Fortress of Ice

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Tell that time,” Otter said, snugging down against his arms, down on 2 8

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  the warm hearthstones, full as he was and close to bedtime. They were far from the matter of Aewyn and the apples now, and a tale, one he’d heard a hundred times, was much better at settling the day’s worry than thinking about Festival and apple theft, which he hoped would just work itself out without involving Paisi at all. “Tell it, about how you met Lord Tristen.”

  “Well,” Paisi said, gathering his knees into his arms, as they’d sat many a cold night on the rough masonwork of Gran’s fireside. One could all but see the fl ash of Gran’s spindle spinning beside them. “Well, it was like this.

  I was on the street, me a little younger ’n you, now—” That one detail had changed slowly over the years he had heard the tale. “And I see this young man walkin’ along, looking lost, ’im wi’ the look of a noble, but all dirty an’ lookin’ as if ’e’d slept rough. Now here’s a young lord a little drunk an’

  lookin’ for ’is next tavern, says I to meself, an’ maybe havin’ money left on

  ’is person, an’ maybe I can fi nd that purse. So I goes up to him, and ’e asks me if ’e can stay the night in my room, bein’ kind of odd - spoke when he does it. Well, now, I hadn’t any room, bein’ as Gran an’ I was livin’ in sheds and such as we could find ’em, up an’ down the town. I says, well, a gentleman like you c’n stay up to the Zeide, can’t ye? An’ he wants to know where that is. Well, now, any fool, even a drunk fool, knows the way to the Zeide hill, which is plainly uphill all over town, from the walls up, an’ at first I’d the notion to laugh at ’im, but ’e just looked at me in that way he had. So, says I, I’d guide him, says I, figurin’ there’d be coin somewheres—’e ’ad no purse about ’im, such as I’d been able to see first off, but some hides it, an’ the gate -

  guards up there, they’d pay ’andsome, if so happen this was some lord’s son in trouble, an’ more ’n that if so happen this odd young man were some out-land spy— the Elwynim was keen on doin’ in your da in those days, an’ now an’ again they tried. It wasn’t just thieves they had hangin’ at the town gate when your da was there. So I showed me visitor up to the gate, an’ the guards took ’im in an’ give me a penny for ’t. But it were that look ’e had, them gray, gray eyes as could look right through you, gentle as could be— I didn’t like what I’d done, an’ I thought an’ thought about it. But if ye ever get involved with ’is kind, ye never can untangle the threads, can ye? An’ ’e fell in with your da. So came the day I’d got meself in trouble, an’ ’e remembered, and ’e asked me to be ’is servant, which I was. And ’e give me ever’thing I needed, and enough for Gran a room, too, never a question, never asked what I did wi’ the last coin. ’Is hands could heal, they could, and ’e cured Gran, too, didn’t he, just easy as thinkin’?”

  Gran always nodded at this point in the story, so in Gran’s absence, he did, which went unnoticed. Paisi’s eyes were shut, remembering.

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  “And I was a servant to Master Emuin, after, which was the same, almost, as to him. And sometimes I slipped in me manners, but Lord Tristen,

  ’e forgive me, an’ ’e spoke for me. And after ’e forgive me, I felt different, at least about stealing from honest craftsfolk. Not about stealing from the priests, who was always talkin’ charity and who always ate well enough and had a roof over their own heads— them I never got on with; but I didn’t steal again, so’s when Lord Tristen left the town, and after Master Emuin left, I went to the Bryaltines an’ gave three good Amefin pennies at the shrine, to have it all paid, every penny I could ever remember stealing from the priests in the lean years. Lord Crissand set me and Gran up in the country— with you. With an Otter to bring up.”

  Here Paisi always came alive and gave a playful dig at Otter’s ribs. He did it now, and Otter tumbled over and laughed as he always had, so that for a moment a fine lordly fireside in the Guelesfort had the feel of a little Amefi n farmhouse with its rough stone fireplace, and winter fire after winter fi re, before this one.

  “Which the Bryalt seems all right with,” Paisi added, aside from his story, resuming his place on the hearthstones as Otter rolled back onto his elbows.

