Fortress of Eagles

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Some think me foolish,” he said to the earls, “and that may be; but I am a fool far less often these days than I was this summer, and I do learn, sirs. I know, for 370 / C. J. CHERRYH

  instance, that many Amefin houses have far closer ties across the river than to Ylesuin. If Ylesuin sets Elwynor safely on her throne, then your villagers will walk across the river bridges by broad daylight and trade as you wish. But if Tasmôrden comes, he will make Amefel his battlefield. That is the truth, sirs.”

  There was not a word of objection.

  And he had nothing more to say or do here, and wished nothing more now than to go to his own bed, and to have ease of the belts and weapons he had borne now for a day and a night…or was it morning?…with no ease of them. Crissand’s loyalty would stay or it would go. The gray space was utterly roiled, seething with yea and nay and hazard, and he wished Crissand Adiran out of his vicinity before his unsteady wits did lasting harm and willed something unwise.

  “Good night,” he said. No one moved for a breath or two, and then one and the other bowed and edged cautiously backward, as if they were each hesitant to be the first to leave.

  Crissand gazed at him, and in the gray space, winds blew, changing direction on the instant.

  Then Crissand bowed his way away from the dais, the guards that had brought him in all standing in uncertainty.

  Tristen shook his head at the sergeant, wishing him not to detain the earl of Meiden, or to interfere with him.

  And for the rest, he knew no more elaborate ceremony or more ready escape than Cefwyn’s habit, which was to walk out by the lord’s door, that nearest the dais. He gathered up Uwen, Anwyll, a trail of guards, the clerks, and then Tawwys and Syllan outside in the hall at the same time as the earls and clerics had to sort themselves out by the other door a small distance away.

  None of the earls, however, ventured near to trou FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 371

  ble him, and shielded what they said with turns of their shoulders and furtive glances as they hurried to be away, either seeking safer nooks of the Zeide in which to gossip, or going home as the court would, by the stable-court stairs and the West Gate.

  Tristen walked, instead, aware of the dismay of his own guards, toward the center of the building, where the South Court doors let in and where the confluence of stairways gave a choice of upward directions.

  “What shall we do wi’ Lord Meiden?” Uwen asked him as he approached that point of choice.

  “Let him go,” Tristen said. But all his soul said there was profound danger in Crissand Adiran…Crissand Aswydd, for Aswydd he surely was. “Let him go where he pleases.”

  So he ordered. But if Uwen were Idrys, and if he were Cefwyn, then he would know that Meiden would not do anything unwatched, and he would never have to hear of it or trouble his soul unless there was reason.

  But Uwen was not Idrys, and he realized only then that he truly had no check on his mercy, and no man to do the dark, the unpleasant things. Uwen asked, perceiving the threat, but Uwen would be grieved to slip furtively about when his lord had made a public show of setting Crissand free on his honor.

  He had to order it if it would be done, while Idrys would have done it even if his liege had strictly forbidden him.

  And he found himself at a pass that Cefwyn with his resources would never have come to. He had given a pledge.

  Was he now to break it himself? Such things, he being not a Man, had more than ordinary consequence, and he, not being a Man, had more than ordinary need of a Man to do the unpleasant work and examine the dark corners.

  372 / C. J. CHERRYH

  They walked by the light of stub candles in sconces up and down the lower hall. The Zeide’s servants had appeared out of whatever holes they had hidden in, and candles were not everywhere, as yet, but there were enough lit at enough points to show the servants working end to end of the hall, sweeping and polishing evidence of death from the stones of Hen Amas.

  They were the true caretakers of this Place, he thought: lords proposed and disposed and worried about the proprieties and the rights of things, but they mopped the dust and the blood away and made it possible to forget the worst of events.

  It was one more change of lords for them, in this year yet unended. There had been four, already, since summer, counting the lord viceroy—who might be the departing rider he heard out in the courtyard, through weapon-scarred doors now closed for the sake of warmth.

  The lord viceroy was gone.

  He was the fifth lord, in one year.

