Fortress in the Eye of Time

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Highness,” said another, older man, “our horses are tired.

  There’ll be no running far or fast. If we can avoid stirring this nest, far better we could do that, and get on to the road.”

  “One or two horses, you swear.”

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  “That left tracks back there, aye, Your Highness. Not more ’n three, but that isn’t saying where they come from or how many might be in camp further on.”

  The men were all saying be careful. The soldiers could by no means argue directly with Cefwyn, but they spoke their minds as much as they dared. “M’lord Prince,” Tristen said quietly, very faintly and respectfully bidding for Cefwyn’s attention.

  “Master Idrys doesn’t know this is happening. Is there any way to tell him?”

  “Master Idrys is gods know where at the moment,” Cefwyn said shortly. “Run hither, run yon across the meadows, and we may gather ourselves gods know what for notice. Idrys may still be engaged at the village, he may have gone south to the road, or he may even have hared off on his own devices for very good reasons, damn his sullen, secretive ways. We go as we are; we stay to the sheep-paths, and bear as we can toward the road where we hope master Idrys will meet us. Gods know what’s encamped hereabouts, or whether they’ve spied us out from the height.”

  “Margreis,” Tristen said. That Name came to him, a village he remembered from the map. “Isn’t it near Emwy?”

  “Ruins,” Cefwyn said shortly. “And how do you know?”

  “From the map, sir.”

  “Margreis is a haunt of outlaws from time to time. And it is near the Knob. No, best we ride slowly, put no demands on the horses until we reach the road. We risk no breakneck speed on a cursed sheep-path.”

  That was the order Cefwyn gave, then. It still seemed to Tristen it was far wiser to turn back to the village, where there were walls and doors to lock against men or Shadows. It seemed to him that being out in the land when dark came, as coming it rapidly was, might not by Mauryl’s instruction be the best choice.

  It seemed to him by what he did remember of the map that they would not find the road before dark even at better speed than they were making, and the notion of

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  them wandering these sheep-paths in the dark looking for hills the man recognized did not seem in any way the wisest thing to do.

  But making camp and lingering seemed the worst of all choices—sitting where their enemies could come up on them in the dark. He was glad at least Cefwyn was of a mind to go somewhere, if he would not go back to walls and doors they could lock.

  Besides, he did not know that he was right; his notions were often right—but Names and impressions were coming to him now from moment to moment: bits and fragments of the map, details of land and cover shaping themselves from what he saw as if of a sudden the land around them had become that map of Cefwyn’s, and he could see beyond the hills, guessing which way villages lay, and where the river was.

  Cefwyn’s men were still not exactly right about the direction, but the way they were going seemed the shortest they could manage without going through the low hills to the west, closer to the deadly woods: Cefwyn kept them proceeding as quickly as the horses could carry them, over ground stonier and less easy as the shadows lengthened.

  And at deep dusk, the sheep-track on which the man had guided them played out at a brook with a high rocky shelf on the other side, so they had to ride along the lower bank and then cross and climb steeply up a sheep-path among the trees.

  But that brought them up where there was rapidly no through track at all, only a tumbled lot of stone that nature had not made, with a scattering of trees. It was not the woods they had met before, only a copse of willows that gave way to stone and brush.

  An old wall showed through the brush. Paving stones were all along the ground, like the Road, but pale gold. Some stones along the base of the wall were carved with leaves, and some with birds and some with circles. Some had faces, one with pointed teeth peering out from the leaves as if it lurked there in ambush.

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  The air tingled. That gray place of Emuin’s was so easy from here; it rippled along just under the air, and it frightened him.

  The soldiers made signs against harm and Cefwyn wore a hard and unhappy face. The way became overgrown, steep and stony, and they had to find their own way through a tangle of half-buried stone in the gathering night.

  But it was more directly toward the road they were going now.

  Tristen was certain of it. “I think this is right,” he said. “The road is straight on from here.”

  “Damn the luck,” Cefwyn said, refusing to be reassured. “This is not at all where I’d intended to go. We should bear more easterly and get out of this warren.”

