Fortress of Ice

by C. J. Cherryh

  The way led along the center of the paved courtyard to those gates that were rarely open, tall iron gates with spikes along the top. Torches went before them onto the street, a war of fire and banners as the gusts battered both flame and cloth.

  From there the way led beside the tall windows and high walls of the Quinaltine, and around to the broad, high steps where a throng of people had gathered. These steps were sanded, and easier than they looked. Having braced himself at the sight of them, Otter let go a wider breath and walked up with ease in among the columns of the porch, and, beside Aewyn and the king and queen, into the echoing dark beyond the great doors.

  A shiver took him there. It was warmer inside, but only tolerable. The massive candles, posed at intervals, relieved only the dark immediately about their flames, cast light on the lower portions of towering marble pillars, while the space above and behind was lost in dark. Shadowy crowds of richly dressed people stood on either hand, having reached their seats before them. The end of the aisle was ablaze with light, a diffusion of a hundred pale candles of every size, like looking at the sunny world from the heart of some horrid, chill dark. The soul wanted to fly toward that safety, but the speed of the procession was set, and they proceeded at the same pace as on 1 2 2

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  the steps. A choir sang, a mournful echo roused out of the spaces above the pillars; and priests swung censers, sending up clouds of incense that began to veil the light.

  Otter wanted to sneeze. He wanted to very badly, and choked it back into an embarrassed hiccup as they reached their benches and filed in. His eyes watered.

  The king sat. Everyone sat down, with a rattle and bump of the benches throughout the great sanctuary. Aewyn sat on the side nearest his mother, Efanor came next, and Otter sat at the end of the row. He watched as a bearded old man all in white and gold stood up in front of all the candles and the altar and lifted his hands. He began to talk about sin and dark, then the coming of the sun.

  That last was comforting. Otter supposed this was the Holy Father himself, and found he had a persuasive, calming voice: he even agreed with what he heard, thus far; but then a pair of priests accompanied an even older man into the place of the fi rst, and that old man began to chant in a reedy voice about sun and shadow, and the willfulness of Men, and the sins of the age.

  It was not so pleasant as the other voice, and the reasoning eluded him, but Otter listened attentively, and stood when everyone stood and sat when everyone sat, and tried not to fidget as Aewyn did— Aewyn swung his feet, and his father had to put a hand on his knee and stop him. Aewyn heaved a heavy sigh, then, and meanwhile the old man had directed more incense be waved about.

  Otter pinched a sneeze up his nose, and tried not to blink. Tears from the smoke shattered the candlelight. A baby began to fret, somewhere in the assembly, and other babies took it up, including the Princess, who let out a protesting wail.

  Otter dared blink, finally, thinking the tears dry enough, and the light cleared into discrete, though blurry, points. There was a darkness between those points, and while the old man chanted, that dark in front of the front row, under the railing, seemed to move strangely, like spilled ink. The shadow began to run along the rail that seperated the choir and the other priests from the assembly. It flowed down from there like black water, and ran down the baluster at the corner, spreading across the floor right by the table where the candles sat. Otter leaned forward a little and watched in horrid fascination.

  Gran could do things like that, making sparks march in a line on a straw, or making a puddle of water go silver, reflecting the light. But this trick with shadow felt quite threatening to him, like a rip in the world that swallowed 1 2 3

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  in the light, and if it was a trick, Otter wished the priests would stop doing that, and they would just preach and be done soon.

  But there was more singing, and more incense waved about, until at last the old man, with all the shadow now swirling about his feet, talked about sin and the wickedness of their forebears, about the world being divided into the gods’ own and the others, and those trafficking in shadows, who were damned.

  Maybe, Otter thought, it was a message, and now the shadow would disappear, driven away by the old man’s power. Maybe they were all supposed to understand it as a trick and an illustration. But the shadow was lapping and leaping about the hem of the old man’s robe, and he seemed not to notice it at all. He waded through it when he turned to the altar and poured a bowl of oil.

