Fortress of Eagles

by C. J. Cherryh

  They could not rank him, as Ynefel, before the duke of Murandys; they could not rank him before any of the northern barons without ruffling their feathers; and certainly they could not admit any importance to a wizard’s tower.

  But as it happened, once the column formed, Tristen found himself not utterly hindmost. Behind him came the banner-bearers of the notables of the town, the great silken billow of the red banner of the town of Guelemara, with its golden Castle. In front of him and Uwen, his banner, flew the silver Star and Tower of Althalen, and the Sihhë Star of Ynefel, remade.

  The two who bore his colors now were veteran soldiers, not Lusin or his ordinary lent guards, as he had expected, but two men Lord Cevulirn had sent, Ivanim

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  who were eager to please their duke, and, Tristen suspected, who were also glad to bear a banner for the pride of the south (scarce here) and pointedly for the honor of the field at Lewenbrook, where northerners had been very scarce.

  Sulriggan’s banner was here, however, the green banner of Llymaryn preceding his nephew Edwyn, farther forward in the honors…Tristen was not so wise in the affairs of the north or the delicate points of their protocols, but he did notice that precedence, and knew that it did not please Cevulirn, nor Cefwyn, and probably did not please the middle provinces, the apple regions, as the soldiers called them.

  He had learned the banners: Guelessar, quartered, the Marhanen Dragon on a red field, alternate with the bright gold Quinalt sigil on black; Elwynor: a Tower, black-and-white Checker with gold and blue; Murandys, blue field, bend or, with white below and the Quinalt sigil, or; Llymaryn, green, the Red Rose of that house: it had been a red rose crowned if Llymaryn’s grandfather had found early followers in greater number than the Marhanen—and there had actually been a crown above the Rose, a crown which had discreetly disappeared as Lanfarnesse and Murandys and other troops had all sworn to Selwyn Marhanen of Guelessar.

  There was the gold Sheaf with bend and crescent of Marisal, and the blue field and blazing Sun of Marisyn; there was the blood red of Ryssand with the Fist and Sword; the pale azure of Nelefreíssan with its White Circle…besides Isin and Ursamin, Teymeryn, Carys, Panys, Sumas, and Osenan, a bright forest of banners. And after obscure Osenan, Cevulirn’s banner, the White Horse of Ivanor, the only southern banner except 120 / C. J. CHERRYH

  the two black banners of Ynefel and Althalen, Althalen no longer royal, but merely a district in Amefel.

  Trumpets blared as they ascended the steps toward the Quinaltine. There was a general, astonished pointing toward the black Sihhë banner; onlookers along the way made signs against harm such as the villagers had once fervently made in Wys-on-Cressit.

  The bells rang as Cefwyn and Ninévrisë mounted the steps and entered the shrine, Cefwyn in slight precedence. The lords with their banner-bearers trooped up between the opposing lines of the King’s Guard and the Prince’s Guard, standing on the steps, soldiers in bright Marhanen red against the upright barley sheaves and other gold and brown signs of autumn and harvest. The banners, too, following the lords, filed inside. The banner-bearers set themselves about the columned sides of the central shrine as Tristen followed the other lords through the solemn, oaken doors.

  The way for the lords and their captains to walk was straight ahead, and he followed behind Cevulirn, down the main aisle of the high shrine, with the banners sweeping as a bright wall on either side. A clerestory was above, and sunlight shafted down into this smoky region of incense-burners, lamps and candles.

  Uwen took his place, standing among the benches of the captains. Tristen walked on as he was obliged to do, still behind Lord Cevulirn, in a stifling could of incense; and as Cevulirn went aside into a row of the assembly, he followed, last on the row, nearest the aisle. Everyone remained standing. There were only two rows in front of him; and past Panys and Nelefreíssan he could see the front of the shrine. The table center-most at the head of the aisle had candles on tiers among gold plates and vessels. Altar was the Word. And on

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  either hand and around the rim, it was decorated with oak boughs. Plates stood heaped with acorns and apples, with nuts and grain scattered about the table covering, singly and in piles.