  And in that realization he found himself approaching a scatter-witted weariness. Was it hunger he felt at this hour, or thirst or merely winter chill? His body failed to inform him.

  Down the corridor ahead, past the great hall, was the ghostly boundary of the mews. There were dead men in the ducal apartment above. There was the lord viceroy’s ungathered baggage in the other lordly residence, that which Cefwyn had used up the other stairs. He longed for his own old, modest dwelling on the uppermost floor, but he who had to fear that wizardry supported his wishes had no hope of recovering that apartment save by arranging a calamity to someone else…as surely someone else was residing there now. He was equally sure the duke of Amefel had

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  to occupy some other residence: Uwen would never let him choose something so small and modest and entirely adequate, nor would Emuin.

  Nor, for that matter, would Cefwyn.

  Cefwyn. Cefwyn. Cefwyn. There was the question tonight.

  But it was not a question he could solve by thinking on it, not with wits muddled with a day’s riding and a night such as they had just spent. He felt tremors in all his body, a desperate need of sleep.

  “Which rooms shall I use?” he asked Uwen, as they reached that choice between the stairway on the left, that led to Cefwyn’s former rooms, and that on the right, that led up to the Aswydd bedchambers. “Where shall I sleep?” His own question sounded plaintive in his ears. He was lost as a child, and Uwen shepherded him toward the right-hand stairs.

  “They’ve been preparin’ the Aswydd rooms,” Uwen said.

  “The servants ha’ been at it for an hour now, a great lot of ’em.

  It’s safest. We ain’t searched every hall and nook, nor will have, maybe for days, so’s ye should have a care for the dark places an’ never go wi’out me, not even wi’ Guelen troops: wi’ me, lad, or maybe Lusin an’ the rest, but no others, no others, no matter how well ye know ’em.”

  C H A P T E R 3

  The apartment smelled of burning cedar and polishing oils. The chair by the tall, green-curtained windows might never have held a dead man—all the dead were gone, to what burial place Tristen had not asked. The servants, working under close guard, had indeed changed the place in very little time, and most significantly there was not a cup, not a bowl, not a vessel or utensil to be seen on any shelf. Guards were in every room, too, standing watch, so that the rooms had not the desolate feeling they might have had after the events of this bloody night: Syllan had taken command of the detachment at the door, while Lusin was off inquiring into things that had to be inquired into regarding the horses and the stables.

  Servants passed, with massive copper buckets that foretold a bathtub being filled with hot water.

  Clean, hot water. If dead men had been end to end of the floor, Tristen thought, he would have longed for that bath, and he abandoned his last reluctance about the place.

  “I want you, and our men, with me,” he said to Uwen as they walked through the inner rooms. “I take all your warnings.

  I want the doors shut. Use only the 374

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  food and drink we brought in.” His voice had become a thread.

  He could not muster more than that. “Let us hope for a quiet rest.”

  “The captain’s had the town watch shut down the taverns,”

  Uwen said, “so the captain says. Can’t any man roam the streets carrying his pot o
f drink with him, and Lord Cuthan’s got his household men standin’ watch by the tavern, gods save us, so’s no crowd gets to barrels of it. Men can be great fools when they’re happy.”

  “And are they happy?” He paused. He was astonished, in the light of the lord viceroy’s actions and all else that had gone amiss.

  “Oh, indeed they are, m’lord. Folk as feared the town might lie under siege all winter, they’re right happy. They don’t care if ye’re a wizard or ye ain’t. By them, ye ain’t Guelen, ye ain’t any viceroy, and Sihhë ain’t any unlucky word hereabouts, either, so to say. Here, if ye call down lightning on the Zeide roof, why, they’ll take no offense by ’t. Aye, they’re happy, lad, they’re right happy about a peaceful winter. Ye’ve come home, an’ may ye have a long and a happy stay here, m’lord, wi’ all my heart, dare I wish so?”

  A long and a happy stay. And a cheerful, even a bantering and wistful wish from Uwen, who had heard everything in the hall below.

