Fortress of Eagles

by C. J. Cherryh

  The smell clung to him. He walked still behind Cevulirn, saw Idrys shadowing Cefwyn, now, ahead of him. There was Gwywyn, captain of the Prince’s Guard, with Efanor. Then the captain of the Guelesfort, and then Lord Maudyn, commander of the forces on the riverside, and all the captains, and then the barons and their captains, and then the minor nobility of the town of Guelemara itself, all spreading out on the step and below them. The guard captains overtook their lords, and the groups formed again, separate in colors, but not in so much sunlight as when they had gone in: clouds had swept in above the square, rendering them all shadowless, breaking down those ordinary barriers of daylight. People in the square had surged forward as the first banners came out, and for a moment the people made signs against harm, and held far back from him. The very sky seemed made of pewter, and ominous, and no one saw it.

  Uwen silently joined him, a relief and a comfort as the Patriach came out and stood on the steps above them. The old man lifted the box left and right, toward the frowning, ominous heaven.

  No! Tristen wished to say, as all of them, commons and nobles alike, looked up. He saw harm. He could not say from what. But harm…indeed.

  The Patriarch lowered the box, and from behind him filed two rows of priests, each carrying a bundle of sticks, out and down the steps, curious sight to behold. The Priests reached the bottom of the step and pro

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  ceeded on across the square. Had not Uwen said the priests did not approve the bonfire? Yet they brought their bundles of sticks, and flung them on. Cheers attended the act.

  “What are those bundles?” he asked Uwen, beneath the noise and the cheering.

  “The sins of the lords,” Uwen said. “And the bad old things.

  All goin’ into the fire, m’lord.”

  “Mine, too.?” he asked Uwen, having a sudden, irrational hope of mending what he could in nowise reach, things his skills had done, thing he had not done, fears he had brought to the land and hopes of others that he had not met. He knew he was flawed. Mauryl had said so from the start; and Emuin generally refused to teach him. Between Efanor’s gods and the burning of sins, dared he hope?

  But in that moment a cruel cold wind had begun to blow, a chill gust that snapped banners and tugged at cloaks.

  Uwen was not instant to answer his foolish question, either.

  “Such sins as ye have, m’lord, which by me ain’t much. Certainly not compared to some I could speak of.” Uwen was wrong in that: If he was the Sihhë-lord some thought, if he was Barrakkêth, then had he not sins? And if he was not the Sihhëlord Mauryl had Called, was he not flawed? And did not the little book Efanor had lent him speak of flaws and sins as one and the same?

  But Uwen took a lighter tone, as talk and merriment broke out on every hand for no reason that he could see except the tossing of the bundles on the pile. “Truth is, m’lord, I don’t know about the burnin’, but the ale flowin’ free, and the dancin’

  and all, that do cure the heart. If rain don’t drown all tonight, folk’ll dance

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  their feet bare tonight, and the ale will flow, and all. Gods bless, the sins they’ll burn tonight ain’t even committed yet.”

  The trumpets sounded, and the lords all turned behind the royal company, and they all trooped toward the Guelesfort, away from the square.

  Tristen felt greater relief with every step away from the Quinaltine and its tormented shadows. The ale was flowing already, as he saw along the sides of the square, where huge barrels were set up and where no few of the common folk had gathered even during the royal procession. In the distance, now that the trumpets were silent, a street drummer and a flute player struck up a lively tune. That lilting sound of the flute lifted his spirits; and if he simply looked straight ahead, he could ignore the warding signs people made against him, and that muddle of lines and trapped shadows he had seen. Could Emuin fail to see it?

  Yet Emuin was, after all, a Man. All but him…were Men.

  He had the Quinalt medallion about his neck. He had never even remembered it during the ceremony. He had never seemed affected, or to affect anything at all. That was good, perhaps, but he was increasingly disappointed.

  He had met no gods, after all, only poor unhappy shadows.

