c. j. cherryh
road. In a time going east, he found a milestone, capped with ice, half -
buried, and hard to read.
Thirteen, it said. Thirteen snowdrifted miles from Henas’amef, and it was only noon. There was hope of making it by sundown, if only Feiny had it in him.
2 3 0
c h a p t e r f o u r
i
feiny could not, after all, do it by sundown. and the choice he had was to camp by the wayside, in a ditch, with the grain all gone, and all Cook’s cakes eaten yesterday, or keep going into the dark at as steady a pace as Feiny could manage.
It was long, long after dark before he rode within view of Gran’s fi rst fence, and Gran’s house sitting quiet and dark. He rode up to the gate that kept the goats in, and led Feiny on around to the goat shed, up against the house. He opened the door ever so quietly, and led Feiny in, but Tammis, safe and warm inside, saluted Feiny in a reasonably quiet voice, and he suspected he was heard inside the house. He was cold, too cold for clear thought, but Feiny had carried him long and hard, and he was of no mind to leave him comfortless. He unsaddled the horse and rubbed his sweaty back down with grain sacking that hung— he knew it by habit, rather than sight— by the outside door, while Feiny tried to force his head into Tammis’s bin, hoping for grain. The goats bleated into the dark.
There was far too much commotion to get past Paisi’s hearing. He heard the front door open, as Paisi had done before.
“It’s me!” he called out, to forestall any caution. “Paisi?”
“M’lord,” Paisi cried, coming into the shed, and shoving two sleepy goats out of his path. “Ye silly lad— ye could ha’ rapped at the front door an’ had help.”
“I was trying not to wake Gran.”
“Who’s wide - awake, an’ who knew you were comin’, as was! We waited supper a while, an’ then so as not to waste lights, we went on to bed.” Paisi flung arms about him, slapped him on the back, and hugged him hard.
“Gods, ye silly boy, ye’re safe. Did ye even get there?”
“I saw him,” he said, in his own defense.
“Gran thought so,” Paisi said. He found the grain bin and the bowl they used to dip it up, and poured a measure into the trough, to Feiny’s immediate c. j. cherryh
preoccupation. “He’s fine, he’s fine. You just come inside, lad. Get yourself warm and fed, an’ I’ll come back an’ tend the horse.”
Warmth and food came very welcome. He went in by the back door, out of the shed, blinking in the dim light of the banked fire. Gran was indeed out of her bed, using the pothook to swing the pot over the coals, but it had become too heavy for her in recent years. He gave it a shove, his hands still gloved, and hugged Gran gently, wanting to stand there a good long while, just in that comfort.
“I saw him,” he said. “He was very kind. He was younger than Paisi,” he added. That never ceased to amaze him.
“His years ain’t ours,” Gran said, as Paisi came in and shut the door behind them. “Nor ever shall be.” She made him stand back and took his cold face in her two warm, age - smooth hands, making him look into her eyes.
“Aye, ye seen him, hain’t ye, lad?”
“He said I was Elfwyn. He said that was my name.”
“Then it has to be, now, don’t it? Come, sit on the bench. Paisi’ll dip ye up a bowl.”
He did. He took what he was given, ever so grateful to be home, and safe.
There was fine bread and butter, good potato - and - cabbage soup with a bit of pork besides.
“His Grace sent it,” Gran said.
“The King’s Guard came by,” Paisi said, having a bit of soup himself, as Gran had some of the broth. “An’ then His Grace of Amefel’s men, wi’ a right sensible Bryaltine father, wi’ some good aromatics for Gran.”
If Paisi thought a Bryalt father was sensible, that was a wonder in itself.
“So we ain’t wanted for a thing,” Paisi said. “How was it, wi’ Lord Tristen?”
“He remembered you and Gran very kindly,” Elfwyn said. “He invited me to dinner, and to sleep the night in Ynefel.”
Gran nodded solemnly. “Ain’t surprised,” Gran said.
“And he said the king was worried about me, and he showed me wards, Gran. And mine glowed!”
