Fortress of Owls

by C. J. Cherryh

  They pretend they didn’t know they were supposed to be rebels, and I pretend I don’t know either, and so they feel safer about it. Crissand, too: he stood by his father, waiting for a message to let him do differently, but it never came. At the last he surrendered to save his men. Now he’s sworn to me, and I’ve had no cause to doubt him.”

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  That lengthy report drew a long, a solemn look. “You’ve grown very wise, Amefel. I am impressed.”

  “I hope so, sir.”

  Cevulirn knew him to a degree Amefel did not, and knew his failures and his follies. And Tristen felt his heart beat hard at Cevulirn’s gray, assessing stare.

  “Protect yourself. You must protect yourself,” Cevulirn said.

  “And recall that Aswydd blood runs in both young Crissand and in Cuthan, just outside the degree that would have seen them banished in Cefwyn’s order.”

  He knew. He certainly knew; and Auld Syes’ salutation rang in his memory. Lord of Amefel and the aetheling…

  “Too,” Cevulirn said, “the ladies Aswydd are still alive, just across the border in Guelessar, learning sanctity in a nunnery…messengers might go between here and there with no trouble at all.”

  The Aswydd dragons looming over them and about them seemed ominous, and the very air grew close, full of foreboding.

  “I never forget it.” He gave a glance, a lift of his hand at the dragons. “They remind me.”

  “That they do,” Cevulirn said. “In this very room Orien practiced her sorcery, wizardry, gods-know-what.”

  “There’s a difference, sir.”

  “I am aware there is. She began in one and set one foot in the other, gods send she tries no worse where she is. But that’s why we have you and master Emuin. —I trust Emuin is in good health. I trust that’s not behind his absence tonight.”

  “In good health, but locked in his tower. He will not see us after all, it seems.” Tristen forbade himself the peevishness he felt about it. Anger was not safe for him: Emuin had warned him so, then provoked him, more than anyone else close to him. “I posed him questions,

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  several questions. I don’t doubt he’s forgotten what hour it is.

  Whether he will answer my questions, I’ve no idea.”

  “A difficult post you’ve been given.”

  “Difficult in ever point. One I haven’t told you, sir. I’ve banished Lord Cuthan.”

  “Banished him! Where? To Guelessar? To Cefwyn?”

  “To Elwynor, which he accepted; but we found the archivist was dead during the commotion, and someone had both dug out and stolen Mauryl’s records…we suspect the second archivist. But Cuthan may have been to blame for it…at least some of the documents turned up in Cuthan’s house. We searched his goods that he removed to take with him, but the guards might well have missed a scroll or two.”

  “Mauryl’s records?”

  “Letters to Amefel. I have the pieces of what they burned, but they say very little. Others may have said more.”

  Cevulirn drew a long, deep breath. “Wizard-work. Cuthan banished. Edwyll dead. Wagons bound for the border. And now records of Mauryl’s time. Unnatural storms. And you just a fortnight in office, lord of Amefel. An active neighbor you will be to my lands, I do foresee it. Well that I lost no more time in coming here.”

  “M’lord,” Tassand said, arriving in the room, and Tristen became aware there had been doings at the outer door. He had supposed it was another course of their supper being brought; but behind Tassand, Emuin came trailing in, late, with one of the servants still fussing his robe onto his shoulders, and with Uwen briskly behind him.

  “Well, well,” Emuin said, “all manner of birds before the storm, and a gray gull from the south, this time. News from the capital? They are wed?”

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  “So far as I do know,” Cevulirn said. “I rode up from the south, having visited my hall briefly, and turned north to present a neighbor’s greetings before the snow fell. —And to see whether Lord Tristen had levered His Majesty’s viceroy out the gates, or whether he might need help.” Cevulirn could be urbane and quick when he wished. Cevulirn also liked and trusted Emuin, Tristen had no doubt of it, but this was a very brief account, passing over more than it said. “I’d not bargained for deep winter in the hills.”

  Emuin’s face changed, very subtly.

