Fortress of Owls

by C. J. Cherryh

  There was no way to have held the men silent on the sights they had seen, not with the presence of the lord of Ivanor to inspire close questions: so Uwen said, and so Tristen gathered of the things that echoed back to him; by noon of the bright, blue day after their ride it was certain in every tavern in Amefel that the men had seen a witch at Levey crossing in flashes of lightning and claps of winter thunder, that immediately after, 160 / C. J. CHERRYH

  ghostly trumpets had heralded Lord Ivanor and his party, who had left Toj Embrel only that hour…folly, but the heart of the matter was the same: the lord of Amefel had ridden out with the earl of Meiden and come back attended as well by Ivanor and his men; and on the way a witch had appeared to them, with portents as yet disputable.

  Meanwhile the earls were all astir to know the meaning of it, and anxious to see the lord of Ivanor and hear from his own lips the doings in the Guelen court, as they called it. So it was Cevulirn’s door they beset, one visitor and another, all of which Tristen knew, and none of which he prevented.

  It left him oddly free of petitioners and questions, so that he quietly fed the pigeons that came to his window, and even had leisure to watch their antics for a time, their pressing and shoving one another, the silly waddle about the ledge when they were sated. Their wings had quite cleared the snow from the ledge in that area, and the place below was only the courtyard, which was free of hazard and remarkably clear.

  Boys ran and flung snowballs where lately men had battled and murder had been done, against that very wall.

  How careless they were, he thought; with what lightness of heart they stalked one another and arranged their ambushes, and how sorrowful that later age filled their hands with iron.

  They were innocent, and thought it all a matter for laughter.

  Through their midst, however, came a dark and purposeful figure, in a course form the South Gate toward the main doors.

  An angry man, Tristen thought, and recognized the cloaked and bundled portliness of His Reverence of the Quinalt as snowballs flew perilously close and spattered across the track just

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  behind the man, prankish disregard of priestly authority.

  It could not have sweetened the man’s mood.

  He had the least but growing premonition the matter would reach him. He could think of no excuse to avoid it, and no one to whom the patriarch of the Quinalt might apply in such anger but to him.

  And within a very little time, indeed, he received word from Tassand that His Reverence had lodged a protest with the provost and with the guard, and called for the arrest not of the boys with the snowballs, but of certain women in the market.

  He knew what it was, then, and surmised even that the small, furtive shaft he had launched in that direction had not gone unremarked by the priests. At very least he had released a prisoner of the Guelen Guard, he had known he left men discontent at his back; and Guelenmen discontent and now a Guelen priest manifestly angry and lodging charges against old women in the market did assume a certain strange relationship in his thoughts.

  And dared he forget the rumors Uwen said were running the town? The priest seemed to have said nothing about witches and storms or the lord of Ivanor, only old women and trinkets.

  “Tell Emuin,” he said, for Idrys in his leaving Guelemara had warned him about priests, and advised him to cultivate their favor with gifts. He had made the gifts. He still had an angry priest on his doorstep…and Emuin was, if somehow not a priest, at least a sort of one, among the Teranthine. By his own preference he would wish to draw in the Bryalt clergy as well, for the sake of having yet one more priestly opinion to spread thin the Quinalt sense of absolute power and right to command everyone. He was not sure Emuin would come, in point of fact, but no Bryaltine

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  had been near the guard last night; Emuin had, and he wished he had made the summons more absolute and more urgent.

  Uwen was out and about the duties of the garrison, something to do with the armory, and he was otherwise alone, but for Lusin and his guard.

  So Tassand sped, and dispatched word downstairs to His Reverence of the Quinalt that there would be an audience as he petitioned, and went himself to advise Emuin he was urgently requested.

