Fortress in the Eye of Time

by C. J. Cherryh

  And a gust of wind skirled along the gravel, kicking up dust.

  There was a fluttering sound, as the wind went ruffling callously through the pages of his abandoned books.

  He had been careless. He did not like such breezes. He went and gathered up Mauryl’s Book and the Philosophy both from the bench, closed and pressed the precious pages together, under the watch of his patient guards.

  But he had nowhere he had to go, nothing now that he was bound to do but what Emuin had bidden him do. He sat on the stone bench and thought about that, watching the fish come and go under the reflections on the surface until the shadow from the wall made the water clear, and he knew his guards, who had no interest of their own in books or birds or fish, were restless, if only to walk somewhere else for the hour.

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  C H A P T E R 1 1

  H e heard a clatter in the yard in the morning, and a great deal of it. It brought him from his bed and sent him to the door to ask the guards, who, in their way, knew most things that went on.

  “We ain’t to talk,” the one named Syllan chided him, “m’lord.”

  “Master Emuin,” said Aren, the one who would talk, sometimes, in single words and with his head ducked. “Leaving.”

  “Leaving,” Tristen echoed, distraught, and flew inside to dress without the servants, without his breakfast, without attention to his person. He was in his clothes and out the door, as quickly as ever he had dressed in his life, in Ynefel or in Henas’amef. “I wish to go downstairs, sirs.”

  “Young m’lord,” Aren said. “Ye know ye ain’t permitted down there wi’ the horses—”

  But he was already on his way, and his guards followed. “Only from the steps,” he said, walking backward for a breath, then hurried down the hall and ran down the stairs, his guard overtaking him on the way.

  The lower floor was echoing with activity, the doors at the middle of the hall were wide open, and when he went out to the great south steps, which he had never attempted to visit before, the courtyard was echoing and a-clatter with horses. He heard shouts and curses, not the angry sort, but the sort of curses men made when there was haste and good humor about a task.

  He went halfway down the broad steps before one of his guards interposed his arm and stopped him.

  “Just a little further,” he asked of them, but they drew him over to the side, out of the jostling current of people coming up and down on business; and held him there—until straightway they fell into conversation with some of the soldiers waiting for a captain who had not shown up.

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  He watched the gathering of horses, and the men climbing into saddles, sorting out weapons and banners; it was bright and it was noisy, a show he would have been curious and delighted to see if he were not so achingly unhappy with the reason of it.

  Emuin had shown him a way that he might find him even in a commotion like this if he really, truly wished—

  No, he said to himself, that was not so. Emuin had said that it was dangerous to do and to do it only if he really, truly needed to reach him.

  So he stood, doing as people had told him—until—just at the very bottom of the steps he saw Emuin walking past, and he moved two steps down before he even thought that he was testing the limits of his guards’ patience.

  But Emuin had looked up and beckoned to him, so on that permission he ran down as far as the bottom of the steps.

  “Remember what I told you,” Emuin said, taking him by the arms.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. He looked Emuin in the face and saw neither disapproval nor anger, but anxiousness; and he wanted never to be the cause of Emuin’s concern. “Mauryl taught me about dangers, and to shutter the windows.”

  “The Zeide has no shutters,” Emuin said. “But be careful of dark places, young lord.”

  “I shall,” he said earnestly. “Please, please be careful, master Emuin.”

  “I shall, that,” Emuin said, embraced him again, this time with a fervor Emuin had denied him yesterday, and walked on toward the tall, spotted horse they were holding ready for him.

  Emuin climbed up, then, with a groom’s help. The mounted soldiers closed about, the Zeide gates opened, and the column filed out with a brisk clatter of horses’ hooves.

  In the same moment Tristen found his guards near him again, ready to reclaim him, and he climbed calmly halfway up the steps with them, then stopped to look back at the last of the column.

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  The iron gates clanged shut. His guards began to talk again to the soldiers standing there. All real reason for him to be in the yard was done, and most people were going up the steps and inside or off through the courtyard toward the stables, but he had nowhere urgent to go.

