Fortress in the Eye of Time

by C. J. Cherryh

  Catch one!”

  — Mauryl’s damnable tinkering, the Wind was saying, with a hundred voices. Mauryl’s meddling with the elements.

  Unwise. He would never take advice.

  — Who are you? Tristen asked it, and thought of Emuin—it was like that gray place. But Gery was with him, Gery refused to go further, shied back and turned—

  “Tristen!” Cefwyn was shouting at him, and the wind whipped about, blinded him with bits of straw that flew and 220

  stung. Gery jolted so strongly forward he hit the cantle, and he fought to hold her as old women hauled the sputtering woman out from under the hanks of yarn and young women bolted down the lane between the houses and fled.

  “She—” Tristen began, but had no words to say what the wind had said to him—it was all fading in his mind the way dreams faded, except it had spoken of Mauryl, and home.

  “M’lord Prince,” Idrys said, sword in hand, “this is no longer a ride for pleasure. Take an escort. Ride out. Now!”

  Cefwyn was incensed. “Damn it! I’ll not be chased by a pot-wizard and a gust of wind!” Cefwyn’s horse was fighting the rein and he brought the animal full about in the midst of them.

  “She’s a foolish old woman!”

  “Lost sheep be damned,” Idrys shouted at him. “It was a lure, m’lord Prince! They wished nothing but to draw you here. Your life is in danger. No one dragged their sons across the river.

  They’ve gone, they’ve taken to your enemies.—No, Your Highness!” Cefwyn had gone aside from the road, and Idrys went so far as to ride in front of his horse. “Go up in those hills and you’ll be feathered like a goose. That’s their purpose. That’s what they want!”

  “Do not you dispute my decisions, sir! The women know where to go!”

  “Straight to their brothers and husbands!” Idrys said. “Give over, m’lord Prince. This profits no one but your enemies! If there’s aught to learn, the patrol I’ve sent will find it!”

  The wind came near them. The air seemed to buzz and hum like insects on a lazy day. Uwen caught Gery’s rein, and Cefwyn was still disputing Idrys, but Idrys seemed then to prevail.

  Two riders who had left them were still chasing across the fields, jumping fences, but the banner-bearers and the rest of the troop gathered around Cefwyn.

  They were alone in the village, then, with the old villagers and the lame boy and the dazed old woman staring at them.

  “Where are your men?” Cefwyn asked again, and had a 221

  confused babble of pointing, and swearing, oh, indeed they were up with the sheep.

  “The lost sheep?” Cefwyn shouted at them. “The sheep that strayed, that you complained of? Or was I ever to see that message? Was it to Heryn Aswydd you sent? And what was it to say to him? Treason? Do we speak of Elwynim, and not of sheep at all?”

  The villagers were afraid. Tristen was afraid. The air still seemed to him to be alive with threat. The elderly villagers kept protesting their innocence. But the air tingled. The light was strange.

  “Uwen Lewen’s-son,” Cefwyn said then, “take your charge and ride as fast as the horses can bear. Tell them at Henas’amef we’ve stayed in this village asking questions, and we’ll hold these people under guard until the patrol comes back with you.—Take Tristen with you!”

  “Aye, Your Highness.” Uwen turned his horse, reached out, leaning for Gery’s rein, and drew Gery about with him perforce.

  “No!” Tristen said, fighting him for the rein.

  “M’lord,” Uwen said, and would not give the rein up as Gery jerked and shook her head, hurt, Tristen saw, and abandoned his attempt to hold her back. “We’re ridin’ for help for the prince, m’lord! His Highness don’t need no argument. Come on!”

  Gery went, fighting a step more, and then Uwen let go the rein and expected him to follow. He knew that Uwen had no time to spare for his fear. He steered Gery with his knee as Gery joined Uwen’s horse in a brisk gait, back along the road.

  “Prince Cefwyn will manage,” Uwen said. “Unarmed and un-schooled ye ain’t much help, m’lord. We’re bound to do what we’re told, ride to the other side of that damned woods, and fast back as we can.”

