Fortress in the Eye of Time

by C. J. Cherryh

  There was straw in his dark hair and dirt on his clothes. If his guards had no terror of him, they were fools.

  But maybe they had after all felt afraid—had they not, clearly, exhausted their chain of command?

  And had those superior to them not called others, until the affair of the prisoner racketed to Emuin?

  And had not Emuin insisted, through Idrys, that His Highness needed to be dragged from bed urgently to intervene in the matter? This was not an ordinary case. In any sense.

  “Come. Come here.” Cefwyn beckoned the young man closer, and the two guards brought him to the lowermost step. The young man gazed at him again, that intimate and terrifying stare—as if the young man—which he could not possibly do—knew secrets that would damn his soul. The impression was so strong that almost he would have disposed the guards from the hall for fear of the youth speaking too much, or bringing some business worth lives—and he did not even know he owned such dreadful secrets. He found no reason for such a fear; and the youth, besides, seemed weak and uncertain on his feet, apt at moments even to fall to the marble floor without the guards’

  steadying hold.

  A moment while his thoughts raced, that silence continued in the room, until one could all but hear the snap of candle flames, until the melting of wax—like the melting of flesh just now in chambers above—made the air cloying sweet. It was Orien’s perfume. It clung to him. His thoughts scurried like mice, this way and that, desperate, looking for an approach to the problem—and found it under his fingertips.

  “Is this your book?” Cefwyn asked, lifting it from his lap.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And are you indeed a thief?”

  “No, sir. I am not.”

  “Where were you and what were you doing, to be arrested by my guards?”

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  “I was at the gate. I asked to see the master.”

  The Guelen guards were unhappy with that. They shook him and cuffed him, saying, “Mind your manners, man. Say, ‘yes, Your Highness’ and ‘no, Your Highness’, and ‘Your Highness, if you please’.”

  Cefwyn winced, almost protested—but Aman, of the guard, added: “’E’s a wee bit daft, Your Highness. We had a notion he might be some Elwynim wi’ that writing, if ye know, Your Highness, him and his clothes and his speech and all, and his being a stranger.”

  “Who brought him in?” Cefwyn asked, and had a confused and apologetic muttering from an officer of the gate-guards, and an avowal from Idrys himself, to which he waved a negligent hand: he knew the chain of command, and by now so did the young man—too well, he was sure.

  “And you think him Elwynim? Walking in by daylight, in those clothes?”

  “Your Highness, he flew right by the town guards, like their eyes was blinded, Your Highness, and them good men. He said he had old Mauryl for his master. He says he come down the road out of Marna, right from the cursed tower.”

  His heart skipped a beat, but it was only confirmation. He knew now that there was omen and worse in the young man.

  He had seen it in the book. He had been certain of it with never a breath of a name. And to judge by Emuin’s urging to come intervene in this matter—Emuin also had opinions, and fears to disturb his sleep, he could rely on that, too.

  “From the old keep,” Cefwyn said, with the gooseflesh prickling on his arms, and a sense of peril and moment now to every move he made—not acute, not inescapable, but there. The young man was looking at him, and he avoided those eyes with a glance at his captain of the guard. “And them knocking the man about.

  Hardly prudent. One might make him angry.”

  “This is not a jesting matter, my lord Prince.”

  And Emuin, unbidden: “Ask him his business, my lord Prince.

  He asked for you.”

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  That was not news he wished to hear. He rested his chin on his hand, assumed a stony indifference and slid a glance at the youth, trying—trying to see flaws and faults in that countenance, in that overwhelming force of the youth’s expectations.

  That was what it was: expectation. Unmitigated. Unquestioning.

  Faith. Appalling, utter faith, directed at him, in the gods’

  mercy, who was not accustomed to such impositions.

  “So. And what is your name, young stranger in my lands?

  And what are you to rouse me out of my well-earned bed at this midnight hour?”

  “My name is Tristen, sir.”

  “No other name?”

  “None that I know, sir.”

  “And do you live most times at Ynefel, or do you travel about the land, rattling gates and conversing with honest guards?”