  Otter’s skin began to prickle. The shadow didn’t go away. It coiled and sent out fingers up the old man’s robes.

  “We have to be blessed, now,” Aewyn whispered, tugging at Otter’s sleeve, and in fact His Majesty moved out, and Ninévrisë with the baby, and the priest dipped his finger in the oil and touched their foreheads each in turn, calling them by their names and titles. The shadow underfoot diminished under his father’s feet and the queen’s, but Otter felt a lingering tightness at the pit of his stomach, the feeling that he might at any moment be sick if he had to step in it. Efanor followed the queen, being called Prince, and duke of Guelessar, which he was. The shadow stayed away, hiding under the railing.

  “Us, now,” Aewyn said, dragging Otter with him out into the aisle, while the king and queen and Efanor filed back into the frontmost, vacant bench.

  Otter caught a breath, stood still while the old man blessed Aewyn with the oil, calling him Crown Prince and heir of Ylesuin and forgiving his sins of the year.

  Then the old man moistened his finger again, and Otter stared at it advancing toward him, not knowing what was happening at his feet, and had the terrible, awful, stinging urge to sneeze.

  “Elfwyn,” the old man began.

  He had to sneeze. He did, startling the old man backward.

  A crash resounded off the pavings, a priest moved to catch it, a censer dropped and hit the edge of the altar. Coals skittered across the altar as the pitcher of oil went over the edge and hit the marble. Fire spread in a thin sheet as the old man recoiled, brushing at his gilt - and - white robes amid cries of alarm from the priests, who ripped loose cloths and hangings to smother 1 2 4

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  it and save the man. A great outcry swelled from the crowd, the crash of a bench, as people surged out of their seats to see or to escape the vicinity.

  Otter stood frozen in place, while priests fell to their knees and mopped and smothered the fire with banners and clothes. The shadow was gone. The fi re died, leaving a stench of singed cloth, incense, and oil.

  The old man cleared his throat, lifted his hands and signaled the buzzing crowd to settle again, slowly restoring quiet.

  Sweat had broken out on the old man’s face, and his hands shook as he turned and took another pitcher of oil. He poured a little into the bowl, atop the rest, and moistened his finger before he turned a sweating, disturbed countenance toward Otter.

  “Elfwyn Aswydd,” the old man said, his true name, his mother’s name.

  “Do you stand to be blessed by the Holy Quinalt and written in the book?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said in a shaking voice, forgetting in that instant that he was probably supposed to say Your Holiness, as Aewyn had, but then it was too late. The old man touched the oil to his forehead and said, all in a rush:

  “Sealed to the Quinalt. Your sins are forgiven.”

  The sins of Sight, and of running away into the rooftree and lying to Prince Efanor? Was he truly forgiven?

  He walked away, glad to escape, at very least, half - blind to his surroundings as others, recovering from the commotion, got up to be blessed, the whole next row. It seemed a long, long way to walk before he found his place beside Aewyn, having gone all the way around the bench as Aewyn had done, to observe a respectful distance from the king and not to cross between him and the altar.

  He breathed, every breath an effort. He shivered, trying not to let it be known.

  “You did it,” Ae
wyn whispered, nudging him with an elbow, while the blessing went on, and they all stood. They stood all through the ceremony, until the priest had blessed the last of hundreds of them, and the choir sang, and dismissed them all, and the royal family led the way out into cold, wanly golden daylight.

  Clean wind chilled them. Otter’s eyes stopped watering and his nose stopped stinging, but it still ran. He thought he would smell the stink of incense and fire for hours.

  And the old man whose robes had caught— he had been so afraid the man was hurt, but he was not. He had gone on. And he was blessed. Forgiven. He was by no means sure he thought much of the Guelen gods, since Gran never had, but being forgiven was a good thing, was it not? And the shadow had 1 2 5

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  gone. He felt as though he dared breathe again. He had done what his father wanted. They could write him in the book, with all the good people.

