Fortress of Eagles

by C. J. Cherryh

  And that well suited the king, who did not want to meet those northern demands and who looked to the south, the alliance he had once forged desperately against Elwynor, to support him most strongly in his determination to gain his Elwynim bride.

  “My friend,” Cefwyn hailed him, and for two 52 / C. J. CHERRYH

  entire breaths had time to ask Cevulirn the state of his affairs, but not to hear the answer, before Ninévrisë herself arrived.

  He had not taken account that he had neglected to invite any other woman. The court, which remarked every nuance of what the king did and did not, would surely remark that particular indiscretion, plucking it out of the overheated air in the kitchens if they lacked spies among his servants.

  But he and his companions of this hall had made a warlike council in Amefel both before and after Lewenbrook. The politicking around the ladies’ court in Guelemara might be thick as bees around a hive, and the bees might buzz about Ninévrisës future status, and the proprieties of a good Guelen lady, and, gods witness, whether her simple bodice and single-petticoated skirt was a fashion to be copied or a scandal to be deplored. But the ladies of the bower never quite acknowledged the one truth most entirely unwelcome to their imaginations: that Her Grace was a head of state, not some ducal daughter to be judged by them; and that Her Grace would have been attended to this hour, not by ladies, but by four good men, lords of Elwynor, had they not fallen in her defense in an act of memorable courage. Her Grace the Regent of Elwynor had led men of twice her years under arms and been obeyed in the field and in the council chamber; but alas, alas for the gossip, on this side of the river she did not entrain family influences which might define her status with the women of this court or their ambitious priests of the Quinalt…how else could they know her worth? And, gods! her petticoats were insufficient.

  Her Grace the heretic arrived with only the four of the king’s guards assigned to her, to sit in the intimate, FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 53

  doubtless drunken company of half a score men at their leisure, including a king ill reputed as a prince…oh, depend on it: the gossip would fly by morning. Here they were, if a wizard-priest, the captain of the King’s Guard, the king’s pious brother, and the silent lord of Ivanor could possibly be counted raffish and daring…why, Cevulirn was a southerner, after all, and not a good Quinaltine, but Teranthine like master Emuin, if Cevulirn ever chose to make any philosophy evident.

  Clatter, clatter, clatter of women’s gossip, and be damned to them and their suppositions. The king did as he pleased tonight and needed those he gathered close to him. His heart needed them.

  It wanted only the Lord Warden of Ynefel’s haunted precinct to complete the evening, and Tristen was, not uncommonly, late.

  C H A P T E R 4

  Cefwyn had said there was no need of formality. As we did in the first days, the message had said, but they had gotten in from their ride just at sunset, and had to wash, and dress in clothes fit for the king’s supper table.

  Tristen wore dark brown and Uwen wore green, no badges at all of Ynefel’s dark repute (which he escaped whenever he could) and this time no weight of mail or defense of weapons.

  The guards—there were always at least four at the king’s private chambers, besides the score up and down the hall outside—knew them and let them in without their having to say a word.

  “The lord of Ynefel and Althalen,” the guard informed a hurrying page, and the page bowed and led them quickly down the reception hall to the smaller banquet hall—past Annas, hurrying about as usual, then past Idrys, who was never far from the king. Idrys had a seemingly lazy attention for them, as sharp-edged as ever—Idrys missed nothing at all, and seemed uncommonly amused.

  The page showed them into the hall. Gratefully, it was not to be one of those state affairs, with tables reaching from the front of the hall to the back, in double rows, a din of voices and lute players in which no

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  one could hear what happened a table away: those affairs could never be arranged in a single day. The invitation tonight had been a surprise, and set in the Blue Hall, which was actually mostly gilt, with only touches of blue in the ceiling. Tristen had been here once before, just after the oath-taking, in what Cefwyn called the coziest hall in the king’s apartments.