  “I ain’t never feared curses from the Bryaltine since I paid them coins. I’d come in there while you was studyin’ letters an’ never feared no curse. And now you got them lucky pennies round your own neck, the same number as I gave back. It’s spooky, is what it is.”

  Paisi hadn’t always added that bit. But it was true, and he knew it. Otter touched the coins, which dangled free about his neck, and thought of Gran, and wondered what spell she had put on them.

  “I’m going to miss the Bryalt festival, being here this long,” Otter said quietly. “They don’t dance.” And then he added, remembering: “They want me to attend services here, with the Prince. Were there clothes sent for me?”

  “Oh, damn,” Paisi muttered, and leapt up.

  “What?” Otter asked, bewildered by this change of countenance.

  “I was to tell ye. ’Is Majesty’s man was ’ere hours ago, and servants, and they left all sorts of things, which ye— ye must see, m’lord.”

  “I’m not ‘m’lord,’ here,” Otter murmured, which he had protested a hundred times by now, but he gathered himself to his feet as Paisi asked. The king had bestowed all manner of gifts on him, as was: he could by no means think what Paisi could so disapprove, but he rose, following a suddenly worried Paisi to the clothespress.

  “Here ’t is,” Paisi declared, opening the door and drawing out a bright red cloak of fi ne cloth.

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  And besides the fine cloak, there was a quilted red coat, with the gold Dragon quartered in a black shield, the beast worked in close stitches, with a marvelous bright eye picked out in real gold— an eye that pierced right through him and made him ask whether this could possibly be a tailor’s mistake. It was not all the Marhanen device, quartered like that; but it was an appearance of that royal emblem, every bit a prince’s coat in the quality of it: quartered like that, it meant kinship with the Marhanen, at very least, but the black— he had no right to Crissand’s blue and gold, certainly. The black and a darker red were the provincial colors of Amefel. But he certainly had no right to those, either: Duke Crissand had heirs, and the king would not disinherit them.

  Paisi, sober of countenance and surely knowing as well as he did that this gift of device and colors marked some turn in their fortunes, mutely showed him the hose and boots that went with it.

  “Which I got to think ’Is Majesty surely knows what’s what and where’s where,” Paisi said, still with a worried look, “as ’Is Majesty’s man give me the livery to match, an’ I said somebody made some mistake, an’ ’e said no, it were no mistake.” Paisi showed it, too, bright red, a plainer, twill - woven cloth, but very fine, with never a slub to be seen, and new black boots. Paisi’s holiday coat had the same Dragon in a shield worked smaller, in leather cut-work, with stitches for the eye, and sewn on.

  “Summat like the Guard, the shield, summat like, but this ain’t the same, is it? The servants said ’t was for the Fast Day,” Paisi rattled on, “an’ it was the king’s man who said it, an’ ’e ’ad to know it’s proper, didn’t ’e? It’s as if ’e’s goin’ to give ye a title. Feel the boots, there, that ’e give ye. Ain’t they splendid?”

  They were, indeed, the finest leather imaginable, soft and sturdy at once, not the sort of thing ever to scuff up in the practice - yard or wear on the road, beyond any question— not the sort of thing either of Gran’s lads had ever worn, not even in the palace of Guelemara.

  “Marhanen colors, m’lord! It is, which ever’body is going to remark, seein’ it.”

  The colors of the king, with a passing acknowledgment of Amefel, no acknowledgment at all of his bastardy or the banned Aswydds— the cloth whispered past his f
ingers with a darker thought, that the only colors he was actually entitled to were those of another dragon, green and gold: his mother’s colors. And those were death to wear: all perquisites, including the duchy and the colors, had been stripped from the Aswydds by the king’s decree. The priests had told him, most particularly, those perquisites and 3 1

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  grants Lord Crissand held, and those to which a bastard, even a Marhanen bastard, would not even appear to aspire, in any degree. He must never, for specific instance, wear any species of red, not dark like the Amefin or bright like the Marhanen, nor any appearance of the Aswydds’ personal green and gold, or Lord Crissand’s blue. And here he held the Marhanen device in his hands, no matter what his mother might think of his wearing it— and there was no one at this hour to ask what it meant.

