Fortress in the Eye of Time

by C. J. Cherryh

  He did not forget it, nor ever would. And now, lo, the unnatural sleep, leading straightway to, the guards had said, a natural waking and the visit to the paddock, which was perfectly of a piece with the gentle moonstruck youth he’d taken under Emuin’s less than explicit instructions and led out into conspiracy and eldritch ruin.

  Now books. Archives? Gods knew what the Amefin archive might hold in its dusty stacks and pigeonholes.

  He quickened his step, came through the door into the musty precincts of the archive, where books and chaotic piles of civil records shared a room that had not, by reports, known order in ages, a room where tax records had been most effectively misplaced, and where, pursuant to last night’s orders, his own accountant still commanded a battalion of pages rummaging the west wall of the archive.

  “Your Highness,” Tamurin said, mistaking his mission and the object of his inquiry. “I am immediately requesting the records necessary—immediately, m’lord Prince.”

  “And in good haste, master Tamurin. I approve all you need do.”

  Master Tamurin passed from his acute attention. In the dim light that came through a cloudy window some distance down 268

  the east wall, at a reading table almost overwhelmed with stacks of parchments and codices and towers of decaying paper…there, run to earth, sat Tristen, with a massive codex open on the overloaded table, with Uwen and the two guards leaning against chairs on either side of him, peering at the work as if they could possibly read much more than their pay vouchers, and waiting as if at any moment Tristen might pronounce some extraordinary wisdom.

  “Out,” Cefwyn bade them, and included Uwen with that princely sweep of his arm.

  Tristen lifted his head, his face lost in shadow, his hair a darkness in the dusty sunlight. It was—a chill touched Cefwyn’s skin—a stranger’s face, with the light touching only the planes and not the hollows: it was a man’s face, a forbidding face.

  The guards, conspirators in Tristen’s wanderings, perhaps at last recalling that they were to have reported a change in Tristen’s condition, eased past, trying to slip unobtrusively out of the way. The guards he had brought with him held their position, but somewhat to the rear. Only Idrys pressed close enough to involve himself in the situation, and Cefwyn considered banishing him as well. But on principle and to have another opinion of the encounter, he decided otherwise.

  “Lord Prince.” Tristen rose and started to close the massive codex. Cefwyn took two steps forward and thrust his hand into the descending leaves as Tristen stood stock still. Cefwyn dragged the book across the table, reopened the heavy pages and turned the book on the table, dislodging clutter, to look on the crabbed Amefin script, the crude illuminations, the miniature map of the Ylesuin that had once been, when it had been a mere tributary to the wizard-ruled west, the wide realm of the Sihhë kings.

  He half-closed the book, then opened to the first page and the title: The Annals of the Reign of Selwyn Marhanen.

  “Ah. Grandfather,” Cefwyn murmured wryly with a look at Tristen’s shadowed face. Still standing, he turned back to the pages that Tristen had been reading and angled the page to the light of the dust-clouded windows. “Althalen,” he read aloud, 269

  and Tristen’s face had a strange, now fearful expression, still shaped in shadows.

  Cefwyn set his foot in the seat of the chair, dragged the great codex up on his knee and inclined the whole face of the page to the light of the same dusty window. “The account of the taking of Althalen by the Marhanens.”

  He looked up to see Tristen, whether that face was contrite, puzzled, angry, or any other readable expression. Window light made it still a white, forbidding mask. He took a loose parchment from the table and laid it on that open page for a marker, closed the codex and gave the massive volume into Idrys’ keeping, dust and all.

  He looked at Tristen to see what Tristen thought of that—which seemed no more than Tristen thought of his intervention here at all. The frightened Amefin chief archivist stood in the shadow of the stacks by the other archway.

  “How did he find this book?” Cefwyn asked, fixing that man with his stare. “Did he ask? Did you suggest it him?”

  “He—asked for a history of Althalen, Your Highness.”