  Immediately after, they found the walls of a building, which had not at all a good feeling. Soot stained the vacant windows and doors, as if the place had burned.

  “Althalen,” he heard one of the men say. “This is Althalen, gods save us.”

  It was a Name. Not a troubling one. But it seemed so to everyone else.

  “They’re stones,” Cefwyn said sharply. “Dead stones. They harm no one. Look sharp for ambush. That’s the danger here.”

  The light had all but gone. Shadows established their hold on the ruins and crept out of holes where they lurked by bright day. I dislike this, Tristen thought, and would have said so, if he had thought anyone would listen, or if it would have done anyone any good, but it was like the time before: all along, they were doing the best they knew to do, going generally south before they could turn east, and they were far enough along their track now that there seemed no choice, or only worse choices left.

  Idrys might miss them on the road, Tristen thought. He hoped that Idrys might come after them. The ruins were all around them, and more and taller ruins lay stark on a hill above. The place felt worse and worse. The sky was the color of dirty water.

  The air turned dank and chill as light left the land.

  And throughout, Shadows ran along between the stones, leaving their lairs in the deep vacancies of broken masonry.

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  Lines upon the earth, Mauryl had said. Secrets known to masons and stoneworkers. But what restrained a Shadow once the building was overthrown and once horses and men rode where doors and windows had not been? Surely such a calamity weakened their magic.

  Wind blasted up, out of nothing. The horses whinnied and fought the bits, wanting to run.

  Something was following them. He felt it. The horses felt it.

  He cast a look back, feeling terror gathering thick about the stones, a sense of presence the like of which he had felt once before in the forest, that time that something had passed him on the Road in Marna. But no more than then did he see anything substantial. Gery’s skin twitched against his knee as Cefwyn led the way down an eroded slope. They passed into a dark, tree-arched gap between the lines of overthrown masonry and fire-stained ruin.

  Wind blasted suddenly at their faces, skirling through the trees, sighing with a voice of leaves. A horse whinnied from far away. Tristen smelled smoke and heard voices raised in alarm, faint and far, but many, many of them. He thought of what Idrys said about burning the haystacks.

  “Something is burning,” he said.

  “Nothing’s there,” Cefwyn said, sharply. “Stay with me.”

  A well-worn path went along the foundations of another set of walls. The smell of burning was overwhelming. It clung to them as they went, the horses all panting with the pace Cefwyn set, white froth flying from the bits in the gathering dark.

  “I surely wisht I had me a bow,” said one of the soldiers.

  “Keep ahorse,” breathed another. “Ain’t no arrows to touch the cursed dead.”

  “Quiet,” Cefwyn hissed.

  “Fire,” Tristen insisted.

  The air seemed gray, then, and he knew he had slipped again into that dangerous place. Worse, it had become full of Shadows.

  H
e saw fire spreading through the shadow-woods, pale and 233

  dimmed, sickly orange in a white and gray landscape of shadows, and he could no longer find Cefwyn nor the men with him as he rode.

  — Stay, a voice said to him. Stay, fledgling. Feel your

  feathers singed, do you? The fire will not touch you. I

  would not let it touch you. Believe me. Trust me. Follow

  me. I’ll lead you safely home.

  — Emuin? he called out. Emuin, are you there?

  “Stop him!” voices cried.

  Hands reached, Shadows rippled and rushed through the gray and the smoke and the pale, pale glow of fire against the pearl-colored sky.

  He saw a gulf of darkness ahead of him and sent Gery flying across it, riding for the only gap in the fire he saw.

  He struck a level plane where Gery fairly flew, away from the fire, away from the flames, away from the voices and the Shadows that reached for him.

  But Gery and he went soaring through empty air, and a way loomed in front of him through breaking branches, a way of escape with fire on either hand, a path that went on and on, into the pearl-gray air.

  Darkness loomed up; the bodies of horses checked Gery’s forward rush. Catch the reins! he heard one shout, and hands dragged at Gery, hands dragged at him, too, until Gery stumbled and slogged to a stop.