  “What are they looking for?”

  “Just you leave the village to His Highness!” Uwen said to him. “An’ stay wi’ me, m’lord. We got to get us past them trees.

  If we start summat from cover up there in the rocks, that woods is all one woods, clear to the other end of

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  Lanfarnesse, and full of trails.—Can ye stay a fast ride?”

  “Yes,” Tristen answered. His breath was coming hard. Idrys had spoken of enemies, and that word he did know—Mauryl had had enemies. The Shadows were enemies, and the forest seemed the most apt place for them to hide. He rode with Uwen, and glanced back as two more of the guard came riding breakneck down the road and their own horses picked up pace to match.

  “Hawith, Jeony,” Uwen said, waving his arm toward the road and the woods ahead. “Get yerself out to the fore of us, we got a m’lord to get through here.” He took off his helm as they jounced knee to knee and offered it to Tristen across the gap.

  “Put that on, m’lord. No disputing me on this.”

  Tristen settled Uwen’s helm, warm and damp with Uwen’s sweat, on his head, and made Uwen no more trouble. They were coming to the woods, with the danger of some sort to pass, he understood well enough, trouble which might try to stop them. He understood the concern to know where the village men were, if they were supposed to be in the fields, but some of Cefwyn’s men had gone up in the hillside meadows chasing those who had run—and what they thought those fugitive women had done or might do, he did not understand. Their own course seemed the most dangerous, a road winding past gray rocky knolls and through thick forest shadow, and as they approached the forest, with the horses already tiring, Uwen reined back, jogging a little distance, letting the horses take their breath.

  “We’ll ride hard through,” Uwen said. “Fast as we can. Ain’t no deceiving anybody. If they come on us, if happen I don’t come through, ye ride straight on for town, hear me? Woods or fields, overland, wherever ye can find a way, ye get to the Zeide gate and tell the Lord Captain of the Watch—his name is Kerdin, he’s always on duty at night, and he’ll get us help. Mind the village is Emwy, and ye don’t talk to no Amefin officers, ye hear me, young m’lord?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. They were passing into the green shade, and Uwen took a faster pace. The men, Hawith and Jeony, 223

  had vanished ahead of them through intermittent shafts of light that hazed the way ahead.

  Their own horses’ hoofbeats sounded lonely on the earth.

  Sounds began to come strangely, and the sunlight seemed brighter, the edges of things unnaturally sharp and clear. Gery caught-step under him and threw her head, and that sharp-edged clarity was all around them, making things dangerous.

  “Uwen!” he said, caught in strangling fear.

  He reined back in fright, heard a hiss—before or after his hand had moved. Something hit his side in a whistling flight of missiles and Gery jolted forward, crashed through brush and under a branch.

  He spun over the cantle sideways and crashed down into brush on his back as he held tight to Gery’s reins. Men were shouting, rushing downhill, motley clothed and motley armed.

  Stones whisked through the leaves, cracked against trees. Arrows hissed and one thumped and sang near him.

  He got up again—found the stirrup and hauled himself, winded as he was, to Gery’s back. He reached the road, ducked low and hung on as Gery ran.

  He heard nothing of the hoofbeats. He was in that bright light, that grayness, he and Gery both, though brush stung his face and raked over his shoulders. He had lost Uwen. He had lost the other men. Gery broke out of the woods and he saw not the road home, but the village where Cefwyn and the others were.

  He had gone the wrong way. But there was no choice, now.

  He rode up at all
Gery’s speed, and Idrys’ men swept him up with them, in what he only then realized was safety.

  “They Shot the men.” He could scarcely speak. He was trembling. So was Gery. But no one had followed him. There were no arrows here. “Uwen might have gotten away,” he said, teeth chattering as with chill. “I don’t know, sirs. I’m sorry.”

  “Damn them,” Cefwyn said.

  “Overland,” Idrys said. “We go overland. I know the map, m’lord. We can make it through. Damn the village and their witch! They’ll wait for night.”

