Fortress of Owls

by C. J. Cherryh

  It was tormenting news, disaster, and yet nothing of substance to grasp, no word whether the town was afire or whether there was an arranged surrender, or what the fate of the defenders and the nobles there might be.

  “Rest for the messenger,” Cefwyn said. He had his standard of what ought to be provided for men and horses that bore the king’s messages, and his pages knew what to do for any such man. “Fetch Annas.”

  “Your Majesty,” it was, and: “Yes, Your Majesty,”

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  and all the world near him moved to comply; but nothing in his power could provide his lady better news, and what use then was it, but the ordering of armies that could bring her no better result?

  “We knew it would come,” was all he found to say to her, with a stone weighing in the pit of his own stomach.

  “We knew it would come,” she agreed, and turned and quietly dismissed her maids on her own authority. “See to the messenger yourselves,” she bade them, “in my name. And tell Dame Margolis.”

  In tell Dame Margolis was every order that needed be made in Ninévrisë’s court…as fetch Annas summed up all his staff could do. The news would make the transit to the court at large, the comfort of courtiers and true servants would wrap them about with such sympathy as courtiers and lifelong servants could offer. At least the gossip that spread would have the solid heart of truth with those two in charge of dispersing it.

  But the Regent of Elwynor would stand as straight and strong as the king of Ylesuin stood, and not be coddled or kissed on the brow by her husband, even before the Lord Commander.

  “Is that all we know?” Cefwyn asked of Idrys as the door shut and by the maids’ departure left them a more warlike, more forceful assembly.

  “Unhappily, no more than the man told,” Idrys said, “but more information is already on the road here, I’m well certain we can rely on Lord Maudyn for that. There’s some comfort in what the message didn’t say: no force near the river, no signal of wider war coming on us. The weather’s been hard, by reports. Nothing will move down those roads to the bridges.”

  “Thank the gods Amefel isn’t in revolt at the moment,” Cefwyn said. “Well-done of Tristen. Well-done, at least on that frontier.”

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  There was now urgent need, however, to move troops west, to the river, in greater numbers, and the transport was stalled in Amefel.

  And to Amefel, the thought came to him, the fugitives of Ilefínian were very likely to come, unsettling that province and appealing to the softest heart and most generous hand in his kingdom for shelter and help. That, too, was Tristen’s nature, and it was damned dangerous…almost as sure as a rebellion for drawing trouble into the province that was Ylesuin’s most vulnerable and volatile border with Elwynor.

  “We’ll have no choice but wait for more news,” Cefwyn said.

  “But we will move the three reserve units into position at the river.” With a scarcity of carts and drivers, the vast weight of canvas necessary for a winter camp was going to move very much slower than he wished, and therefore men who relied on those tents would not move up to their posts except at the pace of their few carts.

  Damn, he thought, and then, on his recent thoughts and his praise of Tristen for steadying the province, gave a little, a very little momentary consideration that where Tristen was, wizardry was, too…far more than in the person of Emuin. Nothing untoward would happen there, that Tristen could prevent.

  There followed a very small and more fearful thought that the hole in the Quinalt roof was not coincidence and the withholding of those carts was not coincidence, either. He knew it was never Tristen’s intent to hamper the defense in the north. Tristen might well have gotten wind of the impending events in Elwynor, too; but the timing of it all had the queasy feeling of wizard-work, all of it moving the same direction, a tightening noose of contrary events.

  He knew, for all the affairs of Ylesuin, a moment of panic fear, a realization that all the impersonal lines on 296 / C. J. CHERRYH

  maps and charts were places, and the people in them were engaged in murdering one another at this very moment in a mad, guideless slide toward events he did not wholly govern and which those maps on his desk yonder no longer adequately predicted.

  They were on the slope and sliding toward war, but even who was on the slope with them was difficult to say.

