Fortress of Eagles
Page 1
C. J.
CHERRYH
FORTRESS
OF
EAGLES
Contents
Map of Ylesuin
vi
The Zeide
vii
Lexicon
457
Prelude
Ages ago, before the time…
ix
BOOK ONE
1
Chapter 1
The path, slanting up through…
3
Chapter 2
There were pearls, an…
17
Chapter 3
Petitions, writs, and a proposed…
40
Chapter 4
Cefwyn had said there was no need…
54
Chapter 5
Dry leaves wandered, amazingly so,…
99
Chapter 6
The doors of houses and shops had been…
117
Chapter 7
It were a fine occasion,…
134
Chapter 8
Wine flowed, along with the…
166
Chapter 9
Where were you?…
184
Chapter 10
In a quick succession of moves,…
207
BOOK TWO
221
Chapter 1
Water dripped from the rafters,…
223
Chapter 2
Your Majesty this,…
244
Chapter 3
The edge of morning brought cold…
270
Chapter 4
The banners flew, in the hands…
289
Chapter 5
Among the few encumbrances…
309
Chapter 6
Where is Earl Edwyll?…
327
BOOK THREE
345
Chapter 1
Candles burned in great numbers…
347
Chapter 2
The Amefin nobles,…
356
Chapter 3
The apartment smelled of burning…
374
Chapter 4
They were not astir until broad day,…
387
Chapter 5
Wisps of white flew on the wind,…
411
Chapter 6
Snow came down in this sinking…
426
Chapter 7
Have great care,…
441
Chapter 8
Emuin arrived a week late,…
450
Epilogue
Pearls shone in candlelight,…
456
About the Author
474
Books by C. J. Cherryh
475
Credits
476
Cover
Copyright
477
About the Publisher
478
Ylesuin
The Zeide
P R E L U D E
Ages ago, before the time of Men, a place named Galasien grew to rule as far and wide as any records tell. Mauryl Gestaurien came form that time and that place. So did Hasufin Heltain, who may have been a prince of Galasien. Assuredly he was a wizard, as was Mauryl. Hasufin attempted a kind of magic that defied law and time and death, and would have ruled with absolute power, if not for Mauryl, who opposed him, and who at last visited the lands far to the north, whence he brought back five strangers to aid him. These were the Sihhë-lords, who wielded not wizardry but magic. In the struggle that followed, Hasufin fell, and with him fell Galasien, the citadel of which became the fortress known to the next age as Ynefel.
The five lords and their halfling offspring comprised a dynasty whose fortress was Ynefel and whose peaceful unwalled capital was Althalen. They conquered the lands of Men, had Men living freely among them, and for a golden age lasting centuries they built and learned and brought comforts and prosperity to the land.
But as Sihhë blood was running thin and a halfling, Elfwyn, sat the throne in Althalen, a prince was born, and died, and lived again, a circumstance which alarmed the wizards, the more so when other
ix
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princes died one by one. By that means Hasufin crept back into influence among the living, bidding fair to succeed gentle Elfwyn and reestablish the dynasty of lost Galasien.
Mauryl led a conspiracy of wizards to prevent that succession, and had for an ally a lord of Men, namely Elfwyn’s chief general, Selwyn Marhanen, who seized power, burned the capital and killed every last bearer of royal Sihhë blood he could find.
But some of the bloodline survived in the peasantry of Amefel, and in a few of the lineage who dwelt across the river Lenúalim in the district of Elwynor. Elwynor refused to join the rebellion, and loyal Men there established the Regency, believing some claimant to the throne would arise to defeat the Marhanen lord.
It was not an unwarrantable hope in those days, for indeed every duke in the realm of Men on the other side of the river attempted to seize power. Only Selwyn proved more ruthless than any of his rivals, and established the Marhanen dynasty in Guelessar. From that time on the name of the kingdom was Ylesuin, and it ruled from Amefel eastward and north and south.
Selwyn’s son Ináreddrin succeeded him; Uleman Syrillas continually reigned as Regent in Elwynor, and the old capital of Althalen became a place of ruins within Ylesuin’s backward province of Amefel, a province despised for its unorthodoxy, given to know far more of witchery and wizardry than the dominant sect of Ylesuin, the godly Quinalt, liked.
Mauryl, however, had no part in the wars of Men. Kingmaker, they called him; but he would not settle the quarrles of Men, ally himself to either side
xi / C. J. CHERRYH
of the dispute, or set aside either Uleman’s claims or Selwyn’s to a united kingdom. Elwynor chose Ilefínian as its capital; Ylesuin chose Guelemara, heart of Guelessar, as the seat of the Marhanen kings, and Mauryl retreated to the shattered citadel of Ynefel to brood or study or do whatever a wizard did who had survived age after age of the world. Selwyn had appointed him Warden of Ynefel, and no one knew what Mauryl did, but one supposed that the world of Men was safer because ungodly Mauryl sat in his tower and kept away whatever ill might come from that place.