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  Cefwyn was not pleased. Cefwyn was taut-lipped and furious.

  “Call the searchers back!” he said, and a man lifted a horn to his lips and sounded a quick series of notes that echoed off the hills.

  He hoped Uwen was alive. He had heard the sound of arrows: he would never forget it in all his life. He shivered still, held Gery as quiet as she would stand and felt her shiver, too. Breezes brushed against his face, and he felt it chill, but that was only fear, not—not the stifling foreboding he had felt in the woods.

  The men Idrys had sent out came back over the hills, down the lane beside the orchard, six men filling out their number again, on tired horses.

  “Overland,” Cefwyn said. “As best we can. Idrys! Take the lead.”

  It had not been the outcome Cefwyn had wished. They had not gained anything. The old woman, tottering on her feet, still disheveled, came out from among the others and down the street, calling out,

  “The King, he come again, he come again, Marhanen lord, ye mark me well! The King, he come again!”

  “One should silence that crone,” Idrys said. Tristen caught his breath up to plead otherwise, that the woman was old and she was afraid and she sent only a little presence into the air.

  But Cefwyn said, “Let be,” and that stopped it. Idrys took the lead in leaving the road, back down the lane that led downhill past the village and toward a meadow pasturage.

  The banner-bearers followed. Cefwyn led the rest of them, down this lane that sheep recently had used.

  He thought he should have tried to help Uwen, but he had thought he was doing what Uwen said.

  He had made a mistake, a foolish, foolish mistake, when, after getting back in Gery’s saddle, he had turned back instead toward Cefwyn, blinded by fear, mistaking his direction. Fool, Mauryl would say.

  Deservedly.

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  O ne of the men said he knew the way, and that he had ridden patrol here, so, he said, he could lead them around the woods and they would come to the road again before it entered the trees.

  “We’ll have our reinforcements,” Cefwyn said to Idrys, “by morning. No use our riding south to the road and back again.

  We’ll have these horses staggering under us, riding there. Make camp!”

  “We are not armored against arrows or shepherd Slings, m’lord Prince. I want you safe away. We’ll fire the haystacks.

  That will keep these people busy: you ride out of here, m’lord Prince! If Lewen’s-son fell, we’ve no one in Henas’amef to ask our whereabouts until tomorrow late. We do not know their numbers—but I can busy them and ride clear.”

  “Then we both can!”

  “No, my lord Prince! Do not be risking the King’s heir after some ragtag troop of women in a sheep pasture! There are battles worth a prince and there are those not, and this is not, m’lord.

  I pray you use the sense your uncle had not, and live long enough to reign!”

  There was silence for a time. Uwen might have made it through, Tristen thought. There might be help coming. But it would still be late. And Idrys and the prince stared at each other, glowering.

  Finally Cefwyn said, “I’ll not draw off men you may need.

  We’ll go by the eastern valley. I can find that in the dark. You overtake us on the road. That is an order, sir. No lingering. I need you. I’ll take Tristen, and two men beside.”

  “The wizardling is not a man, not in wit, not in experience—he’s a risk, m’lord. A maid ten years old would do more than fly back down the road for rescue! A blushing maid might have stayed with her escort!”

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  “Sir,—” Tristen said, stung.

  “Tristen,” Cefwyn said. “Nydas. Lefhwyn. That is my word, Idrys.”

  “And Brogi,” Idrys said. “At least three men, m’lord Prince.

  And six more, for safety.”

  Tristen bit his lip, unable to protest. Cefwyn said, shortly,

  “Later, master crow,” and put his horse to a quicker pace as Idrys and others dropped back to ride back to the village.

  But six more than two men followed them; Tristen followed, not wanting to leave Idrys’ assessment of him unchallenged, but not having any argument against it, either. He had not done well, losing his way in the woods. He had fallen into that gray place, and he had thought he was facing the right direction, and he had ridden out in the wrong one. He did not know now whether he had turned face about in that Place, or had simply lost his sense of which side of the road Gery had gone to, and gotten turned wrong in the terror of the moment. He felt the fool—as Idrys had clearly said he was. But he had resources he had not used. He might call to Emuin, if things were going wrong.

