Fortress of Owls

by C. J. Cherryh

  Cevulirn at last dropped off to a faint, drowsing presence, a light sleep, it was: Tristen was aware of presence, and that meant some awareness lingered. He himself failed to rest quite as easily, still uneasy in the unfamiliarity around him and in his responsibility…and in his daylong separation from Uwen, who had been beside him or accessible to him almost since he had come among Men. He found himself wondering what Uwen Lewen’s-son might be up to in Henas’amef, how his first day of solitary command of the town might have gone; whether he was asleep, by now, in his bed, and whether Uwen also missed him.

  Such questions he might satisfy. He might reach out to Emuin, from here, and through Emuin learn at least some things; but a thought prevented him: that they FORTRESS OF OWLS / 227

  were a day closer to the river now, and that more powerful effort meant more exposure to wizardry than he liked.

  He felt strangely unprotected, despite his access to wizardry, despite the sword on the floor next his bedside, despite the very formidable companion asleep at his side, one of the bravest and most skillful fighters in all Ylesuin, and despite all the guards below. He had not even brought Lusin and Syllan and his ordinary guard on this venture, but rather his night guard, good men, all, and brave and loyal to him, taking turn about bearing the ducal banner. Lusin and the rest of his day guard had come to have other duties more essential than standing at his door, and were more and more absent, one or the other managing the domestic things about the Zeide that they had come to manage very well, becoming the extra hands and eyes he had come to need so much in dealing with the ordinary business of the place.

  Least of all could he withdraw those men at the very time Uwen might need them. And there was no reason to fear for himself, not with Cevulirn beside him, though the unaccustomed presence kept him from sleep.

  So he rested, gazing at the eye-teasing glow of a distant banked fire on unfamiliar rafters, beams so low he could all but touch them. The same beams extended out over the hall where his men were sleeping, and he watched shadows, as it happened, nothing ill feeling at all about the house itself.

  He looked further into the shadows and saw the Lines that established the house, all well made, some brighter and older than others. That meant the house had known several changes, but each had observed the Lines of the one before, so far as his sleepy inquiry could ascertain.

  228 / C. J. CHERRYH

  He shut his eyes, courting sleep now with a determined wish, considering how long a ride they had on the morrow, on snowy roads.

  But something else touched him, light as a summer breeze, awareness of lives, the way he was aware of a hawk aloft or a badger under a ledge, a horse in the stable, or men slipping about something very, very quietly out in the yard.

  He listened to it, and asked himself was it innocent? And should he wake Cevulirn?

  At the very thought, Cevulirn was awake, and a presence strong as a lit candle in the dark.

  “Something’s outside,” Tristen whispered, and they both, having slept mostly dressed, put on their boots and took up their cloaks and their swords in the dimness of the loft.

  There was not as yet any reason to call out an alarm to all the men below. They two came down the worn wooden stairs, the fire in the downstairs fireplace lighting the stairs just enough for night-accustomed eyes.

  And just so the light showed a shadowy, cloaked figure, the new-made earl closing his front door, after a look or a venture into the yard outside.

  Young Drusenan looked around, and up, saw them both, and stood stricken and still, on all sides of him a carpet of Ivanim guard sleeping, but not ale-dulled enough a spoken word would not rouse them.

  Tristen came the rest of the way down the steps, sword bare in his hand, and Cevulirn joined him. No one had made a sound. The wife was awake, and had come out of her curtained nook, her braids all undone.

  The earl might have been seeing to a horse, or himself investigating the unease outside, but the stricken look on his face said otherwise, and he had not the face to lie.

  FORTRESS OF OWLS / 229

  And now, roused by the faint sounds of their movements, one man of the guard stirred, and after that two, and half a dozen, and all the rest, reaching after arms and rising to cast long shadows around the walls.

  Drusenan’s face showed a pale sweat in the firelight. His wife wove her way through the guards, her hair unbound, a shawl about her, and reached her husband’s side.

  “I hear something,” Tristen said, for there was a stirring, remote from him. Others looked puzzled, and Cevulirn looked doubtful. But Drusenan drew a breath like a man meeting cold water.

