Fortress of Owls

by C. J. Cherryh

  Sorcery aiming at Parsynan’s life?”

  “His horse threw him.”

  That was there to read. Indeed, oh, and the innocent horse had been ensorcelled to do murder on Lord Parsynan, as the rioting Amefin, encouraged by Bryalt

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  priests, had assaulted a king’s officer in the streets of Henas’amef.

  That could be believed. So, far that matter, could the actions of the horse, but it was not sorcery, if Tristen had done it: Emuin, his old tutor, had taught him that fine distinction.

  “And Ryssand commits his honor to this complaint,” he asked Idrys.

  “Oh, more, more than that, my lord king. Read on.”

  … the urgent representation of Your Majesty’s loyal officers who will swear to these facts, as we who have honorably and loyally supported the Crown and the gods are greatly alarmed.

  We seek redress of grievances and, putting aside our own bitter mourning, wish to consult with Your Majesty regarding measures that may lead to greater, not less, unity of purpose.

  “Bother and damnation. Unity of purpose. Bitter mourning.

  Hell!”

  Your Majesty witnessed the circumstances that have left Ryssand bereft, and casting now all our care upon our remaining treasure, our daughter, whose alliance with a powerful house will shield Your Majesty’s Ryssandish province, accordingly we have thought of various alliances. But we deem no union more glorious and none more beneficial to the tranquillity of Ylesuin than to join the Marhanen line to that of Ryssand, forging an alliance that will bring us to the spring in one mind and with one purpose. Accordingly I have written to His Highness…

  “Good loving gods! He’s lost all his wits!”

  “Which part in particular has caught my lord king’s eye?”

  “Is he proposing marriage? Marriage?”

  Ninévrisë leaned to see.

  “Artisane,” Cefwyn said, “loving gods! To my brother Efanor…”

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  “I suspect His Highness will be here shortly,” Idrys said in his low voice. “The courier carried two letters to court. And how will my lord king respond to this sage and selfless proposal of peace?”

  He lacked words. Launching the army not at Tasmôrden’s forces, but at Ryssand, was ever so fleetingly the wish of his heart. “I detest this man. I truly detest him.”

  “Efanor surely doesn’t favor him,” Ninévrisë said. “And Artisane is clever, but not wise.”

  “Much like all that house.” The blood ran calmer in Cefwyn’s veins by now, on two further breaths and the consideration that, on the one hand, it was a calculated piece of effrontery, set to make him angry, and on the other hand…that Efanor, while gullible where it came to priests, was nonetheless Marhanen in blood and bone. Efanor was not clever, but he was wise: gentler, but not dull-witted, nor, once the Marhanen temper had slipped the bounds of religious restraint…was gentle Efanor necessarily slow to offense.

  And if Ryssand took this insolent letter as a sort of threat, a not so subtle reminder of the scope of his power in Ylesuin, Ryssand sadly mistook both the sons of Ináreddrin.

  In fact the commotion at the hall door, which opened to some visitor without overmuch ado of pages, led him to suggest, visitor as yet unseen, that they repair to the adjacent room and the table there. “Your counsel will be welcome,” he said to Idrys, and signaled a page. “Wine and a number of cups.

  Gods know how far this conference will extend. We may have half the kingdom here before all’s done.” The commotion was imminent in the hallway. Cefwyn rose at some leisure, taking Ninévrisë’s hand, and had not quite settled at the table when Efanor arrived in the room, color high in his face.

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  Cefwyn sat, Ninévrisë sat, and Idrys, who rarely sat with his king, bowed.

  “Brother,” said Efanor. “Your Grace, Lord Commander.”

  Efanor had a rolled parchment in his fist.

  “Brother, good morning,” Cefwyn said. “I take it you’ve received the match of this correspondence.”

  “I have,” Efanor said, and took the gestured invitation to join their small council. “I doubt it was in any hope of favorable consideration.”

  “And?” Cefwyn asked.

  “And I take it as a gibe at you. He clearly expects no good of it,” Efanor said.

  “I take it for an outrage,” Ninévrisë said. “The man is your bitter enemy.”