  Incomprehension grew, and fear became foremost in the youth’s eyes. “I did live there, sir. But the wind came, and the roof slates fell, and Mauryl—” The youth’s voice faded altogether, not into tears, although the young man was distraught—simply into bewildered silence.

  “So how does Mauryl fare?” Cefwyn asked him.

  “I fear—he is not well.”

  “And the roof slates fell,” Cefwyn echoed him.

  “Yes, sir. They did. Not all. But—”

  “Because of the wind, they fell.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And what brought you here to my hall?”

  “I wish a place to sleep, sir. And supper.”

  There was anxious laughter among the guards. But the young man seemed quite, quite fragile. Childish of manner, now, and altogether overwhelmed.

  Cefwyn did not laugh. “Supper,” he said. “Did you walk all that way for supper?”

  “And a place to stay, sir.”

  “Bringing one of Mauryl’s books.”

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  “I didn’t steal the book. Mauryl gave it to me. He said I should read it.”

  “Did he?” He could not find in the young man’s face the innocence he had seen before. He might have deceived himself. It might be an Amefin-sent deception, challenging his dignity and his authority. So he challenged it in turn. “How many days did you walk from Mauryl’s tower?”

  “Four. Five. Perhaps five.”

  “Walking? One takes it for twice that many days. At least.”

  “Days and nights, sir.”

  “Days and nights.”

  “I feared to sleep, sir.”

  “One does doubt this,” Idrys said coldly, and a spell seemed broken—or provoked. Cefwyn felt uneasiness at what he heard, but although it seemed to him that, if his maps were true, the youth’s account was far short of the truth—still, the youth’s remembrance might be in question. He felt more uneasiness at the habit Idrys had of provoking a situation. He saw it building.

  “He does seem unlikely simple, Your Highness,” the chief of the gate-guard said, “from time to time. An’ then again, he don’t.”

  “Well-acted, though,” Idrys said. “Quite well-acted, boy.”

  “The book,” Emuin said, “the book.”

  “Oh, the book.” Idrys waved his hand. “I’ll have you two its like by morning. Amefin maunderings. Lyrdish poetry. Gods know. Save it for the library. Some musty priest will make sense of it.”

  “I think not.”

  “Monastic pantry records,” Idrys said under his breath.

  “Household accounts.”

  “A plague on you.”

  “Enough,” Cefwyn said, watching the youth instead, whose glances traveled from one disputant to the other.

  A Road there was indeed in Marna Wood, and legend held that no matter where one found that Road, it went to Ynefel, and not easily away again.

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  And by his speech, by his manner, by that unreadable book in his possession—

  Had Mauryl had a servant? Cefwyn asked himself.

  Or, gods save them, an apprentice?

  —Or—worse still, a successor?

  Not even the Amefin locals, with the old Sihhë blood still, however thin, in their veins, would readily venture that Road, that fo
rest, far less go asking admittance at Ynefel’s ancient gate.

  If an apprentice, surely no ordinary lad had come asking for the honor. But reputedly the old wizard had stirred forth, from time to time, though not to court, and reputedly the old wizard still dealt with those willing to risk the river—if indeed it was, as some credulous maintained, the same Mauryl who had dealt with his grandfather, still dealing in Sihhë gold and wizardly simples, and having Olmern lads bringing baskets of flour and oil and such like goods as far up that river as they dared go.

  And never would Olmernmen cheat the old man, or short a measure. In truth—so his spies’ reports had it, they made the measures as much as possible, and tucked gifts in as well.

  So the Olmernmen, particularly those of the village of Capayneth, still honored the Nineteen, the wizards’ gods, as did the rural folk of Amefel,—while the local Quinalt priests, for a share of the gold, looked the other way. As a deity, Mauryl had been demonstrably efficacious for centuries—at least, skeptics said, the many who had had the name of Mauryl and occupied the tower since the legendary rise of the Sihhë kings. More, on the medicines and spells the old man sold, Capayneth’s sheep bore twins, Capayneth’s women never miscarried, Capayneth’s crops somehow never quite headed-out and dried before hail that flattened other fields, and Capayneth’s folk lived long and healthy lives. So they said.

