Fortress in the Eye of Time

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Odd things among the Elwynim?”

  “I heard, leastwise third-hand, aye, m’lord Prince, troubles and outlawry pourin’ out of the fringes of Marna. Which of course we don’t directly see, lord Prince, respecting as we do Mauryl’s dividing of the river. Except you call us north, of course.”

  He chose not to challenge that. Or to say what his spies knew of Sovrag’s occasional goings and comings. “And by bridges to the south?”

  “Bridges, aye, well—I don’t know. We sailed that stretch out of Marna at night, but I’d swear there wasn’t decks on ’em.

  Looked open to the sky, to me, and showin’ stars through, lord Prince.”

  He looked at the frowning lord beside and behind Sovrag, whose lands were also on the river and bordering both Amefel and Olmern to the south. “Imor?”

  “In the south,” said Umanon with a sour glance at Sovrag,

  “our only troubles are local, and, unlike some, we never fare north. We have had misgivings of Olmern’s adventures, however limited, and I do not hesitate to say so.”

  “Much of our trouble, too, is local,” said Heryn unasked.

  “Good my lords, look to your own rights and do as pleases 326

  you, but, as for me, I do nothing until the King responds to my inquiries. You should know this assemblage is without the King’s knowledge or sanction.”

  “But lawful.” Cefwyn held up a finger.

  “But lawful,” Heryn admitted. “As in the matter of the Ivanim and the Olmernman, what my lord Prince wills becomes lawful.”

  There was deathly silence in the hall. Heryn awaited some reaction to his brazen defiance. The barons and the Amefin lords alike waited to see what would result. Cefwyn let the silence go on. And on.

  And suddenly in the outer hall was the tread of guards. Cefwyn leaned back then, a smile on his face, for the timing, thanks to Heryn, was far better than his precise order could have arranged.

  Heads began to turn.

  It was Idrys, and Uwen, and following them, startlingly pale-skinned in black doublet and short black cloak, Tristen, escorted by the red-cloaked Guelen guard.

  And the arms that Tristen wore on his shoulder for this oath-giving were arms unseen in the court of Ylesuin for more than two generations, the silver Tower of Ynefel in chief, above the eight-pointed Sihhë Star.

  A page carried in and unfurled a banner, black and argent, bearing the same. A murmur of consternation erupted as Amefin townfolk and lords of Ylesuin together realized what banner they were seeing. The chamberlain pounded for order. Heryn had moved a step down from his entitled stance on the dais, and more slowly Cefwyn arose, walked down to the last step and held out his hand for Tristen.

  Look neither left nor right, he had personally warned Tristen, and Tristen’s pale eyes were locked now on his as a drowning man’s on a sole promise of safety.

  Their hands met, and Tristen, as he had been told, went to one knee on the step and pressed Cefwyn’s hand to his lips.

  “What manner of sham is this?” Heryn cried aloud. “This man is a wandering idiot, a halfwit known to everyone in Henas’amef!”

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  Cefwyn closed his hand on Tristen’s and drew him to his feet, prepared to turn and deal with Heryn, but to his astonishment Tristen himself turned, fixed Heryn with a cold and clear-eyed stare, and swept it then on all the other lords.

  A silence fell strangely in the hall, so that suddenly the chamberlain’s staff rang loud in the silence.

  “Tristen Lord Warden of Ynefel and Lord High Marshal of Althalen,” Cefwyn said into the silence. “Confirmed in those honors by me, to the lordships thereof and to all rights and inheritances in those lands to which he is as Mauryl Gestaurien’s heir entitled.”

  “No!” Heryn shouted above the instant tumult. “My lords, this wretch came to the gates babbling Mauryl’s name, and upon that sole evidence this whole invention is made! He is no son or heir or Mauryl Gestaurien! And he is no kindred of Elfwyn Sihhë, only some peasant halfwit who may or may not have been Mauryl’s servant—hence his gentleman’s speech! We all know that Mauryl had neither wife nor heir, legitimate or otherwise, unnatural that he was,—if in fact the old hermit at Ynefel was Mauryl Gestaurien. If, if, if, and upon those ifs this perhaps-servant of the man who was perhaps Gestaurien who was perhaps of Ynefel and perhaps the same Mauryl who was the ally of the Amefin is confirmed to equality with us, whose service to the Marhanen house is long and honorable. I protest it bitterly, my lord Prince! I do more than vehemently protest—I refuse to recognize this travesty on the honorable dead of this province, until I see more proof!”