  A darkness touched the corner of his eye. He looked up and saw Idrys frowning down at him from the landing.

  So did his guards see, and looked chagrined, caught in serious fault, Tristen feared. He went up the steps in company with them, as Idrys’ cold eyes stayed fixed on him the while.

  “It was my fault, sir.”

  “Do you take the prince’s order lightly? A matter to ignore at will?”

  “No, sir,” he said. He feared that Idrys would do something to restrict the freedom he did have. Or that Idrys would unfairly blame his guards. But Idrys went inside the doors ahead of them, and did not look back.

  “That were good of you, m’lord,” Syllan muttered, and Aren said, “Aye. It were, that, m’lord.”

  “It was my fault,” he maintained, because it was, although he was also glad to have seen Emuin at least once more, and glad to have had that embrace of Emuin, which made him feel that Emuin did care for him and would, truly, be there at his need.

  But he said no more of it, since the guards were supposed to say nothing at all and were breaking another order.

  He went to the garden then, and found it as trafficked as usual.

  People laughed and talked, where there was often quiet for thinking. It seemed as if everyone who had taken leave of ordinary business to see Emuin leave now congregated to gossip about Emuin and his reasons, and they stood about in clusters, chattering together in voices they wanted not to carry.

  But the garden, usually his refuge, reminded him only that Emuin would not chance here again, in this place which had, 185

  to him, seemed overwhelmed by Emuin’s presence and now was dimmed and made small by his absence.

  He would not abandon the birds, who looked for him. But he went away after he had fed them, and took to his room.

  He read, sitting on the bench in the light of the diamond-paned window, with the latched section, not even large enough to put his head out, open beside him. He had lured the pigeons almost as far as the inside sill, but the boldest was still too wary. He had a secret cache of bread crumbs, which he set out on that windowsill now and again. That was his day’s entertainment.

  He thought, too, that Idrys must have spoken sternly to his guards, because they were very quiet and had kept their eyes downcast when he walked back with them from the garden.

  The next and the next days were as lonely, and as silent. He truly needed speak to no one. The servants brought him food, in which he had no choice, nor knew how to ask—it was delicate fare, on which he was certain the kitchen had spent much effort, but he picked over the plates with diminishing appetite, and on the third evening after Emuin’s departure he rejected his supper entirely save for a bit of bread, which seemed enough.

  Servants cared for his clothing. Servants renewed the candles.

  When, in his desperate loneliness, he ventured to bid a servant good day, that man flinched and bowed and turned away; knowing he had caused his guards a reprimand, he feared to speak to the guards more than to say where he would go, and they kept very silent now, even among themselves.

  Owl had never come. That was better for the pigeons, but he was sad to lose Owl. He reckoned Owl probably hung about where he had seen Owl last, at the edge of Marna, where the bridge was. There were
birds and small creatures on the shore, on which Owl could make his suppers, and Owl had likely become a terror about the bridge, Shadow that he was. He hoped that Owl was well.

  Came a fourth morning, when he went down the stairs to begin his day of wandering about, in the escort of his guards, 186

  and he stopped and lingered at the foot of the stairs, lost and wholly out of heart this morning for the ordinary course of his walks, finding nowhere to go, nowhere at all he cared to go, nothing that he cared any longer to do, or see, or ask of anyone.

  He walked down the hall, watching the patterns in the marble at his feet, finding shapes in them, knowing his guards trailed him as always, protected him as always, deterred conversation as always.

  “Sir Tristen,” a soft, light voice hailed him—a forbidden voice, ahead of him in the hall.

  He had no choice but look up—his heart having skipped a beat and reprised with dread of Idrys’ displeasure. It was, as he feared, Lady Orien; but now he saw two Oriens, the very same, hair quite as red, both alike in green velvet corded with gold, and both smiling at him.

