted his knee. “If there is fault, be it that old reprobate Mauryl’s, never yours. Your consent was neither asked nor given.

  You exist. What you do now is in your power. What Mauryl did regarding you—was not at all in your power.”

  “Was I a child, Emuin? I don’t remember. Mauryl called me boy. But I think I never was.”

  “Think of now, young sir. Now is yours. The future is yours.”

  “But I was not a child, master Emuin.—What am I?” He began to shiver and Emuin’s hands seized hard on his arms.

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  He wanted the old man to draw him into his arms as Mauryl had, to shelter him as Mauryl had, but there was, he believed now, no such shelter left in the world. Held at arm’s length, he saw mirrored in Emuin’s eyes his own terror; he felt the grip that held his arms for comfort push him back more than draw him in—impossible either to escape or approach this man. Cefwyn had claimed him. Emuin had not.

  “Ask no questions now,” Emuin said.

  “You know, master Emuin. You could answer me. Could you not? All these people know. And they fear me.”

  “Therein—” Emuin let go his arms and tapped him ungently on the chest. “There. Therein lies what you are, Tristen. Therein lies cause for them to fear you, or to adore you, or to trust your judgment as true—which is not the same thing, Tristen. And, believe me, you have more of choice in those matters than seems likely to you now.”

  Tristen blinked; the pain in his chest unknotted at the old man’s rough touch and for a moment he breathed more easily.

  It was very much the sort of thing Mauryl would have said, and perhaps, though it lacked the tingle Mauryl’s cures had always set into him, there was a bit of healing about it.

  “Important now that you stay here,” Emuin said, “mind what you’re told and stay safe while you learn.”

  “You knew Mauryl. Did he speak to you about me? Did he warn you I was coming?”

  “I last saw him years ago.”

  “But you said that he taught you.”

  “When I was as young as you seem now, he was my teacher.

  That was a long time ago.”

  “And not after?”

  “I couldn’t stay with him.” Emuin shook his head, and fingered that silver circle that he wore. “We differed. I walked the same sort of Road that you walked, my boy, the Road back into the world. Don’t be frightened here; this is a far less dangerous place than Ynefel.”

  “I was never in danger there.”

  “Truth, lad, you were in most dreadful danger. As was 178

  Mauryl. As events proved, I fear. Mauryl protected you. Mauryl saw to your escape. Mauryl could do no more for you, and less for himself.”

  Memory of that place was all he owned and Emuin’s words threatened to change it. “I was happy there. I want to be back there, master Emuin.”

  “He was a demanding master, and he could be a terrible man.

  And well you should love him, if only that you never saw that other side of him. Patience never came easy for him.”

  “He was good to me.”

  “Tristen, you will hear hard things of him; they are many of them true. He was feared; he was hated; and most of the ill that men say of him is true. But so, I very much believe, are all the things you remember. I tell you this because you will surely hear the ill that men do speak of him, and I would not have you confused by it. Hold to the truth you know of him; it is as true as any other truth, as whole as any truth men know, and I am vastly encouraged that you reflect a far gentler man than the master I knew.”

  It was the same as when he had touched the hearthstones.

  The hand that had met the fire was never the same as it had gone in, having knowledge but never again the same joy of the light. That hand had been burned. The pain had entered his mind. And a little smooth scar remained of that moment, despite Mauryl’s comfort. In the same way he heard the truth about Mauryl, that Mauryl had existed before him, and outside him, and had had other students, who liked Mauryl less. He had no reason to think Emuin lied in his harsh judgment of Mauryl, who was his arbiter of all past right and wrong—as Emuin was his present master.

  “Tristen,” Emuin said, “you say that you sat outside on the step the day Mauryl left you.”

  “Yes, sir.” The sunlight turned colder. “I did.”

  “What did you see there? What did you hear? What did you feel?”

  “Dust. Wind. The wind took shape. It broke and became 179

  leaves. And the wind blew through the keep, and stones began to fall.”

  “The wind took shape. What manner of shape?”

  “It was a man.”

  Emuin said nothing, then. Emuin’s face seemed more lined with age, more somber, more pale than he had been. He knew Emuin had not liked to hear what he had said. But it was the truth.

  “It is too much to ask,” Emuin said, “that Mauryl in any sense prevailed; but he sheltered you, and I trust guided you to reach this shelter. Do not think of going from this place. Whatever happens, do not you imagine going from here. I believe everything you say is the truth. I do not see falsehoods in you.

  Will you do as I say? Will you take my judgments in Mauryl’s place?”

  “Yes, sir.” Tristen gazed at him, waiting for explanation, or instruction, and hardly felt the old man’s grip. The bearded face so like Mauryl’s swam in his eyes and confounded all memory.

  “Will you teach me as Mauryl did?”

  Emuin held his arms and drew him to his feet. “You and I should not stand in the same room. Not now.” With reluctance, the old man embraced him, then embraced him tightly. Tristen held to his frail body, not knowing why Emuin said what he said, but knowing Emuin’s embrace was unwilling until the very last, and knowing now that desertion was imminent.

  Emuin set him back again, and for a moment there seemed both sternness and anger in Emuin’s eyes. “Cefwyn will care for you.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. He could think of nothing worse than being abandoned to Cefwyn’s keeping, not even wandering in the woods. He looked down and Emuin shook at him gently, as Mauryl would.

  “There is a good heart in Cefwyn, Tristen. He was my student, and I know his heart—which is a fair one, and a guarded one.

  Many people try to gain his favor, not always for good or wise intentions, so he makes the way to his favor

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  full of twists and turns, but there is, once you have overcome all barriers, a good heart in him. He is also a prince of Ylesuin and his father’s right hand in this region, and you must respect him as a lord and prince, but mind, mind, too,—now that I thi
nk on it,—never take all that Cefwyn says for divine truth, either. He will be honest, as it seems to him at the moment, but his mind may change with better thought. Like you, he is young.

  Like you, he makes mistakes. And like you, he is in danger. Learn caution from him. Don’t learn his bad habits, mind!—but expect him to be fair. Even generous. As I cannot be to you. As I dare not be.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The place they stood grew brighter and brighter, until it was all white and gray, like pearl; and the light came out of Emuin, or was all through Emuin, and through him.

  — You are indeed, Emuin said, seeming, finally well-pleased in him. You are indeed his work, young Tristen. Hold my

  hand. Keep holding it. Keep on.

  He could scarcely get a breath, then, and was standing on the pondside beside the bench. But Emuin was far away from him, halfway to the door; and with his back to him, walking away down the flagstone path.

  — There is no leaving, young sir. You cannot find Mauryl

  again. But you can find me, at your need. Do not come

  here oftener than you must. I strictly forbid it. So can your

  Enemy reach this place. Do not bring him here. And do

  not linger in the light. At your urgent need only, Tristen.

  To do otherwise will put us both in danger.

  It was like a brush of Emuin’s hand across his face. Like a kindly touch, as Mauryl had touched him. And a warning of an Enemy that frightened him with scarcely more than that fleeting Word. He knew that Emuin was going away, but not as Mauryl had gone—there was a Place that Emuin would go to, and it was measured across the land and down the Road, and was not here—but it was not death.

  He knew that something had happened to Mauryl, and that there was a danger, and that it dwelled in the light as well as 181

  in Ynefel, rendering that gray space dangerous for him to linger in.

  Emuin vanished within a distant doorway, rimmed with vines, a green arch above the path.