  The resultant murmur of voices quickly died in the crash of the chamberlain’s staff. Cefwyn lifted a hand, unhurried, unmoved, satisfied in the attention.

  “He was Mauryl’s, but no servant,” Cefwyn said. “And indeed the old man was Mauryl Gestaurien and indeed he had neither wife nor natural heir.”

  There was silence, profound silence attendant on that announcement, and about the room no few of the hearers made pious signs that rapidly became a contagion. The patri-328

  arch of the local Quinalt made the same signs, and stared round-eyed and set-lipped at the proceeding. The rival and obscure Bryaltine abbot, close to the earth of Amefel, stood his ground among his supporters, a knot of three black robes in the shadows. The Quinalt patriarch looked to be gathering himself to speak.

  “Please you, my lords,” Cefwyn said before that could happen.

  Least of all did he want the priests to fling pronouncements into the charged and anxious air. He caught the eye of the patriarch and glared a warning. The old man, who was, only yestereve, the recipient of a truly munificent Crown donative, closed his mouth and continued to glare. “My lords, Heryn has said there is no sufficient cause to have summoned you; in some quarters of Heryn’s domain, my motives are suspect, it seems—and surely he but reports the sentiment of his lords; but consider how you will fare, my lords, if bridges are being built in secret, and if the Elwynim do plan incursion—as certain ones would urge on me is the case. Mauryl has fallen, our borders to the west are undefended; and now assassins work to remove me from command and lately to defy Mauryl’s will and succession. Lord Tristen himself could tell you what he has seen. Question him if you will.”

  Utter silence; Heryn first, Cefwyn thought, he will attack.

  “How came Mauryl dead?” Sovrag leapt in first, daring where even Heryn had caution, and Tristen turned in that direction.

  “The wind came,” Tristen said, “and the balconies fell. It was wicked, that wind, sir.—And Mauryl said I should follow the road. That was what I did. The road brought me here, and I came to Prince Cefwyn. And to master Emuin.”

  There was silence still. Cefwyn realized his hand was clenched painfully. He relaxed it. The spell of Tristen’s voice had fallen over the hall. He knew then that he had not misjudged Tristen, that Tristen’s very artlessness had power; that there was ensorcellment in his look and in his voice that had stopped far less gentle men in their tracks; and most of all

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  that Tristen would, if asked, tell exactly what he believed to be the truth, come hell, come brimstone, wizardry, or the Quinalt’s blanched faces.

  “Do you intend to send him to Ynefel, my lord Prince?” asked Pelumer suddenly. “Is he to take Mauryl’s place?”

  “No,” said Tristen. That was all, in a silence made for a much longer remark.

  Sovrag cleared his throat. “There’s been no immediate trouble, I can say. Aye, we trade with Mauryl, aye, there being no King’s law against it, I’ll own to it, a boat to the landing by Ynefel’s bridge, and by morning the goods are gone and there’ll be a batch of simples and weight of gold in the boat, our own man never knowing how….”

  There was a murmur, Umanon with his guard, but it died.

  “And by morning, I say, the goods’d be gone, but now—now, I suppose, there’s an end of that trade.”

  “Not Sihhë gold, o
f course,” Cefwyn said softly, the Crown claiming all such hoards, where found.

  “No Sihhë gold, m’lord Prince, no Star on ’t. But fair weight of gold she were. And we give tax on it, as m’lord Prince can know by the accounts, same as any trade: we writ ’er down wi’

  the King’s man. But I say this: there were peace with Mauryl and peace with the border yonder, only so’s we stayed out of Marna Wood except as we was supplying him. I know men of Elwynor to try to come south and never come through. Not a year gone, some of mine got greedy and came off the boat and tried the old man’s gate, but no one that went in came out—and I got the word of the man that stayed wi’ the boat that there was shrieking and screaming aplenty in the keep, fit to chill his blood. But no harm come to him, and he fell into a sleep as always and waked wi’ the goods gone, and the gold and the simples as always in the boat with him. The men that left that boat never come back. I can swear to ye, and so would that man swear, that that were Mauryl indeed, that old man in Ynefel.