  Meanwhile Tristen called one of the younger servants and decided on ducal finery…not so much that he cared to appear in splendor, as that he wished to allow Tassand the time it took to rouse Emuin out…likely from sleep, for the old man waked more of nights than by day, and kept his hours topsy-turvy of habit. In consideration of the priest, he chose not the black of Ynefel, but his new coat, Amefin red—his only such coat, as happened, but he counted it wise not to receive the Quinalt bearing the colors and symbols of a Sihhë lordship he well knew were anathema to the Quinalt.

  And at his own pace and hoping for Emuin’s swift arrival, he came downstairs with Uwen, to the little audience hall, the old one, where servants had lit candles. It had been cold when Cefwyn had it and it was cold now, where the patriarch waited in his outdoor cloak, tucked up like an angry winter sparrow.

  To Tristen’s great relief Emuin had arrived in greater haste than he had shown for any business since his arrival in Amefel, appearing in spotless gray robes and orderly, except the wind had caught his white-streaked hair and had it standing wispily on end.

  “Your Grace,” said the patriarch in no good cheer.

  Tristen walked to the ducal throne and sat down.

  “Sir.”

  “I have come from the market.”

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  “I am aware, sir. And from the provost and with a complaint of some nature regarding women in the market.”

  That might have cut short half an hour’s oration. At least having his business set in sum caused the patriarch’s mouth to open and shut and reset itself, while Emuin tucked his hands in his wide sleeves and looked for all the world like an owl roused by daylight.

  “Your Grace, Your Grace, not merely old women, but a danger to the town, and I pray Your Grace’s sober attention to this matter. These otherwise laughable trinket-sellers are out openly in the square in daylight, with forbidden goods, flouting His Majesty’s law and canon law alike, and selling poisons and other noxious powders in the open. I ask Your Grace order the provost to act on it forthwith.”

  “Poisons,” he said. He had expected nothing of poisons.

  — So do I sell them, said Emuin quietly, for rats and mice,

  given the snows do drive the creatures out of the fields

  and into granaries. They’re generally better than charms,

  even mine.

  “I have come here in all seriousness, Your Grace, expecting a hearing from a man reputed the friend of His Majesty!”

  “I am listening, sir.” It was, in fact, a small lapse he had committed, in wondering, and master Emuin in answering. He saw a peril in seeming distracted; but he had no intention of arresting the grandmothers with their small traffic: if there were magic, it was nothing that afflicted anyone that he could tell.

  “These women, Your Grace, generally they are women of dubious station and practice …”

  “Widows,” said Emuin. “Earning a small living from herbs and cures, and the poisoning of rats.”

  “If it please you,” the patriarch said sharply, “allow 164 / C. J. CHERRYH

  me to speak in my turn and you in yours, brother cleric.”

  “I take your reproof,” Emuin said, hand on the Teranthine sigil which hung in view on his breast. He made a respectful little bow, or half of one. “Pray inform His Grace about the poisons. He has no knowledge of rat-killing.”

  “For rats or whatever they be!” the patriarch said in great vexation. “The good gods know how they’re commonly used, to rid wives of unwanted husbands, or granaries of mice. Mice are not in question here. Witchcraft is.”

  It had been fair weather in Henas’amef, given the cold. The trinket-sellers he had seen in his limited far
ing out in the town braved the cold in far thinner cloaks than His Reverence wore for this room. And His Reverence had walked down the hill the morning after he had set Paisi at liberty. That coincidence seemed less strange beneath, than on the surface of matters.

  “Wizardry is not forbidden, either by king’s law or by the gods’ law,” Emuin said. “Your Reverence mistakes the law.”

  “We speak here of witchcraft, of sorcery …”

  “Witchcraft and wizardry are one; it’s Guelenfolk, not wizards, who’ve made that division, and the king will support me in it, I well know the law and the rule of my order, Your Reverence: trust that I and my order know whereof we speak. And sorcery? These pitiful women couldn’t raise a sot from his slumbers, let alone master a shadow of any potency.”

  “They trade in forbidden coinage, in which His Majesty surely has an interest.”

