Fortress in the Eye of Time

by C. J. Cherryh

  “M’lord,” said Uwen, and knelt by him, hand on his knee.

  “Uwen,” he whispered. “Go away.”

  “M’lord, ye listen to me, ye listen. What am I to do wi’ ye?

  Out wi’ the army and one of your fits come on ye—what am I to do? What am I to do when some Elwynim aims for your 739

  head and ye stand there starin’ at him? Nothin’ ye done has scairt me, m’lord, but this—this does scare me. I don’t like ye doin’ that on the field. If we go to fight tomorrow—ye can’t do this.”

  “It will not happen.”

  “I didn’t like goin’ out to them ruins. I had bad feelings.”

  “It will not happen.—Uwen!” Uwen had started to rise and Tristen gripped his shoulder hard enough Uwen winced. “Uwen, you will not go to Cefwyn. You will not.”

  “Aye, m’lord,” Uwen muttered reluctantly, and Tristen let him go.

  “Please,” he said carefully. It was so great an effort to deal with love…that, more than anything, distracted him, and caused him pain. “Please, Uwen. Believe me. Trust me that I know what I do.”

  “Ye tell me what to do, m’lord, and I’ll do it.”

  He held the sheathed sword against him, rocking slightly, gazing into the fire as he had done at Mauryl’s fireside. “When the time comes, tomorrow, I shall know very well what I must do. Never fear that.”

  “And I’ll take care of ye, whatever, gods help me. But, m’lord, give me the sword.”

  “No.”

  “M’lord, I don’t like ye sittin’ like that when ye hain’t your right wits about ye.”

  “Please,” he said, for the grayness was back and he could not deal with here and there together any longer. “Please, Uwen!”

  Uwen tried all the same to take the sword from his hands, but he clenched it to him, and Uwen abandoned the effort.

  Then he felt a manner of peace, a time in which his thoughts were white dreams, neither past nor future, only a sense of warmth, with, now, the consciousness of Emuin hovering near him in the grayness, a presence as safe as the shadow of Mauryl’s robes, anxious as he had become about venturing into that gray space.

  Puddles and raindrops, circle-patterns, and the scudding 740

  clouds…Pigeons and straw and the rustle of a hundred wings…Candle-light and warmth and the clatter of pottery at suppertime…

  The dusty creak of stairs and balconies, gargoyle-faces, and, seen through the horn window, golden sun…

  “Silver,” he murmured, coming back from that Place, remembering the black threads and the silver mirror. He wondered where he should find silver other than that—then put a hand to his chest, where the chain and the amulet lay, which Emuin had worn, before he gave it to Cefwyn and Cefwyn had given it to him.

  He took it off, silver and belonging to two people who had wished him well, one of them not unskilled in wishing. He eased the sword from its sheath.

  “My lord,” Uwen said in a hushed and anxious voice, and stirred from his chair. “What in the gods’ good name are ye doin’, there?”

  He could not spare the thought to explain. He took the Teranthine circlet on its chain and held it in his hand while he passed the blade of the sword through it. He saw no way to anchor it but to bend it, and he bent the circlet until it met on either side of the hilt—with all the strength of his fingers he bent it, and shaped it, and bound the chain around it.

  When he looked up at Uwen then, Uwen was watching in mingled curiosity and fear. “Silver. And what beast would be ye hunting wi’ such a thing, m’lord?”

  He had no idea why silver should have effect—only that in that Place the dark threads evaded it.

  And it shone. It soothed. It felt right. Mauryl had done such odd things. The pigeons had known. The old mice in the walls had known. He had known. Could living things not feel, smell, breathe, sense such things when they were right? He would ask Emuin how that was, but Emuin had faded away into distance, having, perhaps, prompted him: the touch had been that slight.

  He fingered the worn leather hilt, the iron pommel. It was an old hilt, but a new and strong blade, so the armorer had 741

  declared; and so he felt with his hands and his sense of what should be: it was a blade forged in fire for honor, carried in stealth for murder and taken for defense of a dead king and a living one, by a man himself neither dead nor alive. There was enough improbable about it to satisfy whatever oddness he could think of, and whatever demand there was in attacking a Shadow without substance.

  “Uwen. You have that little harness knife.”

  “Aye, m’lord,” Uwen said, and pulled it from his belt and gave it to him, a very small blade. And with that sharp point, as if it were a pen on parchment, he began to work on the surface of the blade while Uwen watched over his shoulder.

  Designs: letters. On one side he scratched laboriously the flowing letters of Stellyrhas, that was Illusion; and on the other face he wrote, in severe characters, Merhas, that was Truth.

  What speech it was, he did not immediately know, but in one world or the other it had meaning. It was hard to make any scoring on the metal. The knife grew blunted. His fingers ached.

  But he persisted, while sweat started on his face.

  Then he began to work, slowly, painstakingly, to widen those letters, though scarcely could the eye see them.