  He imagined that the shadows would stir about madly over the next few days, lent substance by the offering and the reinforcement of the skewed line, and perhaps they would attempt escape briefly when the sun was hidden and no light penetrated that darkness.

  But nothing the highest of all priests was doing could free them. Trapped spirits were indeed the

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  unhappiness that had troubled him about the place. They were the power in the earth there, too many dead, too much forgotten and disregarded. He could not imagine the Mason who had done the last construction, ignoring all that was done before.

  But somehow the walls had not fallen down nor had the place broken out in irruptions of spirits. He supposed that the last Masons had been the very likeness of the Patriarch and the priests, blind to what they were doing, or even deliberately transgressing something they had knocked down and wished to obliterate—as the Quinalt truly tolerated no opinion but its own and evidently deluded itself that its will had more potency.

  In that sense the Lines might have been jumbled by choice, and the sight he had seen might be truly the Quinaltine as Efanor refused to see it, as even the Holy Father refused to see it—a site at war with shadows, a trap to the dead it professed to safeguard in hoilness.

  Yet, he thought, did master Emuin look on such things unmoved? Or wherein was the difference between Emuin thae priest and wizard, and Efanor the devout and princely man, except one wished to know and the other wished to believe, and the former wished to keep all his secrets and the latter wished to spread his opinions about to acquaintances?

  But dared he think…both were Men, and all he had for guides, and this was the quality of his advice now that Mauryl was gone? The enormity of ignorance directing him was beyond all his fears.

  They passed through the gates of the Guelesfort, crossed the courtyard, where the servants had gathered in some number, and where lords’ men who had not been in the processional sought thier particular station

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  through a waving forest of banners. Lords sought Cefwyn’s ear, braving the cold rain that began to mist down from the pewter sky.

  Tristen did not attempt the press about Cefwyn, himself, and the cold dissuaded him from lingering. Lusin and the others had found his banner in the confusion, and he had two of them at least with him as he and Uwen went toward the steps that led into the keep. The courtyard had grown crowded with the wives and daughters of the lords, women in finery who had come out into the chill and damp, a lighter set of voices momentarily surrounding them. A gust brought drops of rain and squeals and orders to go inside.

  He should have felt elated, he thought, to have pleased everyone and to have gotten through the ceremony; but before they were quite inside the rain began to pelt down. Lightning whitened the yard, and the brightly clad ladies and the courtiers alike cried in alarm and pushed and shoved to be indoors.

  Cefwyn and Ninévrisë, however, and their guards, had first claim on the steps and the doorway, leaving the barons in the rain arguing about precedence. An argument broke out after Cefwyn had gone in, everyone at the steps disputing their rights, standing in a downpour to do it.

  Tristen chose not to contest with the barons and their entourages, and stood there, his cloak wrapped about him, he and Uwen and Lusin and the rest, with the rain coming harder and harder, dripping off his hair and wetting the stone cobbles until dirty water flowed from the roof.

  “Sins won’t burn in this,” Uwen said. It was a joke, Tristen was sure, but it rang with unusual force in the bitter wind, above the squabbling of the barons.

  C H A P T E R 7

  It were a fine occasion, all the same,”
Uwen said when they reached his apartments. Tassand met them to take their dripping cloaks, eager for news and hoping, perhaps, that their lord, rare in his outings, had had a success. “Not a trouble at all. M’lord did right well.”

  Other servants brought towels warm from the fire. There was a fine, even an extravagant late breakfast set out for him and for Uwen, Tristen was delighted to discover, on a festive table decorated with oak leaves and apples. After that, comfortably fed, he gave the staff their pennies, so that they might at whatever drier and more convenient time go make their offerings themselves.

  But then the holiday became like all other days, and Tristen took himself to his reading—curious, cautiously searching Efanor’s little book of devotions for hints of purposeful entrapment of the dead as an activity of the priests, or any persuasive reasons for the mismatch of lines in the Quinaltine, but he found nothing that led him to any hint of understanding.