  The Patriarch arrived from the side of the place with a light sound of bells, and flung water at either point of the altar, using a silver spoon and a small vessel. The actions in a single stroke assumed a kind of sense, that all the doings here involved less the gods than the Lines on the earth.

  Uwen had said there would be no magic. But the sprinkling of water was magical. The establishment of the line was magical. The altar was a focus of this effort. The Patriarch walked back and forth in his occupation, laying down a Line, quite clearly walking the principal Line in the area, if one looked at it.

  But the Patriarch was not walking them as one did who meant those lines to hold fast against shadows. There were four, five, six previous established Lines, all askew from what the Patriarch was building; he could see them clearly now that the Patriarch had brought the principal one to life. They all showed in different degrees, and Tristen stood beside Cevulirn, his hands clenched on each other and his lips firmly shut against the wish to protest this folly. Immediately in front of him was the lord of Panys, and in the first row Cefwyn stood, all the court, and the captains and officers of the court, silent, respectful of this place, this very strange action.

  The priests carried in a smoking brazier, and they cast in incense that rose up in stinging clouds. Tristen fought a sneeze into abeyance; some lord did sneeze, ahead of him, a shocking disturbance of a silence that rang in discord off the columns and the roof.

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  The Patriarch was still walking back and forth, laying down his new line athwart the old, and not in the least regarding the domain of shadows beneath the place, whether intentionally or accidentally. Immediately beside the alter the discontinuity was worst: a gateway for shadows, if one cared to make sense of the jagged overlay of lines, and Tristen averted his eyes and his perceptions, resolved not to look in this world or the other at the moment. Shadows were there, jostling one another…per-haps Selwyn marhanen, for all he knew; he was one who might press to the fore; but Tristen made no inquiry of them.

  Whether all shadows had been alive at one time, he had never known nor wished to wonder at this moment. He refused to look, but he refused to shut his eyes, either, although they stung with incense. He listened to the Patriarch recounting the year’s doings, how Ynefel had fallen, and wickedness had broken out in Elwynor—the Patriarch could hardly fault Ninévrisë for that, since the wickedness named meant the rebels; but one could easily mistake it. His Holiness spoke on about the great shadow, about Lewenbrook and the struggle against darkness, and heard him explain to all the lords how there were great events afoot. They were stirring words about bravery and righteousness and doing the gods’ will.

  But do you not see the shadows? Tristen wondered distractedly. Do none of you see?

  The Patriarch talked about prosperity, and good harvests, and how it was clear that Ylesuin was favored by the gods above all other lands, and how the gods had only revealed their truths to the people of Ylesuin, who bore their special blessing and therefore had a special responsibility to continue those blessings by showing a

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  giving and humbel spirit. His Holiness said that as long as gifts flowed freely and abundantly to the Quinalt and as long as the people celebrated the harvest in godly ways, shunning drunkenness and licentiousness—that was a Word that stirred disturbing images—and shunned the offer of power which did not come from the gods, they would prosper.

  And what of Ninévrisë? What of Elwynor’s prosperity?

  Tristen asked himself.

  And do offers of power come from the gods? he wondered.

  He certainly knew one offer which had not, when Hasufin Heltain had come out of the dark and led Lord Aséyneddin
of Elwynor astray. Hasufin had tried to lead Mauryl himself astray, but had failed at that. Was this a god? Or a shadow?

  That was a disturbing question.

  Shun reckless behavior, His Holiness said. Seek godliness.

  Be prudent and sober.

  It was enlightenting, meanwhile, to hear the Holy Father talk about prosperity and victory in war…but everything the man said would have been far more convincing, Tristen thought, if he had had the least confidence the man knew that the other great Lines under the god’s abode even existed. His Holiness talked about seeking wisdom. But meanwhile he kept walking on that single line, one that was quite unnervingly askew with the Line on the earth that a long-ago Mason had laid down true to the earth. But His Holiness went on declaring that new line sacred by his actions, his incense, and his pure water, his intentions and his assertion of presence, and most of all by its single, blue-shining disharmony with the land and the hill.