  “My lord, the truth: I have other visitors…fugitives, helpless fugitives out of Elwynor. I should have confessed it, but I’d sworn to keep them secret, on my honor, my lord, and how could I break my oath? They’re by no means enemies of yours.

  Women and children, old men. We’ve fed them, given them warmth in the cold.”

  “Hardly a surprise,” muttered Cevulirn. “So I’m sure the borderers do and have always done.”

  So Ninévrisë’s father’s company had found Amefel their natural recourse, and gained help from the village of Emwy.

  Likewise the rebel Caswyddian had crossed, pursuing, and foraged off Amefin land, bringing death with him. There was no way to tell Elwynim friend from Elwynim foe when they all came for shelter and killed one another on Amefin soil.

  “I beg my lord’s mercy,” the wife said, and added, faintly,

  “Lord, I am Elwynim, and have a cousin with them. How could I turn her away?”

  “Blood is mixed here,” Drusenan said. “And kinship binds us, even with other loyalties we keep. Your Grace, in your own good heart, help them. Shelter them. Feed them.”

  230 / C. J. CHERRYH

  Feed my sparrows, Auld Syes had said.

  These were Auld Syes’ birds. The gray space echoed with the memory, the witch of Emwy, the uprooted oak.

  “Show me these fugitives,” he said.

  C H A P T E R 2

  There were indeed mostly women with small children, bundled against the cold, and very frightened to be hunted out of their refuge in the stable. They had been warm and snug among the many horses that had filled the stalls and the aisle.

  Now they stood exposed to view of armed men, roused out into the wind and shivering with fright.

  “Small wonder the village wanted to stable the horses,”

  Cevulirn said dryly. Since it was never the Ivanim habit to surrender that task to anyone, Tristen had no trouble guessing, the fugitives had had to hide elsewhere until the visitors were all abed. Then they had come creeping back to the lifesaving warmth, where hay and horses far in excess of the stable’s capacity had made a very warm haven until the dawn.

  And that was the mysterious coming and going in the night he had heard, the sense of presence more than he had accounted for, that had kept him awake.

  But they were not a warlike group…less than a score in number, one a babe in arms, the rest anonymous bundles of heavy cloaks and wraps of every sort, at least three others of them children.

  “They are no threat,” Tristen said.

  “Until asked questions by those who are,” Cevulirn said.

  “Best not to have them on this route to the river, where they see all the coming and going of your sup 232 / C. J. CHERRYH

  ply. Bryn’s villagers know where to go if trouble comes. These have fewer resources.”

  To have a contingent of Elwynim next Henas’amef or within it was no comfort, either. A gathering of Elwynim fugitives, however pitiful, afforded a resting place where Elwynim spies might come and go. There was nowhere completely safe to settle them, none of the river villages within reach wherein an Elwynim band that might include those sympathetic to Tasmôrden could not work some sort of harm: lights and signals, even daggers in the night, or at very least, one taking to his heels to go back across the river with news.

  Yet the wind blew with a whisper to hi
s thoughts…

  What had Auld Syes said? Magic had a way of diverting one’s attention, the things most needful to know slipping through one’s fingers like water.

  The living king at last sits in judgment.

  And again, which he had already remembered: When you find my sparrows, my little birds, lord of Amefel, warm them, feed them. The wind is too cold.

  Birds before the storm, not his birds, not the fat, silly pigeons that he daily fed at his windowsill, the foolish pigeons which had won him the Holy Father’s ire in Guelemara, on account of the Quinaltine steps. No, these were certainly those other birds, Auld Syes’ sparrows, come to him in want of shelter.

  And wherefore should prudent birds lack shelter? When their nests were windblown down, when their homes were destroyed, when armies marched and villages burned and greedy men seized power. Those were the birds that flew on Auld Syes’

  storm…the winds blew, edged with winter and killing, and there was magic and wizardry behind his coming here and these fugitives seeking help of him.

  And what direction would Elwynim loyal to Ninévrisë run?