  Meanwhile Uwen had gone somewhere, perhaps down to the stables in spite of the rain, where he spent a great deal of his free time—currying his horses, braiding and combing and talking to them when he thought

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  no one was listening—courting Liss, and asking himself for the dozenth time could he afford another horse?

  Uwen talked to horses: his lord read. By afternoon the sun had come out, brightening the roof slates. A bar of light from the window glass crept across the little codex, making his study easier: the hand that had copied it had spared no ornament. It was fine, and beautiful, but difficult in dim light. He meditated the nature of gods and the servants came and went, keeping the fire in order, arranging things in his bedchamber, all those myriad mysterious things they did that meant the household was far less dusty than Ynefel had been, and the candles miraculously renewed themselves when half-burned.

  He wearied of the gods’ little book and sought the Quinalt in the Red Chronicle—a history Cefwyn had lent him, a tale of betrayals of the Sihhë, of murder and fire, and the raising of the Marhanen standard for the first time with royal honors.

  Toward sundown the clouds came back and stole the bar of light from the far wall. Rain spattered the glass again. He chased memories that eluded him, and Tassand came in as thunder thumped and boomed above the town.

  “M’lord. It is certain you will not attend in hall tonight.”

  That was a question. “No, I shall not,” he agreed, and turned his thoughts for a moment to the staff, flexed shoulders weary of leaning forward. “Tassand, the staff should go down to the square, to dance or drink as they please, tonight. I should wish they did, except for the rain. How does the sky look?”

  “Dark to the west, m’lord. The staff is thinking of the staff quarters on account of the weather, to open a keg there, by Your Grace’s goodwill.”

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  “Please do.”

  “M’lord.”

  Tassand went off pleased—Tristen never refused his servants, and Tassand had had no doubts of being granted the indulgence, Tristen was certain. He went back again to his reading of Efanor’s little book, now by candlelight, having found nothing all day long of deliberate entrapments, except an exhortation to the gods to preserve our souls from harm.

  Might the priests believe the souls of the Quinalt dead were safer in that jumble, that endless maze, offering doors and taking them away with the next mismatched line of Masons?

  They were mistaken.

  The little codex talked of a hell of punishment, too, for the wicked. Was that, instead, what the lines supplied?

  Uwen came in at last, rain-damp, as a murky sunset stained the sky beyond the windows.

  And from some small commotion in the servant’s quarters, flush-faced servants under Tassand’s command brought in an especially fine supper for him and for Uwen, food Tassand said was from the king’s feast downstairs, especially the ham, which Tassand highly recommended, showing him into the little hall with a flourish.

  “Have we leave to take these things?” he wondered. His staff was zealous for his sake. But he well knew how his servants were concerned, indignant, even, for his sake, that their lord was not welcome in the king’s hall, and Tristen had at least a niggling suspicion that Tassand might have done something desperate and daring and treading on the edge of the king’s good grace—certainly that of the king’s kitchen.

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  and several of the servants were a little the worse for ale, but they all seemed very happy. They spread the little table at twice its ordinary length, set more oak leaves about the dishes (perhaps some captured from the window ledges or searched out of the yard: no oaks grew on the height of the Guelesfort), and brought in a fair supply of festive braided bread thickly topped with poppy seed, intricate constructions which he found almost too delightful to eat.

  Uwen, however, showed him how when he was a boy (strange to think!) they had used to unbraid the bread as they ate it, and how one braiding meant prosperity and how another meant long life, and how one was for a good harvest and why they baked a whole apple into one kind of bread.

  “So’s there’s plenty all year long,” Uwen said.

  “And does it make it sure?” was his question. It seemed to him it was a good start, at least. And Uwen unbraided a bit of poppy bread and wrapped it about a bit of ham as a new muttering of thunder foretold rain on the celebration outside.

  “Sure’s anything in this world,” Uwen said, as from the servants’ quarters there was an occasional burst of undecorous merriment and a hissing of hush, hush, hush, as Tassand and the staff brought out the next course.

