Fortress of Owls

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Set the garrison in order,” he said. “Marching them to the river’s not all the answer. Have the captain and the highest sergeant gone off and left no one word where they are? Or are men not telling?”

  “Seems, m’lord, they left no instructions of who is in command, ’cept as there’s seniority. The man who’s second senior, he ain’t informed where they are, an’ I think I believe ’im. An’

  Your Grace is right: it ain’t the way it ought to be.”

  “Did Anwyll allow such things?”

  “Captain Anwyll didn’t interfere much.”

  “You command the garrison,” Tristen said. “And all the Zeide.

  Set them in order.”

  “Them’s His Majesty’s troops,” Uwen said distressedly. “I can’t just dismiss His Majesty’s officers, m’lord. I ha’nt the authority, wi’ all goodwill. I begun in the Guelens and came to the Dragons, unlikely as ever was; and then I could ha’

  ordered ’em: a Dragon sergeant can order a captain of the common companies. But I left the Dragons an’ come wi’ you, m’lord, which means I’m provincial an’ not a king’s man anymore. An’ if them troops hadn’t got a captain, I could, if you ordered, in your province. But not so long’s there’s a king’s captain in charge. Anwyll could have ordered ’em. But ye sent him to the border.”

  That His Majesty’s troops did as they pleased and did wrong to Amefin folk within a stone’s cast of the Zeide was not tolerable to him; in his mind the captain had forfeited his command the night he had obeyed Parsynan’s

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  word against his. When he and the senior sergeant disappeared at the same time, leaving no orders behind them he knew what to call it: irresponsibility was a Word he had learned in one place and another. Treason, he had learned very well, here in Amefel.

  And with the town’s well-being and Amefin justice resting on the garrison’s proper conduct, Anger rushed up, twice in two days, now.

  Uncommon, he thought. And that, the anger, he carefully lifted out of its place to examine later, in some quietness of heart. To have anger give the next orders was unwise, even if it was just.

  — Do you hear? he asked Emuin, across the insulating weight of stone. Do you know that the captain and the

  sergeant have disappeared, and do you count it coincidence, good sir? Shall I be angry about it?

  There was no answer, as he had in his heart expected none.

  Oh, Emuin heard. Unquestionably he heard. Emuin was settling into his chamber, poking up the fire, which had gone to embers, and gave him attention, but no answer.

  He had, he recalled, said to the patriarch himself that he guessed the source of the advisement about the trinket-sellers.

  And was it unreasonable that the patriarch should have sent word to the sergeant, who might have told his captain? He himself had had little dealing with either man, and it was still the matter of a search after pebbles among pebbles; but he began to suspect that the pebbles in question were no longer in this heap.

  “Perhaps they’ve taken horses,” he said to Uwen, who waited quietly for his answer, “and then you would have authority.”

  “I am askin’ that,” Uwen said, “an’ word ain’t come yet.”

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  “Only from the bottom of the hill?”

  “There’s a lot of shiftin’ about, especially wi’ the Ivanim in wi’ sixty-odd horses an’ them needin’ room; master Haman’s got lads movin’ horses out to the far meadows and makin’

  winter shelter. It’s over an hour’s ride out an’ back to some of them places, an’ till we’ve counted, an’ horses tendin’ to wander off in copses an’ stream cuts for windbreaks, even when ye built ’em a fair shelter…”

  “We won’t know by evening,” he said, “unless the captain turns up before that.”

  “I asked the gate-guards, too. An’ they just ain’t sure whether the men is in or out. They don’t much notice the soldiers comin’ and goin’. I put it to ’em they should notice such things an’ look sharper. They are under my command, and I apologize for that, m’lord.”

  If the captain had taken horse and gone, there was no question where he had gone: to Guelessar, to Parsynan, to unfriendly ears.

  “We won’t know, then, until we hear from Haman,” Tristen said. “And the lords are coming, within the hour?”

  “Aye, m’lord. Word’s passed.”