But Mauryl was not immortal, despite the rumors. The years sat heavily on him. His studies took their toll. And his enemy, Hasufin Heltain, was not quite banished. On a certain night in a certain spring in the reign of Ináreddrin Marhanen, beset by Hasufin’s threat and working with the last of his strength, Mauryl Gestaurien worked what he knew would be his last great spell, a Summoning, to be precise, and a Shaping.
Perhaps he flinched, perhaps he doubted his intention. He had expected something rather more formidable than what he found before him. The result was a gray-eyed youth: Tristen, who arrived without the least understanding even how to protect himself…a young man far from any understanding of wizardry.
The youth’s understanding of Mauryl, however, grew apace, and by late spring Tristen clambered about the old fortress at Ynefel with a childish curiosity about all the world, taming the pigeons of the loft, even exploring the walled-off end where Owl held sway. Ynefel was a curious place, and FORTRESS OF EAGLES / xii
faces appeared in its walls, faces that on certain nights and in certain light seemed to take on life and move. But Tristen seldom saw them at it. Every night he took the potion Mauryl gave, every night slept soundly…every night except one. And on that night Tristen began to understand there was danger in the world.
On that night
, perhaps, only perhaps, Hasufin found a chink in the wall that otherwise was warded.
On a day not too long after, Hasufin advantaged himself of that opening. Mauryl fell at last…himself immured in the dreadful walls. And on that day Tristen found himself bereft of everything, left alone to face a world he had never seen or imagined.
He set out on the Road through Marna Wood, guided by Owl, in possession of a silver mirror and a book he could not read, not knowing where he was going, but that Mauryl had said someday he would walk that Road.
He came to the town of Henas’amef, principal city of Amefel, and into the hands of Prince Cefwyn, viceroy of that uneasy province. Cefwyn was heir to the Marhanen throne, and through Cefwyn Tristen came to the tutelage of Emuin, once Mauryl’s student himself.
But in short order Tristen so frightened Emuin that the old man fled the court, seeking sanctuary elsewhere—for Emuin realized what Mauryl had done and set into his hands. “Win his love,” was Emuin’s parting advice to Cefwyn, and Cefwyn, bored, isolate amid Amefel’s rustic lords, now realized he had a somewhat dangerous guest…and attempted to entertain the strange young man.
xiii / C. J. CHERRYH
Therein a prince who had no friends discovered one…and saved his own life. For Hasufin Heltain, the ancient spirit that had destroyed Ynefel and Mauryl, had failed to overcome Tristen, and had come whispering to any ally he might find to bring him back to power…the enemies of the lord of the Elwynim, and also the lord of Amefel, Cefwyn’s host, Lord Heryn Aswydd, who himself had Sihhë blood.
Cefwyn might have died in ambush. But Tristen, finding a horse under him and a sword in his hand, discovered gifts he did not know he possessed…and Cefwyn began to be sure that what Mauryl had Summoned was, in his captain’s parlance, no lad from lost Elfwyn’s scullery, no halfling, even, but one of the vanished Sihhë-lords, perhaps Barrakkêth himself, the first, and the most feared.
Meanwhile the plot Hasufin engendered reached to the king…who fell to ambush. Cefwyn, crowned, challenged the traitor, Lord Heryn. But not only the Marhanen king had perished. As Uleman of Elwynor was old and weak, disputations regarding that succession had arisen, and Uleman was hounded to his death by rebels pursuing him even into Cefwyn’s kingdom.
At the Regent’s death, Cefwyn met Ninévrisë, the new Lady Regent, face-to-face…and knew he had met his bride.
But Orien, Lord Heryn’s sister, was not disposed to forgive her brother’s death or to cede Cefwyn to a foreigner; and Hasufin had now a sorcerous and angry woman to do his work. Cefwyn’s brother also opposed a foreign bride. And the Elwynim Lord who had hoped to claim Uleman’s
FORTRESS OF EAGLES / xiv
daughter and the kingdom was open to persuasion…and to sorcery.
Orien’s attempt on Cefwyn’s life failed. And to set Ninévrisë
on her father’s throne and to marry his way to a unified Ylesuin, Cefwyn summoned all the lords of the south to war, to prevent the intrusion of Elwynim rebels into Amefel…and win his bride her throne. But he faced more than the rebel leader: he faced a shadow building and building along that frontier, one Tristen understood, and knew for a greater threat than Cefwyn could possibly understand. Cefwyn was moving exactly where that shadow wished him to move, and Tristen had no choice but to take up arms as the army of the south of Ylesuin marched to Lewenbrook. Wizardry had allied itself with those rebels, wizardry which had brought down one Marhanen king, Cefwyn’s father, and now bid fair to set its own pawn on the throne of a new kingdom.
Tristen, however, found within the book the mastery of magic, his own heritage, which had eluded him. He rode to war as lord of Althalen and Ynefel, under a banner counted anathema by the holy Quinalt, but cheered by the Amefin commons. At the last he and his man Uwen Lewen’s-son rode against the Shadow that had loomed over Marna Wood in an hour when men were falling left and right to a power no sword could flight.