  The gray was no longer clear but charged with man-shaped shadows, full of harsh voices and reaching hands…

  “Stay,” Idrys advised in a voice hardly recognizable for its rawness. “Stay, damn you! Enough! M’lord Prince!”

  Other shadows came up behind him. He was still on Gery’s back. The whole sky spun and wove with lesser Shadows, the sort that men made: pale gray, not the deadly black of the true ones. The air echoed with voices reporting riders in the hills.

  “Cursed ground,” someone said, and: “They’re Sihhë dead,”

  which was a Name potent with their fear. “What’s it to him?”

  another asked. And another: “He’s right with ’em all. He’d have led us to very hell!”

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  “He led us to the road,” a louder voice said. “Shut your damned mouths.”

  And amid all those voices he heard Cefwyn ask, “How did you chance here?” and heard Idrys answer: “The woods and damned good fortune. There was manure that no sheep nor goat made, m’lord Prince, horse manure spread about Emwy’s orchard, bold as you please. I fired the hay, sent ten men after you overland and took the short way after—four good Guelen men, m’lord Prince, four good men lost on this cursed venture not counting Lewen’s-son!”

  He was no longer holding Gery’s reins. Gery moved, and he swayed and Gery moved out from under him as someone called out warning, but he found nothing at all to hold—he was drifting in that gray place, and a hand pushed him until he was straight in the saddle and Gery moved back under him.

  More men came riding up, enemies, some thought, but they were not. He knew them, not their names, but he felt their presence and knew them for Cefwyn’s men. They were men Idrys had sent to track them through the countryside, and they complained of ghosts, and haunts, and swore they had smelled smoke, too, that it clung to their clothes. That they had heard voices and children screaming.

  The night came clear about him, then: a place, a road, open to a sky beginning to show stars. They were on the road, and Idrys spoke of ambush. “We should be on our way, m’lord Prince,” Idrys said. “There’s nothing to gain, few as we are.

  We’ve tripped something before they’d like—so let us have the advantage of it, not throw lives away in chasing ghosts. It’s phantoms you’re seeing.”

  “A plague on Heryn’s lost sheep,” Cefwyn said, and, “We’ll have questions for Emwy district. If they won’t respect my banner, they’ll pray for me back again. And they’ll answer my questions.”

  They rode away from the place. Things came clearer as they went, the dark of ordinary night succeeding gray in his vision.

  But they were going, they said, back to the town, back 235

  to safety, where they might send men to find out the truth of business about Emwy district.

  “Althalen,” he heard Idrys mutter. “A fit place to murder the Marhanen heir.”

  A Name, a Name that rose up and coiled along the road, a Name that cast the night into confusion and distrust.

  A Name that wrote itself on aged parchment, and shadowed with Owl’s broad wings.

  The gray was more, then, and the light in that place breathed with voices all striving to tell him something, but so many spoke at once he could not hear a single word.

  He was sitting on a rock, and horses were nearby. He swayed as he sat, and a hand touched him—he reached to feel it, seeking something solid in the reeling, giddy light.

  A blow stung his cheek. A second.

  “Cold as the dead,” Cefwyn breathed. “Tristen.”

  “M’lord,” he said. The world was clear, if only the small dark space of it where Cefwyn was kneeling on one knee—that was not right. Cefwyn should not do that; but all else was gray, and cold, and went and came by turns as Cefwyn fumbled at his own collar and drew out a circlet of metal on a chain.

  “Here.” Cefwyn drew the chain off and pressed the object into his hand perforce. He felt the shape. He felt it as something alive and potent. Numbly he clenched it tight, pressed it to his heart and breathed, seeing the world dark and overwhelmed with Shadows and starlight.

  “I was lost,” he murmured, trying to make them understand.

  “Cefwyn,—”

  — The Marhanen. We are betrayed once and twice,

  creature of Mauryl Gestaurien. You are deceived if you

  trust in these. Mauryl cannot have intended this, of all

  things else he would have done. You are in the wrong place.

