Fortress in the Eye of Time

by C. J. Cherryh

  “’At’s all right. ’At’s just all right, lad. Ye’ve done very well.”

  “I wish I thought so.”

  “Ye’ve weathered more’n ye’ll say, is clear.” Uwen’s gentle hand brushed the hair off his face. “Ye got to stay out of such places.”

  “They seem where I’m most fit.”

  “That ain’t so, m’lord. Don’t ye ever say so!”

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  “Uwen, forgive me for bringing you out in the rain.”

  “There’s naught to forgive, lad. Only I hoped ye’d fled the blood and the killing and just took a ride in the country, is all.

  And ye found ghosts and worse.”

  “I found Hasufin. I found him and he still was too strong. But the old man drew me to the Elwynim. And I drew you to us, at least I think I did. I was wishing you away, but toward the last, there was nothing I wanted more to see than you coming down that hill.”

  “Nothing I wanted to see more than you, lad. But ye done right well, ye done right well. I heard you askin’ master Emuin.

  It’s a spooky business, I say. The Elwynim talking about fire and smoke, which we was smelling, with the rain coming down in buckets and tubsful. The Ivanim say that’s the reputation of the place, that the haunt often goes with that smell about it. But what broke the trees, m’lord?”

  “I think it was the folk of Emwy,” Tristen said, and tried to open his eyes, but they immediately closed again. “Talk of something else. Talk about the village you came from. Talk about the town. Make me laugh. I would like to laugh.”

  Uwen talked, and talked, but it became a lazy sound to him, and dear and distant at once, telling him about his aunt and the priest and the pig, which was a funny story, and made him laugh, but he could not for two blinks of his eyes follow it, or consciously understand the joke, except the pig had found its way home again by sundown, and the priest had wanted to have it for dinner. So he was on the side of the pig.

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  C H A P T E R 2 8

  G ossip had run the halls all evening and it had had twins by morning, so Annas reported.

  And mostly it was true what the gossip was saying, simply that there was rebellion in Elwynor, Emwy village was burned to the ground—and the King was marrying the Regent of Elwynor. Cefwyn looked at least to have an hour or two before he had to refute wilder elaborations on that report. He had had a late night of questioning Cevulirn’s captain, and discussing matters with Cevulirn—a later night, with the pain in his leg keeping him awake. But he had not finished his morning cup of tea when Efanor came bursting past the confused guards in a high fit of temper.

  “You cannot be serious,” was Efanor’s opening plaint. “You cannot do this. You dare not do this.”

  “I can, and I can and I dare,” Cefwyn muttered over the rim of the tea cup. He felt a sort of triumph to have set Efanor so thoroughly aghast. It was good to have some forces of nature predictable. “Name me a disadvantage, brother, and do sit down, have a cup of tea. Shush! You know I hate uproars before I’ve waked.”

  Annas brought another cup, and Efanor settled. There were smiles. There were nods. The door shut.

  “The woman is a heretic!” Efanor cried.

  “I’ll ask her whether she is. If she consents to my suit.”

  “The King cannot marry a heretic! He cannot blaspheme against the gods! He cannot make light of them!”

  Do you really think they notice? he was almost tempted to say. His leg was hurting this morning and he was quick to temper. But he could be at least as crassly self-serving as Efanor’s priests, and cold-bloodedly larded his own unreligious philosophy with priestly cant. “I believe the gods send 562

  us chances, Efanor, I do believe that chances to do great good are rare, perhaps one in a lifetime, and this is mine.” Luck was the way he personally thought of it. But, inspired to one impiety, he proceeded to an outright fabrication: “I had a vision, night before last night, and I saw the sun shining on the far side of the Lenúalim. I think it’s the gods’ providence that Tristen came to us instead of across the river where Aséyneddin, who is truly faithless, would have seized on him and used him ill, and I think it’s the gods’ good providence that they have given me a chance to bring the realms together.”

  “They’re heretics.”

