Fortress of Eagles

by C. J. Cherryh

  Too, he had accepted Idrys’ offer of an armorer to go with him, Cossun, until last night the juniormost assistant of master Peygan himself. So he had promised that man, too, a living, besides providing him a horse, a

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  cart for baggage, and two armorer’s apprentices and their personal equipment.

  So many had proved unexpectedly willing to join him, of men who had known him in Amefel this summer…Gossan, a man who otherwise would never be a master of his craft, had surely weighed the dark repute of Amefel as well as the chance of war reaching the walls of Henas’amef this summer, and made a dangerous choice in a handful of hours. All who joined him had done so, perhaps in hopes of bettering their lots in life…a chance which came in war to soldiers, sometimes to craftsmen through hard work and good luck, and very, very scarcely in the case of a clerk.

  He had so many hopes going with him today, even when every stride Gery made was carrying him away from Cefwyn’s close friendship. Cefwyn needed loyal men…and by utter chance or someone’s intent, he found very many of them going with him.

  But Emuin, who had never doubted an instant he must come, but who would not advise him, delayed for powder pots and parchments.

  C H A P T E R 2

  Your Majesty this, Your Majesty that, yes, Your Majesty, as you will, Your Majesty…and watching from the upper floors, out the window, His ill-tempered Majesty had a perfect view of the Quinalt roof with its canvas patch…of monks struggling with ladders, of the Quinalt square with its ordinary scatter of business. No one minded the wrath of the gods and the dreadful omen of the lightning now that the imagined threat of the young Warden of Ynefel was gone from them. The barons no longer needed feel besieged or distanced from the throne. The stranger in their midst had departed back into Amefel, where almost any impiety might be tolerable, oh, and at long last, His Majesty’s wizard tutor was going with him, an untidy presence lingering from Selwyn’s harsh reign, lingering far past need, in certain opinions.

  Tristen’s going had left a certain untidiness behind, a tower emptied, pouring bundles down the stairs, a fine set of apartments stripped of presence.

  It had left another kind of emptiness behind, too, and Cefwyn’s heart ached for it. He discovered he had not taken advantage of the time he had had. He had not said to the barons, as he ought, Damn you all, and done as he pleased from the very beginning of his reign. No, no, with all the wisdom he had observed in his

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  father (and now he questioned it) he had tried to keep alive his father’s alliances. He had come into his capital with a southern victory and a foreign bride, and let the attacks come at Tristen because he knew Ninévrisë had no defense.

  But, gods, he had not understood the persistence of those attacks, or their cleverness, or that they would dare this much.

  He had made a clever move of his own, sending Tristen south—but he had not prepared himself for the look Tristen had given him when they stood apart, there on the Quinalt steps. He had not recalled the bitter lessons of his grandfather, of betrayals, and the harm that a word could do. He had not recalled the bitter lessons of his father, how absence could estrange two hearts…and now he worried about it.

  But he would not be so set about hereafter. And he had not at all given up Tristen, or Emuin, or any of his friends. They were where they needed to be. If a king could push and prod wizardry into working for him, then he had made a necessary move, and moved wizards where fools would threaten them at their peril. Let him get the reins of power firmly in his hands, and then he would remember every favor and every score that wanted remembering. His grandfather, entombed in the Quinaltine yonder, had had the barons in fear of him when he was alive. He, like his grandfather, had faced armies. Could he not, in his turn, daunt a paltry handful of court gossips?

  The servants, the court, the Quinalt…no one would have dared tempt king Selwyn as his barons had tempted him. And they were not as clever as they hoped.

  His father Ináreddrin had learned only two tactics: playing one rival against another, which his grandfather had done very skillfully, and compromising—

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  compromising constantly to secure his own safety: he saw it very plainly from the vantage of this bitter morning, this window he had looked out since childhood. Ináreddrin had set northern Quinalt against southern Teranthines, northern barons against southern barons, son against son and devised a clever path through their objections—but, again, he had always resolved matters not by decision but by compromising what he wanted. Son against son on the other hand had been easier game—give the elder son no love. Give the younger son, Efanor, all honor, all credit with the northern barons, knowing very well he was robbing his own heir of support. What was it to him? He’d be dead and in his tomb when the account came due.

