Fortress in the Eye of Time

by C. J. Cherryh

  he ought to say something, to protest that he was against it, but he did not know what had caused it, and the words stuck in his throat.

  “Orien,” Cefwyn said. “Damn her!” There was another rider coming.

  “We should stop this,” Idrys said, and by now Gwywyn and Kerdin and a number of the Guelen guard were near the door, from their tent at the rear. But Cefwyn said, “No, damn it, let them do as they will. Do nothing! I’ll not break what unity we have!”

  Cefwyn thrust past them back into the tent, and before Annas could intervene, Cefwyn poured himself more wine and flung himself down into his chair. A frown was on his face in the candle-light, and Tristen came back to stand uncertainly facing him.

  “What shall I do?” Tristen asked. There was such anger and resentment in the look that Cefwyn gave him, a gnawing sort of anger, hurt and small and frightening to him. “Can I stop it?

  I will. I shall go and talk to them.”

  A moment Cefwyn seemed unable even to speak to him, but sat with his hand clenched on his chair-arm. Then Cefwyn gave a great sigh and shook his head. “No.”

  “I would go with Idrys.”

  “No,” Cefwyn said again, and looked up at him with a wry expression, made strained, Tristen hoped, by the lantern-light.

  “This is a fact. I am Marhanen. I am not loved. And Orien Aswydd has chosen her proxy. Quite clearly she has gotten a message out somehow, to arrange this.”

  “They are Amefin, all,” Idrys said from the door. “And my lord King will recall, the bond between the Amefin and Althalen.

  Well that they have allegiances they will follow.”

  “And may follow on the field. If they will—if they will, then well enough. I said I would as lief have you lord of Amefel.”

  “There are good men of Amefel,” Tristen said tentatively, “and if the Aswyddim are gone, still—one of them would expect, would he not—?”

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  “Then let the Amefin lords exert authority to prevent it,” Cefwyn said shortly, and with a glance at the two pale-faced Amefin ladies who attended Ninévrisë: “I see none of them doing so.

  The earls fear their own commons.—And what matter, as long as they attach themselves to a loyal man? Orien wished a rift between us, but it will work against her wishes, because I shall not be jealous and Tristen is my friend. Go, take your chairs, peaceful sleep. I shall sleep soundly, I assure you. They have answered my question, and if no Amefin earl durst step in, I shall appoint you over them. You should regard that as a threat, my friend, not a benefice. First I advise you appoint a taxman who is not a moneylender.”

  “I know nothing of such things,” Tristen protested.

  “So appoint men who do. You could do no worse than the Aswyddim.”

  “I want no more men following me,” Tristen said. “I have enough, my lord King. I need no more.”

  “Go to bed, I say.” Cefwyn moved his injured leg, and crossed his ankles before him. “I want my rest.—My gracious lady, forgive me. I am not a gentle host tonight.”

  “We should go to our tents,” Ninévrisë said, and they went to the doors. Uwen gathered up their two chairs, the Amefin ladies took the others, in which Annas intervened and called a page to help them.

  “Idrys,” Tristen said with trepidation, seeing Cefwyn had said he would not deal with the matter, “Idrys, how shall I deal with this?”

  The man looked at him with all his usual coldness—and yet with a little change in his regard. “Make it clear to them that you are the King’s friend.”

  It seemed sound advice. Tristen nodded and went outside, giving place at the door to Ninévrisë.

  Ninévrisë looked at him, a half-shadowed look in the firelight, near the standards, and said urgently, “Lord Tristen.”

  “My lady.”

  Ninévrisë seemed to have changed her mind about speaking, then changed it again and came carefully closer. “Our enemy,”

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  she began, then said, “Your enemy. Is he there tonight?”

  He did not so much fear the gray space, as distrust it. And he did not look. “Doubtless he is,” he said. “he always is.”

  “And at Althalen?”