  And mutter as the Quinalt would, it could not prevent the veneration that outlasted the Sihhë themselves.

  Mauryl fallen? The sun had as well come up in the west.

  Comets should fill the heavens.

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  The youth’s acute attention had flagged now. The youth’s head had drooped under his study as if bearing himself on his feet was all that he could do. If this lad was local deity, heir to immortal Mauryl, he bore the wrong name and showed himself a mortal and weary godling, smudged with mud and traces of blood, wilting before his eyes. The spark that had leapt out of the youth for that moment seemed utterly irrecoverable now, the force all fled,—for which the Prince of Ylesuin could be grateful. Here was only a tired young man with an unkept look and a convincing innocence at least of pig-theft, wife-beating, and petty banditry.

  “Tristen.”

  “Sir?” The head came up, the eyes met his, and that moment was indeed almost back, that intense, that unbearable innocence—so appalling and so unprecedented that a man was drawn to keep looking, wishing to be sure, from heartbeat to heartbeat, that it was truly there or had ever been there.

  But he could not find it again, not with the same force. Perhaps the young man did have secrets. Perhaps the young man had discovered them in himself, and was not quite so innocent.

  Or perhaps he had found that his hosts were not what he had hoped.

  “Aman.”

  “Your Highness?”

  “This young man is not to be harmed in any way. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Your Highness.” There was true commitment in that answer. Aman knew when the Prince of Ylesuin was completely serious, and when default would entrain sure consequences.

  “Idrys. The west wing, the blue room.”

  “My lord Prince,—”

  “Idrys. The west wing. The blue room.”

  “Yes, my lord Prince.”

  “Tristen.”

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  “My lord?”

  A change. An awakening to proprieties. A wit wakening—or a pretense abandoned. It could betoken lies. Or utter ignorance.

  Cefwyn did not so much as blink. “Tristen, these several honest men will take you to a room, and servants there will provide you whatever you reasonably need. Your requests will be moderate, I trust…”

  “Supper?”

  “Assuredly.” One did not interrupt the Prince of Ylesuin when he was speaking. There were breaths bated. Not his. He became imperturbable. And equally plain-spoken. “I also suggest hot water.” The young man looked to have been accustomed to cleanliness—and if he had himself walked five days and five nights through the woods, as the youth had claimed to have done, a bath would have ranked foremost among his requests.

  “I would be very grateful, my lord.”

  Ah. Politeness. Courtly politeness. And a moment, all unanticipated, to set the hook.

  “These things,” Cefwyn said, “if you will answer a question.”

  “Sir?” Back to the first mistakes of protocol, in such an audience. And in an eyeblink, the young man’s self-possession began to fray about the edges. In vain, perhaps, the guards’ knocking-about: threats of harm had not shaken the youth’s composure or come near the truth. But now, in the diminishing of threats, the offering of comfort—then the abrupt withholding of it—the young man’s voice trembled.

  Not a chance tactic. Nor kind. No more kind than a prince could afford to seem, in getting at the facts of a case.

  “A simple question, Tristen. An easy question.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Who sent you?”

  “Mauryl, sir.”

  “Is that the truth I am to believe?”

  A hesitation. A careful, apparently earnest, rethinking. “No, sir.”

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  “What is true, then?”

  “Mauryl said to follow the Road.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing more, sir. Only to follow the Road. I thought—”

  “Go on, Tristen with no name. You thought—”

  “Thought, since the Road came here, through the gate, that this must be the place he meant me to be.”

  Mauryl’s student. Possibly. The young man could dice his reasons quite, quite finely, point by point, and say what he chose to say. A common villager did not do that. It came of courtly records. Priestly teaching.

  And a prince could parse reasons down the list—I, thou, he, whence, why, and to what end—quite, quite well on his own.