  “Tomorrow,” he said to Paisi. “Tomorrow, before we get into any other sort of trouble, I have to run down the hall and ask Aewyn what His Majesty intends.”

  “I was afraid to ask twice, me,” Paisi said in a low voice. “I thought I should, an’ then when I didn’t get a proper answer, I thought I shouldn’t, the king’s men bein’ so sure an’ so quick, an’ it coming straight from the king.

  I ain’t sure, m’lord, I ain’t at all sure. But ’Is Majesty clearly means what ’e gives. Ye’re to go to Festival in the king’s company, the king’s man says. And what else is there? ’E certainly can’t fit ye out in the Aswydd colors, what ye own by right. Can ’e?”

  “No,” he said. “Don’t ever say it, Paisi. And we should never count on this. It’s very likely a mistake.”

  “I’m sure your royal father knows what ’e’s about.”

  “I’m not sure his tailor does.”

  “But I’m sure ’Is Majesty’s man does, m’lord.”

  “And livery!” He was unhappy with that assumption. “You’re not my servant, Paisi. You’re my brother. My uncle, if anything.”

  “Well, servant is right enough, by me, and what ’m I ever to wear in me life as fine as this?” Paisi held up the twill coat, admiring it before he hung it back in the clothespress. “What the man said, the king’s man, was that these here is for the first day, Fast Day, and then there’ll be others come, day by day, but the tailor’s workin’ daylight an’ candlelight to be done, as is, on short notice. You’ll have a wardrobe t’ be proud as a prince.”

  “And as like the tailor’s made a mistake. A terrible mistake.” He surrendered the fine coat to the clothespress, which Paisi hung for him, with the cloak, and set the boots down in the bottom of it.

  “No, now, don’t ye fret about it,” Paisi said. “Ye’ll have tomorrow to ask. An’ if there’s aught wrong, it’s the tailor’s fault, ye’ve easy access to the Prince, an’ he’ll get his father’s ear. None’ll blame ye. Ye just be proper.

  Proper as ye can. Ye do ever’thing right, ye walk by the king, an’ all, an’ ye just do the rituals, never mind ye don’t have to agree in ’em.”

  “Quinalt.” He was afraid of the Quinaltine, which loomed so large be-3 2

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  side the Guelesfort. That priesthood had sent out decrees to trouble the lives of Amefin folk and Bryaltines and most of all wizard - kind, which was Gran, and him, as well as his wicked mother, all his life.

  “Well, ye got to do some things different than ’oliday at home. These Quinaltines, mark ye, tomorrow they’ll just stuff themselves wi’ breakfast before the sun comes up, and again after the sun goes down, same as the grooms goin’ about to feed the horses. They don’t ever starve. It’s all show.

  It’s a lot of prayin’, an’ fine talk. An’ bluster.”

  “It’s lies!”

  Paisi’s face shadowed the second time with a look Otter could read as plain as words. “Don’t ye say that! Don’t ye ever say that except to me.”

  “I’m no fool, Paisi.”

  “Well, but ye’re honest, which can be right dangerous, ’specially if ye’re come at by surprise. Which I got to tell ye.”

  “About what?”

  “That there’s words in the Quinalt service that ye may have to hear an’

  keep quiet, an’ ye’re not to look up when they say ’em or ask about ’em after.”

  “How, words?”

  “They curse the Bryalts. Now, mind, they may not do it nowadays. They used to do it in Amefel, till m’lord Crissand said otherwise, an’ then they don’t do it no more there, as I’ve heard. But this bein’ Guelessar, and the Quinaltine itself, I ain’t sayin’ they don’t, still, especially at Festival. It’s in the singin’. They used to say over an’ over, Death to them as is under the Star— which means the Sihhë; an’, Death to them as drinks the cup— which is the cup the Bryalts drink at ’oliday sunset. It’s about the old wars, an’ the king. An’ it’s just words.”

  “Gran says nothing is just words if you have any sense. Why do they do that?”

