Fortress in the Eye of Time

by C. J. Cherryh

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  equipment they requested, and counting in what tents and wagons and other such things the departing lords were leaving behind.

  At a table near the door, master Peygan’s clerks kept careful account of what went out and what went in. Carts pulled up at the door and bundles of pikes went in, long arrows by the score, as well as buckles, girths, bits, harness, pennons and odder items of equipage: all of it came in from the armory storage, and from the armory’s outlying storage, and the whole flowed in past the clerk, who kept a painstaking and amazingly rapid account in various codices stacked on the table by him, while stacks of requests accumulated beside him, and a junior clerk, reading the requests, sent a score of stout armorer’s boys running with apprentice clerks to read the orders.

  It was a tangle, lords’ pages demanding their equipment be taken to shelter immediately, since there were clouds overhead, threatening a shower, and master Peygan’s clerk informing said pages that nothing would go into or out of storage without it being written fair and wide in request, which went on the stack.

  Meanwhile Amefin companies were being equipped for weapons-drill, and someone was complaining about a box of buckles that had gotten set down and swept up with someone’s equipment.

  A clerkish young man came out lugging an armful of odd plate up to them, then, and said they were to have bards for two horses, and would he approve what he had found so he could put it with their gear.

  Tristen had no idea. He had never handled horse armor, but Uwen said that it was very fine, he was sure, but they were mistaken in the number of horses unless they wanted a spare.

  Meanwhile another boy came with a tablet and said he had to draw the arms for the man who was going to paint the shield, and was the device correctly displayed?

  That, Tristen could answer, and had the Star set a little 626

  larger and the Tower a little smaller above it; so the youth went off busily to inform the painter. Uwen said that likely they would stitch up a caparison for his horse and all—the horse Cefwyn had given him being still on his way in from the country, from what they knew. But the standard he would have carried before him would be the one they had unfurled in hall.

  It was an amazing amount of activity, and they were often crowded upon, where they sat, so Tristen took the notion to tell the clerks where they were, and go out to the smithy which stood next door.

  So they went out into the cool air and in again to the heat and smoke. He liked to watch the smiths work: he was always entranced by the sparks and most of all by the metal when it was hot and all but transparent. He hung about as long as he had an excuse, but the smiths and the wheelwrights were as harried as the armorer, since several of the lords, independently, it seemed, had been postponing work on various transport in the thought it would last until they got home. Now they were leaving the wagons here in the care of the drivers and the Crown would not count them in unless they were received in good order, so the drivers were frustrated, and felt they were put upon by someone.

  It was the most amazing lot of racket, not alone the hammering, but the shouting and the arguing. And things growing hot there, and the wind shifting and carrying smoke into their eyes, they went back to the relative quiet of the armory, to sit and wait again on the bench against the wall, where at least they would not be impeding the traffic coming in and out the door.

  It was a lot of standing and sitting and waiting, it was now toward supper, and he had hoped to have it over and done long since. He thought of asking Uwen to go for a book—but watching him read was dull for Uwen, so he sighed and thought otherwise.

  “I’ve seen a lot of odd doings,” someone near them was saying,

  “but I never thought I’d see the Elwynim for allies.”

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  “In the winter.” He knew that voice. It was Lord Pelumer. He had, Tristen thought, come in while they were gone. Pelumer was talking to someone behind a rack of equipment. “I make no secret I don’t like it at all,” Pelumer said.

  “Wizardry, is what it is—grave-dust and cobwebs for an ally.

  Give me a man that has somewhat more natural in his veins, to my preferences. Ghosts and now this Elwynim bride? You have the King’s ear. Urge him against this folly.”

  “Oh, this is the man that has the King’s ear. I’m certain I don’t, nowadays, sad to say.”

  Uwen had started to get up. Tristen prevented him with a touch on his arm. And he recognized the first voice, now, as Sulriggan’s.

  “If we deal with the old man of the tower, even dead, what can we look for?” Sulriggan was asking. “This Tristen is Sihhë.