  He had been remiss in letter-writing. Idrys had bidden him write often, very often; and now in Uwen’s report he thought he should write that days-delayed letter.

  “Go do what you can do,” he said, “but be back when I go down to the hall.”

  “Aye, m’lord.”

  So Uwen went off to find those he was now sure were unavailable and well away, and Tristen sat down at the desk with dragon legs and under the brazen loom of dragon jaws, and took up pen to warn Idrys directly of all that had happened.

  He was all too aware

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  now that along with the Dragons he had dismissed all his most reliable Guelen messengers, except his private guard. The Amefin guard would not be able to traverse Guelessar unquestioned or unremarked, and might not so easily reach Idrys. He had retained not a one of the Dragons at hand; and under the circumstances, trusting the Guelens to report ill of their own officers seemed folly. There was Gedd. He might well send Gedd.

  Uwen, however, might well find an honest man or two in the unit of which he had been a part as late as midsummer.

  Not all of them had marched home, of those who had fought at Lewenbrook; and, Cevulirn’s help notwithstanding, he could not afford to dismiss the Guelen Guard. Honest men must be the heart of what he should have done by now and must now urgently do with the Guelens: depose or assign elsewhere officers who had carried out the massacre. Now that the sergeant and the captain had fled, if that was indeed their course, then all the harm their reports could do would have been done…and he was increasingly convinced that they had fled, and that the Quinalt had warned them.

  Overtake the fugitive officers on the road, frighten the horses from under them… that he might do, as he had done to Parsynan.

  But it had not prevented Parsynan getting to Guelessar, as he was well sure Parsynan had done; and he found himself more than reluctant to invade the gray space with such a reckless assault.

  And when he realized that in himself, he let the pen pause, asking himself why he did hesitate.

  Fear of killing: there was that. There was no guarantee how they would fall, and a fall was chance and chance was the realm of wizards.

  There was no guarantee such an act would in any 184 / C. J. CHERRYH

  wise prevent the gossip arriving at a bad time; when it arrived was now a matter of a horse’s strength, reasonably certain. But to bring it into the realm of chance also laid things as open as a window flung wide to whatever influences might be seething just out of reach of his inquiries.

  There was Ivanor…arrived the very day he sent the Dragons to the border.

  And arrived on the heels of portents and omens, word of lords and aethelings, himself and Crissand and prophecy.

  Now Paisi, a waif detestable to the Guelens and sheltered by the Amefin gate-guard, had become the cause of upheaval in the Guelen Guard, the garrison that was Amefel’s surest and readiest defense.

  His hand trembled somewhat as he dipped the quill in ink.

  The thoughts that came to him were not quiet ones, nor assured in their direction. Emuin’s sudden spate of advice to him and to Uwen assumed the character of a milestone reached, a point at which Emuin would speak; and now, now he was aware of Emuin’s eavesdropping.

  — You know, he said to Emuin, and had nothing but Emuin’s retreating presence, refusing to utter a thing.

  Anger came back, a blinding anger, and he smothered it, quickly, as some foreign and hostile thing.

  To find Emuin standing at distance, watching him.

  Watching,
saying nothing, power intact.

  Emuin could still keep secrets from him.

  Had not Emuin always said he would not stand in the path of his intentions? Yet Emuin did exactly that, refusing his demands, keeping him from leaping from one stepping-stone of advice to the next, distracting him… leading him, by his frustrated questions, to examine things for himself, letting things Unfold to

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  him. And leading him yet again, by his affection, by his anger, by his very conviction that Emuin held secrets from him…

  While he had no answers from Emuin…he delayed acting.

  While he delayed acting…

  He found other courses to take.

  The anger subsided, grew cool. Master Emuin still said not a word to him, but he stood in the winds of the gray space and detected a certain small satisfaction wafting on the winds.

  — Is that your tactic, sir?

  Emuin did not ignore him, rather watched him warily, and he ignored Emuin, mostly, at least, aware that time was short and the earls would be gathering.