  Today— he had fi gured it as best he could— even with delays because of the weather, Paisi should be across the river and onto the road on the other side, well on his way to Gran’s.

  And Brother Trassin would be waiting for him in his rooms.

  ix

  there were usual proclamations to issue, a royal approval on a fifth daughter’s marriage in Carys— gods, was the man never out of daughters?—and the same from the current Lord Ryssand, no relation to the last, whose third - eldest son was the bridegroom: it required wax and the seal, but little thought. On this particular ill - starred day, Cefwyn wished there had been some distraction. At least the Patriarch had not gone up like a torch: he was, it was reported, a little singed, and in some pain, but nothing too serious.

  “His Grace of Guelessar,” a servant advised him.

  News, maybe. Maybe an assuagement of anxiousness that, along with a too - bland, too - fatty sausage, sat uneasily on the royal stomach since noon.

  “Admit him.” Cefwyn blew out the sealing flame and tidied the unruly stack of stiff, beribboned parchments on his desk.

  It was afternoon, verging on late afternoon. He had another dinner to face tonight, and could not imagine how he could get past the fi rst course.

  If Efanor reported matters in the Quinaltine solved, he might manage.

  “Brother,” Efanor said, closing the door at his back. “I’ve talked to Idrys.

  I’ve just come from the Quinaltine, inspecting the matter myself. There is a mark. No scrubbing will remove it. There are scratches on the altar, which appear to the eye but not to the touch, and I have seen them. They reportedly spell out blasphemies.”

  “Scratches that spell, for the gods’ sake! The boy sneezed. The old fool jumped back, and a fool priest was standing too close with the censer— what more might there be?”

  “I did everything possible to quiet this—”

  “I know, I know. I knew it was difficult when I asked it. But a simple sneeze, good gods!”

  “His body could not tolerate the holy incense. The oil burned the holy banners rather than purge his sins . . .”

  “And purged them right away and forever in the next moment, once the 1 2 6

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  old fool got his wits collected, damn it all. Did anyone notice he did receive the oil with no diffi culty, after?”

  “The fire mark on the floor cannot be scrubbed away. There’s a permanent darkening of the stone.”

  “Well, pry it up and lay a new paving stone, if His Holiness wants it.

  The boy was a model of decorum and gentility throughout. Your spy was with him all night and all morning previous. He took the oil. He sat through services. He did nothing but sneeze, gods save the day! What does the good brother say? That he flew about the room last night and conjured rats?”

  “The boy had bad dreams and waked calling on Paisi and Gran, who the brother was relieved to know are living relatives.”

  “Oh, for the gods’ own sake, brother!”

  “There is gossip running among the priests. The Holy Father now has a fever. The curious come to see the scratches. Some see claw marks. Others see blasphemies.”

  “Probably overzealous scrubbing,” Cefwyn said. “Claw marks, for gods’

  sake! Claws that write. Do they observe good grammar?”

  “The cracks are there, perhaps from the fire,” Efanor said. “Or not.”

  Cefwyn shot back an angry look. “My son— my son, I say!— did not go there and scratch the precious floor. A censer fell. A priest dropped it. Fools have been scrubbing at the stone with all their might and now, lo! scratches appear. What a wonder! Gods, brother, you can argue with the arrant fools!

  Do it!”

  “I have more concern than that,” Efanor said. “Remember the wars. Remember the Quinaltine—”

  “Long quiet, and long settled.”

  “It has been a battleground for spirits.”

  “Years ago.”

  “When the Sihhë last were abroad in the land.”

  “He’s Aswydd, brother, not Sihhë.”

  “Thin blood, but that blood, all the same, brother, you know it. The censer indeed fell.”

  “The boy sneezed!”

  “Or something there, once settled, does not like him there and wakes to notice.”

