Fortress of Owls

by C. J. Cherryh

  She might be some sober use when she had settled in as a married lady, for as often as not her shafts of wit flew at her uncle, for now that she was marrying well, she gained a voice, and her uncle had to worry whether Luriel the featherwit had any interests beyond finery.

  “She’s likely gathering a fine dowry from her uncle,” Ninévrisë

  remarked, “just from her silence. One wonders what she knows.”

  “Murandys has approached Panys seeking a conference,”

  Cefwyn said, holding her close, the two of them in night robes, and the fire crackling and friendly. “But Lord Maudyn isn’t guesting with him. He’s staying at the river in his tent until the wedding, not even coming to the capital. Gods send me a dozen like Lord Panys.”

  The damned carts had come home, thank the gods, undamaged, not mired on the roads or lost in snow-drifts…with a discontent lot of carters complaining of the high-handedness of the duke of Amefel, true, but Idrys had been ready for them, this time. With no more than a day’s sojourn in the town, the discontent carters had gone on to Lord Maudyn.

  So the offended carters, ousted prematurely from the joys of Guelemara, surely spread rumors among the troops. But the guardsmen stationed there had the sobering sight of the river before them, and would surely find

  FORTRESS OF OWLS / 447

  no fault in Tristen for making strong preparations in the south…not when they faced the eerily snowy shore of Elwynor just a wooden span away from their fair-weather side. And they would not fault a little friendly wizard-work in the distant south, when sorcery was a constantly rumored threat from across the river. Many of them were veterans, and the carters themselves might sing a different tune when the veteran guardsmen told their Midwinter tales.

  Meanwhile, too, another simmering stew, the negotiations between Efanor and Corswyndam of Ryssand meandered on, and as yet Efanor signed no document. Ryssand was still aghast, perhaps, not having expected his proposal to be seriously considered…let alone accepted. More, there was the queasiness of a wedding preparation during an official mourning: Ryssand was high enough to set convention aside; Efanor certainly could…but by now Artisane had launched her own campaign, sure she would come back to court in all her glory.

  Efanor had not broken to the lady the news that he had a fine estate wanting a lady’s hand, oh, at the remote end of Guelessar.

  And in genuine courtesy to Luriel’s moment, they delayed the official announcement…but now with couriers rushing back and forth, necessarily through Murandys, Murandys ached to know what was in the messages…and evidently Ryssand had held Murandys, his old ally, from knowing anything.

  “Do you suppose Ryssand holds Prichwarrin responsible for his son?” Ninévrisë wondered quietly.

  “I’ve wondered, too. Prichwarrin urged it too far. It was Brugan’s stupidity, no mending that, but Prichwarrin didn’t take strong enough action. It wouldn’t grieve me if those two fell out.”

  He asked Idrys, on the following day, whether there was any hint of breach.

  448 / C. J. CHERRYH

  “Murandys sends home often,” Idrys said, “but I’ve no report he’s receiving messages from Ryssand. He seems genuinely concerned, and has a worried look when anyone mentions priests. This is a man who may not know as much as we do.”

  “Perhaps after the wedding he’ll seek Ryssand out.”

  “Leaving his niece unwatched, and no presence in court?”

  Idrys said. “No, my lord king. I very much doubt it.”

  His Reverence of Amefel, meanwhile, being an old man, had had a taking, a serious crisis of health—Idrys swore his innocence. But His Reverence had had a falling spell, and retired into an apartment within the Quinaltine, spending his time between his bed, his privy, and his prayers for his benighted province.

  The controversy and the division was by no means healed.

  Efanor himself had argued vehemently with Ryssand’s priest at a most uncomfortable state dinner, a mincing of doctrine and dogma at that table that Cefwyn hoped not to see repeated.

  There was no profit in it, none: neither Efanor nor the priest emerged converted, the damned petticoats figured in the issue, and everyone’s digestion suffered.

  “Silence this damned doctrinal nonsense!” Cefwyn had insisted to the Holy Father’s face, utterly out of patience, and the result, the very next morning, was a hesitant, rambling homily from the Holy Father on the subject of unity in the state, a discourse that made no sense, seeming to court all sides…a parable of brothers and the healing of breaches and somehow off to the rights of a father to order his family and a king to order the state and a husband his wife.

