Fortress of Eagles

by C. J. Cherryh

  40

  FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 41

  The point under discussion now, however, seemed to regard rousing master Emuin from his tower, which meant waking him from the diurnal sleep natural in a man who spent his nights peering at the stars, omentaking, and scrying gods-knew-what in candleflame and water. The king did not want to know what master Emuin did in his tower. He refused steadfastly to countenance complaints regarding master Emuin, his tutor, a Teranthine, having a place in the honors read in the Quinaltine at harvesttide, as he refused to hear the complaints about his bride, his friends, his consorting with Elwynim lords or southern barons, or his uncommon (for a Marhanen) association with Amefel, a heretic province, mostly Bryaltine in faith and, gods knew, many of its people of tainted Sihhë blood.

  Nor, latest controversy in the reports Idrys had brought him, did he regard the to-do in the Guelesfort over his choice of plainer fare for the harvesttide feast, a scandal for the cooks and for the lords who fancied their stomachs too delicate for Amefin barley soup instead of the traditional leek. He consented to both on the table, but by the great gods’ indifference, he would have the barley soup, himself, providing the Guelen cooks could produce it unscorched.

  A new king inevitably met such complaints and such resistance to change. Traditions opposed him, even in soup bowls.

  He could not please the fisher-and farmerfolk of Murandys to the north of Guelessar if he pleased the apple-growing province of Panys to the east of Guelessar: his choice of harvesttide fare had political and economic symbolism, and his father had done thus, and promised this, and so on, and so on. As with soup, so with religion: he could not maintain his ties to his old tutor Emuin and at the same time please

  42 / C. J. CHERRYH

  the Patriarch of the Quinalt, the sect which had risen and prospered under his father. He had already drafted a reply to His Holiness… we shall consider measures which may suffice, regarding the good appearance of the steps…And meanwhile his longed-for informal supper with his bride was all but on the tables and word arrived on the lips of a page that they had indeed located Tristen within the town, late, unseemly, but advised. In a calmer state of mind he began a reasoned missive to Lord Brysaulin… we command you send this day to all the villages specifically to ask…

  Then, another commotion of the pages, alas and alack, his own intended russet velvet was discovered in better light to have a stain on it. The senior page, with him since Amefel, and now Master of the Wardrobe, was devastated: Annas went off to settle the matter and there was peace as far as… tally of carts…

  “The bats and the owls are out of sorts this evening,” Idrys remarked dryly, quietly shadowing the light above his desk,

  “and master Emuin will attend. Annas has provided him clothes.

  We have waked him.”

  “Provided clothes?” He was mildly dismayed, and looked up at his captain, quill stopped. He had not seen his old teacher in…it must be a fortnight, perhaps a little more. Well, perhaps since the oath-taking and festivities of the court last month—or was it more than a month now? But the old man had looked quite well. Emuin seemed admirably content, having reclaimed his former choice of residences, the Old West Tower, and since he was a Teranthine father, he had been served, quite handsomely served, by respectable, soft-spoken Teranthine monks.

  He had naturally assumed his old master was well, if nocturnal in his pursuits.

  “Wherefore is Annas now providing his clothes, FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 43

  pray tell? Where are his own servants?”

  “He discharged the grayfrock brothers,” Idrys said. “Some time ago.”

  “All of them?”

  “Both of them. There were two, my lord king. He faulted their clumsiness with inkpots.”

  He had not known. He was appalled. “Does no one attend him?”

  “The Lord Warden has seen him at least twice in a sennight, and sent to him daily.”

  “Tristen has seen him.” Tristen would never neglect the old man, so, there, he had not neglected his old friend and tutor: Tristen had been seeing to him.

  “The Lord Warden’s servants have seen to his linens and his meals,” Idrys said. “But master grayrobe is less among us mortals than among the stars lately, so it seems. I do think he might do with more blankets in that tower.”

  That Idrys evinced concern was troubling. Idrys, the darker eminence of his household, had been his father’s man, then his, a man who would stick at very little, and who was not restrained by any pity or scruples from the deeds a prince had to do. He supposed that in some sense even Emuin had been his father’s man, but that was so long ago it scarcely signified.