  And I say, too, Mauryl’s demand of flour and oil and all did double this spring, to the wonder of us all.”

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  A murmur went through the hall, at that. Cefwyn paid sharp attention, thinking to himself that here was a source very few consulted—a source on that river that saw more than he admitted to seeing, because he was most often breaking the King’s law and hedging on breaking Mauryl’s partition of the river into two parts eighty years ago—north for Elwynor’s commerce, and south for Ylesuin’s, to the profit of Olmern and Imor.

  “Thank you, m’lord of Olmern,” Cefwyn said. “And, Tristen?”

  “My lord?”

  “Will you offer peace to all the lords assembled, for Ynefel and Althalen?”

  “Most gladly, sir.”

  “And be a loyal subject of the Marhanen Crown?”

  “Yes, m’lord Prince. Most gladly.”

  “And a pious subject of His Majesty?”

  “Most gladly, m’lord Prince.”

  It was very quiet, for a questioning of rite and ritual. It was more quiet than attended a royal heir’s investiture, he could attest to that; more quiet, more sobriety, and more careful attention to implications of words the lords all, at one time or another, memorized and mouthed, believing in the oath, it might be, but never understanding as applicable to themselves the prohibition against sorcery.

  A second kneeling, a second impression of Tristen’s lips against his hand and placing of hands within hands: he raised Tristen up, set a brotherly kiss on his cheek, and the whole hall breathed with one breath.

  There was a move at his left then, and he glanced aside in alarm, recoiled a step sideways as Heryn cast himself to his knees at his feet—his first thought was for the hands, a weapon, but the hands were empty, and there were Guelen all about as alarmed as he, whose hands were on weapons. Pikes had half-lowered.

  “My lord Prince,” Heryn said in the dying murmur of alarm.

  “I beg forgiveness of you and of him. I thought—I most earnestly thought this was a sham meant against this

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  hall. Gods witness I was wrong. I am a loyal man to the King, and to his sons. Gracious Highness, forgive my suspicion.”

  “It is late for that.”

  “I withdraw my protests, and will swear so.”

  “I do not withdraw my Guelen, and will swear so.”

  “I must bear that, then,” Heryn said, and when sarcasm might have prevailed, there was no apparent edge to his voice, only anguish.

  Something must be done with him; the whole hall waited, anxious, skeptical of Heryn alike, perhaps embarrassed in Heryn’s fall from dignity, perhaps thinking of their own weapons: Cefwyn knew the volatility of the region all too well; but he considered rejecting Heryn and his offer, and his tax records, a moment or two longer than he might ordinarily contemplate a move to fracture the peace.

  But after such a delay, enough to make Heryn’s face go to pallor, he beckoned the man to rise, and, still frowning, gave him the formal embrace courtesy and custom demanded after such an accepted capitulation.

  Still there was a cold feeling next his heart while Heryn touched him. He was very glad of the leather armor he wore, and he said to himself angrily that he had indeed been in bed with but two of the Aswydd whores, and them less shameless.

  He set Heryn back coldly and turned his shoulder to him as other lords and their adherents came to the steps, quick to protest their support in more dignified terms than Heryn’s example.

  Even dour Cevulirn came and offered more than ritual support against, Cevulirn said, the rumors of bridge-building.

  Came, too, one town official of Henas’amef, creaking with age, who seized Tristen’s hand, to Tristen’s clear astonishment, and knelt and kissed it, tears running down his face.

  “M’lord Sihhë,” the man hailed him. “We believe in ye.”

  Mark that for remembrance, Cefwyn thought angrily, wondering at the man’s brazen act; and then saw Tristen’s look, which was touched by the gesture and was completely bewildered as the old man’s tears wet his hand.