  FORTRESS OF OWLS / 233

  They would never go to Guelessar for refuge, that was certain. Their lady Ninévrisë might have wed Cefwyn and might have Cefwyn’s promise of aid, but for Elwynim noble or common to cross the river and deliver themselves into the hands of Guelenmen, their old enemies, that, they feared more than they feared Tasmôrden’s army.

  No, if Elwynim sought shelter, of course they would seek it among a folk allied by blood and history. Of course they would go south; and that was the duty Auld Syes had laid on him, to receive these folk and safeguard them, no matter what happened within Elwynor.

  He looked at the pitiful band by torchlight, helpless and shivering, a close-wrapped band that looked for all the world like drab winter birds, and all looked fearfully at him, who held their lives and safety in his hands.

  “Let’s go back to the stables,” he said, “out of the wind. That first. And you’ll tell me what brought you here. I’ll protect you, but if you wish me to, tell me the truth.” He had not forgotten how Crissand’s father Edwyll had contrived with Tasmôrden, who had promised to send Elwynim forces across the river…and indeed, in these, Tasmôrden had, but a force of the starving and desperate, whom Tasmôrden would be well content to see plundering Amefin resources: such cruelty he added to the tally of Tasmôrden’s doings.

  “Light a lantern,” he said at the stable door…they should not bring the fire-dripping torches inside with the hay. And a man found a lantern and lit it, so they could go in among sleepy horses, gray and brown backs pressed side by side, and wary dark eyes shining back the lamplight in wonder what Men were doing.

  234 / C. J. CHERRYH

  Within the stable, barriered against the wind and in the warmth of so many horses and the bedding straw, Tristen appropriated a stack of grain sacks for a ducal seat; Cevulirn chose a barrel.

  Drusenan stood and held the lantern himself, a circle of light which fell on faces that, indeed, freed of their muffling wraps, were all women, old men, and children.

  “This is Tristen of Ynefel, our new lord duke of Amefel,”

  Drusenan said, “and this is Duke Cevulirn of Ivanor, who’s the best of the lords of the south, and they ask me why I’ve sheltered you.”

  “Our homes are burned, lords!” came the anguished reply.

  And from another: “We had no choice but cross to Amefel!”

  “Where is your home?” Tristen asked quietly.

  “Nithen, lord.” A young woman spoke, a thin woman bearing a recent and ugly scar of burns on a hand clenched on her cloak of straw-flecked wool. “We come from Nithen district, mostly.

  One from Criess.” Another head nodded, a young woman with a closely bundled child at her skirts. “Tasmôrden’s men took our stock and our seed grain. We couldn’t live there.”

  “My cousin,” Drusenan’s young wife spoke up. “Where else should she go, but to me?”

  “Wife,” Drusenan interposed; and then with a glance at his judges: “So they came for food, harmless and unarmed. How could we refuse them?”

  Tristen was ignorant of farmers and shepherds, but he knew the map of Elwynor, such as they had. Nithen was not on the map he had, but Criess was, near the border. Cevulirn, however, asked shrewd and knowledgeable questions of the fugitives, how large a village was Nithen, what was its sustenance, where were the men…and how many men they had seen making the

  FORTRESS OF OWLS / 235

  assault, riding what sort of horses, whether they had killed the men of the villages or forced them into service. All these things Cevulirn asked, and yes, there had been perhaps a hundred, and they had taken some men of various villages to serve Tasmôrden, but some who resisted, they had killed. An old man from Nithen had lost a son, and others shouted out their own losses with tears and anger.

  Cevulirn’s questions quickly assumed a shape in Tristen’s understanding, an image of the number and condition of the enemy and the very weather of the day they had moved through the district. All the significance of Cevulirn’s questions Unfolded to him in troublingly vivid order, and told him when, and how, and with what result. And he wished calm and comfort on the innocent.

  “When Tasmôrden marched on the capital,” Tristen said, “he went through Nithen; and that was above a fortnight past, is that so?” He was convinced both that they told the truth and that pity was justified for these desperate people. Nithen was a hamlet attached to Ilefínian, an estate of the Lord Regent himself.

  And as for the day on which these folk had crossed over, no, they replied to his question, they were aware of no muster of Tasmôrden’s forces to the border to aid any Amefin rebellion: it had all poured in on Ilefínian.