  There’s Sihhë blood all through Elwynor. Gods know what they’ll do. Did you mark the bride’s eyes, Lanfarnesse? Gray.

  Gray as I stand here.”

  “I confess I mislike the turn things are taking,” said Pelumer.

  “We were neighbors to Althalen, we in Lanfarnesse. Marna Wood covers a great deal that the east has forgotten. But we remember. Some things there are that cannot be made friendly, even by their own will. I count the new lord of Ynefel as one of them.”

  It stung. He knew not what to do or say. Clearly they did not know he was present. Clearly they had said things they would not have said to his face and could not be comfortable with if they knew he had heard them.

  Then someone said, a whisper that sounded like one of the boys that ran errands, “He’s here, m’lords. Be careful what you say.”

  “Here?” He imagined them looking around, and he knew nothing now that would help matters, except to indicate to them that, indeed, he did know. So he rose from the bench, which was along a rack of axes, and confronted them with, he hoped, a mild if not friendly expression.

  “Sirs,” he said. “Good day.”

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  “Spying on a body,” Pelumer said indignantly.

  “Hardly by intent, sir.”

  “I make no secret I don’t like the plan you advanced, sir. I’ll say that in polite discourse. I don’t like assuming it will be Emwy and I don’t like to start a campaign in this season.”

  “It will be by the new moon, sir. I might be wrong. But I believe that will be the time.”

  “He believes that will be the time,” Sulriggan said. “Do you hunt?” Sulriggan asked. “Do you gamble? D’ ye have any common pleasures, lord of the cobwebby tower? Or do you spend all your time chasing up and down the roads and making mysterious predictions?”

  “I read, sir. I feed the pigeons. Such things as that.” He knew that he was being baited. He saw no reason to hunt or to gamble or to be like Lord Sulriggan, which seemed to be all that Sulriggan approved.

  But for some reason Sulriggan failed to seize up what he said and mock him in those terms as he expected Sulriggan to do.

  Sulriggan’s face went quite angry and red.

  And abruptly Lord Sulriggan stalked out of the armory.

  “Ynefel,” Pelumer said, “he had that for his due. Accept my apology, if for nothing else than indiscretion. I am sure we may differ on a question of tactics without anger.”

  “I am not angry, sir. I am sorry he is.”

  “Ynefel, you will not win that man. I listened because for His Majesty’s sake I would know what he is about. Believe it or not, as you have learned me to be.”

  “Sir, I find no reason to doubt what you say.”

  The old man bit his lip and gnawed at his white mustaches, seeming unhappy, but thinking, too.

  “Well, well,” Pelumer said then. “He would have been mistaken to attack you at arms. I think he thought you an easier mark than that. I think he had expected to entrap you into a challenge—which is not lawful, under the King’s roof, as you may recall. You possess the field, sir. I congratulate you.”

  Pelumer went away then, out the door, pausing to pick up some paper of the clerk at the door.

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  “I fail to understand,” Tristen said.

  “I think Lord Pelumer meant you scairt His Grace w
ho left,”

  Uwen said. “Meanin’ Sulriggan ain’t the fool altogether. That

  ’un wasn’t on the field at Emwy. That ’un come in after all was done, and settled in wi’ Prince Efanor. He ain’t seen you fight, m’lord. But I think he knows now he was in deep waters.”

  He wished he understood, all the same. That the man did not like him hardly surprised him. But that the man wanted to fight him did not make sense. That the man wanted to entrap him and to discourage Cefwyn from friendship with him—that, he did see. He didn’t know if it was fair to warn Cefwyn. It seemed to him that there were intricate Rules to govern men’s behavior, and to govern what they told authority about and what they did not and settled unto themselves.

  He did not know those Rules. He only saw they existed. He was quite, quite stunned by Sulriggan’s kind of malevolence.

  But Hasufin’s sort of harm and this man’s seemed to have tactics in common, and he found it worrisome this was the man who stood closest to Efanor, except only Efanor’s priest.