  Cefwyn cast a look about the other volumes stacked high on the tables all around him: census files, tax records, deeds of sale, meager books of poetics, science, and philosophy. And history.

  Oh, indeed, Amefel had history.

  He looked toward Idrys’ black shape and frowning countenance. “There are witnesses,” Idrys cautioned him, meaning that his questions were already too full of particulars and betrayed too much.

  “Tristen,” Cefwyn said mildly, “walk with me.”

  “Yes, m’lord,” Tristen said meekly. He looked into light as he bowed and the gray eyes seemed as naked as ever they had been.

  Fear was there. Cefwyn thought so, at least. Bewilderment. All the things that might placate an angry prince.

  Tristen turned, started to pass Idrys on his way to the door, but Idrys, unbidden, set down the book, laid a hand on Tristen’s arm, and roughly searched him for weapons. Tristen endured it, stone-still, in midstep.

  It was carrying matters too far, unordered: a protest leapt 270

  to Cefwyn’s lips, in Tristen’s defense, this time; but on a morning like this, in a hostile hall, a prince was a fool who blunted his guards’ attention to his protection. When it was done, Tristen continued down the aisle of the library, seeming only mildly disturbed by an indignity that would have racketed to the King’s ear had Idrys inflicted it on Heryn or Heryn’s familiars. He walked behind with Idrys while Tristen walked ahead in a downcast privacy and careless dignity that, had Idrys stripped him naked, he did not think Idrys could have breached. It was no astonished, defenseless youth such as Emuin had brought him that night in the lesser hall. This morning the jaw was set.

  The broad shoulders, in velvet and silk, declared a restraint of self, emanating not from fear but from fearlessness, and he did not think Idrys failed to be aware of whether a man feared or disregarded an outrageous interference in his affairs.

  Tristen walked down the aisle of cluttered tables, past the business of account-gathering and agitated archivists, and the guards joined them at the door, escorting them down the corridor and up the stairs.

  Anger blinded him, Cefwyn saw that in himself now, anger he had not let break. Anger had gathered in his chest and dammed up his reason; and now came a strange sense of grief, of betrayal, if he could lay a word on it: loss—of some rare and precious treasure that he had briefly seen, desperately longed for in this man.

  Mauryl’s gift, he reminded himself, in a morning fraught with dealings with traitors, in a morning after breakfast with Heryn Aswydd. It was Mauryl’s Shaping of present flesh and something other; and, given he had adequate wit to rule a province, he should have seen hazard in Tristen’s fecklessness toward all and sundry threats; he should have seen it did not come of helplessness, but of Mauryl’s work. He should have armored himself and steeled his heart.

  And had not, had not. Had not.

  271

  Upstairs, safe behind the doors of his apartment, he looked again into that too-clear gaze and met the absolute challenge to trust that Tristen posed.

  “Out,” he said to the guards, but Idrys did not budge. “Out, Idrys.”

  “In this alone I am your father’s man, my lord Prince. I will stay.”

  Tristen stood alone by the table. The book lay beside him.

  Cefwyn sat down by it, laid his arm on the leather, fingered the edges of it.

  “Why,” he asked, looking up at Tristen, “why did Mauryl send you to me?”

  “He did not send me to you, sir, not in anything he told me.”

  “One forgets. The road brought you.”

  “The road did, yes, m’lord.”

  “Did you sleep well last night?”

  “I slept, yes, m’lord.”

  �
��Rather long, as happened.”

  “Uwen says I did, sir.” There was the least edge of distress, now. “I had no knowledge of it.”

  “What happened in Althalen? What did you see? Ghosts?”

  “No, m’lord.” Wariness crept in. “Nothing happened.”

  “You rode with the devil on your heels. You rode such a course as I’ve scarcely seen and none including myself could overtake.

  And you never having ridden. How did you manage?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Wizardry?”

  “No, sir.” The voice was faint. Respectful. Convincing, if less in the province were amiss. “I was afraid.”

  Tristen had a faculty for adding the unexpected, the ridiculous, that tempted a man even in the heat of temper to burst out in laughter.