  “He is my royal brother’s bitter enemy,” said Efanor airily, which was to say he was angry and pretending calm. “I have fallen from his consideration, and therefore he writes such a large stroke, caring nothing for my opinion. There is Ryssand’s gage, if you will, cast in our faces.”

  “Unfortunately,” said Idrys, “we have no adequate reply.”

  “I know I have a certain reputation among the northern barons, which I never sought.”

  Their father had wished Efanor to rule, but never found the means to secure the throne to his younger, more placid, son.

  So had Ryssand wished it, once, estimating Efanor would be biddable, lost in his contemplations and his studies. All the world estimated Efanor as a monkish sort, inclined to celibacy and scholarship, and the religiosity that had dominated their grandfather’s later years, in his excessive fear of hell. In Selwyn the court had seen the utmost of religious terror, in his last year.

  The truth was that Efanor did not so much fear hell FORTRESS OF OWLS / 253

  as love his expectations and imaginations of the gods, and yet…and yet at this moment, the clear, steady look Efanor had, the color high in his face, recalled the impish brother who had helped filch sweets from the banquet trays, the brother who had hidden with him in a haystack, frustrating the captain of the Dragon Guard.

  “So what if I were to be so gullible as to write to him,”

  Efanor asked, “as if I believed every word, and considered his offer?”

  There was the Efanor who had conspired with him, the Efanor his bride had never met, in the few months of a new kingship. There was his brother. Cefwyn found himself on the one hand all but breaking into a grin.

  “That would set the fox in the henhouse,” Idrys had said, who had seen that other Efanor, often…while Ninévrisë sat amazed.

  “Ryssand might think twice about what he has and what he might lose,” Efanor said.

  “He might think twice and three times,” Ninévrisë said, “but Artisane is a wicked girl. Truly, truly I counsel against this.”

  Cefwyn moved his hand to hers. “I would not countenance it,” he said to Efanor, “for one reason: the affront she paid Nevris, whether young Artisane contrived it or whether she only said what her father dictated. I can’t forgive that, or bring her into Nevris’ presence, not for any advantage. Nor will I sacrifice my brother’s happiness.”

  “Oh, never a qualm for me, brother. That Her Grace can’t forgive the lady…that’s a difficulty.”

  “If I could assure the troops to save my land and my lord’s good heart,” Ninévrisë said, “I’d kiss her and forgive in full view of the court. I account her that little. But for you, dear Efanor, my dear friend, you

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  have a good heart; too good. For your own sake, don’t make light of it. The woman is a serpent, and she has a sting. Gods forbid, that you might ever carry through such a marriage.”

  “As for me,” Efanor said, with a ruddy color to the roots of his hair, “my reputation is largely deserved: women have never moved me to the extent…” Efanor’s voice trailed off, but Cefwyn had no reticence.

  “You are not tempted to follow me,” Cefwyn said, “in my previous folly.”

  “I could remain lastingly indifferent to the lady, and, being good Quinalt, she is chaste.”

  Ninévrisë laid her hand on Efanor’s sleeve. “No. Never throw away love.”

  “I’m half a monk,” Efanor said, “don’t they say so? What should I lose? And she’s young. She ma
y learn to be pleasant.”

  “Pleasant!” Cefwyn said, for he could bear no more.

  Efanor gave him one of those glass-clear looks in his turn, innocent as Tristen’s eyes at this challenge to his priests and his holy aspirations. “Kings and princes marry for policy, not love. Would you not have married Luriel, if there were no other prospect? The girl is young, and Quinalt at least in observance, and by the gods’ grace the true faith might give us something in common. Ryssand’s offered. He cannot object to being taken up on it.”

  “Gods, what a recommendation of a bride. I’ll not have the brother I love fling himself between me and Ryssand’s ambition.”

  “I’d give her no heir,” Efanor said with quiet assurance. “And I assure you’t would be as good as a nunnery and no inconvenience to me. My life is simple…monastic, in most points. It can remain so. And

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  we only speak of responding favorably to Ryssand’s offer…not of the actual marriage. Take Luriel as an example. No marriage resulted.”