  “Oh, I’m sure something there doesn’t like him. Someone among the priesthood doesn’t like his presence or the Aswydd name, and I’ll warrant there’s been talk in the robing rooms. It takes no spooks, brother, no ghosts, no haunts, just one ill - disposed servant of the gods . . . maybe not even the 1 2 7

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  man who dropped the censer, rather than set His Holiness alight. Maybe the scratches came from someone who cleaned it up, someone opposed to me who found a chance to do ill, in all this to - do.”

  “The boy has become a bone of contention.”

  “And dogs will worry at any scrap. I’d expected conspiracy among the lords, not the priests.”

  “Or the ghosts.”

  “The ghosts, for the gods’ sake!”

  “Ghosts, brother. I tell you plainly, it is not wise for him to go there again.”

  “And next the priests will bruit about the notion he dares not come back!”

  “Better let them gossip old news than another incident, which there may well be if he goes back. Have him take ill, have him fall on the stairs. He should not cross that threshold again until we unravel this.”

  “Why don’t we fault the fool who dropped the fire in the first place! What did he dream the night before, does anyone ask that?”

  “The Holy Father has taken to his bed in pain and fever. He is not at his most reasonable this afternoon. Caution. Caution in this. Remember Lord Tristen himself . . .”

  It had unhappy resonance to that other crisis in the Quinalt, in which a Sihhë amulet had ended up in the offering plate.

  And no one needed remind him that riots had broken out in the town over suspected Sihhë influence, killing his wife’s Bryaltine priest and no few others. Religious anger had divided the realm, had taken a war to settle . . .

  And that war had roused horrid manifestations in the Quinaltine during the hour of the last battle. He had no reason to doubt Efanor’s report of it.

  The place had its ghosts, unquiet ones. It was not the only place in Ylesuin so blessed.

  “Let me remind you, too,” Efanor said, “if the priests should begin to question his activities— the one item the Patriarch’s spy did report in the boy’s room was Nevris’ candle.”

  Cefwyn turned a furious face on him, but Efanor, who was certainly no enemy of the queen, only set his jaw doggedly.

  “I know you will not endanger her,” Efanor said. “Or the treaty. And if this Amefin son of yours does begin to endanger her, or to threaten the peace we forged— no, hear me out on this, brother— I know you will use your wits to find another path. What you owe this boy, what debt you have to him, and all your heir’s affection for him to the side— I pray you use your cleverness, not your will, in this case. Have
your way and bring the boy along, but have 1 2 8

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  it slowly. You knew the danger when you kept him here through Festival. You thought you could fly this young sparrow low and quickly past your enemies, have him entered in the rolls, and that the priests were in your hand. I had my misgivings. Yes, he is fair to look on, but he frowns too often. He has those eyes that some call Sihhë heritage. He is mysterious, and, forgive me, brother, your dalliance with the Aswydd duchess is— unfortunately— made new gossip by his arrival in a winter devoid of other topics.”

  “Good loving gods, Efanor, there is no trouble from the woman!”

  “We suppose that there is no trouble from her. The people have been reminded most vividly, now, that there is still a prisoner in the Zeide tower.

  They remember the dead sister, Orien. They remember the fall of the Aswydds, and your lifting your own ban to raise Lord Crissand, which roused some debate at the time. Amefel had settled far from Guelessar’s interest, until you brought this gray- eyed boy into the Guelesfort and made him your son for all to see. Now the people talk, and after this morning, they will talk in every shop and tavern.”

  “I did not plan for an old fool to back into a censer pot!”

  “You certainly planned for someone among the lords of the land to raise an objection in audience, which you were prepared to silence by this little maneuver in the Quinalt. You insisted on Festival, on the sacred season—”

  “My son asked him here.”

  “And you kept him on, full well knowing the delicacy of it.”

  “I didn’t plan on fools!”

  “Alas, fools grow like cabbages in Guelessar. But you know that, too. I can tell you nothing. I never could.”

  Efanor was water, to his clenched fist, and it was a tactic that had long infuriated him. Sometimes Efanor was right in taking the devious course; but sometimes, too, Efanor backed away too quickly and encouraged fools with momentary success.