  “Damned useless,” Cefwyn said to Idrys in his apartments after services. “Is this his word against that FORTRESS OF OWLS / 449

  damned priest wandering the taverns? He’s a father and that priest—what’s his name—is some errant son? Or a wife? Fetch me Sulriggan. No, tell Sulriggan bring His Holiness and I’ll talk to him. Good gods, can’t the man come to a point, say yea or nay, not both in the same sermon?”

  “And what more is my lord king, but yea and nay regarding this priest that’s preaching sedition? I still advise my lord—”

  “Dead priests are trouble, master crow, of a sort even you stick at, don’t deny it. Now the patriarch of Amefel’s taken residency in the Quinaltine, where you can’t reach him, save his bad stomach.”

  “Unhappy man,” said Idrys, long-faced. “And holy men have been known to vanish. It’s a known aspect of holiness.”

  “For shame.”

  “For a long reign, my lord king. I’ll be far plainer than His Holiness. Kill this priest.”

  Cefwyn looked long and soberly at his Lord Commander, saying to himself he had just asked for the hard truth, asking himself whether he was not a fool for sticking at this one deft, swift act, that might, in fact, save other lives.

  But there was, beyond his own scruples against murder, the prospect of outright disaster in any miscarriage of Idrys’ proposal.

  “I have observed this priest meet with those who meet with Murandys and Ryssand,” Idrys said. “Often. I’m not sure there’s a content beyond the offices of priests, but the fact remains: this priest has their patronage, and if messages do flow between Ryssand and Murandys to which we have no access, there is a conduit for them. The man’s no dullard, no wide-eyed believer, and he has far too sleek a look for a man that sleeps in hedgerows.”

  450 / C. J. CHERRYH

  “You have suspicions of Ryssand, do you? Is he playing two games?”

  “Oh, of suspicions of Lord Corswyndam I have full store and several wagons over; of substance, there is only that one priest I know has his ear, and the ears of a half a score of the barefoot and hair-shirt sort, the ones who plague the streets. But what this one might sing if I laid hand to him could be valuable. If we can come at Ryssand that way, His Highness needn’t marry to rein Ryssand in. If we can find a cause to shorten Ryssand by a head—gain to the whole kingdom.”

  It was a tempting thought. But he dared not. Would not. “I am not my grandfather. And, gods, if something went wrong—”

  “Your grandfather lived to die in bed, his son with two sons and the kingdom secure. I ask instead of acting because I will not trample on policy. I serve my king; I beg to serve him well.”

  Idrys chided him and provoked him humorously on many things. This time there was no humor, no mask. “You’re saying I’m a fool to let Ryssand live. What need to justify it, if I were my grandfather?”

  “I say if Ryssand had died before this, you’d have no priest stirring up resentments in the populace. Now, lo! the priest. If my lord king fears to become his grandfather, let him remember his royal father failed to be rid of Heryn Aswydd, and look how that tree grew.”

  It was not a pleasant memory. Idrys was telling him what was the more prudent course. Profitable if Efanor could somehow convert Ryssand’s interests to the Crown’s interests, for Ryssand’s talents and resourc
es were formidable; but that still left him with Ryssand for company, and Ryssand’s narrow doctrine to battle for all the years of his reign…while he hoped to settle a lasting peace with Ninévrisë’s kingdom. The FORTRESS OF OWLS / 451

  Elwynim would never become Quinalt, and it was a far leap to think he could bring Ryssand away from his doctrinist allies, on that score. When he looked that far, he saw all manner of trouble.

  But that was far, far downstream from where they stood.

  “If I do this,” he said, “we risk dividing Ylesuin. We risk years of unrest. We risk making a holy martyr, in this priest, and that is nothing we can sweep away. My grandfather, with all his faults, avoided martyrs.”

  “What to do is Your Majesty’s concern. How, I consider is mine. But the harm grows, day by day.”