But Tristen rode with a sword graven with magical words of Truth and Illusion, cleaving one from the other, and wielded that weapon against the Shadow of shadows. He found himself at Ynefel, then hurled into shadow, lost to Men forever…
Except that fearing that his power might grow xv / C. J. CHERRYH
too great and overwhelm him, and draw him out of the world of Men, he had given his shieldman, Uwen Lewen’s-son, power over him. He made a common soldier his judge, whether to call him back or to let him vanish from the world as too great and too dark a danger.
And Uwen called him.
BOOK ONE
C H A P T E R 1
The path, slanting up through young forest to gray rock and old trees, became a hollow, leaf-filled track at its end. When Tristen reined in and stepped down from the saddle, ankle-deep in autumn, the silence on that hill was so great he could hear the individual fall of leaves as soft, distinct impacts…until Petelly tugged at the rein, impatient of good behavior, and leaves cracked and rustled under his massive feet.
Guelessar’s forested hilltops had shown bright red and sunny gold above the fields not a fortnight ago. They had cast off much of that color in the wild winds of recent days, the result of which had piled up in ditches and against fences all along the roads. The trees on this height stood all but bare, more exposed to the winds than those lower down the trail, and Tristen scuffed through ridges of brown and gold as he led Petelly along.
He had ridden out for pleasure on this late-autumn day in this first year of his life and this first year of king Cefwyn’s reign. He had come into the world as a wizard’s Summoning in the soft, whispering green of spring, and he had discovered the world of Men in a summer of full-voiced leaves. He had come to his present maturity by his first autumn, with his duty to the
3
4 / C. J. CHERRYH
wizard Mauryl all done, and with Mauryl immured in the ruins of Ynefel. He was, amid dreadful battles, sworn to a king who called him his dearest friend and declared him Lord Warden of Ynefel and Lord Marshal of Althalen to honor him—but the lands the king had granted him held no inhabitants, only shadows more or less quiescent and benign. He was lord of mice and owls, as His Majesty’s captain was wont to say.
And what did king Cefwyn intend him to be, or do, now that he had finished Mauryl’s purposes? He knew that least of all.
The leaves that had fallen earliest in the season were wet from old rains. The newest leaves, fallen atop them, left a fine, pale dust on Tristen’s boots, and the brown, wet depths of the drifts streaked that dust as his walking disturbed unguessed colors: a dazzling yellow, a vivid, jewel red. Spying a particularly large dry oak leaf, he picked it up for a particular treasure and carried it with him as he walked to his usual vantage at the edge of this hilltop woods, the sheer, wooded cliff from which he could reliably look down and see his guards watering their horses at the forest spring just below.
But unexpected sunlight shone through the trees to his right as he approached the edge; and a glance showed him a distant grassy meadow and a succession of forest-crowned hills marching in endless order in the east.
He had never noticed that view before. He was amazed as he moved branches aside to reach a new vantage—even while it Unfolded to him, as strange new things would do, that this new barrenness of the woods, these revelations of unseen hills, were but one more sign of the season. The grayness of the trees in that moment of magic evoked memories (and he had so FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 5
few memories) of a place all but forgotten, and then known again, yes, not here, but there. The deepest woods of Marna, where he had begun his life, had been gray like this in springtime. For a moment he could deceive his own heart with the sight and think he was there and then, where Marna’s trees had stood so thick and dark they shut out the sun.
But here…here and now, the bright Guelen sunlight very easily reached him through the branches and cast all the other hills, all the low-lying meadows and hazy forested crests, in glorious gray and gold as far as he could see.
In the joy of the sight he
released the captive leaf, letting it enjoy a second, unlooked-for life before it wafted down, down, to settle lower on the hill next a lichen-mottled outcrop of rock.
There another gust caught it and the leaf, not yet defeated, explored the changed world on the very winds that had once robbed it of safety. Thoughtless of the act a moment before, he suddenly longed for the leaf to live, fly back to spring and become green again. He longed for all the woods to be green and the wind to sigh with the mysterious voice of his first days.
He longed to know this province of Guelessar as he had known the surrounds of Ynefel.
He longed for a thousand things, all of them dangerous.
Petelly meanwhile had trailed off at his own direction, doubtless crushing a score of remarkable leaves underfoot as he wandered nose down, sniffing under the autumn piles for whatever might prove edible underneath. He was a practical horse. Long hairs abounded in Petelly’s bay coat, making him appear stockier than he was, a disgrace among the highbred horses of the guard,
6 / C. J. CHERRYH
and Petelly’s jaw, never fine, was thick and massive with beard that riffled in the wind. All the horses and the cattle in the fields had been growing shaggier by the day. The guards said the coats on the cattle, the vast chevrons of birds skeining across the skies, all were signs that foretold a bitter winter, with snow likely before the full moon. The servants in the king’s household were unpacking quilts and woolen clothes and airing them where they could, foreseeing the same, and Tristen looked forward to that event with mingled curiosity and trepidation.
Once the snow began in earnest, so he had heard, it would lie deep and white all winter, killing the fields, putting the trees to sleep.