  Leave them. Come away.

  “Unnatural,” a soldier muttered. “They’s ghosts about. They’s no good for a Marhanen nor a Guelen man on this road.”

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  “Get him up. Set him ahorse,” someone said, and Tristen tried to see, but the Shadow was around him. He knew he stood. He knew Cefwyn took the object and the chain from his hand and put it over his head, and about his neck, insisting that he wear it. It chilled him through the mail. “I am afraid,” he said. “Cefwyn, I don’t know the way from here. I can’t find the road home.”

  “Hush,” Cefwyn said, or Mauryl said. He was not certain.

  Rough hands pulled him, guided him, lifted him up and across a saddle which he struggled at the last to reach, knowing it was his way to home and safety.

  A long time later he heard the sound of horses. He said as much, but no one would listen. Later, after another rest, and after they were on their way again—it might have been hours—they heard them, too, and he heard men curse and some invoke the gods. He heard metal hiss and knew the sound for the drawing of swords.

  He felt at his side, but he had no sword. As in the loft when Mauryl died, when others took measures against the danger, he waited, not understanding, searching through the grayness to know whether the riders that came toward them were friend or foe.

  Someone hailed them in the distance. “M’lord Prince?” that voice said, then closer. And eventually another called, rough and grown familiar since a morning that now seemed a world past, a voice that had called him out of a safety amid the bedcov-ers, out the dark of his room yesterday morning.

  “M’lord Prince? Lord Commander? Is that you?”

  He trembled, recognizing Uwen’s voice. He saw Uwen with a bandage about his head, ahorse and leading other horsemen toward them out of a faint coloring of dawn above the hills.

  Among the riders was His Grace Lord Heryn in velvet hall-clothing. Heryn made haste to get down and kneel on the roadside and to offer Cefwyn his respects and his concern.

  “Well you came,” Cefwyn muttered. “And with the Guelen guard. How kind of you to bring my soldiers. Or was it my soldiers who brought you?”


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  “I heard the news,” Heryn said. “Your Highness, I had no inkling, none, of any disaffection in the area. My men have come and gone there with no hint of their doings. I swear to you I’ll find out the truth. I’ll get to the heart of this. I’ll find the ones responsible and their kin. Damn them all!”

  It was not the last word that Heryn said. Cefwyn also gave some answer to him. But the sound of voices grew dim. Uwen had ridden close, and asked if he was well.

  “I think,” he began to say, but did not finish.

  — Tristen, the Wind breathed. Tristen, Tristen.

  He felt the chill, and struggled against the touch.

  — No, said the Wind, and there was fear in it. Tristen is not

  your name.

  “Uwen,—” he found wit to say. He stood on the ground. He had gotten down from Gery at the rest they took; but he stood foolishly with Gery’s reins in hand, and could not manage them, he was shaking so. “Uwen. Help.”

  “Aye, m’lord. Here’s a stirrup clear. I got ye.” A hand reached down to him, took Gery’s reins, and lingered to take his hand.

  “Put your foot in ’t, m’lord, I’ll pull.”

  He set his foot in Uwen’s stirrup. Uwen pulled on his hand as he tried to rise, pulled until he could catch a grip on Uwen’s coat, and then on Uwen’s arm, as he came astride the horse.

  He settled, taking a grip on the saddle, not knowing what else to do with his hands, but Uwen bade him to put his arms around him—“The horse can carry us both a ways,” Uwen said. “Ye ain’t got but a mail coat, nor me much more, m’lord. Rest forward against my back, there’s a lad.”

  He let his head sink again, trusting Uwen, trying with all his will not to fall into that grayness again. It had become a deadly place. He knew this as he recognized Words when they came to him. The gray space, which Emuin had warned him was not their own, was not a refuge here, this close to haunted things.

  He had not reached Emuin. He could not

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  attract Emuin, only that hostile Voice that called and urged at him, and of all things else, he dared not listen to it.