“Ain’t surprised for that, neither,” Gran said.
“And then he said he would come to Henas’amef. I don’t know whether only to Amefel, but he gave me a letter for Lord Crissand. And I lost it, Gran!
I fell in the brook, and I lost it!”
There was a small silence. “Did ye, then?”
“Well, what shall I do?”
“What do ye incline to do?” Gran asked him.
2 3 2
fortress of ice
“Go to Lord Crissand first thing tomorrow and tell him as much as I know.”
Gran nodded. “That ye must do, then. Paisi told the king’s men you’d gone an’ where you’d gone, and they didn’t follow. An’ Lord Crissand knows where ye were, o’ consequence, so he’ll be wonderin’.”
“First thing in the morning,” he said. He was melting a puddle onto the floor, off his boots, and it had become muddy from dirt in the shed. He put the bowl down, having eaten as much as he could, and the bowl clattered against the stones as he set it down, his hand was shaking so. “I think I’m a little tired, Gran.”
“That ye be,” Gran said. “Paisi, get ’im to bed. Is that horse settled?”
“They’re settled.”
“Great hungry horses— thank the gods ’Is Grace is feedin’ ’em. The goats is gettin’ fat off just the grain an’ hay they spill. Go to bed, Elfwyn, lad.”
Gran called him that name, as if that name was his even here, but in spite of everything, welcome had settled all around him, warm and good as Gran’s house always was. He gathered himself up, and sat down again on the bed he shared with Paisi, and managed to get his boots off, and his stockings, which had holes in them, and had worn bloody blisters. There was mending and washing to do, when there was light enough. He took off his belt and fell into bed, which still seemed to move with Feiny’s weary gait, and that was that— he managed to lift his head only when Paisi came to bed.
“Good to have you back,” Paisi said.
“Good to be back,” he murmured into the crook of his arm, head down again, nose buried. Gran’s amulets were all about the bedstead and under the mattress, which was goose feathers, and ever so comfortable, especially with Paisi’s warmth by him. The snow could fall tonight. He was warm and back to his beginnings, as if his soaring rise to princedom and his passage through Ynefel had never happened. He was only Gran’s boy again, more than a little lonely, but protected.
Vision, Tristen had said. He had that scored onto his hand. And now he saw Gran’s place as safety in a cold, dangerous world, and the humble beginnings he had longed to escape. Gran’s love, and Paisi’s— those were, he thought, his first and greatest treasures, those he never had valued enough.
He lay with Paisi’s warmth next to him, and the cottage snug against the wind, no matter how hard it blew.
That was the way Paisi kept things. He hoped to be as clever with his hands. It was a Gift, potent unto itself.
Vision. Seeing things for what they were and what they could be.
2 3 3
c. j. cherryh
What was that other word?
It still eluded him.
ii
owl was back in the keep, disagreeable and peevish. he had lost a few feathers, and sat puffed and mad - eyed on the newel post upstairs.
It had not gone well. Luck had not run the boy’s way, and a good deal of his path had become obscure, deeply shadowed.
Perhaps, Tristen thought, he should have ridden out with him and con-veyed him home. He had foreseen trouble. But the world had been shadowed these last few days, and it would have meant, had he gone out from Ynefel and devoted himself to one boy, on one solitary track throu
gh the woods, that he would lose track of other things, to the peril of all.
More, his presence risked drawing more attention than the boy already had on him. The boy had fallen into a dark place, one of those shadows Marna had within it, where even Owl had had trouble finding him. Likely the boy had not known that old stones lay near, likely had never even felt the gap in the earth, but he had gotten out of the trap and away, and come out of shadow unscathed, at least.
Leaving the keep now, abandoning his vantage at Ynefel, meant he would suffer a degree of blindness during the boy’s passage, which would have brought the boy into greater danger. He would suffer a degree of blindness to movements in the land when he did ride to Henas’amef— the balances there had already shifted, tipped, trembled on the edge, and if he moved, he sensed, he would tip them right over.