  “Good loving gods, Efanor! Whom else can one rescue from sin? The pious? The gods already have them. It’s the heretics the gods have to court! It’s heresy to deny the gods’ providence,—is it not? These are clearly providential events, absolutely unprecedented, tumbling one upon the other! And surely the good gods want converts and influence in Elwynor, which the lady can give to them,—if the gods’ pious Guelen worshippers make a good impression and don’t offend the lady by arresting doddering trinket-sellers in the market. Let us have a sense of proportion, here, brother, and give affairs their sensible importance! What matters more to the gods? Scaring some old woman?

  Or having peaceable relations with Elwynor and the chance to secure a border? Leave the gods to take care of the old women in their good time and let us do what they clearly have set before us, in the matter of this border, and the Regent, and a chance that has never ever come to any king, not for a hundred years.

  If we fail—if we fail, we shall stand accountable for thousands of lives. We shall lose all we hold dear and defeat the gods’ own purpose. And I would not have that on my soul, Efanor, I would not!”

  Efanor’s mouth opened, and shut, and maybe Efanor’s wits had begun, however belatedly, to work. Efanor had gone from sincere childhood fears of things going bump in the stairwell at night to a fierce belief that supernatural things had kept him from the good in life and could be cajoled into 563

  working better for him in the hereafter. Efanor had had his wits fairly well about him until his desertion of Emuin’s easygoing Teranthines to the more rigid orthodoxy of the Quinalt, with their rules and abstinences—and their course of atonement for faults. Efanor’s self-doubts and his demand for a solution he himself could apply had brought him to a sect that instilled doubts of the morality of his every thought, every thought of a thought Efanor had, and taught him then how to atone for those sinful thoughts and search for more fault in himself—which took an increasing amount of Efanor’s attention from what was going on in the world.

  Probably, Cefwyn guessed, it was the effect of growing up with a grandfather who knew he was damned to some unguessed hell and an uncle who’d said something prophetic about his demise the day before he died. Efanor was clutching at straws of salvation in a flood of the increasingly inexplicable.

  But the brother he had loved had owned a keen wit once upon a time; and it seemed to him on an odd provocation that a surfeit of inexplicable ideas, complex beyond that damned priest’s limited wit, might be his best chance to rescue his brother.

  So he sipped tea and sat discussing the notions he had of matters military and matters involving Elwynor, and he saw that his brother was pleased—his brother, he saw in a vision at least as thunderous as the one he claimed to have had about the sunlight and the river, hated to be ranked down among the other lords, and hated to have his information when they received it.

  So he would have to make time to see that Efanor was not surprised by matters of state. Efanor relaxed over that cup of tea and a second and a third, and, granted he must be very, very careful of the new-sprung and thorny hedges that defended Efanor’s religion, Efanor positively expanded, and considered, and even advanced a rational thought or two.

  Efanor had always liked to know things others did not—and once Efanor knew there was a complexity of reasons, rather like Umanon, but with more wit, Efanor was haring

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  off down the ramifications and thinking up ideas—which could not be state secrets if he told his priest.

  In that tactic, Cefwyn thought, he had his best chance to rescue his brother: get Efanor so deep in state intrigues, little ones at first, that Efanor would lean to him and keep his secrets
rather than the Quinalt’s.

  Then beware the Quinalt, he thought, foreseeing trouble of a dangerous sort once the Quinalt saw Efanor slipping from their grasp.

  He was rather pleased with the outcome of that conversation.

  His leg ached less. He felt he was on top of matters, at least starting the day, as he saw Efanor out the door.

  But no sooner had he gone back to the table and his morning agenda, than Emuin was at the door, craving admittance of his guards.

  And on two more cups of tea—Emuin spilled another web of less divine scheming, with secrets to tell him.

  “Our young man,” Emuin said, among other pleasantries, “is aware of Mauryl’s enemy and in occasional communication with him.”

  “Here?” he was moved to ask.