  It was not the dancing he regretted, which might not now take place in the square, if the rain that spattered the glass fell much harder. It was not the feast in the great hall he regretted, where Cefwyn and Ninévrisë would be; thanks to his servants their food was as fine. But he could easily grow melancholy this evening, remembering with fondness his days in Amefel.

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  had a fine supper, the regard of his staff, the favor of the king…but on thinking of the ladies, the bright-gowned ladies, who glittered and flashed so beautifully in the candlelight as they danced, he began thinking of the festivities downstairs and imagining the music he could not hear—remembering how on such a remarkable evening in Amefel a lady had come to him, the darkly reputed duchess of Amefel herself.

  He knew now how very foolish he had been, and how dangerously foolish Lady Orien had been, for that matter; and he could sigh now (with some understanding of the company of women, about which the guards had a great deal to say), for the chance he had had to court a lady.

  And though Ninévrisë was his model of all true ladies, he recalled the music of that night, Lady Orien’s beautiful face and white shoulders…her beautiful hair. Red, it was, a most remarkable red that accorded well with the dark green of the Aswydd colors. Her skin was pale, and the gown had shown him very much of the wonders of the lady’s form.

  And that night, if he had walked into Orien Aswydd’s snare and only just gotten out unscathed in his innocence…as it had been in those days…why, there were just as certainly traps set for him downstairs in the gathering this evening, traps that he would disappoint by his absence. So he might be satisfied—in-deed, should be satisfied with his own table. He was sure he did not regret Lord Prichwarrin of Murandys, for example, who was testy and difficult, nor Lord Corswyndam of Ryssand, who greatly disapproved of him and made no secret of it.

  Ninévrisë would be there, among the ladies, a sight he wished he could see…but he could not be seen

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  near her; he could not be near Cefwyn, either, of course. And in the way his servants, having had too much ale, laughed and became cheerfully foolish…Cefwyn’s guests might imbibe enough of the ale to become far too blunt, and that, among Men, would require h
e defend himself, which meant he would have to kill the offender.

  And that would certainly put a sad cap on the festive evening.

  So it was folly even to regret the feast downstairs.

  He looked toward windows now dark with night. Fire glow shone on the stonework. “It does seem they managed to light the fire after all,” he remarked to Uwen.

  “Right about sundown they did,” Uwen reported. “So Tassand was sayin’. They put canvas on ’t all the day, and now she’ll burn even through the rain, if she gets a good blaze up and if they’re lucky.”

  “So the sins will burn after all.” When he went to the window, fine clear glass with not many bubbles at all, he found that the bubbles acquired the glow from the square. He could just make out the fire itself, and a bobbing mass of dancers.

  “They have indeed. The light touches all the walls.”

  “It do that,” Uwen said, coming up beside him.

  He thought if he opened the small side pane, he might near the music, but the rain would come in and Tassand and the staff would have to clean it. “Go down to the square if you like.”

  “I, m’lord? Not I.”

  “Do. Tell me how it was. Take Lusin and the men and go down.” He thought of the other element of his life, the old man whose days were topsy-turvy and who waked generally by night, to look at stars which would

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  hardly shine on this thunderous evening. “I can go up to Emuin and bring him his breakfast. I swear I’ll not go elsewhere.”

  Uwen’s eyes danced, though his face was solemn. “Not I, for my oath, m’lord; and not Lusin, for his. There’ll be ale here, by your leave. ’At’s enough for holiday, an’ we’ll all visit the old master.”

  Uwen meant that, being his sworn man, he would not let him go unguarded tonight, and that Cefwyn, who had Lusin’s oath, would be sorely displeased if Lusin left his post. So the guards had to stay and go with him as they were accustomed to do…more so, he supposed, since sometimes he did go alone to Emuin’s tower. He was not at all surprised at Uwen’s insistence, however, with so many people coming and going in the Guelesfort tonight; and if he dismissed Lusin and the men on his authority, he supposed they would stand outside defying him on Cefwyn’s.