  “Ryssand’s no easy horse to ride. There’s no one I could set in that saddle but Lord Ryssand, precisely because he is a narrow, provincial doctrinist like every other man in Ryssand. I’ve thought about my choices. I detest the man. We’re well rid of that son of his. But what do I set in his place, if not my brother, gods help him! And I’ll postpone that day at least until there is a wedding.”

  “Disarm him of this priest.”

  “If not this one, there’ll be another one.”

  “Oh, aye, my lord king, and if we down one of Tasmôrden’s men, there’ll be another. Shall we forbear to fight Tasmôrden?”

  “You know it’s not the same.”

  “Be rid of this one. And the next. And the next. Eventually there will be a dearth of Ryssandish priests.”

  “And enough anger to breed there and fester. Words deal best with words.”

  “Ah. Another of the Holy Father’s sermons?”

  He let go a breath, beaten down by the mere memory of tedium and indirection.

  “Give me leave,” Idrys said briskly. “And the matter is done by evening.”

  452 / C. J. CHERRYH

  “And the town stirred up to a froth.”

  “A lack of a priest isn’t noisy.”

  It was ever so tempting: his piety, such as it was, halfway argued him toward it, as the safest course for the peace, and all the lives he held in his hands. But he had Luriel’s public show approaching, on which there would be crowds, tinder for a spark, and that rode his thoughts, inescapable.

  “I want the town quiet. I want Luriel safely wedded and bedded and no untoward event to undo that alliance. When Murandys has Panys for a bedfellow, and we have Panys reporting to us… then we can consider measures.”

  “I fear I’ve not told you everything, my lord king.”

  Cefwyn drew a lengthy breath and sank, somewhat, against the back of his chair, Idrys black-armored and seeming by now like an implacable fixture of his office. “Sit, damn you, crow.

  My neck aches from looking at you. What morsel have you saved for dessert?”

  “Cuthan, my lord king.” Idrys reluctantly settled his black-armored body onto a frail, brocaded chair. “The priest is a straightforward matter. Lord Cuthan, I fear, is not.”

  “Cuthan.”

  “Your Majesty may remember him…the one Tristen exiled, that vain old scoundrel…”

  “Out on it! I know who Cuthan is and where he was and where his cursed ancestors slept, in their own beds and out! I know Tristen exiled him, and I know he’s in Elwynor.”

  “He is not in Elwynor, my lord king.”

  “Where, then? Dare I guess?”

  “Ryssand?”

  “Damn.”

  “Ryssand is honest in one thing,” Idrys said, “that he bears a father’s grief for a son and heir. That, mar FORTRESS OF OWLS / 453

  riage with His Highness or no, he will never relinquish…not greed, not ambition, not the promise that his line might weave itself into the Marhanens can ever erase the matter of his son.”

  “His one virtue and more inconvenient than his sins. Now he has Cuthan. And Parsynan. What a merry court!”

  “I’ve not told His Highness yet. What I wonder is how he passed through all of Elwynor and its weather and all the way to Ryssand.”

  “A rowboat. We’re not speaking of a regiment.”

  “Yet my lord king knows the man is old, in no robust health.

  How did he bear the snow, the ice, the pillaging army, if nothing else? A very hardy man, or a very lucky, if he did that alone.”

  “Damn. Twice damn. Tasmôrden!”

  “Exactly so. I fear Cuthan may be very close to Tasmôrden.

  He may bear a message, or gather one.”

  All of a sudden the depth of Idrys’ knowledge suggested a fearsomely deep involvement in Ryssand, volatile as it was, dangerous as the spying was—and fruitful as it proved.

  “How did you learn this?”

  “Efanor’s messenger.”

  “Efanor’s messenger. Crow, it’s my brother’s name, his reputation…his safety, for that matter—”

  Idrys, rarely abashed, looked at him with a half-veiled effrontery, defense in every line. “Your Majesty, you once asked whom I served, your father, or you. And where there was a choice of loyalties, your father is in his tomb, and I have only one lord, as does His Highness.”

  “So you insinuated a spy into Ryssand, a spy wearing my brother’s colors.”

  “Briefly.”

  “Do you know the furor if he were found? Efanor is honorable to a fault!”

  454 / C. J. CHERRYH

  “Very much to a fault. My lord king, but some risks are worth taking, and spies within Ryssand are hard come by.”