  He had never imagined such cold depth under Efanor’s calm good humor: somehow, in some way, Ryssand had stirred Efanor’s absolute detestation. Efanor had all but drawn in his defense and Ninévrisë’s, and while Efanor would not take up the sword with any good cheer, this was indeed the brother he knew, who had planned at least half the forays of their childhood…and who had become his enemy when Efanor had believed him guilty of sedition.

  Now it was Ryssand who had made Efanor angry. And monkish Efanor might style himself, but he was Marhanen.

  “I will countenance a courtship,” Cefwyn said, “but never a marriage. I will find fault with it. I’ll find some flaw in any arrangement.”

  “As they did,” Ninévrisë said. “And yet we married.”

  “Because we willed to marry, as gods know Efanor has no such desire. Gods. Gods. Idrys, you’ve been silent. What say you?”

  “That nothing Ryssand plans favors anyone but Ryssand.

  But I’m not sure he’s planned His Highness’s acceptance. That will worry him.”

  “Write,” Cefwyn said to Efanor, “and I shall. His own damnable arrogance may lead him to believe we think it a good idea. But gods save us, Nevris, if that baggage ever affronts you in the remotest…I’ll have her head and her father’s.”

  “That baggage is feared, mark me. Cleisynde fears her, as much as follows her. But Luriel—”

  “Luriel hates her cousin, and always has.”

  “Luriel is new-crowned queen of all eyes,”

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  Ninévrisë said, “and is also clever, but not wise; and there have been great changes since Artisane left. If Artisane returns, when Luriel’s all a-flurry over Panys and a prospect of her grand wedding, and all of us stitching on Luriel’s wedding gown, oh, now there’s the fox and the weasel in the same sack, with the neck tied.”

  He had had small understanding of the women’s court, which he had thought of as sheep without a shepherd since Efanor’s mother’s death. Weasels in a sack seemed more apt since Ninévrisë’s ascendancy.

  And he gave what Ninévrisë said his careful consideration, for while Artisane and Luriel led no troops, wielded no swords, nor had good Quinalt ladies a voice in the councils of state, a quarrel between the niece of Murandys and the daughter of Ryssand would unsettle the relationship between those two houses. And that relationship, however unholy their recent acts, was the rock on which the north was built.

  It was also the reef on which the kingdom might shipwreck itself for good and all. Quarrels in the women’s court where the king could not directly intervene had their own potency.

  “If Luriel gained a firm rule over Artisane,” Cefwyn said, “the whole kingdom would be the safer. But neither the fox nor the weasel will threaten you, Nevris, and that I swear. There is one intervention I can make in your secret realm upstairs, and that is to see Luriel in one convent and Artisane in another at the other end of Ylesuin if ever you find their quarrels tiresome.

  You may not be queen of Ylesuin, but by the blessed gods the ladies of this court will know they have you to please, and none other.—So likewise for your peace, brother. I swear it, quite, quite solemnly.”

  “So shall we disturb Ryssand’s?” Efanor asked with—Cefwyn could all but see it—the old sparkle in

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  the eye and the old flare of the nostril that meant Efanor had decided and was bent on the deed.

  “Be careful,” Ninévrisë wished them both, and from Idrys, that dark eminence: “Hear her. Very carefully hear her, my lord king.”

  By evening of an easy ride, Tristen at Cevulirn’s side came in sight of the river and of the camp, orderly rows of tents beneath their high vantage on the hill: there was one of the several bridges that led into Amefel…or its pylons and framing, for the deck was stripped of planking and that planking stored on this side of the river in sections, under guard. There was the camp, long-established with several sheds and a small company of guards, that had maintained their guard over the bridge before Anwyll had come here. Now the sheds that must have been all the camp were swallowed up in the brown and gray tenting that spread along the shore, and the fires which before now must have been modest and few sent up a blue haze of smoke which hung low above the water.