  Difficult to say, too, who had pushed, or whether anyone remained safe and secure and master of all that had happened above them. Tristen’s dark master of Marna Wood, this Hasufin Heltain, this ill-omened ghost, as Tristen described him—devil, as the Quinalt insisted—was defeated and dispelled at Lewenbrook, his designs all broken, and he or it was no longer in question. The banner of Ylesuin had carried that field.

  But Tristen had fought among them up to a point, and then something had happened which he did not well understand, or even clearly remember to this day. Darkness had shadowed the field, an eclipse of the light, night amid day; and so the sun sometimes was shadowed, and so wizards could predict it to the hour and day.

  But had something been in that darkness? It seemed that the heart of the threat had been not the rebel Aséyneddin, but Hasufin Heltain, and when Hasufin retreated and Tristen cast some sort of wizardry against him, then Aséyneddin had fallen and that war had ended, the darkness had lifted, and all the forces of the Elwynim rebel Aséyneddin had proved broken and scattered in the darkness. Light had come back on a ground covered with dead, many of them with no mark at all.

  A man who had fought at Lewenbrook had a good many strange things to account for, and memories even of men in charge of the field did not entirely

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  agree, not even for such simple things as how they had turned Aséyneddin’s force or ended up in the part of the field where they had seen the light break through. They could only say that in the dark and the confusion they had driven farther than they thought and won more than they expected.

  Yet…

  Yet none of it seemed quite stable, as if they had not quite deserved their good fortune and did not understand how they had gotten there.

  They had won, had they not? Yet here he stood with a bereaved wife and no less than Idrys saying there was little they could do.

  And if someone pushed them over the precipice toward another conflict, with lightning striking the roof and Tristen driven in apparent retreat…still, they had won the last encounter.

  Had they not?

  And would they not win against whatever lesser wizard Tasmôrden dragged out of the bushes?

  Would they not?

  Damn the Quinalt, whose fear of wizardry gave him no better advice than to avoid magic…when the whole of the Quinaltine combined could do nothing of the sort Tristen had done on that field, and nothing of the sort Tristen could do again.

  And damn the Quinalt twice: they had sent Tristen to Amefel, even if it was his good design, and done only in time to avert the whole province rising up in arms.

  Was that not good fortune…save his carts, which the weather would not let them take across the bridges anyway?

  So here they were…committed, and before the winter forced the siege to a fruitless end; and before any white miracle of the gods could intervene to save

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  Ninévrisë’s capital. It was not contrary to their unhappy predictions, at least…none of them had held out infallible hope.

  He sent Idrys and Annas away with orders. And only when they stood alone did Ninévrisë allow tears to fall, and only a few of them.

  “He will not hold it,” was all he could say to her. At least without witnesses he could gather the Regent of Elwynor in his arms and hold her close against his heart.

  “I have never wished I had wizardry,” Ninévrisë said, hands clenched on his sleeves. “Until now. Now I wish it, oh, gods, I wish it!”

  “Don’t,” he said, frightened, for she knew what she wished for, and the co
st of what she wished, and reached after it as a man might grasp after a sword within his reach…very much within his reach; and no swordmaster, no Emuin, no Tristen to restrain her. He touched her face, fingers trembling with what he knew, he, a Man and only a man, and having no such gift himself. He took her fine-boned fist and tried to gain her attention. “Don’t. I know you can. I believe you can. You can go where I can’t follow, and do what I can’t undo, being your father’s daughter. I know. I know what you do have, I’ve never been deceived, and if Emuin were here…gods, if Tristen were here, he’d tell you to be careful what you wish.”

  She gazed at him, truly at him, as if she had heard Tristen say it himself, in just those words. Then she grew calmer in his arms. She reached up and laid fingers on his lips, as if asking silence, peace, patience. The tears had spilled and left their traces on her cheeks in the white, snowy light from the window, and all the world seemed to hold a painful breath.

  “I love you,” she said. “I’ll love you, forever and always. That says all.”

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  “It will always say all. And they won’t win, Nevris. They won’t win.”