None of what had happened in Henas’amef of late was what he wanted.
If he went there, when he went there, it would shake the world and the world beyond it. But what had been gnawing away at the peace all these years had its own intentions, and undermined, and shifted, and would have its way, sooner or later. The boy was the lever that moved things. He had been born for that.
The boy, however, had gotten safely as far as Gran’s house, and slept inside her wards tonight. It was Cefwyn and Crissand who had their troubles at this hour. Those did not grow quieter. Peace might last a little longer.
Perhaps he should still delay going, and only see whether things settled now that the boy himself had settled to rest for a time. The intervention of a Sihhë - lord in the affairs of Men had rippled the calm surface of ordinary 2 3 4
fortress of ice
years, and he had seen how his withdrawing to Ynefel had smoothed things out for a time: things that ought to sleep slept more deeply, the longer he kept his distance. The whole world drew an easier breath.
And should he go now, hastening everything, to divert this boy? He was a good lad. Gran had made him that.
Uwen came and went among Men much more frequently, usually with Cook: the two of them had gone, generally as plain travelers, into villages, and now and again as far Henas’amef itself to consult with Lord Crissand, or to exchange messages— oh, with far less fuss than the lord of Ynefel would generate, and very little ripple in the peace. They were quiet, and clever, and came back full of news and gossip— news he would not have thought to ask, names that quickened fond memory— servants he had known, and minor lords, and sometimes they brought news from Guelessar, or down the river: familiar names, like Sovrag, and Cevulirn, that conjured warm evenings and happy moments as well as dreadful. The two of them had ridden out, and came back bringing him the oddest trinkets, a curious tin box, a fi ne pair of gloves, packets of spices from the southern trade . . . all these things he valued, but the things he most longed for no one could bring him in a bag of trinkets. A quiet supper with Lord Crissand was what he wanted, or rarest and dearest desire, with the friend of his heart, with Cefwyn himself.
Oh, he had made ventures, but never since the boy had grown old enough to ask questions.
He had met with Paisi, oh, at least half a dozen times, at the edge of Marna Wood: if not for Gran and the boy, Paisi would have gladly ridden into Marna and begged to stay.
He remembered a dirty - faced boy, who had also been Paisi, in the streets of Henas’amef, the day he was lost. Paisi running errands for Master Emuin.
Or holding a baby who could not go back to its mother.
Time ran back and forward for him when he let his mind wander. He had visions at times . . . he had been a dragon once— he had felt his own power increase beyond all bounds, had felt the earth shake, seen men cast to ruin in a breath. He had drawn apart, to keep his influence out of the world, but, oh, he was so tempted to go into Guelessar, and to turn up in his old friend’s path, and just to say, as Cefwyn had used to say to him, “Shall we go riding?”
Those had been the best times of all.
And when, since that day, he did go out into the world, when the poor or the desperate begged for health, for fortune, for justice— he had been the Dragon, and the power was always there. Oh, indeed, the touch of a Sihhë
2 3 5
c. j. cherryh
hand could work such magic . . . the people knew it. Some, if they knew the price, would pay it . . .
And whenever he worked, he knew. The smallest magic could just as easily, and not by his intent, bind an unwarded soul to his own life, as Paisi was bound, as Gran was. Healing could just as easily make some desperate man an open gateway to things that man would never expect to meet. Men prayed to their gods. They prayed by their own understanding, reckless of what they invoked, and wanted things, wanted so very much— and sometimes with such complete justice and need—
Some things he granted. But some things he never would. He would not, for instance, raise the dead. Mauryl had done that, had clothed a soul long in the dark.
Had good ever come of that?
Mauryl had never said— but then, the final word was not written, and Mauryl himself had never known the outcome of his Shaping. That was all he dared say of himself, that he tried to do the best he could, which was as little as possible.
He would not, for instance, deal with children, or try to bend them one way or the other. Childhood baffled him. He hadn’t grown that way. He had simply stepped into the world as he was and learned it as he could.