  But Emuin was very far away, and could send them no soldiers, nor any other help that he knew. Emuin had said the gray place was a dangerous place to linger. He wondered if Cefwyn knew of it, or if Cefwyn could go there, or if any of the other men could; he wondered whether he should tell Cefwyn that possibility or whether Cefwyn was privy to Emuin’s doings with him, or should be.

  Meanwhile their case was not desperate: ground flew under them, green grass and gray stone and black earth, over meadow-land interspersed with rocky knolls perhaps too small to have names. The map still echoed Words to him, Words running in red and black and brown, with fine lines that blurred and ran and tried to find accordance with the land.

  Wrong, something said to him. Wrong, wrong, this map; but he had been wrong once about directions: Idrys had 227

  said he was a fool and a difficulty to whatever party included him. And he had no way to say Idrys was wrong.

  The horses could not long sustain the hard pace Cefwyn had set riding clear of the village and its stone pens. It was across the fields and pastures they went, away from the rocky hills to the north, and Cefwyn set a slower pace, still in no good humor, speaking to the men Idrys had sent only to indicate direction and prospects of reaching the point they sought, using a certain hill as a landmark. The man who claimed to know this land maintained that the road by which they had come lay due south of that mark.

  That was wrong: it was south after some long distance east, Tristen thought: but he found it prudent still to hold his peace.

  Cefwyn was not in a pleasant mood, and south would do for a while, at least to get them toward the road.

  They rode for a long while, until they had come where they thought they should find the hill, and failed to see it; and the man was begging Cefwyn’s pardon just as they actually came in sight of it, and became sure where they were.

  I know, Tristen thought. Owl’s flight over the map in his dream had shown him all this place. It had shown him where hills should be, and the brooks that emptied into each other until they met on Lewen plain, somewhere the other side of the village, if they were going as far as the river.

  Which they were not. They were still going directly south, which would lead them into rough land, Tristen thought. It would not be quicker. But no one asked his opinion, and Cefwyn was still short-tempered. He thought Cefwyn had a very good reason to be, counting the men lost and his argument with Idrys.

  He was thinking about that, and they were passing quite close to the hill in question, a hill remarkable for a treeless top capped with stone—a bald hill, the men called it, and had a name for it: Raven’s Knob—when they rode across a dark trail in the grass, left to right across their path. He saw it, 228

>   wondered about it, as the only feature of disturbance in grasstops otherwise as smooth as velvet, a track such as their own horses made. Someone, Tristen thought, had made a recent passage through the meadow and away from the track they took. The trail they had left went up around the shoulder of Raven’s Knob.

  Cefwyn saw it too, and while they proceeded, one of the lead men rode out for some distance off their course and looked closely at that trail before he rode back again and rejoined them on their way.

  “One rider,” the man—Brogi—said. “Maybe two, Your Highness. Light horse, gone over the Knob and down the other side, by what I mark. I’d not be disturbin’ things further without your order, Your Highness. That’s a lookout over all the valley, that place is.”

  It was not good news, a fool could gather that much, too.

  Cefwyn frowned more darkly than he had, since, surely, Tristen thought, men on horses no matter what their business ought properly to be on the roads and not following sheep-paths across the land, unless they were trying to avoid something, as they were.

  There had been no horsemen in the village. But he could not say whether there had been in the woods.

  “It were made a few hour back,” Brogi said, further. “I’d take oath on that, Your Highness.”

  “Perhaps it was Uwen,” Tristen ventured in a quiet voice. “He said leave the road if need be.”

  “I judge it earlier than that, Highness,” Brogi said. “The sergeant’s apter to have gone off south before now. If it’s his, he’s lost. Maybe Lord Heryn’s folk, but I wouldn’t take anything anywise on trust, Highness, not wi’ what we’ve seen.”

  “If Heryn’s men,” Cefwyn said, “still, I don’t trust them.”