  He wrote, in the time he had. And paused, the feather brushing his lips, and gazed at the candleflame, recalling how, in the mysterious ways of wizards, once at Mauryl’s hearth he had been allured by fire. His hand still bore that small scar.

  He never forgot that he could not grasp the flame, only feed it or extinguish it.

  Such was wizardry. Such had been Mauryl.

  Such was Emuin, uncatchable, even by such a power as he had in himself. If his power was the wind and the whirlwind, Emuin’s, like Mauryl’s, was the fire, small as a spark, leaping up to consume whole houses, and moving aside from a curious finger.

  And had not Mauryl been very like that? Mauryl, whose half-burned letters still contained only requests for supply and observations on the weather? A murderer had thought to find far more in Mauryl’s writings, and yet…what could they learn of Mauryl or any wizard in the small exchanges? It was the long work that said more, the persistence of the little spark smoldering outside its hearth, the one, slight, unnoticed act of chance.

  — I respect you, he said to one he was sure had his 186 / C. J. CHERRYH

  ears well stopped and his heart warded. I respect your

  working, sir, nor am such a fool as to ignore it. When I

  transgress, you will not tell me; but should I transgress

  against you, sir, I beg you continue to call me a fool. I

  fear the silence more than the shadows.

  I will to do good, sir. But we are, are we not, something

  different one from the other? If I am the wind, you are

  the fire, and may burn, but mine is the stronger force.

  I am Sihhë. Is that the lesson I am finally to learn, that

  I am not a Man and that I should not practice wizardry?

  If that’s so, sir, it would seem I need you. I need you

  very much.

  The captain of the Guelens has very likely fled, and

  mischief will come of it, and wizardry might prevent him.

  But do you say I should not wield it? That magic is my

  skill, and I should avoid wizardry?

  He listened until the ink dried on the quill tip, and he heard no answer, none, at least, in words.

  But there was a sense of presence grown more peaceful, a touch softer than the feather and more subtle than a word. The dragons that loomed over this place threatened that peace: creatures of fire, reared in angry postures.

  Yet was the carving oak, or horse?

  Was the image bronze, or all that a dragon might be?

  The nearest of them loomed, a spell in its own right, and warred against the peace. It leered across his shoulder, flanked him, stared outward with him, with its bronze and dreadful countenance, an Aswydd beast, witness of all that had happened here…and trying, so it seemed, to be his ally.

  Do I command the dragons? he asked that silent, wizardly witness, with none but an afterthought to the FORTRESS OF OWLS / 187

  king’s men who bore that name, or to the arms of the Marhanen, the golden dragon on the red field, which was the emblem of the kingdom as well. His immediate question was to what extent he could reach back into Aswydd power, and rely on it; but in the way of such questions, it answered itself differently.

  The echo of understanding the question raised in him was that the Aswydd dragons extended their reach into Guelessar, and that they backed the Marhanen throne, not Sihhë emblems…never the Sihhë emblems. The dragons were solely the emblems of Men and kings and lords of Men. This room he had never felt he owned. This room he had warded by his presence, as much as lived in it. It was useful to everyone’s safety that he lived here and kept the wards.

  Yet it came to him, yes, he did command the dragons, now, and only so long as these creatures of fire and passion failed to rouse his anger, or his passion, or his fear. That long, and only so long, did he command them, and only that long did he command those who were their masters.

  The dragons and those who commanded them must not break that condition. They must never break it. With wind and fire alike they could deal, but never break that condition. He was writing a message to the Lord Commander, with the local garrison in disarray; he was facing a meeting of the lords of Amefel, to sit and do justice, and the dragons loomed above, reminding him their anger was fire, and his will was wind.

  He felt that silent and wizardly witness to his musings, sealed as he was, and deliberately withdrawn from the soundless sound in the silence that lapped about this room of his refuge.

  This, too, Emuin witnessed.