  Shame reproved him then, as he saw that there was no 332

  politicking at all in the old man’s tears and trembling. It was no treason, only an old man who had waited a long time to see what he was willing to agree the old man had indeed seen—and a better age for the folk of Amefel and Elwynor if it were true and accepted by the Marhanen: that was what he had held out to the population of Amefel. He saw it clearly now. The frail old official knelt and kissed his hand, too, and he helped the man up, and, more, embraced him. He was frightened—dis-turbed to the heart—by his own jealous impulses.

  He knew his grandfather’s mind, the quick suspicion, the angers, the jealousy with which the old man had brought up his two sons—the same jealousy that worked within him and within all the Marhanens. It was their curse. It was their besetting fault.

  He kissed the old man on the cheek, in a coldhearted demonstration of Marhanen recognition of the native Amefin.

  He was Marhanen. He couldn’t help the politicking. It, along with temper, ran in the blood.

  All about him after that was tumult. A press of Amefin bodies unnerved his guards. He, with Tristen, received the respects of Amefin who never before this would have dared approach the Prince of Ylesuin.

  The hour was his. He had made peace in his district. A Sihhë

  banner was on display in a hall where it had once hung as sovereign, now grouped with the banners of Ylesuin. A Sihhë, aetheling in the minds of the people, had sworn fealty and allegiance to the Marhanen prince and been recognized and legitimized—a prince himself: that went with it. The prophecy on which Elwynor should reunite with Amefel—was fulfilled, but not as the Regents of Elwynor would have it.

  Servants were carrying in the tables, meanwhile. Annas was in charge. Annas could read the subtleties of a situation the way master Tamurin could read accounts, and knew when to make distraction, and when to make it loud and urgent.

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  There was venison, there was pork, there was rabbit and there were partridge pies, a specialty of the region. There were pitchers of wine, wheels of white and yellow cheese, white bread and black. Plates whisked off and onto tables with the precision of weapons-drill, and there was an endless succession of courses, a loaf of eggs-in-sausage, a course of roast veal and another of fish, delivered not alone to the huge hall, but to the adjacent Zeide weapons-court, where the gentry of Henas’amef, in all their finery, had had the prince’s invitation to the tables set up since evening.

  There were Guelen guards at every entry, and weapons not in urgent display, but the guards were sober, watchful, and well convinced every potential assassin or hirer of assassins among the Amefin was likely a guest tonight in hall or out in the common court. But festivities and food abounded in the courtyards as well as in the hall, not to mention the kettles of stew set up in the lower town court, offering supper to any bringer of a bowl and supper and a trenc
her of bread to those who had none, on the prince’s largesse.

  Pay due courtesy to the guards, weary and sleepless as they had already been: Idrys had admonished them, to a man, on the prince’s orders, that there were to be no complaints of pushing, no press with pikes or weapons, no hesitation if needed, but no temptation of Amefin tempers. And cheer spread throughout the Zeide’s courts, audible through the windows above the tumult inside: there were cheers raised, there were toasts, there was moderate tipsiness, but only once so far was there a breach of the peace, and that over a young damsel of the town and a trio of suitors. There might have been a resort to the King’s law. There might have been arrests.

  But, informed of the cause, Cefwyn chose not to notice it, nor to have the guards acknowledge seeing it. He had Heryn on one side and Umanon on the other, with Sovrag and Pelumer within easy distance, Cevulirn and Tristen out of easy speaking range at the high table.

  He also had Idrys at his back, constantly, as Uwen held anxious watch at Tristen’s, and other lords’ men hovered in 334

  similar fashion. If there was to be amanita in the sauce or a knife drawn at table, there was at least sufficient force to be sure of revenge. But Heryn had no Amefin, but a Guelen man to watch his back, and it might be well, Cefwyn thought, that Heryn had that for his own protection. Before he had even come down to hall to hear Heryn’s protestations of undying affection, he had set the Guelen servants free to gossip to their Amefin counter-parts of Heryn’s account books, a dispensation of gossip loosed with the same mindful intent with which he would have signed a death warrant.

  And if there was tonight any anxiousness in Henas’amef, particularly in that courtyard, besides the raising of a Sihhë

  standard contrary to the King’s law, it surely revolved around those books. Two messages thus far had come to him from the Zeide doors, stating that the sender had information on usury, if the prince would send messengers to this appointment and that on the morrow.