  “So Uwen said,” Emuin replied, and settled at table. So did Uwen, diffidently, though less abashed in small company, and the servants served the next course, while the talk drifted momentarily to the fare before them.

  “Auld Syes met me on my way,” Tristen said, “and advised me a friend was southward. Then the storm began, which I’m sure Uwen told you. It stopped when I called Seddiwy’s name.”

  — I told you what Auld Syes said, he challenged the old man in the gray space, quietly and close at hand, disturbing as little as possible. This business about kings and aethelings. And friends to the south.

  — With this great storm about. When wizardry stirs up

  forces, some other wizard may nip in and use them. I

  mislike it. I tell you I do.

  — The storm came out of the west, sir.

  — So does the evening sun, young lord. Does the heavenly orb belong to Mauryl or any other?

  — But who sent the storm, then, sir?

  — I’m sure I don’t know. Was I there? Did you consult

  me? You did not.

  The servants had brought in their meat and served it, and Tristen, frowning, cut a bit of cheese, out of appetite for dead creatures.

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  “There is opposition to us,” Emuin said in a muted voice, aloud. “I have difficulty determining whence it comes, whether collective, of many interests, or whether single, directing all. I cannot say, nor see a way to determine what we face.”

  “In the storm?” Cevulirn asked, who had heard nothing of the lightning flash of exchange they had just had.

  “It may be,” Emuin said.

  — Shelter my birds, Auld Syes told me, master Emuin.

  Yet I saw no birds. My pigeons flew out and back in

  safety. They were about the ledge this evening.

  Emuin’s face was very solemn. One trusts those birds, if

  any, would return.

  “Cevulirn was caught in the storm,” Tristen said. “He’s killed Lord Ryssand’s son, and left Guelemara, and come here to see whether I needed his help.”

  “Storms aplenty in this season, between wars,” Emuin said.

  “But they are wed and done with protests, is it so?”

  “Charges of unfaithfulness, sir,” Cevulirn said, “naming Tristen, which no sane man credits.”

  “Sanity is not requisite in Guelemara,” Emuin said. “Only orthodoxy. So Brugan is dead. Small loss.”

  “I was about to say,” Tristen said, “which Lord Cevulirn doesn’t know, about the letter.”

  “Mauryl’s letters?” Cevulirn asked.

  “Ryssand’s to Lord Parsynan,” Tristen said. “Ryssand sent warning Parsynan I was coming. What I did not say…I sent the letter to Idrys, in hope it would reach Cefwyn more quickly that way.”

  Cevulirn arched a brow, and a slow pleasure spread across his face. “Oh, His Majesty will be very pleased to have that in his hands. He has them. He has Ryssand in a noose, by the gods; and Ryssand will not find this easy.”

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  “I hoped it might be of some use to Cefwyn.”

  “Of use to him! You’ve secured us all a quiet winter, and possibly saved Ylesuin. Oh, you’ll be far better a neighbor than Heryn Aswydd, sir.”

  Considering Heryn Aswydd, and Duchess Orien, it was certainly no extravagant compliment, but Tristen felt warmed by that approval all the same. “I’m very glad to have you for a neighbor, sir. I counted on your help in the spring, but I’d no expectation you’d come here this winter.”

 
; “His Majesty was very wise to send you south. As he sent me, I think, knowing I might find you, and lo, here we are with our heads together and apprising each other of the actions of our enemies. If there was inspiration aloft in the lightning that night that cast you from the capital, it had to be in that stroke.

  His Majesty knows how weak his support is in the north, that at any moment these Guelen reeds he leans on may break and pierce his hand if not his heart. He won’t grudge you the use of the carts, not in the least, though for the northern barons’

  eyes he may look askance at it. His Majesty can’t say so, but I think he is amply warned and wary of just such treachery as you sent him proof of.”

  “Yet he’ll not have me go cross the river,” Tristen said unhappily. “Tasmôrden is assailing Ilefínian at this very hour, or worse, and you and I and a troop of your light horse could prevent it; I said so before I left Guelemara. But Cefwyn expressly forbade it.”