  The shadows grew increasingly uneasy in this venture if Men above them, uneasy and resteless, and Tristen 124 / C. J. CHERRYH

  restrained his anxiousness as the gray place increasingly, urgently cried for his attention. The air seethed with motion just at the corners of his eyes whenever he would dart a glance at the other lords or at Cefwyn and Ninévrisë. He was less and less sure it was safe for him in particular and in this place to be making wishes he did not understand, even whishes for the king’s welfare and the safety of Ylesuin, and even at the Patriarch’s behest, all the while he could not make sense of what the Patriarch was doing with his incantations. All the actions on this mistaken line, if mistaken it was, seemed to weaken, not strengthen the Lines that held back the shadows, which had begun to seep out along the glowing reds and roses and faded blues of the lesser lines, to seek along them and grow confused and baffled.

  It seemed to him suddenly then that he understood what he was seeing: that Masons had laid out the lines of the Quinaltine and walked the Great Line where the walls would stand, and protected the places where doors and windows should be, and if those had been the only Lines that had ever existed here, all would have been well and safe and the shadows would have flowed along them and obeyed those doors and windows. But those latter-day Masons had for some reason laid their Lines over something that had used to stand there, some prior work of a master Mason that could not be removed, or at least had never been properly removed or reshaped. And those second Masons had done it not merely once, but many times, or falteringly. In his small experience of places on the earth he had met nothing like it; but to his understanding, it was almost certainly the source of the difficulty he had always felt with this building.

  The Lines on the earth were confused by the builders of the place, further confused by His Holiness, FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 125

  who had not the least idea what he was doing. The Guelesfort was always what it had been, so far as had ever impressed him; but the Quinaltine had another, older beginning, and no one, no one, since its other beginning, had ever set it right.

  More, years of priests kept attempting to establish yet another set of Lines by their observances, across a division in the building that had been a door, on one level, and yet had been a wall another time, and then yet a third time a wall, with doors and windows in that earliest age. Openings overlay walls all about this great hall. What should have let shadows flow entrapped them, and immured them, and created pockets of distressed souls that seethed and struggled behind the banners, behind the acorn-baskets of the table, especially where two of the previous efforts had made an unintended doorway.

  He no longer saw the candlelit stone or the incense; he saw streaks of blue light, and shadows milling there in increasing violence, a darkness in motion, wailing, attempting to flow along the new, misaimed line the priest established, a line that failed to meet the ward of the vanished door on one side and that had only the slightest of barriers established there.

  Foolishe, he thought. So foolish. There was power here, although nothing acute. and it was no help at all to be walking back and forth, back and forth as the Patriarch was doing, with a very weak force, luring the shadows to one side and the other like hounds following a tidbit, leading them to desire their freedom and then, with a turn, frustrating them.

  Perhaps the torment of the shadows had to do with the gods, who were supposed to be five in number, and somehow bright, as shadows were not—the very anti

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  thesis of shadows, as he understood from Efanor’s earnest but vague instruction; and he wished he had had the chance to ask Emuin, who had evaded him by having his door latched, which might have meant he was asleep, or might not. Emuin disapproved in general and yet refused him the excuse that might have prevented his instruction; Emuin disapproved the penny, too, he feared, or so he gathered out of that surly silence. Go ahead, Emuin seemed to be saying by this odd behavior: I disapprove in the extreme, but neither will I counterpose my will to your curiosity or Cefwyn’s insistence.

  Emuin must have known about the Lines. Emuin spoke about gods, and salvation, and Emuin must have know about the Lines. Could both things be true, this blind show, and could the gods still exist?