  “I cannot say, m’lady.” He thought then that was what she feared: she had said not a word when they chose one of their camps as a site near Althalen, but he had seen her face in the council where they had worked out such details, seen the small nip of her lips together, clamped on an anxiousness about the notion. “But I have no sense of trouble there—or I would have said. Cefwyn did ask me.” It had not been a question aloud, but at least a look, when they had measured the distances. “I would have spoken if I thought so.”

  She looked reassured, then. And it came to him that, perhaps worse than being able to see to Ynefel, if he chose, was the inability to see far at all, only to feel the threats in the gray world.

  She was not a strong wizard—yet, or perhaps ever. She perhaps had only enough of the sight to frighten her.

  “You,” he said, “will at least feel danger if it comes. As you felt it that night. Then is the time to advise Cefwyn. And me.

  But I will very likely know.”

  She looked at him, and put out her hand and touched his arm.

  “Be my friend, too,” she said. “I have this sight. I don’t know when it will come or where, and I don’t know what it will show me. I fear to sleep here—but Althalen may be worse, and I did not sleep last night—”

  Tears were very close. Her lips trembled, and he touched her hand and let it fall.

  A shadow had come in the doorway of the tent.

  Idrys.

  Tristen looked in his direction. “Sir,” Tristen said, feeling as caught in wrongdoing as ever he had with the man.

  But Uwen was there, and Ninévrisë’s ladies, and Tristen made a little bow and went away into his tent, where the servants had the lantern lit, and where Uwen helped him shed the wearying mail and the servants helped him with the boots and the clothing. Uwen lay down to rest then, on the cot in 704

  his division of the tent, and soon Uwen was snoring, in honest, hard-won exhaustion; and the servants became quieter and quieter.

  Tristen sat a time and tried by lantern-light and until his eyes swam, to read anything in the Book, on page after page after page, seeking any letter that offered him anything understand-able.

  But now and again through the night his peace was broken, with men passing the tent.

  And it was plain, after he had blown out the lantern and lay abed in his tent, what was continuing to happen outside. The guards were doing nothing to prevent it, on Cefwyn’s order—be-cause Cefwyn did not want a quarrel within the army. They had already had a nearly disastrous encounter between the two Guelen guard forces in the affair of Orien Aswydd, a confrontation which had left uneasiness between the two units that Idrys and Gwywyn had only scarcely patched. They could least of all afford a second one between Guelenmen and Amefin.

  He did not know what he should do. It seemed he had not done what he should have, on any account. It was well possible that the enemy was already reaching out to push and pull things—just little things—to make them fail; and he did not know how to stop the desertions that threatened Cefwyn…or the constant accumulation of followers of his own, that terrified and distracted him on every side.

  In the morning as the first light touched the camp, forty or more of the village banners made a tight cluster about the Sihhë

  standard.

  But the Dragon of the Marhanen did not stand alone either, for the unit pennons of the Guelen guard had been moved by their own men, and stood ranged about Cefwyn’s red and gold banner, defiance and challenge of the Amefin. Tristen knew what he saw, coming out of his tent at the first stirring about; and,

  “Well,” Cefwyn muttered, seeing that sight from 705

  the doorway of his own tent, and seemed greatly touched.

  “Break camp!” Idrys ordered, and tents began, in that area, to
come down, as they had already come down in the row next to them, in that dim light. Very quickly their guy-ropes and pegs formed a bundle on their several tents which became a bundle, and they were among the first laid out along the lane the wagons would travel picking them up. Cefwyn stood in the chill morning wind, and Tristen stood beside him. The grooms brought their horses to them, but Cefwyn did not offer to mount yet, so no one else did.

  Eventually there were only men and horses standing where there had been tents, as far as the eye could see. They were behind their scheduled departure. They stood, and went on standing, and as it became evident to everyone that they were standing there on the King’s will, and waiting for the King’s order, there fell an unnatural quiet, on their personal guards first, and at last over all the camp.