  And lo! his father indeed died and here was he, standing at the same window, facing the same decisions, making choices his father should have made with an iron hand.

  But not entirely recklessly. He longed to go down and at least bid Emuin safe journey as the old man was setting out.

  But then the very point of sending Tristen away was to still the rumors, and if the barons thought him weak and biddable, let them think it only for another dozen days. He should not go to Emuin.

  Quiet the rumors, give Tristen the winter in Amefel, give the realm the feeling of real danger on the border, oh, and then the Quinalt would see magic much differently. Gods, gods, but he looked forward to sending a few lords on horseback through the mud and brambles and into the range of bowmen and see whether they did not soon view Tristen of Ynefel as their very savior.

  The king being angry, the king’s servants would not come near him. But the tread that crossed the floor behind him now, soft and with the whispered grate of

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  armor, he knew: he took no alarm, and saw a grim, dark-mus-tached reflection in the glass.

  “Well?” he asked that reflection.

  “Things are as well done as may be,” Idrys said, “m’lord king.”

  “Satisfied, are we?”

  “Mauryl’s heir has grown far cannier, and more adept than many think. Send him back to the nest and he will grow indeed again. But he is still the innocent, in many ways. I authorized forty silver, by the by, for Uwen a horse.”

  “A horse.” In the depth of his melancholy, in the tottering of Marhanen rule in Guelessar, he found an act of Tristen’s still to astound and amuse him.

  “A mare. A surplus of the guard mounts. A fine horse, as happens. I applaud Uwen’s eye.”

  He almost found it in him to laugh. “Good gods, I give him a province and that was his concern.”

  “Oh, l daresay he had many concerns, but this was the one he could reach, to please a man he trusts. I approve his reasoning.”

  Idrys’ speech was sometimes barbed, sometimes indirect, rarely straight to the point. For Idrys, this was blunt. And Cefwyn was less amused.

  “I take your lesson, master crow.”

  “You confound your enemies, Majesty. They never foresaw his appointment to Amefel, I do agree. And the fools among them imagine Ynefel will go quietly to his tower and become absent for a few decades of years, like Mauryl.”

  “Tristen will not,” he found himself saying, and in the ghostly reflection saw Idrys’ implacable visage. “Should I fear him?”

  he asked, perhaps because in the strangeness of the day and the stripping away of his

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  resources, fear did occur to him, the barons’ fear, the fear of Guelenfolk, of all the north…and his own fear, deep and little confessed. “I don’t fear him, master crow. There is no malice in him, nor ever has been. And what I’ve done, I choose. The hell with them all.”

  “I should be remiss if I did not point out—”

  “Damn your pointing out, Idrys!” He spun to face his Lord Commander. He had b
y no means meant such an outburst. It had been waiting all night and all morning.

  And Idrys looked not at all surprised to receive it, saying smoothly, imperturbably, “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “Neither ambition, nor self-will, nor greed for land. None of these things move him, Idrys. He is the best man ever I knew.”

  “He is not a man,” Idrys countered him. “As m’lord king may well remember.”

  “A man in all points but birth.”

  “Oh, aye, a birth… that small matter.”

  “Damn you, I say.”

  “As Your Majesty may please,” Idrys said, and for some few moments they stood side by side, overlooking the workers who assayed the Quinalt roof, like the movement of ants in the sunlight.

  It might have been any ride they had ever taken in Guelessar, though at a slow and plodding pace, the banners comfortably furled and cased now that they were out of sight of other men.

  The banner-bearers talked together in quiet voices, alike the Guard, riding behind them, Captain Anwyll with his aides.

  At their first rest Uwen changed off to Liss to ride, and gave Gia a rest.

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  “Two fine horses,” Uwen said, in delight at the mare, fairly beaming. And then, soberly, and blushing, “M’lord, it were still very good of ye.”

  “If I can please no one else,” Tristen said, “I would please you.”