  The quill when he dipped it and wrote scratched like claws on stone, as if the dragons stirred on their perches. Shadows, the tame ones that had a right here, lurked 188 / C. J. CHERRYH

  and crept under tables and in the folds of green drapery, within cabinets and in corners as he shaped his report.

  He owned magic as his birthright. Having it, he knew he must be careful of it. He never loosed the shadows that belonged here, never, in fact, allowed the lights to be extinguished: candles always burned here, and he never shut the drapes by day. The ones who had died in this room were not wholly his men; but they were faithful to Amefel, and he willingly lived under their witness, conscious of their leanings, and sure now, as in Auld Syes’ salutation to him and Crissand, that he held what would not forever be his.

  Emuin heard that, too, and tried very quietly to slip away.

  But Emuin could not elude him now: often as Emuin might have watched, unseen, mistrustful of him before this, he was not unseen now, and might never be again.

  — Know that, Tristen said, wounded, and know I have heard

  at least one and two of your lessons, master Emuin. And

  because I have heard, I’m about to hear the demands of

  stonemasons and of the earls. I wish the Guelens and the

  house of Meiden will not go at each other’s throats.

  Why, why, master Emuin, do wicked purposes seem to

  slide by so easily, and these men escape me to do mischief

  and Mauryl’s letters burn, and reasons for all this

  wickedness slip through my fingers? Is this the way of

  things in the world? Or is there cause aside from me and

  you?

  Is that the reason of your mistrust?

  And is that mistrust of me the reason you came here,

  after all?

  C H A P T E R 7

  There was no miraculous word of the fugitives by the hour the court convened…and that was not to Tristen’s surprise or Uwen’s. The readiness with which the court assembled did somewhat surprise Tristen: the summons had gone out to the earls to come early and present their petitions, such as they had, before the banquet…a feast which had already been planned for their guest for the evening, and on which Cook had labored since yesterday evening, to a mighty shouting and commotion around the kitchens. That event Tristen expected would see no tard
iness.

  But the earls all came, every one, even earlier than the requested hour; and so Cevulirn attended the audience of his neighbor province, dressed in his plain, serviceable gray and white, yet no lord in the hall was more dignified by his finery than Cevulirn by his demeanor. He drew every eye by his mere presence in hall, and stood at the side of the steps of the dais to give his account of doings at the court, the marriage of His Majesty and Her Grace, and the death of Brugan, son of Corswyndam, Lord Ryssand. There was no restlessness at all in his hearers, and all hung on the account of a man who doled words out like coin, well weighed and sparingly.

  “What shall we do?” Drumman was quick to ask, when he had heard Cevulirn’s account of his dismissal 190 / C. J. CHERRYH

  from the king’s court. “This is an attack on the south and on all of us, our privileges, our rights, soon enough our land. We have in king Cefwyn a monarch who at least respects our soil and look how these damned northerners deal with him!”

  “Aye,” said no few, from among the ealdormen of the town, too, for Cefwyn had ruled Ylesuin from Henas’amef for some few weeks.

  “Let ’im favor us in the least and here’s the barons with their noses out of joint!” someone shouted out of turn. “Earl Drumman has the right of it. We fought wizards and the Elwynim at Lewenbrook, and buried our sons, where we could find ’em, an’ where’s bloody Ryssand?”

  “Safe,” said Cevulirn, in a fleeting still moment of the shock of that forwardness. “Safe, sir, and hopeful of comfort and power for himself, which does not come with a marriage to Ninévrisë of Elwynor, who will strengthen Cefwyn Marhanen.

  You see very clearly. Ryssand is my enemy. I assure you he is the enemy of your lord as well.”

  “Lord Sihhë!” someone was bold enough to call out. “Lord Sihhë can teach Ryssand a lesson or two!”

  It was not what Tristen wished, this stir about the northern lords, and he saw matters sliding away from his hand in the very first moments of the audience Emuin had advised him to hold. He knew that was not by intent, nor by Cevulirn’s intent, and he lifted his hand from the arm of the chair to seize a breathwide silence.