  There was Emuin looking scrubbed and like his old self; and Ninévrisë was talking freely with Efanor, who was smiling, tonight, and without the doleful priest who often came with him.

  Even the pages were those who had attended Cefwyn in Amefel and whom he had kept in service, though other lords had besieged the throne with offers of eligible sons and nephews.

  Best of all, Cefwyn came and clapped him on the shoulder, bidding him welcome; and for a few distracted moments Cefwyn talked to him about the weather and the wedding and the harvest.

  “I hear the barley is exceptional,” Tristen said, and Cefwyn gave him a wondering look.

  “Uwen told me today,” he confessed, and Cefwyn laughed.

  “It is a fine harvest,” Cefwyn said. “Come, come, are you too warm with that cloak? Boy! —Gods, they’ve heated the hall like a forge.”

  Tristen surrendered his cloak. Uwen had deserted him you too outer hall and would have his supper there, Tristen was sure, where Uwen would be far more comfortable with the Ivanim guard, and with Idrys’ lieutenant, than among lords.

  Meanwhile it was impossible to follow anything Cefwyn said; Tristen’s thoughts flew entirely asunder. He had come in from riding all unsuspecting. He had taken to eavesdropping on his own guards for the sheer

  56 / C. J. CHERRYH

  comfort of voices and here he was, snatched into a gathering of all his own old friends. He felt his heart more than fill; he felt it loosen from its habitually guarded state, and he looked about him in sheer dangerous delight…aware of Ninévrisë as he was of Emuin.

  He saw Emuin’s frown from across the room.

  He ducked his head then and made his presence in this world and in the gray space instantly smaller and quieter.

  But damp the happiness, no, it could not, and Ninévrisë

  crossed the room to meet him and take his hands.

  “Tristen,” she said with great warmth.

  “My lady Regent.”

  “You look very well,” she said. He tried not to reach into the gray space. They could speak with no word spoken—alone of everyone but Emuin she could reach there, as her father had been able to do; but only scarcely, a wisp of a presence at the strongest: she was no wizard. She only had the heritage, and had consciously abandoned it.

  “Here we all are,” Cefwyn was saying just then, summoning all of them to table. “Come, come, everyone, no standing on ceremony tonight. By royal decree among the lot of us, I make today a start on harvesttide, no great echoing halls and long speeches, no worries, not a care. So be at your ease, all my good friends, my dear soon-to-be-bride—sit by me. Emuin is a priest—he will keep the proprieties.”

  “No priest,” Emuin said. “I am most carefully not a priest.”

  “Close enough for propriety in this company: a cleric, a man of years and dignity. My lady to my left, FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 57

  Efanor to my right hand—Cevulirn, next Efanor, Tristen, opposite, then my good master crow. Gods, what joy to see you.”

  They talked a moment. Efanor delivered a very long supper prayer, and after serving and conversations began again, Cefwyn talking of horses, of the weather, the prospects for the winter…and the spring, Idrys reminded them.

  “No,” Cefwyn said, then, “no, not a word on that matter. I did not bring you here for any council of war, only for the pleasure of seeing you. Friends, look you, a gathering of friends.

  That is all my pleasure tonight.”

  “My lord king,” said Cevulirn, and Emuin lifted his cup.

  “Friends,” Cefwyn said again, “with whom I can say with particular significance that this has been both a bitter year and a good year
.”

  “Aye to that,” Idrys said.

  “A year of ending and beginning, a year of loss and finding…and all of you were with me through the storm. I drink your health, your wealth, your fortune for long years to come, and I hope for many more days in which we can gather like this.”

  Cefwyn drank. Then Efanor got up from his chair. “Gods rest our father,” Efanor said then, lifting his cup, “and gods rest them all who died, and gods save the king and the Holy Father.”

  Everyone drank to that, too, though Cefwyn did not seem entirely pleased. It was like Efanor to bring the gods and the dead into everything, and he was not quite sure Efanor should in all propriety have paired the Patriarch with the king.