  “But oh, my friends, all my friends…my family…my home and my people…”

  “I know.” He set his arms about her, let her rest her head against his shoulder, and she heaved a great, heartbroken sigh with a little shudder after. “Gods save them. We’ll go. We’ll take the town. We’ll have justice.”

  If he had gone to Elwynor in pursuit of Tasmôrden at summer’s end, if he had not insisted on dealing with his own court, his father’s court, and all the old men, believing he would have loyalty from men who had hoped he would never be king.

  Folly, he could say now: the might of Ylesuin had been readier then than it was now, if he had only taken the south on to a new phase of the war, and damned the opinions of the old men who supported the throne in the north. If even two or three of the midlands barons had come behind him and gathered themselves for war along with the southern lords, they might have crossed the river, carried through to the capital…he had had Tristen with him, for the gods’ sakes.

  But what had he done with Tristen’s help? Set it aside. Tried to silence him for fear of his setting northern noses out of joint.

  Kept him out of view instead of using his help. And not demanded Emuin come down out of his tower and forewarn him. He had delayed for deliberations with men he had thought reliable and necessary and respected their arguments and their long service to his father, telling himself that their opposition to him had ended when he took the crown. Well now he had the consequence of it.

  Yet crossing the river thus and relying on Tristen’s help with Althalen’s black banners flying would have offended the north, scandalized the Quinalt, alienated

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  the commons, and that might have led to disaster and weakened Ylesuin, on whose stability all hope of peace rested…there was that truth. There was that.

  Yet what might he have made of Ylesuin if he had not stopped at Lewenbrook and not forbidden magic and never come home to Guelemara until he had come as High King and husband of Elwynor?

  What might he and Ninévrisë have become with the strength he had had in his hands in those few days? Everything he had done, he had done to get a legal, sanctified, recognized wedding that would secure an unquestioned succession, sworn to by the Quinalt and legally incontestable.

  And, doing that, he had given Ninévrisë no way to win him and his aid except to cross every hurdle he set her. What else was she to do, having no army, having nothing but a promised alliance with him on condition of their marriage?

  He owed her better, he thought, holding her close and cherished within his arms. Damn Tasmôrden and damn Ryssand and his allies, and damn his own mistaken trust in his own barons, but he owed her far, far better than this.

  C H A P T E R 6

  The baskets had disappeared from master Emuin’s stairs long since—Tassand’s managing—and Tristen left his guard below as he climbed up and up the spiral stairway on this day after his arrival home.

  A door opened above before he could reach it, letting out not daylight this time, but warmth and candle glow, and a rapidly moving boy…who had not expected to see him there, face on a level with his feet. Paisi came to an abrupt halt and tried to make himself very small against the wall of the landing.

  “M’lor’,” Paisi whispered, as Tristen climbed up to stand there, far taller than Paisi.

  “Paisi,” Tristen said. “I trust master Emuin is in.”

  “Oh, that ’e is, m’lor’, an’ ’is servant sent me after wood an’

  salt, which I’m doin’, m’lor’, fast as I can.”

  “Other servants from the yard will carry the wood up for you, understand. You have only to ask them. The salt you must manage. Cook’s staff will not come up these steps. They complain of ghosts.”

  “Yes, m’lor’.” A deep, deep bow, and a wide-eyed, fearful stare. “Yes, m’lor’, an’ I will, m’lor’.”

  “Emuin won’t harm you.”

  Paisi seemed to have lost all powers of speech. He had only added a good coat to his ragged shirt and 302 / C. J. CHERRYH

  worn boots to his bare feet; but he had had a bath, despite his uncombed and unclipped look.

  “Didn’t I send you to the guard and to Tassand,” Tristen asked on that sharper look in the imperfect light, “and is this the dress they gave you?”

  “I been i’ the market, m’lor’, an’ beggin’ Your Grace’s pardon, listenin’ as ye said, so I kep’ the clothes, as they’d point at me if I was in a fine new coat.”