  “But may I say, gettin’ far above myself, m’lord, ye was right to chide the earls.”

  “Was I?”

  Uwen colored to the roots of his hair. “Sayin’ as I’d know,”

  he said with a downcast look. “But ye done well, m’lord.

  Only—”

  “Only?”

  “Ye was right, too, about them sayin’ lord Sihhë. ’At’s trouble. The Quinalt father was standin’ there 376 / C. J. CHERRYH

  with his hands in his sleeves and lookin’ to have swallowed a bad bite.”

  “Idrys says to make a gift to the Quinalt. I think we should for all of the priests, and have them happy.”

  “If ye went yoursel’ an’ made it, they’d be happiest of all.”

  “We have the gold.”

  “Aye, m’lord.” Uwen laughed. “Ye have the whole damn treasury…which ye should look into and take account of, at least I would, seein’ the lord viceroy was packin’ jewels which might have been her ladyship’s.”

  “Orien’s?” He had by no means imagined.

  “Her ladyship bein’ duchess of Amefel, I don’t know, but she wore some right fine green ’uns when she were lady here.

  An’ I don’t know the color of what the viceroy was packing.”

  “Twice, then, tonight, Orien.”

  Uwen’s face had gone quite sober. “I’d say so, m’lord, an’

  right cautions I’d be wi’ anything that lady owned.”

  Tristen passed a glance around them, the draperies, the ornate doors, the penchant for dragons.

  “So I am,” he said.

  They walked back to the entry, and there he stopped and gazed at his domain: heavy chairs, massive tables, tapestries wrought in silk, fanciful globes worked in gold and silver. There were tables covered entirely in gold leaf, and a dining table the legs of which were strange, hostile beasts. With the servants’

  best efforts he still found the dimly lighted room, with its dark green, gold-tasseled draperies over the windows, stiflingly oppressive, as if air had not moved here, and could not move again.

  He walked across the room, surveyed the green fab FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 377

  ric that he associated with Heryn and Orien and the Aswydds—rightly associated: it was the Aswydd heraldry. He gave it a tug to draw the drapery back. It slid freely and unexpectedly on its rods, showing diamond-paned glass, and night, and dark—

  Stark terror, beyond the window, a shattering of light and dark on glass.

  Reflections. Mere reflections. His heart had leapt. And settled.

  But it had been real, once. On a certain night this summer he had surprised Lady Orien and her sister in sorcery at the very table as that now in the corner of his eye, with the dragon candlesticks alight, the window vents open and unwarded before her, her sister Tarien, and a small cluster of her ladies. In his imagining at any moment he might hear the rustle of Lady Orien’s skirts, smell her heavy perfume.

  For an instant he longed to flee this room at least until daylight.

  But if he could not master this room, and its shadows, himself being forewarned and wary and far more potent than the earl’s thin Aswydd blood, then how could he ever master the Zeide? The threat was negligible, if he met it, dealt with it, banished it.

  And what would Emuin say now of this night’s doing? Not praise for his foresight, he much feared. He would not compound his discreditable actions by hieing himself and his guards to a dusty, unused bed-chamber, all for fear of Aswydd curses, he, who was Mauryl Gestaurien’s heir.

  “M’lord?” Uwen had come up close to him. “M’lord?”

  The window reflected a dark man and an older, worried one, silver-haired, behind him.

  378 / C. J. CHERRYH

  Then by a trick of the eyes he was looking out into dark, and night.

  Shadows rushed against the window, a solid wall of black.

  A second trial of him.

  He lifted a hand, startled, and a second time saw only the window again, the ordinary night.

  Lady Orien had invited shadows into this room repeatedly.

  She had treated with them, opened this window, compromised the Lines on the earth that Masons had made when they declared the foundations of the Zeide; and it was a dangerous breach to have made. She had sought power to come to herself…but being bound inside the Zeide, had either acted in folly or over-weening pride. This window had become a gateway to Orien’s ambition, her hate, her anger, going out…and that had become worse, a highroad to far older spirits entering.

