Fortress of Eagles

by C. J. Cherryh

  His situation and Cefwyn’s had grown very tangled, but dearest to his heart, at least tonight he was again in the king’s close counsel, and therefore and for the first time in weeks he saw hope, hope of the same sort that Cefwyn himself saw: only let there be a wedding, only let them have the agreement of the Quinalt,

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  Cefwyn said; and now he thought the same. Let there be a wedding, and then he would have men and weapons and then he would make Cefwyn’s kingdom safe.

  And then there would be peace and safety and all Cefwyn’s friends would be together for a thousand thousand such evenings. Dared he hope so? He had grown wiser, and dared trust less in the world.

  “I shall send Efanor to you,” Cefwyn said. “Tomorrow.”

  “I shall expect him,” he said to Cefwyn.

  “Was it a fine evening?” Uwen asked him as they walked back, Uwen with a moderate glow of ale about him. “Was it all to expectation?”

  “Very fine,” he said. “Very fine, thank you. Efanor will come tomorrow, to teach me the Quinalt’s manners.”

  Uwen coughed, which he did not take for a cough at all.

  “For Cefwyn’s good,” Tristen said. “Like Wys. Very like Wys.

  To please the northern lords and the Quinaltine.” He thought that told Uwen enough.

  “Well, mostly, aye, ye puts your head down at the right times and does as others do, and there ain’t that much to it.”

  “Cefwyn gave me a purse of pennies to give. For the roof.”

  “Ah.”

  “I have two days. The court will go there, and I will go, all together. And you must tell me what to do.”

  “Oh, well, as to that understandin’, don’t ye fret, 86 / C. J. CHERRYH

  lad.” Uwen alone could call him that, generally not until they walked clear of Lusin and the others, as they did now. And Uwen had seemed much reassured about his visiting the Quinalt when he heard it was the penny offering. “Say what the lords say an’ do just what they do. ’At’s the straight and simple of it.” Then a frown. “—There ain’t any small shadows like to come out, is there? No untoward appearances.”

  “No,” Tristen said fervently. It was what Cefwyn had asked.

  “No.” He was worried about the visit to the Quinaltine, but Cefwyn had directed him smoothly through the confusion and movements of the court before this, and he was the more reassured to know he was also under Emuin’s advisement. If Idrys talked to master Emuin and neither of them found strong objection, he feared nothing in meeting with Efanor, at least.

  Efanor was tedious, but genuinely learned, and intelligent, and well-disposed, and he was indeed puzzled about the gods and the other manifestations the Quinalt here claimed to see, far more than in Amefel, along with miracles and some sort of magic. The priests never wanted to call it magic, and perhaps it was not: if spirits so potent as regularly came and went in the Quinaltine, he would have expected to notice them in the gray space. Above all if there were common appearances of gods within the lived, he thought Emuin would have warned him not to stray there.

  Yet Emuin had forbidden him the gray space, so long as he was in Guelemara.

  Emuin, however, had affected to take the priests all lightly…and Emuin was a priest, though not Quinalt, but Teranthine. He never saw Emuin pray and he never FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 87

  heard Emuin blessing this or that as Efanor did. He found it all very curious, and the prospect of gods both intrigued him and posed him questions. Dared he ask Efanor to show him a god, or to teach him how to find one?

  But perhaps gods were furtive spirits and refused to visit where there were crowds. Some shadows were like that. Perhaps priests met gods only when they were alone and the lights were dim.

  Perhaps gods were a special kind of shadow. If that was the case, then that might be the reason he always felt uneasy when he looked at the Quinaltine. He was curious about the priests, too, and wished to learn why they both tolerated shadows, which was dangerous, and feared wizards in general, who were not.

  Idrys came back. Idrys had not gone far. “So?” Cefwyn said, when Idrys and he were without servants, in the private, the guarded, hall. “Out with it, crow.”

  “I?”

  He flung a glance at a face that had no expressions, but two, the arched eyebrow and the rarer play of mirth. There was the one, but not the other, tonight, and had not been from the time he had spoken to Tristen. He had brought his wine with him.

  He drained the cup.