  Uwen blushed, bright red. “M’lord.”

  He wished he had not said that. He knew not what to say to soften it.

  “His Majesty’s given ye a province, m’lord. And in the Quinalt’s eye. The northern lords’, too. We’ll be back again.

  Ye’ll see His Majesty by spring, and ’twixt me and you, the town will be cheered up by then.”

  “He had to take Sulriggan back.”

  “Oh, well, but sooner or later he’d have to, and His Majesty knew it an’ Sulriggan knew it. It was sooner, is all, by about a couple of months, and ye can lay to it his lordship Sulriggan’ll catch cold before any battle. He probably wishes His Majesty had stayed choleric until after the war and never would call on him at all, but there wasn’t a chance of that, anyway, so all he gets is a few months to work his way back into better graces.

  The Holy Father has a rotten weak reed of a cousin in Sulriggan, that’s the truth, and whoever relies on him, His Majesty’ll chew him up bones and all.”

  “Perhaps he will,” Tristen said. “At least I doubt Efanor will believe Sulriggan again.”

  “His Highness has his eyes open more than some thinks,”

  Uwen said, and for a time they rode talking of Efanor, and then recalling Amefel and thereby the stables in Amefel, and wondering whether they could improve the drainage in the stables sitting at the bottom of the hill.

  Perhaps, Tristen thought, Cefwyn had not been entirely unwise to send him south. Very near Cefwyn’s 250 / C. J. CHERRYH

  apartment, amid all the gathering of the court, he dared not even wonder what Cefwyn was doing, or how he fared or whether the land was safe…dared not until he was far from the walls. But today, at this distance from the men around him and in command of the column as it was, he simply drew a deep breath, reached, and the world was wider by half again.

  He was aware of Uwen, of the horses, of all the men and all the patient oxen, even of the wheeling hawks that soared, fearless of the chill autumn winds, looking for mice or sparrows.

  Poor creatures, he thought, seeing a hawk stoop beyond a leafless copse of trees. He forever pitied the hunted, and thought of Owl, and wondered where he laired, nowadays, whether he had gone back to Ynefel now that it was free of threat.

  He was thinking like a boy again, and making wild and foolish conjecture, as he had done on the hilltop. But, oh, he could dare more. He could draw the gray light to the sunlit world, he could do battle with shadows if he found them—

  But he had far rather simply be aware of the lives, the living, the loyal and the loved. He had proposed to sleep in the saddle, but unexpectedly found his thoughts too rapid, racing ahead of the slow wagons. He was unavoidably morose at the thought of leaving Cefwyn and Ninévrisë, but he breathed with increasing anticipation of the road and the freedom ahead.

  The sun was warm enough to raise a slight sweat on his shoulders when the wind slacked, and the wind did fall and stayed still in late afternoon. They rested from time to time, changed horses, for the horses’ ease; and Uwen, trading Liss for Gia again, looked well content, a man with an old friend and a new and trying to

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  assure one of his affection without slighting the other: all at once it Unfolded what Uwen was doing, and how he loved both, but Gia more, the other being all to discover. Was not a king much the same, when he had to consider who sat next him at table?

  And the world, in widening, slowly widened behind them, too, to the subtle feeling of cold water, the smell of sweat, the shapes of stones.

  “Master Emuin is finally on his way,” Tristen said, drawing Uwen’s curious glance.

  “He’s leavin’ the gate?”

  “Oh, farther. By the little stream we crossed, the one near the rocks, with the old tree with the hole in it.”

  “Does he come so far on the road and ye not see?”

  “He can slip about when he wishes,” Tristen said, “better than I, I think. He’s quite clever. I think it comes of being old.”

  “And what does he say?” Uwen asked, and Tristen wondered that at once. A sting of displeasure came back.

  “He bids me mind my business,” Tristen said, laughing.

  Uwen cast him a sidelong glance. His gray hair blew in rising wind as the sunlight found it, all against a blue sky. Light touched Uwen’s weathered, cold-stung face with perfect cheerfulness.