  “Occasionally. But Place is important. Magic clings to places, and places once built mark the earth for a long, long time. He and the late lord Regent sought to take Althalen from Hasufin.

  I believe he did at least give good account of himself. He has prevented absolute disaster in that precinct, and wizardry of some sort called him up there. But I do not know whose maneuver it was and I do not know whose maneuver the lady Regent may be in coming here. I am not confident it’s Tristen’s doing.

  He’s young, he’s sometimes unaware—I don’t know but what the enemy could instill an idea in him. Certainly I can’t. But I don’t put it beyond Hasufin to do so.”

  “This is the dreadful Barrakkêth. This is the wizard capable of turning the Zeide into Ynefel! Now you’re saying he’s a feckless child open to malign and subtle influences!”

  “He’s not a wizard. And I am saying Mauryl did not Shape 565

  him as he was at his height of power. Mauryl—the gods know what Mauryl did. Mauryl certainly didn’t capture all of him.”

  “Glorious! Half a wizard.”

  “Don’t make light of it! There is every chance he is simply—young, as I said from the very beginning.”

  “And getting older by the day, master grayfrock.”

  “Be careful of him. Only be careful. He may have done you a great and very wise service at Althalen. I think, perhaps, since things are quieter, that Hasufin may have gotten his fingers burned.—Did I mention the lord Regent had Sihhë blood? You distracted me with your questions, young King.”

  He swallowed the tea he had in his mouth. “No, you did not mention it. I’ve proposed to marry his daughter—Did I mention that, sir? And the lady has gray eyes.”

  “It was wizardry, however, that the lord Regent used. Wizardry, as I strongly had the impression. I don’t say Sihhë can’t become wizards, and I think the lord Regent was, if Your Majesty wishes, my considered opinion, both.”

  “Good blessed gods, old master, I am speaking of marriage with this woman. I have deliberated marriage with this woman for months. Do you just now report this small fact? Damn it!”

  “First, I didn’t know about the lord Regent until Tristen told me. There are wizards about. They do make rustlings in the world. Second, that blood is very thin, very thin, or the lord Regent himself could have fulfilled the prophecy. He could not.

  He was nothing to what Tristen is.”

  “Will Tristen inherit Elwynor?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “Should I marry her?”

  “If you fancy her, why not?”

  “Why not? Good gods, spare me. Give me advice, sir.”

  “I confess I don’t know. I could never select a wife for a man, being celibate, myself.”

  “Another reason not to trust wizards.”

  “It’s not a requirement. It does seem to work out that way.

  But I have told you what I came to tell you.”

  “What shall I do, damn it, sir? Where is your advice?”

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  “Idrys knows far more of worldly things than I. You might ask him.”

  With which Emuin took his leave, off to, Emuin declared, his devotions.

  “Hell!” he said to the four walls.

  “My lord?” Annas asked, having arrived from the other room.

  “Hell and damnation.” He went and stared out the window, at the roof slates and the morning sky. The breakfast dishes were vanishing behind him. He heard the quiet clatter.

  And a page slipped up, diffidently to hand him a note.

  It was sealed with wax, with a seal of a Tower and quarterings.

  Her seal. Of course her seal. They had carried the banners.

  Packhorses with bundles aboard. Certainly the Regent’s seal—which he lifted with his thumbnail, and unfolded the note.

  I accept your offer, it read. I shall marry you.

  The sun was well up and the household about its day’s business when Tristen waked—staring at the ceiling of his own room, lying in his own bed, in uneasy comfort.

  He hardly wanted to face the day. He had far rather lie still and cause no one any more difficulty.

  But he could not, lying there and staying quiet for fear the servants would rush in, keep his thoughts from wandering over where he had been and what had happened, and, worst of all, to Cefwyn, and Cefwyn’s reasons for being angry at him.

  He supposed it was a fault in himself that he could not leave it at that, that he needed desperately to make peace with Cefwyn.

  He was not even entirely certain Cefwyn was angry. But it seemed at least that Cefwyn had every right to be.