  Hasufin Heltain had almost entered here. That ancient, dispelled spirit had needed only a tiny breach to begin its entry, but fortunately for everyone, it had needed a far, far greater one in order to enter any place as warded as the Zeide had been, and as far from Hasufin’s own center of power. Hasufin or whatever passed for Hasufin in this place had not quite succeeded in breaking the wards.

  At Ynefel…it had done so. And Ynefel, warded by the most potent wizard alive, stood in ruins. Dared anyone think a tiny crack should be disregarded?

  The one beneath the horn-paned window…had that been the entry?

  Or had his own young curiosity breached Ynefel’s wards?

  He touched the side of the window, and drew his finger from that side across the sill, all the way across to the other wall.

  He touched the metal frame of the little FORTRESS OF EAGLES / 379

  side pane that opened, and ran his fingers across the latch. He repeated the action. Three times, Emuin had said. Once was an accident, twice was divisible, three was neither accident nor divisible. Three was a maze spirits could not bend themselves through with any ease at all.

  The reflection showed a dark man and a silver-headed one.

  Uwen watched his actions, saying not a thing.

  “I treasure you above all my household,” he said to Uwen’s reflection. “I wish you well, Uwen, and I wish you very well.

  I wish you well.”

  Three times he said it, and if, as Emuin said, he had an unbreakable hold on magic, he attempted it as consciously as anything he had done in the hall tonight. Uwen was silent a moment. And shadows drifted, no longer potent, on the other side of the glass, fading from the edges of the day.

  “I’m glad of that, m’lord,” Uwen said finally.

  The drapery smelled of incense, unpleasantly so.

  “Red,” Tristen said, and gathered up a fistful of the green velvet, pulled at it, looked up, where the rod supported it. It would assuredly fall if he pulled it, but it would endanger the wrought panes of the window and the dragon-held tables on either side. No matter his distaste for the place, it was the wealth of Amefel, which he had sworn to increase, and tend, and not to cause harm to it.

  But the color meant something among the nobles of Ylesuin, and these, and the draperies downstairs…all this green said Aswydd at every glance.

  “Will Lord Heryn’s gold dinnerplates buy new draperies, do you think?”

  “They might, m’lord. Might well.”

>   380 / C. J. CHERRYH

  He saw a servant standing then, waiting to be noticed, a reflection across the room. He turned and acknowledged the presence.

  “Your Grace, the bath is ready.”

  “Heat more water. Bring more towels. My men and I all will use the bath.”

  “’T ain’t lordly,” Uwen said, “m’lord, and lord ye are, now, lad. The men and me can wash in the scullery.”

  “Not tonight,” he said. “No. Here,” he said, and that was an end of it. He went to his bath, and afterward found the servants had stripped the bed in the adjacent chamber, laid on clean bedclothes and strewed herbs over them, crushed, dried petals, as well as set pomanders in silver dishes everywhere, until the place smelled of last summer’s flowers…or a woman’s perfume.

  But the air smelled of cooked sausage, too, and when he walked out to the fire to surrender the bath to Uwen, his guards, sitting at the fireplace, offered him hot tea, bread, and toasted sausage. “From our own stores, m’lord,” Syllan said.

  They had toasted it on a knife blade that he was sure had not come from this room.

  So Uwen had his bath, and they camped, he and his men, like wayfarers in the splendor of the Aswyddim.

  The door opened, and someone came in…Lusin, it proved to be, back from the stables, with straw clinging to his cloak.

  “Bath is waiting,” Uwen said.

  “Captain,” Lusin said, “a word with you, sir.”

  Uwen got up, and went to hear the report, and no one’s attention was quite for the fireside, then. Tristen listened, but heard nothing, only saw Uwen’s face grow grim and glum, and saw Uwen shake his head as he answered Lusin, no good news, it was clear. Uwen’s shoulders slumped in a second shake of his head.

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  The cheer had gone out of their gathering. They all watched as Lusin left again and Uwen trudged back to the fire to sit down.