  “Guelen!” Idrys shouted, then, and there was a movement forward, the Guelen camped around the command tents, who massed toward their standards all in confusion. Idrys shouted angry orders; the standard-bearers took their standards to their respective units, and the Guelen fell into order.

  Then, unbidden, but in rivalry, perhaps, not to be left behind, came a tide of Amefin surging forward, who noisily possessed their own standards, but they did not take any orderly form.

  There was shouting, there was pushing, and a fight broke out as men surged forward and began trying to rescue their standards, and as the Guelen shoved them and made space for the King and his company.

  Tristen stared helplessly for that instant, then—understanding the symbol of what these men were struggling for—he knew the only thing the Amefin and Guelen in that press might all see.

  He seized the Sihhë banner from Andas, who had moved to protect it, and carried it himself to the front of Cefwyn’s tent.

  The pole had a sharp end; and with a great thrust he planted it in the earth beside Cefwyn’s Dragon, aslant, as it settled the poles touching.

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  A murmur went up, and the fighting stopped. He was not capable of speech. He went to Cefwyn and they embraced before the army. A cheer went up around them, and Cefwyn laughed and grinned broadly, and embraced him again.

  There was a cleaner feeling in the air. Tristen hugged Cefwyn a third time for gladness of that feeling, and Cefwyn’s eyes sparkled with tears, his lips drawn tight.

  “To horse!” Idrys shouted, waving his sword. “Districts by order! Move! We are late, sirs! Move, move, move! ”

  It seemed to mean everyone. Cefwyn went toward his horse, and he went quickly to the groom that held Petelly, took the reins and swung up. The wagon had not been able to get through. Now it was coming, as men ran for their appropriate places, and Andas reclaimed the Sihhë standard, as the standard-bearers of the Dragon and the Regent’s Tower took up their own.

  A breeze lifted them. The morning sun streamed gold through light cloud. The King moved out and Ninévrisë joined him as their standard-bearers got to horse and moved out ahead. Tristen rode to join them and Andas took the Sihhë banner out to the left, where it belonged. Their guards mounted up, the Amefin lords came next, and before they had left the camp grounds, the Guelen Guard, both rival regiments and the regulars, had started up the same marching-song, shouting it out and going along at a brisk pace.

  In no little time there was another song from the Amefin ranks behind, and that was the way the troops contended with each other.

  He felt quite cheered. He had won something, he saw that, things seemed mended that had been broken, and Cefwyn laughed and joked with him and with Idrys and the lady. The morning lay like a sheen over the road, making their shadows long as they marched toward the west, casting that early-morning glamor on things that made ordinary colors seem different, and more magical. This morning they could do nothing wrong.

  But then his eyes lifted to the horizon, toward the north 707

  and east, and the morning seemed not so bright there—he was tempted to look with the vision he did have, terribly tempted; but he thought it was exactly what he should not do.

  They rode in that direction on a road that could not lose sight of that shadow, and it was impossible to forget it. It distracted him from the light mood the others set, and his distraction seemed at times to make them anxious. But they asked no questions, perhaps fearing the answer he might give.

  “Do you see any shadowing on that horizon?” he asked of Uwen when they stopped for rest. He hoped that it might be some natural thing. If autumn could surprise him, then other things still might, and Words might arise he had never met.

  But Uwen looked where he looked and said only that he saw a hint of cloud, but that it was not all that black.

  He went to Ninévrisë while they were paused, and said, looking at the grass at their feet, “M’lady, if it comes to you today to have a look into that other place, resist it. Resist it with all your might.”

  “Why?” Ninévrisë asked in alarm. “What do you see?”

  “Nothing imminent,” he said. “Only be prudent.”

  Natural men could not see it; and Cefwyn could not; and even Ninévrisë failed. So he rode with the knowledge to himself, alone, as slowly, subtly, to his eyes, a line of shadow began to reach along the horizon, like a smudge of smoke, a presentiment of night.

  It seemed, to his eye, closer, and wider.