  This is where I must be, Tristen thought then, absolutely certain of it, for no reason. This is where Uwen must be, with me. We belong on this road…and all is well.

  Other men are where they need to be. But Uwen and I are where we must be…there is a difference.

  Then came, with the cold chill of water, with that clarity of sun on stones, the uncertainty of certainties 252 / C. J. CHERRYH

  that seeped out of the gray place, but it was Emuin’s troubled doubt that owned this fear. Come rain, come lightning, come spells or wizards’ wishes, this muddy road was a thread stretched out strongly toward Ynefel…it ran there, Tristen thought, and thought of his window at night, the rain crawling across the horn panes. But that was but one place of all the places it led.

  Ink followed the goose-quill tip, red wax dripped onto parchment under a window full of sunset. The royal seal made a scant, a listless imprint.

  Cefwyn fixed the duke of Ryssand with a cold stare then and did not himself pick up the parchment, or invite the duke to do so. An anxious page fidgeted and failed to move.

  The Patriarch himself slipped in and did the deed, picked up the rattling document and bowed without quire looking Cefwyn in the eye.

  A disappointment.

  I am coming to hate this man, Cefwyn thought of Corswyndam, Lord Ryssand. Corswyndam was a lank, hawk-nosed, wet rag of a man, the sort that smothered any enthusiasm, disapproved anything not to his advantage, used the Quinalt as sword and shield and purse of pennies, and had interest in nothing that did not serve his own interests.

  He had not the luxury, now, to hate the Patriarch. The Patriarch was thus far too useful. Why, if there were no Patriarch, then that parchment might have rested on the table until the page called a servant to move it. As it was, the Patriarch clutched it in reward of

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  services rendered and no one present mentioned exactly what those services were.

  But the king met with the duke of Ryssand and the duke of Murandys, and officially settled the matter of Sulriggan’s return on the very evening the king’s friend was on his way to Amefel…and the king had the small satisfaction of seeing no triumph on any face except the Pa
triarch’s.

  The two lords had looked to enjoy this evening. They had looked, perhaps, to accusations of sorcery, and expected better of the Patriarch than they had gotten. But the Patriarch knew on what table his meals were served henceforth and forevermore, and knew that the two lords at his back felt betrayed, and therefore he had double reason to stand close by his king.

  Sulriggan would return to court, the Patriarch’s cousin; and gods send the duke of Llymaryn would be prudent, now, having coasted so close to royal anger. Ironic, that the king’s two best allies in the troublesome north might turn out to be the Patriarch and his cousin Sulriggan. He never would have seen that as likely. But Emuin had left him in order to advise and restrain Tristen, a far chancier element. That left, of royal intimates, only Efanor, only the Regent, only the Lord Commander, several other officers, and Cevulirn—a gray, often silent presence.

  So at present, in the court as it was now and for time foreseeable, yes, the Patriarch was his ally and Sulriggan was the Patriarch’s man…such as he was.

  He smiled on the Patriarch, a warm, a proprietary sort of smile, the sort he denied the two lords. He meditated on the rewards of piety, on his new use of the gods, from a perspective he had not had until his enemies hewed down the tall tree that was Tristen…or at

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  least, until he lengthened his view of the realm not as protecting a small, threatened circle of intimates but as reaching to his good neighbor Amefel, his good neighbor Cevulirn of Ivanor, his dearest love the Regent from across the river, and hell take these two barons. He had the Patriarch, and soon he would have Sulriggan, both in the center of his hand, clever as they had thought they were, and neither would be anxious to see that hand ever become a fist.

  “I add,” he said to the Holy Father, “I add the welcome of the Marhanen house, and the use of the bedchamber lately in use by the duke of Amefel, for residence within the Guelesfort.”

  He said nothing about the cook, that unholy power in Sulriggan’s household. Within the Guelesfort, the lord of Llymaryn had to rely on the Guelesfort kitchens, and be damned to Sulriggan’s culinary tastes. There was a second thorn in that royal rose, too, that Sulriggan would not be questing with, say, Ryssand or Murandys.