  Master Emuin had been his tutor and his brother’s: Emuin was his most trusted councillor of the last few years, a man all in grays: gray of purposes, of arguments, grays of the Teranthine order, which cloaked Emuin’s confessed unorthodoxy. There was never a question in which Emuin could not deliver a perhaps or an if, never an issue in which Idrys could not find a counterinterest and a suspect motive.

  Master grayrobe and master crow, Teranthine 44 / C. J. CHERRYH

  cleric and Guard captain, the guides of his misspent youth.

  Each, Annas making the third leg of a stable tripod, had presided in his separate authority over a young, notoriously wastrel prince: but now that he had been crowned king, and especially since he was facing a war in Elwynor, taking census of his resources and arranging the movement of men, why, he supposed he had been far more in Idrys’ company than in Emuin’s the last month. He had not known his old teacher was living in need of blankets.

  The man counseled the king of Ylesuin, for the gods’ sake.

  How could he not find two more servants? Or browbeat the palace staff into service? Or at least complain. Why had Annas not told him?

  His pen had dried out, and he discovered he had spotted his fingers with ink. The staff had by now found his second-favorite doublet immaculate and acceptable…he had surprised the pages by his choice of the shabby favorite, when so much lately had been the court finery. But tonight he wanted his comfortable clothing, not even the lightest hint of martial defense—no leather coat, no bezaint shirt, none of the weight that habitually bore on his shoulders, his ribs, his stomach, and his disposition.

  The few souls he had called to his table were, among all their other virtues, the friends of his heart, the friends on whom he relied.

  He had included his brother Efanor in that number, after anguished thought, after wavering yea and nay for an hour, and finally deciding that, yes, he must. He simply must. Efanor had little in common with his friends and companions. Efanor, Duke of Guelessar now, since Efanor had become next in line for the throne, had not shared in those difficult and dangerous days in Amefel, except the very last, and Efanor’s piety was a discour

  FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 45

  agement to any levity, even in a lady’s company. But Efanor’s feelings would be extremely hurt if he left him out. He most earnestly did not want to hurt his brother, and he had invited him, but he dearly, fondly, foolishly hoped Efanor would not pray over supper.

  In the welter of attempts to sway his judgment, he needed the assurance that he could still reach his true friends. A new king in Guelemara, attempting to maintain his own will against the entrenched powers of the northern baronies, had very many concerns in the establishment of his household, the management of which was Annas’ job; and had vital interests in finding out things some barons might have hoped to hide from a less active successor—that was Idrys’ purview. And in searching the stars, his faithful counselor Emuin was seeking out the fortunes of his reign: he saw that as needful, considering what they had faced at Lewenbrook, a practice in which he feared that the Holy Father—and his own extravagantly pious brother—would find some dangerously righteous objection.

  But he knew how to defend Annas and Idrys and Emuin, who had long records of service. Since the barons could not prevail there, it was Ninévrisë about who
m the objections circled. Ninévrisë and, gods help him, Tristen, Warden of Ynefel. The last Lord Warden had not left his tower. Tristen had. That there was reason he should have done so, that Ynefel stood in ruins, none of these considerations sufficed to deter religious objection. The Quinaltine had no wish to hear of wizardry on the battlefield, no wish to know that sorcery had confronted the army and that wizardry, not piety, had turned the attack—and neither had the northern barons, notably absent from the field, any wish to hear about Lewenbrook.

  46 / C. J. CHERRYH

  He had most urgently to marry, remove any potential leverage priests might have on him, and then to hell with the religious quibbles: he would do as he pleased then and be damned to the barons. He had to produce a victory, make heroes, create precedents that would settle all this tangle, bribe a few key barons with grants that would make them betray their brother lords, and most of all he had to do the deed quickly, trample over custom, shorten the mourning for his royal father no matter how Efanor frowned and cast him anguished looks. He had to marry soon and very suddenly to dash the hopes of Ylesuin’s assorted nobles and eligible daughters: his marriage would place all hope of a daughter crowned out of reach of any of the baronies…most notably out of the reach of the duke of Murandys, Prichwarrin, who had been counting heavily on snaring him into a familial bond that would make Prichwarrin ultimately kinsman to kings.