  “Gods save the Lady Regent,” Cevulirn said, in his turn, “and all her faithful men.”

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  That meant Elwynim and heretics. Everyone drank, and that did please Cefwyn, but not quite so well Efanor. Tristen began to fear he might have to say something himself, and all wit immediately escaped him. He decided if he had to say something he must bless the king and all present, which was no great difficulty; but fortunately it seemed the gods-saving was done, and the rest of them were spared having to invent something.

  Instead they began to talk and eat until they had done for the soup and bread. Annas supervised the pages bringing in another course, and they sat and ate, not overmuch, and drank, not heavily. Tristen found himself thinking of the noisy lords of the south—thinking with a lightening of spirits how Sovrag would take to the autumn ale. The lord of Olmern would be very drunk and very loud by now, and inevitably talk of matters no one would approach head-on with the king—but Sovrag would always go straight to necessary matters, and most of the time people would laugh, or pretend to laugh, even if they were offended. In fact he liked the man as he liked Cevulirn; and he found only the dimmest joy in Efanor’s pious prayers, for which he was very sorry.

  But it was a warm, good gathering. They talked about the harvest, and the festival, and whether the scarcity of cloth was a matter of merchants downriver getting rumors of war from Imor and holding back goods: Cevulirn thought not. His dukedom of Ivanor was more southerly than Imor, though entirely lacking a riverport. Cevulirn, who usually spoke very little, succinctly told what he knew regarding the downriver merchants and their quarrels, and why he thought they were not shipping cloth—which lay rather in a quarrel FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 59

  between two lords. Then the talk wended to the grain harvest, and almost inevitably to horses, and finally to the duke of Murandys, Lord Prichwarrin, who wished to breed the northern Spestinan horse (it was almost a Word, a sturdy sort of horse Tristen did not think he had ever seen, but he imagined such horses as stocky and winter-bearded like Petelly) crossing them to the southern Byssandin breed, the native horse of the Ivor plains, not to the Crysin breed that the Ivanim rode, a type which they had bred up from the Byssandin. It was horses, hounds, and hunting where Guelenfolk gathered in numbers, and Tristen listened to his second discourse on horse-breeding for the day.

  Cevulirn, with Cefwyn, opined that Murandys was likely to lose the strength of the Spestinan and add all the faults of the Byssandin shoulder, which produced a notoriously unpleasant gait. That led them to a mare Ninévrisë had brought from Elwynor, that Cefwyn much recommended and that Cevulirn greatly approved; and thus back to the spring campaign, and the ill-made tallies, which Ninévrisë declared they should not discuss tonight, no, firmly, no.

  So back to the breeding of horses and the plenitude of hay this fall, a good last cutting. The conversation all was light and pleasant, until at last Emuin enjoyed too much ale himself, fell asleep, and two pages had to see him off to his tower. Ninévrisë

  made her departure at the same time. So did Cevulirn and then Efanor; and Tristen thought it clearly time to go.

  But when Cevulirn and Efanor were out the door of the Blue Hall, Cefwyn stayed him for a moment with a hand on his arm, and offered him, of all things, a purse heavy with coin.

  “Sir?” he asked, perplexed.

  60 / C. J. CHERRYH

  “Penny day, we call it. A custom. The day after this, folk high and low repair to the Quinalt, either at high services or any hour of the day after noon, if they will, and drop the harvest penny into the collection box. Supposing that you have no great abundance of pennies, I give you these, for yourself, for Uwen, for your household, to give to the Quinalt.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. He was unaccustomed to handling money.

  He wondered what a sack of pennies might buy, and he was already planning to go later rather than early and to do the deed quickly. He did not like the thought of the Quinaltine roof over his head. He wondered if he might send Uwen to do it for him, and whether there might be coins left over.

  “For each of your servants and Uwen and yourself. It is important,” Cefwyn added, “that each man make his gift with his own hand. The harvest penny repairs the Quinalt roof.”