  Back and forth, back and forth paced the Holy Father in what Tristen knew now was folly. But he judged the temper of the Lines and their jagged traps and knew that, frustrated as they were, and angry, the shadows were far from breaking loose. Most of them were weak, and had no power to do real harm even if they did break free…certainly none could do so by daylight, when they had less power. It was the sheer mass of their accumulated anger that was daunting, and it vexed him that Cefwyn stood unseeing in front of this thing. Whether Ninévirsë, who was able to enter the gray place, might be aware or not…he doubted it. But his mere thought leapt suddenly to her thoughts: he felt her confusion and the oppression of the shadows around them, and was aware of her presence as point of light amid the demishadows of others.

  He felt another presence, too.

  It was behind him. He felt three or four, enlivened FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 127

  points of light. Not shadows, but wizard-fire, the sort that ordinary men never saw, and fear leapt up in him so high that he clutched the rail in front of him. He was almost aware of Cevulirn…he had never known there was wizard-talent in Cevulirn. Not even Lewenbrook had provoked it. And in being aware of that very dimmest fire, he saw Ninévrisë like a blue-white star—and Efanor with ever so faint a spark. He was aware of Emuin, high aloft and some distance removed; and of six or seven very dim presences out among the guards, or the people, and one among the banner-bearers along the sides, also in the shrine.

  What was it? he asked himself. Could he have failed to see what glowed softly in Cevulirn, or had the danger at Lewenbrook, so strong, so thunderously dark, blinded him? Or had the Patriarch’s folly encouraged the faintest sparks in two in particular he knew were not the Patriarch’s followers? Was it as defense their hearts raised? And if that was so, how must he seem, to anyone with eyes to see him in the gray space?

  You burn, Emuin had told him once.

  He was trembling as the Partiarch finished and took up the box that he hoped would hold the pennies and give them their escape. The Patriarch lifted it on high, then held it before him.

  The singing of women rose high and full, echoing around the hall. The sunlight speared through a heavy pall of incense, and oh, at last! the ceremony was ending. First Cefwyn, then Efanor, then Ninévrisë filled past and dropped a coin into the box as the lines of the assembled nobility began the recessional.

  Lord Brysaulin passed and dropped in his penny as the row emptied and Cefwyn led the procession out to the fanfare of trumpets. The Dragon banner of Ylesin swept in from the side, the Prince’s

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  personal standard, the black-and-white Checker and Tower of the Regency in Elwynor and the standard of Guelessar moved close upon them, the various king’s officers yet to come, and then the barons. The second rank of nobles
joined the file past the Holy Father and now the column went out the door.

  Then the next row was moving, last but his. How should he find Uwen? It seemed in this arrangement that the lords’ captains has to follow as best they could; and he feared making a mistake and calling attention to himself, or breaking one of those weak patterns. He was far from sure the Holy Father would know it if he nudged something magical by mischance, but certainly if it had been international wizard-work, a misstep would draw attention.

  Cevulirn was moving now, so it was time for him. He drew a deep, anxious breath, wished nothing ill to happen…but Emuin had warned him to wish very little. He thought very hard of being as harmless as he could be and of burning very, very dimly in the gray space as he followed Cevulirn: he wished to show no more fire than Cevulirn himself, and wished to do no more harm than Cevulirn did. He had the penny, the metal warm in his hand. He followed Cevulirn’s example and dropped his gift into the slot, not looking into the Patriarch’s face as he let it fall. It hit other inside with a metallic sound, and he turned away, seeing the bright sunlight of the high arched doors as refuge toward which he walked.

  He followed Cevulirn’s gray cloak outward what had become dimmed sunlight, with the smoke overheard a haze above the door, a stinging haze stirred by the passage of the great banners.

  The White Horse of Ivanor swept in from the side. His own banners flowed

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  in before him, a black transparent veil against the daylight in the doors, and preceded him as he walked out and down the steps. He was glad to breathe the clear, cold wind, glad to be away from the shadows seething at his back.