  “I mustn’t speak with you,” he said, and started to go down the hall away from them, but with a rustle of her skirts, Orien—or was it truly Orien?—closed the gap between them and hung on his shoulder, smiling at him.

  “Tristen,” she said. “Where, in such a hurry? Musty books?”

  “Mauryl bade me—”

  “Oh, Mauryl,” the lady said. “Pish.”

  And the other, exactly like Orien: “So sad of countenance, Sir Tristen.”

  “M’ladies,” he said, trying to brush first the one and now the other lady from his arms, “I have explained. Please: I am not permitted to speak to anyone.”

  “Such cruel hospitality. How have you offended the prince?”

  “Please,” Tristen said, and broke from them and walked quickly through his disturbed guards, back the way he had come. He had offended Orien Aswydd, he thought, yet Emuin had said she was to be avoided. And magic had made two of her. He did not look back. He hurried to climb the stairs.

  Face to face with a pair of the gate-guards.

  One he knew, a face out of his bad dreams; he met the 187

  man’s eyes without willing it, and turned and fled down the steps, taking the side hallway toward the garden.

  No one but his own guard followed. On the bench near the pond he sat down and clenched his hands behind his bowed head until he could draw a calm breath.

  The gate-guards, he told himself, would not come for him.

  They had not seen his misbehavior. They had not reported him.

  His own guards would not. They stood silent, as they must, now, but they were his own, such as he had, and they would have rescued him from the encounter if they had had time, he told himself so, as they had intervened before to save him from untoward encounters, and he hoped that they themselves would meet no reprimand.

  He stayed by the pond all the day, save once going to the kitchen to ask a bit of bread, of which he fed half to the birds and the fish, who never knew his foolishness or his failures or his indiscretions.

  And in the afternoon he tucked up his knees and rested his head on his arms, risking a little sleep finally in the sun’s warmth, for he had ceased to sleep well of nights. Breezes blew through his dreams. Wings fluttered in panic, and beams and timbers creaked. Stones fell from arches. Shadows crept among the trees, soundless and menacing, and the wind roared through the treetops, rattling dry twigs and leafy boughs alike, making them speak in voices.

  Here—the wind was pent in garden walls, the trees were trimmed by gardeners, the voices were all of passers-by who cared nothing for him.

  But someone walked near on the gravel poolside.

  And stopped.

  He looked up into Idrys’ grim face and started to his feet. He stood with heart pounding, for never had Idrys approved anything he did.

  “Prince Cefwyn has sent for you,” Idrys said, then, the shape of his worst fears.

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  Guards stood at the door of Cefwyn’s apartments, downstairs from his room, grim red-cloaked men with gold and red coats and a gold dragon for their insignia: the Guelen guard, they were, which attended the prince. Idrys went through their midst without a glance, and Tristen followed him through the doors they guarded, through an anteroom and into a place of luxury such as, even imagining the ornament of his room done thrice over, he had never imagined existed.

  Patterned carpets, gilt embellishments across a ceiling that was itself adorned with countless pictures, furnishings carved over in curling leaves, a fireplace faced in gold and dark green tiles and burnished brass. Idrys took up his station by that fire, arms folded, waiting, and Tristen stood still, not daring stare, only darting his eyes about while pretending to look down.

  There were windows, tall glass windows such as he had seen in the solar downstairs, clear in the centermost panes and amber and green in the diamonded margins—amber and green that recalled, most inappropriately for his conscience, the ladies’

  gowns. The windows looked down, he saw, upon the roofs of the town below the wall, varishadowed angles of black slates and chimneys from which individual plumes arose to mass into a haze of smoke smudging the evening sky.

  A door opened to the left, next that alcove in which the windows were. Cefwyn came into the room, stopped, looked at him—

  Tristen bowed, as he knew men should with Cefwyn.

  “Good day,” Cefwyn bade him, walking to the table.

  “Good day, lord Prince.”

  “Emuin asked me to see to you.”

  It was not, then, the discovery of his wrongdoing that he had feared.