  “You, crow, you know, you think, you guess, and you suppose. Wherewith? On what account? And do you dispute me?”

  “Not, I, m’lord, oh, not I.”

  “Out on it! You reek of disagreement. You breathe disagreement.”

  88 / C. J. CHERRYH

  “I fear no manifestation of mice and demons in the shrine when he appears. I do look for opposition. To set the lord of Ynefel as the focus of the barons’ discontent denis that they have weapons. And that he does.”

  He set the cup down hard and picked up the pitcher. He set down another cup beside it, he, the king, servant to them both.

  He filled both, and gave one to Idrys. “Stand down from your watch, crow, and unburden yourself. I saw you frowning through supper. Plague on you! Can you not be festive?”

  “About the safety of my king? Rarely these days.”

  “And wherein am I threatened?”

  “The mooncalf is the prophecy, my lord king. You cannot deny it. We all know it and Her Grace knows it. The Elwynim look for a King to Come. And you pretend there is no danger.”

  “Tristen is exactly right in his advice, you know. Plague on the northern barons. These dithering fools will cost us lives, they will cost my lady’s men lives, and by the Five if an incursion out of Elwynor lands boats on Murandys’ shore, I’ll send troops to Prichwarrin’s relief by way of Ivanor. Lord Maudyn sends me anguished letters. Damnation! Men will die because Lord Prichwarrin insists on delays and Lord Brysaulin mistakes my reports.”

  “If it was a mistake.”

  “Do you say it isn’t?”

  “I would never accuse the Lord Chancellor as to the reason he sent that report to Prichwarrin. It would hardly be politic.

  And I have become a politic man. I must be, else I will surely offend you.”

  “Politic.” He drank a mouthful and found it flavorless, the result of too many cups before. He set the cup down, gently, this time. “Damn him.”

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  “Damn Prichwarrin? Or the Lord Chancellor? Or Mauryl Gestaurien?”

  “Leave Tristen out of this damning. He is not a political man.”

  “He is Sihhë,” Idrys said, “he is Mauryl’s heir, he is most indubitably Mauryl’s parting gift to the house of the Marhanen and the house of Syrillas…”

  “All these things we admit.”

  “And dare I say you have had my advice, but you follow master grayrobe’s by preference. Now what will Your Majesty do?”

  Win his love, Emuin had said, regarding the danger Tristen posed. Win his love.

  “Now are we afraid?” Idrys asked. “Now do we wish we had done otherwise?”

  “No, we do not!” He cast Idrys a scowling look.

  “Mauryl prevented harm to us once. And twice. Tristen is my friend. They are rare in this climate. Exceeding rare.”

  “Mauryl Gestaurien, Mauryl of Ynefel, Mauryl Kingsbane, Mauryl King maker…”

  “Crow, what point are you making?”

  “I wonder what point my king is making. You will win Her Grace her throne back. And then what? Twice on a week, boats will ply the Lenúalim to bring the king his bride, his bride the king…”

  Idrys came very near the mark. Dangerously near. Cewyn looked elsewhere, into the shadows, of a mind to forbid the topic, but wondering how much the man closest to him had assembled out of bits an pieces.

  “Go on.”

  “Because she will not sit the throne?” Idrys ventured. “Becau
se you have the Elwynim King to Come sworn and sealed to you in fealty?”

  90 / C. J. CHERRYH

  Things had such a dull sheen in Idrys’ hands, sheen of gray iron, sheen of well-oiled metal, knives, and swords, an sharp-edged daggers. He could turn even friendship to base, cutting metal.

  “The oath between us is fealty, not homage. I left him free.

  Ignorant that he was at the time, I left him free!”

  “How ignorant is he now, more to the point, Majesty? How much does he fail to guess? And while we discuss the intricacies of Her Grace’s oaths and pledges, promises and prayers…by what is Lord Tristen sowrn, and how is he bound?”

  “By friendship if nothing else!” He answered in haste, because he was stung; but it echoed of Emuin’s advice. Win his love.

  Win his love, because nothing a king wielded would ever constrain him.

  That which a wizard wielded…perhaps. Perhaps it could.

  But Emuin could not.