  Efanor did not, over all, like him, and at least this one man, possibly with Efanor’s knowledge, possibly without it, was going about quietly trying to turn Pelumer to their side, too.

  He was not certain where Fairness lay, in this—whether it was Fair for him to tell Emuin, who would surely tell Cefwyn, and that would make trouble with Efanor, which would make Cefwyn unhappy, when Cefwyn had enough pain.

  It seemed something he could deal with. It seemed at least the man had gone in retreat.

  So it was not something he chose to tell Cefwyn, in the meeting they had. And Cefwyn was not angry with him. Tristen was very glad of that. He had gone to Cefwyn’s door specifically to apo-logize for interrupting him in council, but Cefwyn took 630

  his hand and said it was very well, he had been right to speak out under the circumstances. And Cefwyn had asked him in and shared a cup of tea with him, and directly asked him about the armor, which he said was very fine.

  Then Cefwyn told him he had ordered Haman to make a choice of horses for Uwen as well, since, as Cefwyn said, for the King’s pride he could not have the chief of personal guard of a lord of Ylesuin drawing his mounts at random from the stables.

  He gave Uwen the horses and their upkeep, the written order said, as long as Ynefel stabled horses at Henas’amef.

  It was a very handsome gift, Tristen had no difficulty in recognizing that. It was another in the succession of gifts Cefwyn had poured out on him in the context of his betrothal to the lady, and he did not know altogether what it meant. “If I had any means,” he said to Cefwyn, troubled and embarrassed, “I would provide for him. I understand what I should do, and I cannot, and I am very grateful.”

  “If I had any desire to weigh you down with the administration of a province,” Cefwyn said, “I swear I would bestow Amefel on you and send Orien Aswydd packing. As it is, I find it a very modest upkeep for an entire province of Ylesuin. The horses have come in, Haman advises me. You will need, of course, grooms, standard-bearers, their horses and upkeep. And upkeep for your servants.”

  He could scarcely conceive of it—or understand what Cefwyn was doing to him: pushing him out on his own, perhaps, which was not unkind, and perhaps even timely; but he still had the suspicion that gifts and generosity came before bad news and parting.

  “I am not a lord in any useful sense. I hardly need more than Uwen.”

  “Oh, you are far more useful and far less expensive than, say, Amefel. How did you find Orien? Civil? Or otherwise?”

  “Idrys told you.”

  “Oh, my dear friend, Idrys indeed told me. And I wish to know if you have any complaint against her.”

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  “I know that I shouldn’t have gone there. I was there before I knew that. But her guards were wiser than I was: they told Idrys and he came for me.”

  “Idrys says you made it out on your own,” Cefwyn said.

  “Which is far more sense than I had.”

  That was a joke, but Cefwyn did not laugh, and Tristen did not. He did not think of anything to report that Cefwyn did not know, but he did not think he could as freely forgive Orien the way he had forgiven the gate-guards and Idrys and all the people who had done him harm of one kind and another. Orien’s action seemed somehow more mindful and of a purpose he did not wholly guess, nor wish to. But he tried to guess.

  “I have no idea what she wanted,” Tristen said, and Cefwyn looked at him oddly.

  “I believe I know,” Cefwyn said, as if he were being a little foolish, even for him. But beyond the evident conclusion, he thought it far more than a ploy to lure him to—what he only dimly visualized. Still, he did not wish to launch into that discussion tonight, for Cefwyn seemed very tired, certainly in pain, and should go to bed. “I’ll deal with Orien,” Cefwyn promised him. “I am very aware of her displeasure.”

  “You should rest,” Tristen said.

  “I fully intend to,” Cefwyn said, and declared his intent to go to bed like a good betrothed husband, after which Tristen made his excuses and withdrew across the hall to his own apartment.

  Cefwyn had seemed in increasing pain since last night, and that was hard to watch as well as disheartening for their preparations. He could not imagine of his own experience how acute the pain of such a deep wound was, but Cefwyn’s face had been quite pale, at the last, and damp with sweat. Tristen wished—desperately wished—that he had Mauryl’s ability to take the pain away and to heal the hurt; but he did not.