  There, too, across the river, was their first view of Elwynor, a shore that, far from being ominous, looked very like their own, with snowy low hills and wooded crests. There, Tristen said to himself, there was Ninévrisë’s kingdom. Ilefínian, under siege, lay far away over the hills. The dark Lenúalim, which had lapped like an old serpent about the stones of Ynefel in the spring and summer, ran here as a broad, cold river, sided by ice.

  They rode down toward the camp in a light sifting of snow from the heavens. Banners unfurled, and showed to the camp who had come, which sent the soldiers scrambling to their feet.

  Men ran, and the camp answered with a brisk and anxious welcome.

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  Captain Anwyll, only just arrived himself, came half-dressed from the largest tent to meet them in the main aisle of the camp.

  “Your lordships,” Anwyll said, looking up at them on their horses. Anwyll’s breath steamed in small, hurried puffs. “Is there trouble?”

  “No. Only a visitor to see the camp,” Tristen said, for he had no complaint of what he saw. “His Grace of Ivanor has come to see our situation.”

  “Honored,” Anwyll said, though most likely, Tristen thought, their visit was not entirely welcome tonight, while order was not complete; Anwyll still looked distressed and caught at a loss. But he sent for a cloak and his coat and showed them about his small command.

  “I’d see the bridge,” Cevulirn said, “the captain’s good grace extending that far.”

  Anwyll cast Tristen a glance as if to see was there contradiction, and receiving nothing contrary, led them to the bridgehead, where great timbers stood skeletal against the wintry sunset and the empty pylons stood tied by timbers, which alone lent the structure strength.

  “There’s some concern about the spring flood,” Anwyll said,

  “We’ve the planking under guard; I’m told we should cross-brace when the floods come if the decking’s not in place by then.”

  If they lost pylons or decking, they could not cross without considerable delay and difficulty; and Tasmôrden would very much aim at that destruction if he could spare the men from his siege: the bridges might well be his next attack.

  “By no means must we let the bridges go,” he said. Anwyll was shivering, and sneezed in reply. “Be well,” he said, and Anwyll blessed himself with a worried look. “We should go where it’s warm,” Tristen said, and on their walk back to the center of camp observed Anwyll pressing a hand to his heart, where no few soldiers

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  wore their Quinalt amulets, or Teranthine ones, beneath their coats, and so Anwyll had had, on a gold chain.

&nbs
p; But worried or not, Anwyll ceased the small cough that had troubled him on their walk to the bridge, and there were no more sneezes.

  Anwyll’s tent was a spare, snug, and modest affair, with a forechamber large enough for a small chart table and field chairs, such as assembled out of pegs and parts. Twilight was deep, and the lighting of lanterns made a fair contribution to the pungent air, the smoke, and the warmth in the place…a smell that conjured other tents, and the battle at the end of summer…not, curiously, an unpleasant stench, that of oil and leather and horses, and the nearby river, only one that carried the implication of weapons advanced, battles possible, the enemy opposed.

  Ale added its own aroma, ale provided from Anwyll’s own store; and at that table and in Cevulirn’s company, Tristen provided the news he had, the confirmation of Drusenan as Lord Bryn.

  To the appointment of a lord of Bryn, Anwyll said nothing, nor likely knew whether Drusenan was good or otherwise; but to the mention of fugitives at Modeyneth, he frowned, doubtless not pleased to have Elwynim between him and his capital; and chagrined, it was likely, to have marched his force of elite Guard past a band of Elwynim without knowing they were there.

  It was a fault. Tristen neglected, however, to mention it.

  “I’ve moved these folk over to Althalen, across the hills,”

  Tristen said, “to have them safe within walls and not let them gather in numbers on this road.”

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  “To Althalen,” Anwyll echoed, in mild dismay.

  “Women and young children. But with the siege of Ilefínian there may be more seeking to cross.”

  “And what shall we do with them?”

  “Let any cross who will cross,” Tristen said, “if they swear to Her Grace.”

  “Armed troops as well?”

  “If they’ve Tasmôrden at their backs,” Cevulirn said dryly,

  “they’ll be in a considerable hurry, and reluctant to discuss.

  And very difficult it will be to sort out Tasmôrden’s men from the rest.”