  “Does it leak?” It seemed an odd way to deal with an urgent situation; and he made Cefwyn laugh and clap him on the shoulder.

  “Not for at least fifty years, but a benefice once accorded never goes away, not where the priests are involved. Supposedly now the money goes for the widows of the town, which is good work, but most of all, understand, it requires even the king to make pilgrimage up the Quinalt steps, and there to drop in the harvest penny to show his piety. You are not frequent in your observances…truth, you have not been, on my advice. This time, you must do this with your own hand sometime during the day. As I shall at the high ceremony.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” The warmth of the wine had deserted him in the chill of imagining that place of groined arches and pillars that stood like forbidding

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  watchers. But Cefwyn clearly had some compelling reason for sending him there, a reason he was sure had nothing to do with the Quinalt roof, and Cefwyn’s hand on his shoulder drew him close as they walked the outside hall toward the doors.

  “Efanor has warned me before this,” Cefwyn said. “You know the priests are discontent with Her Grace, and entirely distrust the southern barons, who are not Quinalt, excepting the lord of Imor Lenúalim. And that they are also very discontent with master Emuin, who is far, far closer to me than the Quinalt has ever found comfortable. They will wish to find fault.”

  If they disapproved Emuin, it was very clear by extension that they disapproved him—which was no news at all, but troubling.

  “For my sake, do this,” Cefwyn said. “Bring the penny.

  Scrupulously, on the day. Uwen will guide you. There will be a state procession, all due formality. You need not suffer that.

  You may go later. You may do me and my lady a great service, if only you can carry this off with no untoward events. Above all else, we mustn’t have an untoward event. Dare you? Can you? Will you?”

  Uwen being a Gueleman, and Quinalt whenever he was asked, Tristen knew he could rely on Uwen to know at least about the general behavior expected with shrines and gods.

  He had never delved deeply into the question of gods, fearing that powers and magics which ordinary Men claimed to exist, and which he thus far could not find, might lead even their strong friendship into uncomfortable places. He had felt Uwen’s discomfort with the subject at any time they skirted near it. But it seemed circumstances now and at last called for him to deal with gods—and with priests, who said the gods naturally detested him.

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  Still, Cefwyn would never wish him harm, and if Cefwyn asked him, for his sake, to drop a penny in a box, that was after all a small thing, however foolish-seeming.

  “I will,” he said.

  “I have all confidence in you,” Cefwyn said, still with that sober look, the two of them walking slowly. “Understand, my enemies will try to catch you. The closer we come to the wedding, those who oppose me see themselves and their influence sitting farther and farther from the cour
t, and themselves with no further means either to bend me or to change the treaty.

  The southern barons see the advantage to themselves of our treaty with Elwynor. But the northern barons have old grudges with Her Grace’s land. They wish nothing so much as to diminish Her Grace to a subject, her kingdom to a province. They have had two short months first to find the nuptial agreement will not permit that, then to wish me to break that agreement, marry Her Grace, then invade her kingdom and loose them so they can plunder it.”

  “You would never.”

  “I would never. That took them a few days of the two months to learn. Then they proposed forms for the ceremony that would accomplish the same thing: they wanted to insert clauses in our vows that would make my lady far less a sovereign than her husband, and then they would demand their king take advantage of them. But, another few days of scheming and composing, and they simply cannot find a chink in the betrothal documents we crafted in Amefel, do you see? So now they wish to insert other clauses to let them claim Elwynor for our heirs; but we have them there, too. The northern barons went to the priests, absolute in their belief

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  that they might find weakness in the documents. But that failed.

  Now with fifteen days left before the wedding, the only hope, their only hope, is to find some wickedness to charge against Her Grace. Their time is running out, and the harvesttide, when there is so much license and so much drunken behavior, and the public ceremonies, with the king and his friends on view, is their best chance to arrange some inconvenience.”

  Had this something to do with pennies? He was not entirely enlightened.