  And worry over Cefwyn might have put him out of the mood to have supper, except Uwen was so entirely delighted 632

  and overcome when he heard about the horses and the King taking a personal interest in him, it was hard to remain glum.

  So he took supper in his sitting room with Uwen and the four servants, who were, since he had come back from Althalen, very willing to linger by the table and gossip. He learned, this evening, for one thing, that Lord Sulriggan’s personal cook had had a dish turn up very, very salty at the betrothal feast, and Lord Sulriggan called it witches, but the servants thought it likelier the scullery-lads.

  Tristen found himself laughing, in far better humor than he had begun. He felt a little guilt, because it was a misbehavior, but not harmful; and by now the servants and Uwen probably had traded stories, so Lord Sulriggan’s discomfiture in the armory would probably make the rounds, too—and find especial appreciation in the kitchens.

  Opinions about Ninévrisë were also making the rounds of the staff: there was a deep curiosity about a woman who would be, if not queen, still, the next thing to it. The general opinion the servants gave—far more cautiously—was that she was a very kind, a very gracious lady, who, moreover, politely had not complained of a wool coverlet, though her skin could not bear anything but lambswool: it came of being a princess, the staff said, and the servants had had to send after more linens to case all the blankets until they could find proper ones.

  Tristen was duly appalled that such information was a matter of common gossip, but Uwen reminded him what he had said to him from the beginning, that a lord’s reputation among the servants was just as important as that he achieved among his peers—because it rapidly was among his peers. So Ninévrisë

  was well begun, at least with the staff, who thought her very proper and very accepting of the staff’s good intentions.

  There was a muttering of thunder as they finished supper. The clouds today had gone over with no more than a spit of rain, and would shed their burden on Guelessar. The farmers of the south and west were doubtless happy, and so, doubtless, 633

  would be the lords and their men who, leaving their tents with the baggage, had started home to their own lands.

  Tristen for his part thought it a good night to sit by the fire, and in that comfort, still thinking of Cefwyn’s misery, he took it in mind to try just a little magic, foolish as the attempt might be, to see if it worked for him at all. Cefwyn’s well-being was something he wanted very much—and that might
help. Mauryl had said it was easiest to make things what they wanted to be.

  So he lit the candles in his room—he always thought of his bedchamber that way, his room, as opposed to the outer room where the servants came and went and where Uwen sat and talked with them, or talked with the off-duty guards. Usually the doors stayed open between the rooms, but he shut his tonight, saying that he would retire early and manage for himself, so the servants and Uwen could play dice or whatever they pleased.

  He took his Book from the shelf and sat down to read by firelight, the page canted toward the warm glow, and after a little, he looked into the fire as sometimes Mauryl had done, and made pictures to himself in the fire as he had used to do.

  He saw mostly faces, that suddenly seemed to him like the faces of Ynefel, which was not at all what he wanted to conjure.

  He tried to think of Cefwyn, instead, and of Cefwyn’s wound being well. Mauryl had done it so effortlessly, and he wanted so much, just, for a beginning, for Cefwyn to be able to rest without pain, and to walk without pain.

  A wind gusted up, and came down the chimney, fluttering the fire. He did not like that.

  Then he heard a rattle at the window-latch.

  He liked that far less.

  He shut the Book. Then came a tapping at the glass, which he had never heard, and could not imagine what it was in the middle of the night, on the upper floors, until he thought, as he had not thought in some number of nights, about Owl.

  He rose from the fireside, Book in hand, and went over to 634

  the window. The tapping kept up, in a curious pattern, and in the light coming from inside the room, he could see a pigeon on the narrow, slanted window-ledge.

  He had left the bread out earlier. But it was an odd time for pigeons to be after it. He could not think that it was natural behavior, and the bread was, he saw in that same outflow of light, gone from the ledge.

  Tap. The bird pecked the windowpane, perhaps attracted by the light. Tap-tap. It lost its balance on the narrow ledge and used its wings to recover.