  So Tasmôrden’s promises of support to Edwyll were indeed a lie: only this hungry and desperate band had crossed the river, allowed to escape not out of mercy, but because their presence and that of other disordered bands of refugees might just as well aid Tasmôrden with no expenditure of troops. They might be a burden on Amefel’s supplies, perhaps would steal from Amefin villages—at best, given Tasmôrden’s promises to Edwyll and the rest, might confuse the king’s troops. They were cast away to die.

  236 / C. J. CHERRYH

  But pitiful as they were, he would not be surprised if armed men began to flee the war and cross, too, and some of them might be Tasmôrden’s men.

  Most certainly, on Cevulirn’s advice and his own clear sense, he should not leave these folk here to multiply on his supply route to the border.

  And if Modeyneth was the village with connection to them, Modeyneth would still willingly feed them, Auld Syes’ sparrows…

  And what better refuge than in Emwy district, which was in Auld Syes’ hands and under her potent wards, hers, and the late Lord Regent’s? Ninévrisë’s father, though a Shadow now, would know the true from the false.

  “West of Modeyneth, in the hills,” he said, “the war will not so likely come. There are walls and vaults at Althalen that would keep the wind out, and if we sent canvas and timbers, the old walls could well shelter them. I know the place is well warded against harm from the outside.” He did not add that he himself would know sure as a shout and as instantly if any untoward thing happened there…he did not think there could be any intrusion at Althalen without his knowing it.

  “Your Grace,” Drusenan protested. “It’s forbidden even to set foot in that place.”

  “So much the safer. I don’t forbid it, and I’m lord of the place.”

  “The king forbade it, as he forbade—” It was to Drusenan’s credit that he forbore to say, the wall.

  “The king is my friend, and I know he’d bring these folk to Althalen himself if trouble threatened. There’s nothing harmful there, not to the harmless. A little girl rules it, and the Lord Regent. If you can manage only canvas and straw, they’ll be safe and warm within the walls. The stone there is thick, and reflects warmth if t
hey have a fire.”

  FORTRESS OF OWLS / 237

  “If they had leave to cut wood…” Drusenan said.

  “Plenty grows there.”

  “If we had your leave to cut it, my lord.”

  Why should you need it? he all but asked, but from Guelessar’s example, he understood the jealousy with which lords guarded their wooded lands…and he knew the reason of it, that indiscriminate cutting would ruin the land and kill the game. “You have my leave,” he said, looking at the women,

  “and if there should be haunts, don’t fear them. Uleman’s grave is there. The wards of that place are stronger than any common place.”

  The Regent’s name greatly affected the women. One seized his hand, pressing her brow to it, hugging it to her.

  “Gods bless Your Grace.” The woman’s wounded hands clasped on his so he could not force them off without touching seared flesh. She bore amulets, he saw as her shawl fell open, much like Auld Syes. She was a witch, but had no power, or none that he could feel. Cevulirn had far more, and glowed softly in the gray space. He touched her hands, wished her flesh to heal as soon as possible, and with no more hardship.

  She pressed her tearful face against his hand, and fell to her knees…he hoped because he had done some good.

  “The king’s law forbids settlement at Althalen,” Cevulirn said in a hushed voice, at his other hand, “so you should know, Amefel, though I agree His Majesty would ride right over that law at his need. The king’s law also forbids the raising of walls and defenses in Amefel.”

  “Is it all Cefwyn’s law?”

  “His grandfather’s.”

  That was very different. “His giving me the banner of Althalen was against his grandfather’s law, too, but he 238 / C. J. CHERRYH

  did, all the same. And he told me do justice, and I swore to him to do it. So I have to find these people a place.” Tristen cast a look at Drusenan. “Settle them there tomorrow. Quickly as you may.” It struck him between the lordship, the wall, and the fugitives that he had settled a double and a triple burden on Modeyneth. “Don’t bear it alone. Call on the help of all Bryn’s resources, up to the walls of Henas’amef and inside, and tomorrow send to all of Bryn and say this is my instruction, and the council decree says the same.”