  That was what finally drove him out of bed.

  He had his breakfast, which pleased his servants; he dressed deliberately in clothing his servants somehow found for him—black—and, resolved to mend his behavior, talked pleasantly with Uwen, who had been able to sleep late, too, 567

  which Uwen almost never could. He took a little bread and opened the square of window that would open and set it out for the pigeons, which he would do every morning he had leisure—he wanted to have his life quiet and the same again, and he did all those things he would do when his life was at its most even.

  But after breakfast he excused himself to Uwen and said he was going across the hall. “I promise, Uwen,” he said. “I do most earnestly promise to go nowhere else without coming back for you. Rest. Do what you care to do.”

  “I don’t distrust ye, m’lord,” Uwen protested.

  “I deserve your mistrust,” he said. “And I am going to do better, Uwen. I promise I am.”

  “M’lord,” Uwen said, seeming embarrassed. But there was little more he could say than that.

  It was clear by the number of guards at Cefwyn’s door that Cefwyn was in and most likely alone: at least no other lord’s guards were standing about. He went across the corridor, trailing the two members of his guard that were obliged to go with him even this distance, and asked entry to Cefwyn’s apartment, half-expecting that Cefwyn would not grant it, and dreading the meeting if he did.

  But the guards passed him through on standing orders, it seemed, which had never been revoked, and he passed through Idrys’ domain between the doors, finding that vacant, and so on into Cefwyn’s rooms, where Cefwyn sat at the dining table which he had had pulled over to the light of the window.

  “M’lord,” he said faintly.

  “Tristen.” Cefwyn started to get up, and it cost him pain. Cefwyn settled again with a sigh, and beckoned him.

  “I didn’t know that you’d see me,” Tristen said, and came and took the chair Cefwyn offered. “I’m truly sorry, sir.”

  Cefwyn reached out across the table and caught his wrist.

  “Tristen. I would have called you last night but they said you were abed.”

  “I was, sir. What did you want?”

  Cefwyn laughed and shook his head, letting him go.

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  “Constant as the sunrise. ‘What did you want?’ I wanted you alive, you silly goose. I wanted you well.”

  “That’s very kind, sir.”

  “Kind! Good gods. What’s ‘kind’ to do with it? I might have known you’d turn up unscratch
ed.”

  “I stole. I lied. I went where I knew danger was.”

  “That fairly well sums it up.” Cefwyn shook his head and seemed amused instead of angry. “I knew every damn step of the way you’d taken. Uwen knew. I knew. Idrys knew, the moment you turned up missing, and you still got away from us.”

  “It took Uwen a while to get a horse.”

  “To get six squads of cavalry. Uwen had the sense not to go alone.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You should not have seen,” Cefwyn said soberly then, “what you saw that night. You shouldn’t have gone outside.”

  He had half-forgotten the start of the business, or what had prompted him to the meeting Cefwyn was holding.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, accepting Cefwyn’s rebuke.

  “Heryn,” Cefwyn said, “was responsible for my father’s death.

  It turns out—for Elwynim deaths as well. Heryn Aswydd was on every side of the business, and he was seeing that messages went through him. If the message didn’t suit him—that messenger died. He was dealing with every Elwynim faction, dealing with me, informing my father with lies about my doings, informing my brother and informing any lord of any province who would listen to his poison. He was guilty, Tristen. And if there is war, as I fear there will be, he is in no small part responsible for that.”

  “I think that he listened to Hasufin.”

  “Your bogeyman in the tower. I don’t know who he listened to, my friend. But his own greed—and his panic when I began going through his tax records—made him desperate. He was, I am almost certain, directly behind the attempts on my life. Certainly he indirectly instigated them and possibly secured safe passage of assassins to get near me. Certainly with his men on patrol up by Emwy, it was

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  easy for that bridge to be rebuilt and for any number of Elwynim to come across that route: his so-called guards passed them through like a sieve.”

  It certainly made sense of a great deal that had happened. “I believe you’re right,” he said.