  “Wearing my brother’s crest, good loving gods…I’d like to know where else you have them.—No! Don’t tell me! I’ve become worse at lying than Tristen is.”

  “I fear you were never good at it. It’s Tristen who’s become adept in the art.”

  He was not certain for a moment it was no jest. But Idrys’

  expression advised him the matter was serious.

  “You don’t fault him,” Cefwyn said. There seemed a fist still clenched about his heart. “You don’t tell me he’s deceived me.

  This is my friend, damn you! You’ve spoken against him before, and you’ve been wrong.”

  Idrys gave a rare and rueful laugh. “Lord Tristen is extremely canny about disposing my spies at distance from him. As a result, I have not a single man in Henas’amef. He’s sent them all to the river, beginning with Anwyll. I have better intelligence of Ryssand than of His Grace of Amefel.”

  “And what do your spies learn, beyond his sins at Althalen and his wall-building?”

  “His fortification of the province? His permissions to the witches to flourish? His countenancing of Sihhë emblems, spells and charms openly displayed in the market?” Idrys held up fingers and ticked off the points, one by one. “His banishment of Guelen Guard, his appropriation of Your Majesty’s carts and drivers, his holding of Parsynan’s goods in consequence—” Idrys began the tally on the left hand. “His alienation of the Amefin patriarch, his banishment of an Amefin earl old as the hills in his title…”

  “All these things he confesses. Justify your spies, master crow.

  I defy you to report to me one thing Tristen hasn’t freely owned.”

  FORTRESS OF OWLS / 455

  “He’s holding winterfeast and invited all the lords of the south to come and camp under arms, for, one suspects, some use besides a winter hunt. The preparation is for a host as many as took the field at Lewenbrook.”

  He forgot to breathe.

  It was, on the other hand, exactly the sort of feckless doing he could always expect of Tristen—and it was not aimed at him. There was nothing of Ryssand’s poison in what Tristen did. Rather it was Tristen’s doing what his king could not do…and so secretly it had taken Idrys this long to know it.

  “He’s doing what I did this summer. He’s gathering his allies about him, people he well likes…men who like him. He’s reknitting the damned southern alliance, is what he’s doing…and gods save him for the effort! Wh
at I can’t, he does, and I wish him success. I wish him every success.”

  “But it will provoke just a small bit of comment among the northern barons, will it not? He’s told Anwyll prepare a landing for boats bearing grain. An immense amount of grain, out of Casmyndan.”

  “He’s importing grain? I had to show him the use of a penny this autumn, for the gods’ good sake.”

  “Well, and made him lord of Amefel, my lord king, which I do recall counseling you was a—”

  “You agreed it was a good idea.”

  “I agreed he would be a most uncommon lord of Amefel, and perhaps it was a safe direction for him, considering the Elwynim prophecy.”

  “Damn the Elwynim prophecy! If he wants to be king in Amefel, between the two of us—” He drew a deep breath, his heart still laboring from the realization of new complications in all his plans. “Between the two of us and the walls, master crow, if he would be High King at Althalen and rule the damn province between me and

  456 / C. J. CHERRYH

  Nevris’ kingdom, I’d grant it. The Aswydds styled themselves aethelings.”

  “So does he.”

  “When?”

  “That the first night, in the oath of Crissand of Meiden, my lord king, who is also Aswydd, may I say? And who swore to him as aetheling. And may I say that that small rumor is starting to make the rounds of the taverns? The word came out of Amefel, I daresay.”

  “Like Cuthan.”

  “Never forgetting that now troublesome man. And now Ryssand’s priest knows.”

  “Damn this zealot priest—what is his name?”

  “Udryn, my lord king. Chief of them, at least. And while Your Majesty has a very sensible desire to have the Lady Luriel’s wedding without incident—very many rumors may begin to make the same rounds, from the same lips, from the same source. Do you still bid me refrain from this priest?”

  “I want none of his crowd creating a commotion at the wedding. No. No blood. Just keep that priest out of the way.

  That’s all I ask. If the Holy Father can’t rein him in…see to him. Frighten him. That’s the best course. And don’t let him know who’s done it.”