  “And for what purpose, Tristen of no name, did Mauryl Gestaurien send you—ah!— bid you to take to the Road?”

  “He never told me that.”

  “Did he say—go left or go right?”

  “No, sir. It only—seemed—as the gate showed me.”

  “And Mauryl is not well, at the moment.”

  “No, sir.”

  “In what way is he not well?”

  “He—” Clearly they had reached an abrupt precipice of reason.

  Or a brutal wall of understanding. “I—saw his face above the door. In the wall, my lord. Like—like the other faces.”

  From an improper ‘sir’ to a presumptuous ‘my lord.’ And on such a chilling declaration. There was consternation at various points about the hall. He hoped there was none from him—he tried at least to maintain calm. The matter of the faces was well-rumored, the work of the last Galasieni—or the succession of Mauryls all hight Gestaurien: accounts varied, none of which he had taken as truth, and he would not be daunted, not by the claim, not by the innocence in the voice.

  “Like the other faces. Most remarkable. Or not, in that venue.

  Do casual strangers inhabit the walls? Or only outworn wizards?”

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  “I—have no idea, sir.”

  “Are you a wizard yourself?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What are you, then? Beggar, servant,—priest of unwholesome gods?”

  “No, sir.” The gray gaze was frightened, now, as if this Tristen were well aware of mockery and yet had no means to discern wherein he was mocked.

  “Come,” Cefwyn said, “even the score, sir wayfarer. Ask a question of me.”

  “Are you the master of this place?”

  “Yes,” he said, as plainly as the youth asked, and ignoring the ducking of heads and hiding of expressions all about the hall, stood fast in this assault of the wizardous and incredible. “I am.

  Cefwyn. Prince of Ylesuin, for that matter, but, yes, master of this hall, this town, this province.—And if I give you welcome, you are indeed welcome, Tristen late from Ynefel.—Mauryl in-disposed. Immured. Th
is is astounding, even momentous news.

  Is there perchance more you should tell me?”

  “I fear,” the youth said faintly, “I fear that Mauryl is lost. I think he would come back if he could. But he’s in the wall.”

  “What of the rest of Mauryl’s books?” Emuin asked. Like a pebble in a still pond, that deftly-dropped wizardly concupis-cence. Emuin was likewise refusing to be daunted. And the young man’s eyes were at once wary and alarmed.

  “I suppose inside, sir. Everything was falling. I sat on the step outside. I feared to go back inside. When it grew dark—I went to the Road.”

  “I wager you did wisely,” Cefwyn said, keeping his voice quite sincere. “Mauryl was our neighbor for many years, vastly preceding my tenure here. Or my father’s or my grandfather’s, for that matter. He kept his own borders and stayed out of mine. One can hardly ask for more in a neighbor of long standing.—Idrys, perhaps instead of the blue room, which is doubtless musty—is the gray hall in good order for a guest?”

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  He himself doubted that was the case, but it signaled to Idrys the quality of hospitality he meant. “Cedrig’s chamber,” Idrys suggested, “is far airier, Highness.”

  Meaning to Idrys’ knowledge it was clean, unoccupied,—and might have advantages as far as the guard being able to keep a close eye on things, being upstairs and at the end of a cul de sac hallway. That would far better satisfy Idrys’ concerns—which were certainly not to ignore.

  “See to it,” Cefwyn said lightly and, keenly aware Emuin wished the young man disposed otherwise, and that Emuin wished his own hands on the book, held out the book to their guest. The guards—simple men but no dullards—let him go then, and the young man set an intemperate foot on the second and the third step. Cefwyn held the offered book so he must ascend to claim it, not leaning forward to give it. It was a trap, and even as the youth laid hand to the book, Cefwyn did not let the book go, wishing the young man face to face and in privy conference with him.

  “Did Gestaurien teach you his arts?” he asked in a low voice, not for other ears. He looked at close range at the prisoner, at the reality of grimed skin and tangled hair and those eyes that had no barriers in them. “The truth, Tristen from Ynefel, as you wish my hospitality. Are you a wizard?”