  “Only in seeing good silver come out of hoards and into his revenues, if it were traded, which it is not. The amulets are half at least fraudulent, copper, brother,

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  mere copper, which raises the worth of the copper, but the silver when they do find it is commonly melted and worn for bangles and rings here, as by your long tenure you might know.”

  “The king’s law forbids that traffic! As you should know in your tenure in the capital, sir!”

  “The late Lord Heryn enforced the king’s law only when the king’s son was in the town to see it, and the king has no interest whatsoever in confiscating trumpery trinkets and piddling rat-charms. Ask where half the Amefin treasury found its metal.

  There’s your question.”

  “This is pointless talk! The issue is the law, brother, however blithely your all too tolerant order may wink at sorcery, both as a concept and a practice!”

  “Sir,” Tristen said. “Master Emuin will not countenance sorcery. Nor will these women.”

  “Selling charms!”

  “Wizardry,” Emuin retorted. “Honest wizardry, which is within the tenets of their faith, recognized by the king and council and perfectly legitimate, however you disapprove it.”

  “It’s a thin line,” the patriarch said stiffly, “crossing right over to blackest practice.”

  “No, sir,” said Emuin, “it is not. It is not a thin line, it’s a gaping chasm! That’s the very point here, and those women with their little charms work against sorcery, not for it…as good maintain a rushlight against the darkest night of winter, but there they are, these poor folk, to tend a baby with the colic or drive the rats from a poor man’s store of seed grain.

  Sorcery destroys. Sorcery corrupts. Sorcery empowers the shadows and a man whether gifted or not is a fool, sir, who seeks to reach into the shadows and gain knowledge. A greater sorcerer is still a fool, who seeks to reach there and bring something across for his own

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  benefit. Greatest of all fools, Hasufin Heltain, who sought to steal himself from the shadows and have them all, the living and the dead, in the clutch of his greedy fingers!”

  The walls rang with Emuin’s anger, and silence followed it, a deep, troubling silence. Emuin had never been so forward with the truth, and Tristen heard it in a profound distress.

  No less so the patriarch, whose face had gone red with anger, then pale with what he had heard.

  “And what brings such dangers, but wizardry!”

  “The greed of men, of which we have plenty in the world!

  And, aye, I practiced wizardry in those days, and do now, brother, and shall continue to do, whereby we shall not see another shadow roll down on Amefel, to gobble up the defense of good men and pious. Your Duchess Orien was the one to look to, subtle and dangerous, but ultimately evident to us by her workings, as I assure Your Reverence any sorcery in the lower town would make itself felt in short order.”

  “You say so. I don’t have your source of confidence, I thank the gods for it.”

  “Thank your young Lord Tristen, who stood between you and the fall of this province. Thank those of us who detected sorcery in practice and stopped it! And thank your Lord Tristen and His Majesty, bearing arms against an invasion that would have swept through this province like flood. And yes, that was sorcery, on its way to Guelessar and all provinces else. It was that near a thing, this summer, brother, and whether or not you compass it with your philosophy, those selfsame women with their little charms likewise prayed with you, along with the incense that went up from Amefin shrines of every sect, while the Quinaltine sat ignorant on its hill in Guelessar and knew nothing of the threat until it was banished. You were a hero

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  among the rest, brother, along with those who took up arms; you kept the candles lit and raised up prayers in this province against the danger we all faced. Stand with us. Let us have no quibbles of old women and charms in the marketplace, when your temporal lord could well use your prayers.”

  “His Grace is Sihhë,” the patriarch said in a faint voice, as if that argued all; and perhaps it did: Tristen heard, and knew that, Prince Efanor’s little book availing what it could, this man had set him on the side which that little book called evil.

  “I shall never,” Tristen said, “work any sorcery, sir. And these women are not our enemy,” he added, to have that clear. “I read your book of devotions. His Highness gave it to me.

  Doesn’t it say that the gods made all the world and the rain and the mountains? So surely they made Sihhë, too.”