  Idrys lifted his cup with a quizzical expression, a tilt of his head. “Forgive the northern barons a certain bewilderment: you are the king of Ylesuin, and do not agree that the throne of Elwynor is a Regency? And if a Regency, for what king?

  And if not for a Guelen king, for which king, pray? Has Your Majesty explained that point to Her Grace?”

  “You tread now where you have no welcome.”

  “But he is your friend,” Idrys said, “and so all things can be resolved.”

  “Yes, they can. They can and they will be”

  “The barons of Ylesuin will not accept him as a leader on the field. It will create dissension. And the commons of Elwynor rally to Lady Ninévrisë? Some may. Some may not. How will you restrain Guelen soldiery from provocations? There will be bloody battle, my lord

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  king, far bloodier than you wish to contemplate. There will be slaughter. You rely on the northern barons as you are determined to do, and look to it: there will be slaughter when Guelenmen march across those bridges. Do not delude yourself.

  There is no gentle war. Aye, yes, Tristen is right: come from the south, come from the south because you will have such allies, you will make such bargains, and you will do better to parade your allies in front of southern troops, not northern.”

  “It was not the first time for that argument. Cefwyn still held to the other side, the one that sought to reconcile Murandys and Ryssand to the war, and not to split the kingdom in bitter division…as perhaps he could not avoid; but he tried to prevent it. Looking to the day of an allied Elwynor, he tried to avoid it.”

  “And if we have the north opposed, that slaughter will go on. There will be other provocations. There will be other chances for war. We can both foresee them. We must have war stopped, crow. We must fight a little war across the river to avoid a more grievous was here, among our own barons.

  We must have no more, no more fighting to give wizards a foothold in our lands. No more, Crow.”

  “Then remember you sent your royal father advisement regarding the lord of Ynefel. Did you not, my lord, advise your father regarding him and the Elwynim prophecy? And if to your father, then to your father’s intimates, and to Lord Brysaulin?”

  Dire thought. Chilling thought. “Brysaulin is an honorable man.”

  “For the welfare of the realm…to what other guides would an honorable man resort with his king dead and the Prince consorting with wizards? My lord king will have to inform me.

  As we all know, I am from

  92 / C. J. CHERRYH

  time to time uninformed on points of honor.”

  To the Quinalt, to Maurandys, to Llymaryn, to Efanor, if Lord Brysaulin had ever relied on anyone. And Efanor had been choleric and convinced of perfidy in the days after their father’s death.

  “Remember that Lord Heryn Aswydd was the purveyor of truths to your royal father,” Idrys said, “and I would not begin to imagine the fervid imagination of Heryn Aswydd.”

  “Or the scope of his lying tongue.”

  “Nor all imaginings. He had substance on which to practice, my lord king. And you yourself sent that message, which your father’s natural suspicion would have taken for ten times less than Heryn’s loyal truth.”

  “And thus my father relied on Heryn, and thus died. Add to it the work of wizards, the work of priests, which I count little different…”

  “Oh, never say that in council.”

  “There are many truths I don’t say in council, crow.”

  “And to me?”

  He gave a bitter laugh. “Perhaps I have a secret. Perhaps not.

  If I answered that you’d know, would you not?”

  “If I answered that, my lord king, I would serve my lord king less well than I do. Tristen of Ynefel is far too potent a wizard to loose in this war of petticoats and pennies. He cannot become Quinalt.”

  “Yet he must appear, must appear in public. The more he stays hidden the more rumors fly about him, and better him now than Her Grace. That…that, I cannot allow.”

  “It is a risk.”

  “All things are a risk, master crow. Let my brother FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 93

  practice persuasion on him. Let the Quinalt do its best. Efanor is not a fool…he if anyone knows what was said that provoked my father to ride to Amefel, into Heryn’s trap, and all he will say to me is that Father distrusted me and Heryn fed the fire.

  Efanor himself burns to atone for believing it and for not dissuading our father; that compels him. He is faithful to me. Say that he’s faithful, master crow.”

  “To my observation, he is.”