  Cevulirn’s eyes kindled and shadowed. The lord of the Ivanim was a man of grays, grays in his dress, grays of hair that reached to his shoulders, and frosty eyes that had perhaps the faint heritage of the old Sihhë lineage in them. Perhaps, in the terms Men reckoned such things, they were at least remote kin, he and Cevulirn. It was certain they were of like mind.

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  And in all this exchange, Emuin quietly ate and listened.

  “His Majesty may be less inclined to walk softly past Ryssand now that he has that letter in his hand,” Cevulirn said. “Gods, that was a fine stroke. And were you not so explicitly enjoined against it, Amefel, I swear I would have my men here in short order, snow, storms, and all.”

  “No,” Emuin said suddenly, and they all stopped and stared.

  “No, sir?” Tristen asked.

  Emuin seemed to have spoken on impulse, and now seemed to be as taken by surprise as they were.

  “No,” Emuin said again more thoughtfully and more slowly.

  “It will not be. It must not happen. I cannot see it, and I distrust any such notion for the two of you alone.”

  Tristen knew himself for the creature of less than a year, less adroit than Men, and ignorant. But Emuin had not only bewildered Cevulirn, he had even astonished himself, to judge by the puzzled crease of Emuin’s brow.

  “Is Cefwyn in danger from such an action?” To that sort of subtlety he had ascended, out of his former ignorance. “Would it set wizardous matters amiss?”

  “Matters amiss with the northern barons, without a doubt,”

  Emuin said in a distant tone. “But no, their discomfort is nowhere a concern in what I feel. Something will come, perhaps out of the north, I have no knowledge, nor can say what, but come it will, and we cannot be caught napping, or venture too recklessly across the river.”

  “Assassins?” Such had been known, or claimed, in Amefel, in Cefwyn’s tenure. So Heryn Aswydd had claimed…falsely.

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  from which side of the river it might come.”

  “I put nothing past these northern barons,” Cevulirn said, himself a southerner. “They’d slip a dagger in our good king’s back and have a new dynasty…if Ryssand dared, if Ryssand didn’t know there’d be war, war within, and war pouring over Ylesuin’s border. This letter you gave into Idrys’ hands will set the fear in Ryssand, and it may have quieted him for a space.

  Treachery from the Elwynim? Easily aimed at Cefwyn. Or at Her Grace. No need even to warn His Majesty of that danger.

  He knows with whom he has to deal. And as for the rest of the barons…those who once thought Efanor would be a more tractable king…I think Prince Efanor would be far other than they once thought him, if ever he came to the throne. There’s an anger in Efanor that never yet has come out, and I think if no other has, Ryssand may have begun to perceive it, that day Brugan died. If anything should befall Cefwyn, Ryssand would not benefit by it.”

  Hard words, very hard words, even to contemplate Cefwyn fallen. Tristen’s heart beat faster, and he saw extremities of anger in himself he had never contemplated, a door he very quickly shut fast and barred, holding to the calm Cevulirn spread abroad.

  “Cefwyn is my law, sir. If they harmed him, or Her Grace, they would find me at their door. I’m not Guelen. Nor Ryssandish. And I don’t care for the things they care for.”

  A small silence followed, Cevulirn’s stark stare, and Emuin’s, alike directed at him, as if they knew that door existed.

  “I believe that,” Cevulirn said. “Nor am I Guelen, or Ryssandish, for that matter. But make no such threats openly.”

  “Shall I allow them to plot against him and do him harm?”

  He found it all but impossible to sit calmly in 114 / C. J. CHERRYH

  his chair, a province removed from Cefwyn. “I won’t.”

  “You would rouse Guelessar in arms against Amefel and Amefel against Ryssand and have all the realm in civil war,”

  Emuin said, “if you bruited such a threat about. No, indeed you are not Guelen, young lord, nor Ryssandish, and by the evidence of witnesses, including Uwen Lewen’s-son, I’ve no doubt you’d strew dead in windrows if they provoked your anger, but that’s not what His Majesty needs of you at this pass. No. Contain your temper and your imagination. I pray you, contain it. There’s no need for it yet. Only for cleverness and clear thought, which are in lamentable short supply in the north.”