  He had hoped to turn the patriarch’s sure conviction at least to some doubt; and saw that he had had effect, at least that the patriarch seemed taken aback. So did Emuin, which warned him that it might not be the effect he had hoped.

  “His Grace will attend the matter,” Emuin said. “I assure you no sorcery will have effect in this town, nor anywhere His Grace can find it. He may be Sihhë: that remains unproven; he is certainly Mauryl Gestaurien’s successor, legitimate and a friend to the realm, and will not permit harm to the souls or substance of honest folk.”

  “These things bring no good fortune,” the Quinalt father said.

  “His Grace can have little sympathy in such practice, himself, but for the sake of the common folk of this town who have no commerce with wizards and who petition me with prayers for the safety of their souls, I beg you ask His Grace, since you have influence with him, to honor His Majesty’s well168 / C. J. CHERRYH

  thought and reasonable laws and forbid the display of such symbols.”

  “Difficult, since the ducal arms contain them, at His Majesty’s gift.”

  The patriarch drew in a breath. “Within the religious context, sir!”

  “No common coin will damn any of your flock, father, nor lead any astray to Bryalt beliefs except they be Bryaltine from the cradle, which Your Reverence must admit is tolerably common in Amefel.”

  “I beg you take this seriously,” the Quinalt father said. “And lead His Grace at least as strait and seemly a path as may be.”

  “His Grace has all manner of favor in His Majesty’s eyes, and the approval of the Holy Father in Guelemara, who blessed him at his oath-giving, and commended him to Your Reverence’s hands in all good faith. I will tell you, brother, for fair judgment and care of your flock’s rights and dues, and for keeping the less savory influences…wizardous and sorcerous alike…from out of the dangerous marches westward, you should be grateful to him. There’s none of the haunts and unhallowed goings-on as might find opportunity here, considering the very injudicious activities of Her now deposed Grace Orien Aswydd.”

  “We have never countenanced Her Grace’s doings.”

  “Well enough, since she let the very fiend into the apartment His Grace has now warded beyond any opportunity for such maleficent spirits. I’ve tested his wards, and they are subtle and wonderfully made…should you wish to know?”

  “I do not!” It was strange to stand to the side and hear himself discussed and argued about. But now the Quinalt father looked at him with
a wide and distraught stare, and matters had gone askew from what was prudent, and at Emuin’s hands, none other.

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  “Sir,” Tristen said with a nod and a will to placate this distressed man, “if I have done anything amiss, I will always hear you, and tell me, tell me if I do wrong. I don’t think Cefwyn ever feared the women in the marketplace, and I know there’s no sorcery that I can feel. But if you have misgivings, I’ll certainly walk there myself and see if there’s any cause for alarm.”

  “Your Grace. In your gifts, in your observance of protocols, I find no fault. But I doubt Your Grace will take alarm in such small matters as frighten my flock.”

  That last was pointed and sharp-edged: he was not so naive as to miss it. “His Highness instructed me and gave me a book of devotions. He said it was good I read it, and find the gods, and avoid evil. I agree. I by all means wish to avoid evil.” He had asked himself why the priest came to him now about the market just when the market and the grandmothers had entered his concern, and if it was not magic that made the connection, it was Men. “There was a boy, wasn’t there, Your Reverence?”

  “A boy.”

  “It was mischief for Paisi to steal a soldier’s kit, but it was greater mischief for that man to come to you and suggest there was something amiss in the market, when the truth was that he wished someone to die for the theft, when it wasn’t even his kit, as I understand: it belonged to a man of the Dragon Guard.”

  “I know nothing of any of this, Your Grace!”

  “Didn’t a soldier come to you?”

  “He by no means told me about any boy.”

  “I doubt he did. But you should ask him what the truth is.”

  “Your Grace,” the patriarch said, as if he had taken a dismissal in that, his case in disarray and his words turned back on him. But the patriarch blessed himself with a gesture, as Uwen would when he saw wizardry