He understood that, in Elfwyn, he dealt with a creature not yet a Man, but something nearly a Man, a creature with a Man’s passions, but not quite a Man’s desires; a Man’s yearning, but not a Man’s self - restraint. That would come. And when it came, there would be another new creature, one which had not existed in the world until Cefwyn had engendered that life in Tarien Aswydd’s womb. Elfwyn Aswydd was not Tarien’s remote kin, long dead, or Cefwyn’s grandfather, also dead. He was something of both, and neither.
He was a wild force, a power unto himself, and most unpredictable of all, he was still in that stage of things Unfolding within himself— not as things had to him, out of a mature knowledge and the distant past, but taking shape out of bits and scraps of what other people showed him and what his intellect could make of it. There was, in fact, no knowing which way Elfwyn Aswydd would turn.
His mother had her own plans for him; but worse, she had made herself a window through which other things could look, and her plans, set into motion, had never been all her own. Her time had run, irrevocable in the world of Men. Threads had come together in a design that wove through and through this boy’s existence. Hasufin Heltain was one thread. Heryn Aswydd was one. Orien was. And Tarien Aswydd.
2 3 6
fortress of ice
Stubborn he was— and what else? He was Cefwyn’s son, equally.
He sat thinking until the sun rose, trying to ponder what this boy was.
And in the morning he walked into Uwen’s cottage. There he found that Uwen was sharpening his sword, tending his own weapons for the fi rst time in a long time.
He sat down by Uwen on the bench and took a cup of tea from Cook.
“Ye’re thinkin’ about the outside, are ye, m’lord?” Uwen asked him.
“That I am,” he said quietly, aware that Cook was listening with one ear, while putting bread to bake.
“Is it the old enemy, m’lord?” Uwen asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “How could you suspect?”
Uwen shrugged while the whetstone kept moving. “The boy. The Aswydd woman. An’ the king. Things is come together lately.”
“That they have,” Tristen admitted.
“An’ last night ye had the whole hall lit.”
The candles came and went. He rarely thought about them. “I suppose I did.”
“So,” Uwen said. “Ye ain’t slept much since the boy went out.”
“I often don’t.”
“Ye ain’t, ’cept Owl is back, so the boy’s got where he’s goin’. An’ Dys, he come in on ’is own from pasture
this mornin’. Ye called him.”
“Did I?” He was amazed. He’d wanted the horse. He’d wanted Uwen.
Both knew that without his saying so.
“So,” Uwen said, looking up and down the gray- sheened edge of the metal. “So, well, the bones is some older, but these hands ain’t forgot.”
He’d worked his little magics to keep Uwen hale and strong, and Cook and Cook’s son, too, since Cook made Uwen happy . . . it was his little secret, a furtive and quiet magic, worked within the walls, and this without polite asking. Dys didn’t age, nor Petelly, nor any of the horses. Cadun grew up, but never older, and if there was wrong in that, he only hoped Uwen forgave him, if Cook and Cadun did not. This morning was as close as Uwen had ever come to remarking on his own long good health.
But he needed Uwen. This was the truth inside the truth: he knew that time ran too fast for his liking, and that Men faded. With them, with this one comfort, he was content; and without them, he was alone.
Since the day he became a Dragon, he held in his heart a vision of a place frozen in ice, remote from all Men— a place before Men, and before love, and before everything. He couldn’t quite remember a time he had been there, but he feared it more than anything. It was that place where the Enemy had 2 3 7
c. j. cherryh
been, and yet it seemed to him that he had been there before he knew Mauryl, that he had watched Mauryl arrive at those gates, oh, long before many other things had happened, and long before there was Uwen, to tie him to this place and this time. Tristen had lived his fi rst year in the world of Men less than two decades ago; lived that year, and the next, and many after it.
But the cold place was there, always, in the back of his fears, an icy fastness where nothing he loved had yet existed. It had been so easy to spread anger out onto the winds, like the Dragon, and be there again; but once he was there, he might not remember how to get back.
Fortress of Ice Page 32