  “Well, the Quinalt ’olds it’s different gods we drink the cup to, and in their heads it’s witchcraft. An’ the Bryaltine in Henas’amef has a shrine they don’t talk about, which they don’t like. An’ ye know the Quinalt don’t ’old with wizards. Even the Bryalts is a little put off by ’t, except old Master Emuin used to come an’ go there, bein’ Teranthine, which is no different than bein’ a wizard.”

  Gran was a witch, and Bryalt, and the Bryalt priests never had complained about his manners in services in town, except to show him how to make a proper blessing sign and not to do it Gran’s way.

  “The Bryalt priests don’t mind a charm or two,” Paisi said. “But the Quin-3 3

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  alts, you know they’re strong again’ the Sihhë.” Paisi had closed the clothespress. Now he settled on the end of the bed. “And sure enough, the fi rst Festival after Lord Tristen went west, the Quinaltines started doin’ the old hymns again, all upset, puttin’ things back in what they hadn’t done all the years. So

  ’e’s gone, an’ here they are, an’ the Bryalts bein’ foremost in Henas’amef— still, the Quinalt there got ambitious an’ was goin’ to put the words back, so the Bryalts said. So I went to the Quinalt service meself, an’ heard it plain as plain.

  The Star is his banner, ye recall.”

  Lord Tristen’s banner, that was, the old Sihhë banner.

  “So they were cursing him.”

  “No question at all that was what they was about. I ’eard it plain, just the way the fathers said it would happen, an’ I was upset. And old Father Haidur— you don’t remember him: he died when you was scarcely up to me elbow— but ’e was Lord Abbot in the Bryalt shrine, then, and he went right to Market Square an’ raised a famous fuss in town, tellin’ ever’body what the Quinalts was sayin’. After that, a couple of Quinalt priests got soaked in ale an’ tossed in a manure pile. So the Quinalt Patriarch went to Lord Crissand all hot and steamin’ about the disrespect, and Lord Crissand had hot words back with the Patriarch about them doin’ the hymn about Lord Tristen again, and the upshot was they stopped singin’ that hymn the next services, an’ ever’ year after. Far as I know, they still don’t do it. But here’s the Quinaltine, an’ ye just got to expect ’em to be Quinalt.”

  Be on your guard, that was to say, in a place where the walls echoed to listening servants, and even the report of a dour look raced off to places there was no accounting. There’s spies, Paisi had said before they ever rode inside the walls of Guelemara, or up its cobbled streets. There’s spies in every hall up there. Look ’appy no matter what, an’ don’t fight. Don’t ye never let anybody provoke ye, boy.

  “Well, well,” Paisi said in the stillness, “the king is lookin’ out for you, he’s goin’ to bring ye out in front o’ ever’body, an’ granted them colors is what ye’re to wear, he ain’t goin’ half measures. But there’s those here that don’t like the Amefin, and sometimes they say so, and act so, an’ puttin’ on a red coat is only goin’ to turn them heads your way— not too many of that mind, maybe, but ye don�
�t want to do nothin’ to make folk uneasy. Ye don’t get to laughin’ wi’ the Prince an’ ever forget it’s a solemn place, or let yourself frown when ye shouldn’t, so’s somebody can be whisperin’ about it after an’ sayin’ ye was talkin’ again’ the Quinalt or that ye wasn’t grateful t’ be there. Otters is slippery, but they shouldn’t ever, never get too confi dent.”

  Otter nodded solemnly, with a colder and colder feeling coiling inside, 3 4

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  after the first blush of pride at being invited with the family, then the unsettling matter of the red coat. Priests always made him anxious, even Bryalt ones, and he never had had dealings at all with the Quinalt sort before—

  Quinaltines were few in number in Henas’amef, sullen and aloof from most of the poorer sort of townsman and holding their services in a mostly empty sanctuary, for a handful of clerks, mostly travelers from Guelessar. In Guelemara, in the capital, the Quinaltines were foremost, and ruled everything, while it was the Bryaltines who kept one solitary shrine: it stood near the great Quinaltine, so far as he knew, while everyone important would go to Quinalt services. Even the queen, who was Bryalt herself, went to Quinalt services, even if she went to the Bryalt shrine later.