  But now, after Emuin’s departure, now the prince unwillingly took direct governance of him? He supposed that was the way things had to be.

  He had far, far rather Emuin.

  “Do you want for anything?” Cefwyn asked.

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  “No, sir.”

  “Anything?” Cefwyn repeated, although clearly Cefwyn was not pleased to be concerned about him, and clearly he might best please Cefwyn by making himself very little trouble. He knew such moods. Cefwyn threatened him. He had lost Emuin.

  He was content himself if Cefwyn forgot him for days and days.

  “No, sir,” he said dutifully.

  “If there is ever anything you need, you will tell me.”

  “Yes, m’lord Prince.” He thought perhaps that that last was his dismissal, and he should go, but Cefwyn was staring at him in such a way as said there might be something more.

  “You have remembered your condition,” Cefwyn said, “to speak to no one in the halls.”

  “Yes, sir.” It was not quite a lie. He trod closer to the truth.

  “Sometimes people speak to me, but I don’t seek them out.”

  “What do you do with your days, sir student?”

  He shrugged, feeling a lump of anger in his throat, and kept his eyes fixed past Cefwyn’s shoulder, beyond the windows, on the roofs and the smoke haze. “I feed the birds.”

  “Feed the birds?” Clearly Cefwyn thought it was a joke.

  “They are grateful, m’lord, as birds know how to be. And polite as birds know how to be.”

  “Is this insolence?”

  “No, my lord Prince. I do not intend to be insolent.”

  “Do you want for anything at all?”

  “No, my lord Prince.”

  Cefwyn frowned and jammed his hands into his belt. “Idrys.”

  “My lord.”

  “Have Annas bring wine.—Sit down,” he bade Tristen, suddenly indicating the group of chairs in the corner of the large room.

  Tristen unwillingly chose that nearest him and sat down. Cefwyn sat down facing him, crossed his booted ankles and leaned back, hands folded on his stomach.

  “You have no diversions,” Cefwyn observed then. “You 190

  cease to eat; I have had report. You pace the halls or sit in the garden doing noth
ing.”

  “I feed the birds, sir.”

  “You’ve not tried to leave,” said Cefwyn.

  “No, sir, never.”

  “Emuin claimed that there was no malice in you. He left you in my keeping. What am I to do with you?”

  Cefwyn wanted to have an answer that would let him dismiss the matter. That was all.

  “I need nothing.”

  “What would you wish me to do?” Cefwyn asked. “Damn what you need, man. I have power. What would you have me do?”

  “Have others speak to me.”

  “You are gentler company than most. I cannot set you out among these Amefin lords. They would rend you like wolves.”

  “I would not speak to the lords, sir. Only to my guards. If you would, sir.”

  The door opened; the aged servant brought the wine and poured two cups, offered to Cefwyn and then to him. Cefwyn lifted his cup and drank, deeply and full; but Tristen only sipped at his, for he had eaten but little in two days, and it came very strongly to his stomach.

  “Idrys,” Cefwyn said suddenly.

  “Your Highness?”

  “Be at ease. I judge no harm in him.”

  Idrys unfolded his arms and sank down on a bench by the fire, tucked up one knee and rested his arm against it. His dark eyes did not cease to watch and his frown never left him.

  “There are no civilized diversions in Henas’amef,” Cefwyn said. “Only the hunt. No hunting about Ynefel, I’ll wager.”

  Tristen shook his head. Hunting was a Word of blood and death. It shivered down his spine.

  “Gods, what did you do there?—Grammaries? Wizardry?

  Unholy sorceries?”

  “I read, sir.”

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  “Would you ride, Tristen?”

  Horses, and open land. Moving air. Sunlight. “Yes,” he said at once.

  “My lord Prince,” Idrys said, sitting upright.

  “With full escort,” Cefwyn said.

  “The area is not secure, m’lord. Even so.”

  Cefwyn frowned, folded his arms tightly across his chest, and scowled, rocking his chair back. “Doubtless. So we ride with the guard.”