  There was a small disturbance of the gray space, a gifted boy trying to become invisible, as, in those clothes, he looked very much the boy he had always been…except a fine new coat.

  “Go, do what he asks,” Tristen said, not willing to deny master Emuin’s instructions, whatever they might be, and not willing to plumb the convolutions of Paisi’s reasons this morning. He had far more serious matters to deal with.

  Paisi ran past him, and Tristen stepped up into the doorway of a tower room in far better order than last he had seen it.

  “Good morning,” Emuin said from the hearthside. Emuin sat on a low stool, stirring a pot and not looking at him, but the faint touch of wit was there, in the gray space, and it was the same as a glance. Tristen took it so.

  “So Cevulirn is riding south,” Emuin said, “leaving his guard at the river, and you have made your agreements for Bryn, for the raising of a wall, and for the settling of a band of fugitives at the old ruins.”

  “To Cefwyn’s good. Do you say otherwise?”

  “Not I,” Emuin said. “No.”

  It was always the same reply, whether a refusal or a denial of objection always unclear. Emuin never rose quite as far as agreeing with his choices, and this refusal to contradict him was as halfhearted.

  “I have ordered the watch fires ready,” Tristen said, FORTRESS OF OWLS / 303

  coming to stand over the old wizard. “Which is a great hardship on the men that keep them. Consequently I wish all bad weather north of the river. I could reach Cevulirn otherwise, but it seemed better to use the fires, and to extend them to the view of Lanfarnesse, Olmern, and Imor.”

  Emuin nodded.

  “Was that wrong?” Tristen asked. “Is it wrong?”

  Emuin gave a shrug and never abated his stirring. Whether it was a spell or breakfast was unclear by the pot’s sluggish white bubbling. It smelled like porridge.

  “I’m sure I don’t weep for Tasmôrden’s discomfort,” Emuin said. “It’s no concern of mine, and none of my doing.”

  He could lose his temper entirely at this resumed silence.

  Almost. But Mauryl had taught him patience above all things, and he gathered it up in both hands.

  “Porridge?” he asked, a tactical change of subject.

  “Barley soup.”

  “How does the boy do?”

&nbs
p; “He’s a scoundrel,” Emuin said, “but deft. He won’t steal from me. As for why you’ve come—you wished His Reverence in Guelessar, as I recall. So to Guelessar he’s gone.”

  A shot from the flank. It was not entirely why he had come, but he knew he was in the wrong, and badly mistaken in the way he had dealt with the man. “Uwen couldn’t stop him.”

  “Short of your man arresting him or sitting on him, I doubt Uwen could have done anything to prevent him. What a cleric will, that he will, and a duke’s authority through his man or otherwise can’t stop him…short of lopping his head, that is, and that creates such ill will among the clergy.”

  “I’ve written to Cefwyn,” he said meekly.

  “Good. You should.”

  304 / C. J. CHERRYH

  “And to Idrys, more plainly.”

  “Regarding?”

  “Ilefínian.”

  “That…”

  “Ninévrisë’s people are dying, sir! Don’t you know that?

  That’s why I came.”

  Emuin looked at him from under his brows. “I say that because it was foredoomed to happen.—So, perhaps, was your settlement at Althalen. Oh, yes… that matter, while we’re at it.”

  “You might have advised me.”

  “Advised you, advised you…were you ignorant what Althalen means, and what it signifies to have that site of all sites tenanted again?”

  He drew a deep breath. No, he could not say he was ignorant of that.

  “Were you unaware?”

  “No, sir. But there was nowhere else I knew to put them.

  Here wasn’t safe.”

  “In that, you may be right.”

  “Am I wrong, sir?”

  “Wrong? I think it must have been fated, from the hour Cefwyn, the silly lad, handed you its banner and his friendship.

  What more could he think?”

  “Have I done wrong, sir?”

  “I don’t think right and wrong figure here. If Althalen was foredoomed to fall and foredoomed to rise, damned little he or I could do about it.”