  “Afraid.”

  “There was something very bad there, m’lord Prince.”

  “Something bad,” he echoed. A child’s word. A child’s look in eyes gray as a boundless sea. He refused to be turned from 272

  anger this time. “So you broke from the company, you risked lives, you deserted me, you deserted the men guarding you, and rushed onto the road into the hands of you knew not whom, because something bad frightened you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “‘ Yes, sir.’ Say something more than ‘yes, sir,’ ‘yes, m’lord,’

  ‘beg your grace, m’lord Prince.’ These are serious matters, Tristen, and I refuse to be set aside with ‘yes, m’lord.’ If I ask you, I want a full and considered answer in this matter. What frightened you? Something bad? Good living gods, man, credit me for good will, and tell me what you saw.”

  A breath. A settling. “I don’t know, sir. I don’t remember all that I saw or all that I did, or where I was. I thought I was doing what I ought. But I thought you and the soldiers were behind me. I thought you were there.”

  “Damn you! you knew. You knew where we were!”

  “No, sir. I did not.”

  “Men die for such mistakes, Tristen.”

  “Yes, sir,” the answer came faintly.

  “You damned near killed your horse, damned near killed me, and half the men with us. If it wasn’t wizardry that carried you safe over those jumps, I should assess that mare’s foals for wings.—And, damn you, don’t look at me like a simpleton! You say you’re not simple. You claim Mauryl for your teacher. You say there’s nothing unnatural about your riding, your appearance, or your coming here. You say there was nothing unnatural in your sleep nor in your waking. What do you think me? A fool?”

  “No, sir.”

  Fainter still. More contrite. Cefwyn averted his eyes from that look that compelled belief. He opened the huge book and turned to the place the loose parchment marked.

  “What did you seek in this book?” he asked Tristen without looking up. “What do you seek in the one Mauryl gave you?—Who were you before Mauryl set hand to you?”

  There was no answer. He looked up and saw Tristen’s face had turned quite, quite pale.

  273

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “What did he send you to do?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “I want more answer than that. I want your honest, considerate opinion.”

  “I know, sir. But I don’t—I don’t understand—what I was to do. I don’t even understand—what I am. I think—I think—”

  Finish it, Cefwyn thought, his own heart beating in terror, because Tristen had gone beyond what he asked, went beyond, in his wondering, what he would ever want to know of wizard-work—because there were answers, and there was, he suddenly realized it in the context of Tristen’s vacillations between feckless acceptance and that severe, terrible self-confrontation,—there was somewhere a truth. He was Emuin’s student as Tristen was Mauryl’s. He had learned no wizardry but he had learned its peculiar logic. There was a reason Tristen had not read Mauryl’s strange book. There was a reason Tristen had gotten onto the red mare uncertain of the reins and hours later terrified him in a hellbent rush he could not match with a better horse.

  “I think,” Tristen said in a thin, small voice. “I think other men are different than I am.”

  It was another of Tristen’s turn-about conclusions, the sort that could tempt a man to laughter. But this one stuck in a prince’s throat. This one echoed off walls of his own circum-scribed world, and he thought to himself, too,—he, the Prince of Ylesuin—Other men are different than I am; while the look in Tristen’s eyes mirrored his own inward fear. That, he saw facing him and, much, much worse, the look of a man who could say that honestly, the look of a man who had gone to that archive and asked for that book.

  Alone. Mortally alone. He understood such fear. He had to fear Tristen’s declaration for what it was, but he respected above all else the courage it took to face that surmise and seek an answer, with all it might mean.

  “Tristen, certain folk say it was bandits who attacked against my banner. Certain folk say it was otherwise, a mistake, only 274

  the movement of Amefin patrols and lost shepherds. What do you think?”

  “There was harm meant.”

  “I agree. I’ve set guards to protect certain people, and you will aid me best, understand, if you do not go wandering about the halls against the advice of your guards.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m sorry.”