  Cefwyn let go a heavy breath. “There is no great love, now, in our brotherhood; but guilt, that we have, each of us, each for not loving the other, I suspect. He loves the notion of loving me. But Tristen is my brother. And that galls him. Is he jealous?”

  “Jealousy is a sin, Your Majesty. And His Highness hates his sins, every time he does them.”

  “Someday I must make peace with him. Inform him. Inform him he will inform Tristen on the Quinalt, make a godly man of him…”

  “A Man, you say.”

  “Close as he may do, damn your wit. Mine’s fled.” He set the cup down emptied, resisting the impulse to fling it at the wall. “Hates his sins, does he? So do I. So do I, crow. And my father’s sins, how do I number them?”

  “I left your father’s service,” Idrys said. “He no longer liked my reports regarding you. So I ceased to make them. It seemed a fair arrangement.”

  Uwen went off to his small nook to sleep and Tristen let his servants put him to bed, his very comfortable bed in an apartment far finer than he had had in Amefel, 94 / C. J. CHERRYH

  rooms on the highest level of the Guelesfort. The bedchamber had evening stars painted on the ceiling, and white clouds against a dark sky. The glow from the newly banked fire in the fireplace showed him just a little of that paintwork, a shadowy view sparked with the silver inlay of a star catching the firelight.

  A sword stood sheathed beside the fireplace. He had had master Peygan forge him a blade after Lewenbrook. Truth was the symbol on one side of it; Illusion was written on the other.

  But it had gone unused in Guelessar. Now he asked himself where he might write Appearances, which had been Cefwyn’s word tonight. He would become friendly to the Quinalt, for Appearances. He would join the barons, for Appearances. He would avoid magic, for Appearances.

  The sword stood in the corner, in disuse. Other men practiced. Uwen practiced. He did not, hating the feeling that came on him when he took up the thing. It was another kind of Unfolding, a terrible one, sure of its power and uncaring.

  To secure peace with Elwynor, to end the war that had existed through the reigns of Cefwyn’s grandfather and father…dared he hope now that Mauryl’s purpose for him extended that far? He would, in the spring, cross the river into Elwynor for Ninévrisë’s sake, and there deal death with that sword, but he would not win, because it would offend the barons.

/>   There was so much temptation to know, to reach back, and to bend his life backward, backward, backward, until it met itself on the Road.

  And he knew the way back to the Road. He had found it today, on the hilltop. But it was a terrible way, fraught with dangers. He perceived that if he truly used FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 95

  it he risked his own existence. A young man sitting against a tree in Marna Wood perceived a terrible presence, like a shadow in the woods…and he had been both young man and shadow.

  Dared he be a third presence? Dared he reach toward Ynefel again by that Road, to see whether it was still safe? The young man had seen nothing. The shadow had fought shadows, and Hasufin had ruled that Road.

  He dared not venture that way again. His heart beat hard at the very thought.

  Lying on his back, his hands on the fine, thick, comfortable bedclothes, he reached out, instead, all forbidden, for Emuin, and found the two presences he knew well in the Guelesfort, one on the floor just below him: Ninévrisë was unaware of him, was thinking instead of Cefwyn, all warm and full of love.

  He skimmed away, and above him, aloft, up in the dark, found Emuin in his tower, Emuin, whom he trusted would answer him, call him a fool, tell him when he was right and wrong and whether he dared even contemplate gods.

  —Master Emuin.

  The old man was not quite startled, but disapproved his intrusion, a chill wind in the gray space that wavered and then paid attention.

  —Idrys will come tomorrow to ask you, Tristen said.

  Cefwyn says Efanor will tell me about the Quinalt if you

  approve, sir. I know you disapprove my venturing here,

  but Cefwyn says I must visit the Quinalt with the court

  in two days. He believes it’s a question of appearances,

  and it will please the Patriarch. Dare I?

  —It seems you have already agreed and I have little to

  do with it. The old man was still shadowy and 96 / C. J. CHERRYH

  faint to him, tattering in the pearl-gray winds of the place. Why?

  Why have you agreed to this?

  He could not lie in the world of Men with any great skill at all. Here, it was far more difficult. And he knew in his heart he had agreed. Because I want to be free, master Emuin, And