  But hot-tempered, self-assured Luriel, Prichwarrin’s lovely niece, had abandoned her prince when he was governing Amefel, a province rife with assassins and on the edge of rebellion. She had gone to Henas’amef when her prince was made viceroy in Amefel quite clearly expecting to reign like a queen consort and had been so certain of him that she had set herself in his bed to win his undying love. But she had grown bored with the lack of festivities in that rustic province, and because there were no more suitable, more beautiful, more favored ducal daughters in all Ylesuin, why, she had no fear of his looking elsewhere and she had flounced out of Amefel. Her uncle Prichwarrin, after all, was the most important baron, the most necessary ally to a king-to-be, and her position seemed secure.

  FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 47

  She had not considered outside the bounds of Ylesuin, however since no Guelen lady had ever had to consider outside the bounds of Ylesuin for a rival—and now Luriel languished in Aslaney, with no marriage, no husband, and no prospects.

  Luriel, greedy Luriel, so sure she was clever, had certainly suffered the most pitifullly in his plans, and was certainly a grievous disappointment to her uncle…who doubtless clung to hope and prayed for an outbreak of sorcery, treachery, even a breath of scandal or a trip on the stairs that might at the last moment prevent the king marrying the foreign Regent.

  Lately Cefwyn felt sorry for Luriel, truth be told, and took her plight as something he would have to deal with in some honorable way…a title, a handsome husband. He had one in mind. Meanwhile marry he would, and marry Ninévrisë he would, and in fifteen days he would have made clear to all of Elwynor that the Regent of Elwynor was not his prisoner, but the ally of a Marhanen king with a potent army, a king with the Quinalt’s blessing, a king able to fight the rebels (all this a powerful blow to rebel claims) before the situation across the river grew more dire, and able to set Ninévrisë on her throne and march away without claiming Elwynor as his own.

  Let one of the Elwynim rebels claim to sit as King and not Regent, and then the Quinalt might well see another resurgence of wizardry on their very doorstep. A prophecy current in Elwynor foretold the end of the Elwynim Regency in a King to Come, and it was only to be expected that they did not expect the Marhanen to fulfill it. Sooner or later a bold rebel would find some wizard or worse to attest his legitimacy and assuredly claim Sihhë blood in his ancestry (common enough in 48 / C. J. CHERRYH

  Elwynor, and in Amefel). He had argued that possibility to the Holy Father and seen real fear dawn on the man’s face. The Quinalt, that other power in the kingdom of Ylesuin, had never demanded piety of the Marhanen kings; and gods knew his grandfather and his father Ináreddrin had been willing to accommodate unorthodoxy—for the very calculated purpose that they might one day gain Elwynor back into a union of kingdoms, as it had been one realm under the Sihhë kings. His father and grandfather had very carefully maintained a blind eye toward Sihhë symbols and remnants of the Bryaltine faith in Amefel, precisely to keep that heretic province attached to Ylesuin. And they had continually declared the Elwynim to be more or less Bryalt in hopes of fitting Elwynor into their crown: all that, they had done, and the Quinalt Patriarch had blessed their actions no matter how questionable in doctrine.

  But accepting a bride of Elwynim blood for the grandson without quite reclaiming that lost territory was pressing matters to the limit. The compact between the Marhanen kings and the Quinaltine was stretched thinner than at any time in Ylesuin’s brief history.

  And pigeons now shat upon the Quinalt’s porch, by petty sorcery, gods save the day.

  He had for a little while avoided being in public with his old friends. See, he would say to the Guelenfolk, who were the heart of Ylesuin, nothing has changed. The gods favor the king and the Quinalt, and there will be peace with Elwynor…

  After a small war.

  There will be piety and fear of the gods…

  But remembering the enemy’s wizardry, why, we do have wizards. Be assured they are quiet once. Pray excuse the pigeons.

  FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 49

  Ignore the slight grayness of master Emuin. Ignore the very conspicuous darkness of the banner of the Lord Marshal of Althalen, alike the new Warden of Ynefel, resurrected from anathema and death itself…I had never planned to love him like a brother.

  Worst of all—there was claimant for the throne of Elwynor that he both believed and feared was the fulfillment of the prophecy—he knew, and Emuin and Idrys knew, and Ninévrisë

  herself knew, but he was far from sure Tristen knew.

  And he could think of few things that would make Tristen more miserable.

  It was almost time. He walked the long corridor from his private office toward the state halls, a vast, well-lighted corridor of fine that windows with the royal Dragon blazing gold on red, Marhanen heraldry all but dimmed now as sunset shone like fire in the two clear panes to either side.

  He saw commotion at the doors ahead. Arrivals had begun.

  Efanor, he discovered, had come in early, but not too early, and Cefwyn met his brother with a warm embrace, a genuine embrace—though the ornate and overlarge Quinalt medallion Efanor affected turned between them as they met and stabbed painfully through the velvet. Efanor flattened it to him and renewed the embrace, laughing.

  “Did the books come, the two from the south?” Efanor asked.

  “Have they come? I’ve not seen them, gods, when shall I have the leisure for books again? Annas!” he hailed his chamberlain, who passed down the hall at a fair clip, shepherding servants and pages who should not be in the receiving hall, gods alone knew why the young fools had chosen that traverse precisely as guests

  50 / C. J. CHERRYH

  arrived. “Annas, where are these books my brother sent?”

  “In the library, my lord king.” This on the retreat, pages scattering.

  “In the library. Why the library, for the gods’ sake?” He was promised a first text of the natural philosopher Manystys Aldun, observations of the ocean he had never seen. Efanor had recovered his summer baggage out of now-disgraced Llymaryn, and with it, his forgotten birthday gift, arriving in a pack train which must finally have reached the capital. Cefwyn had waited for it for months…was eager to read the text…when he might find the time. Being king, he had not his books in his room—but in some damned great room full of books where he could find nothing.

  But then Emuin arrived, far from the dire condition Idrys’

  report had led him to believe…looking a little like an owl roused by daylight, true, and a little windblown, but properly scrubbed and tidy. His beard, wh
iter this fall than its previous streaked gray, was well combed. He wore gray, always gray, and bore the Teranthine sigil conspicuous on his chest. It was a war of medallions tonight. “Well, well, and welcome,” Cefwyn said, feeling thin arms beneath the robes as they embraced.

  “They led me to think you had dismissed your servants, master grayrobe.”

  “I have! Pottering about, moving my stacks, over-setting my inkpot…if I want ink spilled on my charts, I can do it myself.”

  “I can find you other servants.”

  “And spying, Spying!” This with a knit-browed glance at Idrys, who stood to the side, loquacious as statuary.

  FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 51

  “Idrys means you nothing but well, old master,” Cefwyn said.

  “And gives you his report of my reports. If you wish the state of the stars, ask me.”

  “I shall,” Cefwyn said, suppressing a smile. Your Majesty was almost unheard out of Emuin’s mouth. In the old man’s mind, he suspected, he was still the towheaded royal urchin, leaning inconsiderate inky elbows on precious books.

  But for Efanor, also Emuin’s pupil in former days, there had been nothing from master Emuin but a polite nod of his head, a solemn, formal, and entirely correct: “Your Highness.” Did that sting, oh, far more than any omission of royal honors?

  Cefwyn did not guess. He worried about it.

  But meanwhile Cevulirn of Ivanor had arrived hard on Emuin’s heels and slipped in silently, leaving his guard outside, men of the White Horse. Cevulirn was tall, thin, all gray and white in his colors, a man who might fade into mist and fog.

  He was not that imposing until one looked him in the eyes or saw him with horses or on the battlefield, and Cefwyn had seen all three. Cevulirn was the one of all the southern barons he was most supremely glad to have linger in the court—speaking of spies, which Cevulirn assuredly was, ready to bring the southern barons immediately back to court if the northern ones beset the king with undue demands for favors for their personal causes.