  “Are you well, Tristen?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You said you could not recognize a lie. Now I ask you to discover the truth, truth, as you would speak to Mauryl. Say it to me or never again ask me to trust you. What did you see that frightened you?”

  “Smoke. Fear. Fire. I wanted us to come through, sir. I wanted you to come through, and I thought you were behind me, I did truly think so.” There was a moment’s silence. “I believe I thought so.”

  “You thought you were leading me to safety.—Or, if you were only running, Tristen, I forgive it. Only say so.”

  “No, sir. I thought that I was going toward safety—I believed that you were behind me, and that if I turned back…if I turned back…I don’t know, sir. That’s all I remember.”

  “Conveniently so,” Idrys said, forgotten in his habitual stillness.

  Cefwyn flinched, the spell broken.

  “But you did follow me, sir,” Tristen said.

  “And you fell straightway into a sleep no man could break,”

  Idrys said coldly. “Is this wizardry? Or what is it?”

  “I—” Tristen shook his head, and there was—there was—Ce-fwyn would swear he detected guilt, or subterfuge in that look; and if this was guilt, the other things were either lies or hedgings of the truth.

  “Did you dream?” he asked, and Tristen looked at him like a trapped deer.

  “No, sir.”

  “What did you do? The truth, Tristen. As you told me before.

  Trust me now or never trust me. You have no choice.”

  275

  “There were names. There were too many names. I grew tired.

  I slept. I sleep when there are too many names.”

  “Names of what?”

  “Althalen. Emwy. Other names. I might know them if you said them, m’lord. I can think. I can try to think of them.”

  “Did this dusty book tell you anything?”

  “Not yet, sir.”

  “You didn’t read it.”

  “I hadn’t time, sir.”

  Cefwyn leaned back and bit his lip, flicked a glance to Idrys.

  “Be rid of him,” Idrys said. “At least confine him until Emuin returns. Neither you nor I can deal with something Mauryl Gestaurien had his hand in. This Shaping is no hedge-magician’s amusement. Be rid of it.”

  “Damn you, Idrys!” He saw Tristen’s face gone ashen.

  “Tristen.”

  “Sir?”

  “Would you do me harm?”

  “No, sir, in no way would I.”

  “Go back to your rooms across the hall. Do not leave
them on any account. I’ll have your belongings delivered to you.”

  “Yes, m’lord Prince.”

  “This evening…” Cefwyn said, impelled to soften his order, which was arrest and confinement. And he had not intended to agree with Idrys’ cursed advice, nor at all to appear to—but it seemed the only safety for Tristen and for the Crown and the peace. “This evening I shall expect you at dinner, if you will accord me the pleasure.”

  “Sir.” Tristen rose from his chair, seeming reassured. Idrys saw him to the door with complete if cold courtesy.

  Then Idrys came back to stand in front of the table, arms folded, impossible to ignore.

  “Do not give him that book, m’lord Prince. Don’t send it to him.”

  “You are a useful man to me, Idrys, but do nothing to harm him. Nothing.—And whose man are you?”

  276

  “Where it regards your safety,…yours, of course.—What says that book, my lord Prince?”

  “Blast you,—must none come near me but you?”

  There was a moment’s silence. Idrys drew a long and quiet breath while Cefwyn tried to catch his.

  “You suffer strange attractions, my lord Prince, mindfully stubborn attractions toward those things which are most likely to harm you.”

  “You suspect everything and everyone that comes close to me!

  You and Emuin—”

  “Orien and Tarien, my lord?”

  “Damn you!” He looked aside, feeling a burning in his eyes he cared not to show to Idrys.

  “My lord Prince,” Idrys said, coming to lean too familiarly against his chair back, “the last of the Sihhë kings died at Althalen at the hand of your grandfather. That is what he will read in that book.”

  Cefwyn swept the parchment aside from the place it marked, and smoothed the heavy page. The letters swam before his eyes, a script that cast back to the Galasite foundations of all writings, a history once safely remote from his present-day concerns.