  “Do you know what we ought to do? Tell me what Cefwyn does need, master Emuin, and I’ll gladly do it.”

  “So will we both,” said Cevulirn.

  The servants were near, but they were his own, Tassand foremost of them, all brought with him from Amefel to Guelessar and back again. They were men loyal to him. Uwen, who had come late, had his meal in silence, and stayed silent throughout, but now Uwen’s keen glance went to one of them and the other, a wise, common man who doubtless was thinking his own thoughts, and who looked grim and afraid, beyond easy reassurance.

  “Yet you left Guelemara not of your own will,” Emuin said,

  “lord of Ivanor. As did Lord Tristen. I’d say you had well-thought reason to obey His Majesty in that regard.”

  “If I could have steadied His Majesty’s power by staying,”

  Cevulirn said, “I would have done it; but nothing’s served if we weaken the kingdom in fighting among ourselves. If Ylesuin stays strong and if Her Grace comes to Elwynor soon, the common folk across the river will rally to her banner despite her marrying a

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  Marhanen king. If she fails to come to their relief at first opportunity, the hope becomes less and less she will ever come. In that case, support for her cause will fall away to Tasmôrden quick as the wind can turn. So if we here begin any dissent that delays Her Grace returning to Elwynor and keeping her pledge to her people, then anything we do does the king harm, not good.”

  It was very clear what Emuin had wished Cevulirn to argue to him: his reasons, clearly given, to retreat and not contest his dismissal. And he heard them as good reasons.

  “Yet,” Tristen said with a sidelong, defiant glance at Emuin,

  “if we could prevent Tasmôrden altogether…and bring him down …”

  “Even so,” Emuin said, “gods know where that would lead.

  To a rising in the north, very possibly. Very likely the barons’

  failure to answer the king’s call to arms. He might call and they might bid the king enforce his orders how he might. No, young lord, listen to Cevulirn in this. We dare not defy the king, we the loyal subjects. If we don’t obey him, who will? And if you ride across the river and take Ilefínian, what in the gods’ good name will you do with it?”

  “Yet,” Cevulirn said before Tristen could answer, “I have sent riders to Lanfarnesse and Olmern, and even to my neighbor Umanon in Imor.”

  Emuin was less pleased with that news.

  “Also,” Cevulirn went on, “I’ve left my second-in-command clear
instruction to take the dukedom and swear to Cefwyn in the field should aught befall me untimely on the road: I’ll not risk my successor by sending him to Guelemara as things sit now. In good truth, I expect Ryssand to attempt my life before the year’s out, and I advise my allies as well as my appointed successor to look to their own backs. To 116 / C. J. CHERRYH

  you I came personally, as you see. To Idrys I have already spoken, and you know his opinion of Ryssand. To the risk of his own life, Idrys would proceed against Ryssand and Murandys; but not if Ryssand moderates his threats, and I understand that reasoning. It’s Ryssand’s compliance the king needs.

  Ryssand’s gone as far as the king will permit, and Ryssand knows his head doesn’t sit securely. Let him worry of nights whether Idrys will act in absence of orders. It will keep him out of mischief.”

  “To the kingdom’s peril if Idrys should take it on himself to act,” Emuin said darkly. “There’s no succession in Ryssand now, once Corswyndam’s gone.”

  “Tasmôrden has already attempted to divide Amefel from the rest of the kingdom,” Tristen said. “And he may well seek some means to unsettle us. Wouldn’t he rather see Ylesuin fighting inside its own borders instead of crossing the river in the spring?” All the uncertainty of the day brimmed up in him like flood. “And wizardry, if it does work on Tasmôrden’s side, would press for that. Wouldn’t it strike at the stone that will move, if it wants to bring the wall down?”

  Cevulirn cast him a stark, a calculating look.

  “Oh,” said Emuin, “you would be astonished what understandings come to our young lord in dreams these days.”

  “I’ve understood nothing in dreams,” Tristen said, disturbed even to think of them. “I dream of dragons, sir. And Owl.”