  They met the contingents of four more villages. They were, Cefwyn said, approaching an end of Amefel where villages had been once, but where now were far fewer—where forest rimmed the horizon and where roads ran more scarcely.

  By Cefwyn’s reckonings they should have begun to pick up the southern lords this morning. And they had not; the levity with which they had begun diminished through the day, and when they saw the sun pass mid-afternoon and they were neither at their campsite nor seeing any sign of their allies 708

  either ahead of them or to the south or behind them, concern began to work among them, and Cefwyn and Idrys cast frequent, anxious looks toward the south as he did to the west.

  “We might wait a day for them,” Idrys said. “We might well, m’lord King.”

  But Ninévrisë said, “Lord Tasien cannot wait,” and Tristen added, “We dare not,” because that was the truth he could not doubt.

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  C H A P T E R 3 3

  A ll about them now were meadows and forest-crowned hills, low rolls of the land that rose toward Althalen—treacherous land, which, like that around Raven’s Knob, could mask an entire army. They had had that message last night that their way was clear—but that condition could have changed ahead at any hour an Elwynim army appeared on the riverside.

  Cefwyn shifted his weight in Danvy’s saddle both to ease the throb of his healing wound, and to see whether, by standing a handspan higher, he could see significantly more. They were behind their schedule. He did not want to order the column stopped prematurely, short of their planned camp; but he was beginning to ask himself was it wise not to stop sooner, and whether they had not overestimated their rate of march altogether, which would affect their ability to meet their other contingents and which might turn very serious indeed, if their army was going to move more slowly than their plan all along the march.

  The heavy horsemen rode today with their shields and weapons, but not in their full battle armor, and the heavy horses all traveled under saddle, in the hands of their grooms, though they as yet carried no riders and did not carry their full armor or caparison. That had been the plan they had made, that once they passed beyond the first encampment and especially as they rode in the vicinity of Althalen, they would count themselves in hostile if not imminently threatening territory. The light horse had carried riders all day, the destriers at least a slight weight all day; the infantry had marched with shields and spears since noon rest instead of having them transported in the baggage—and they might have to revise that plan to make the speed they needed. But going without defense was increasingly a risk, in territory uneasy in more

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  than the sense of Althalen’s haunted precinct. In the r
olling land not only was the rear of the train out of sight in the distance, hours behind the front ranks, simply because of the length of the column, but even nearer ranks were often lost to view in the rolls and windings of the road. The wagons for baggage and supply had a small rear guard and the whole line of march, foot as well, was interspersed with horsemen who could ride for help in the event of attack, which could otherwise have cut off the tail of the army without the head even aware an attack was in progress.

  If the enemy could cut them off from their equipment, their tents, their supply—they would be in a very grave situation, in which many of them would never survive retreat and regrouping near Henas’amef. It was not a risk to run lightly, to have the men lighter-armed, because there had been incursions such as Caswyddian’s, and the Regent had camped at Althalen completely unknown to men searching the hills. It was rough land out there. Tristen warned that Aséyneddin did know their intent and their schedule, and they were racing with all the skill and strength they had against an enemy doing the same with the help of Tristen’s mysterious enemy, an enemy capable of killing Mauryl Gestaurien, chilling thought.

  They had to start earlier tomorrow morning. They had to reach Lord Tasien’s encampment at Emwy Bridge in order to hold Aséyneddin in Elwynor; at very least, if they were too late, they had to do something to keep from meeting Aséyneddin on ground Aséyneddin or his wizardly ally chose.

  Wizardry. Sorcery, rather. It was the first time he had ever used that word advisedly; if it ever applied, that dark art which Emuin had named in the necessary lessons of a prince of a land with such a history, it should apply to this ghost, this—whatever it was that Tristen feared.

  But they faced mortal enemies too, and it would be fatal to panic, to tire his forces, or wear down either the horses the heavy horsemen used for travel, or the warhorses who would, over much shorter distance and under all the weight of their 711