  Uwen watched in silence, perhaps fearing to interrupt him, although he would not have objected to interruption now: it was only a task; his thoughts were at peace. Sweat ran on his face and he wiped at it with the back of his hand and worked on what had now become elaboration in the design, for beauty’s sake, because he did nothing haphazardly, on what became determination, because he would not abandon the small idea he had of what he faced, in substance and in insubstance.

  Perhaps Uwen expected some magic. After a long time Uwen gave up and sat down on his cot.

  “You should go to sleep,” he said to Uwen. “You should rest.”

  “Are you going to do something, m’lord?”

  “Not tonight,” he said. He rubbed the design with his hand.

  Marks on the metal wove in and out, and it at last seemed right to him.

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  — Finished? Emuin asked him, at cost, and from two days away. He had known Emuin was there—or at least knew Emuin had come close for the last several moments. The letters shone under his fingers, bridging here and there, as though he could thread one within the other.

  — Am I right? he asked Emuin. Or am I foolish?—I was

  afraid today, master Emuin. I saw Ynefel. I was almost

  there. I fell into his trap, and I had no weapon—I could

  not take it there.

  — The edge too has a name, Emuin whispered to him, ignoring his question. Emuin’s presence in the grayness very quickly became drawn thin, scarcely palpable, and desperate. He will

  know. An old Galasieni conundrum. The edge is the an-

  swer. I cannot help you further. You are Galasien’s last

  illusion, Man of the Edge, and, it may be, its noblest. I hope

  for what Mauryl did. I hope—Boy,—boy. Did he show

  you—did he show you—?

  — What, sir? What should he have shown me?

  Emuin began to say. He thought so, at least. But the presence had gone. Deeply, finally, the weak threads of communion with Henas’amef were pulling apart, the fabric unweaving in little rips and gaps. He could not reach it now. He tried, and was back at that lattice-work of Lines and light that was Althalen. It answered to him. But Emuin did not.

  Not dead, he thought. But at the end of what strength Emuin had mustered for himself. He feared for the old man, who, not brave, had found courage to fight not for his own health, but for Cefwyn’s. He feared for all of them—and he did not know what Emuin meant—or even how he had come here, except that Henas’amef still stood untroubled, and that Althalen had become safe, sheltering all of them within its reach—

  It was Althalen tha
t gave him respite from the Shadow and rest from his struggle.

  It was Althalen that would keep Ninévrisë safe tomorrow. It was Althalen that had taken the messenger to its rest.

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  But he himself could not hide in it. Resting here was not

  why Mauryl had Summoned him into the world.

  He drew a deep breath. He plunged his face into his hands and wiped his eyes, then flung his head back, exhausted, not knowing, save from Althalen, where he was to get the strength—not the courage, for tomorrow, but simply the strength to get on a horse and go, knowing that Cefwyn relied on him, that Emuin relied on him, that the lady relied on him—and that, in a different and far more personal way, Uwen did.

  Uwen was sleeping—Uwen dropped off so easily, and slept so innocently: he envied that ability, only to sleep, and not to find the night another journey, to worse and stranger places than the day, and another struggle, that did not give him rest.

  But he had hours to spend before the dawn, and if he could do more than he had done, he had to try. He had Althalen, if he knew how to use it, if he dared another vision such as he had had on the brink of the ruin.

  He knew of himself that he was not good—or had not been, once and long ago.

  He knew of himself that such as Ynefel was, he was responsible for it being.

  He knew of himself that he had more than killed his enemy, he had used the innocent.

  Or—he thought that he knew these things. He had no map to lead him through the gray place. He had no Words written there to say, this is Truth, and this is Illusion.

  Here he had made a sword to divide them. Here he had Mauryl’s Book, and Mauryl’s mirror—though only the sword seemed of use to him, he did not think it was Mauryl’s intention.

  It was not, it occurred to him, Mauryl’s gift.

  He had a few hours yet. He had not failed until those hours were gone. So while Uwen slept, while the servants slept, and even his guards drowsed, he moved his chair closer to the tent-pole, where the lamp shed its light.

  He sat down with his Book, then, and opened it to the place the little mirror held—blinked at the flash of bright, 744

  reflected light, and moved the mirror so that it did not reflect the lamp above him, but the opposing page.

  The letters were backward in the reflection—no better seen in that direction than the other, though it seemed to him a small magic in itself. He wondered if all letters did that in all mirrors, or whether it was a special mirror, or whether, after all, just to reflect his face.

  It was a changed face the mirror cast back to him. A worried face. A leaner face, not so pale as before. His hair he never had cut, and it fell past his shoulders, now. He had not realized it had grown so long. He had not known his face showed such expressions. He knew all the shifts of Uwen’s expression—while his own were strange to him. That seemed—like inspecting his elbow—an inconvenient arrangement.

  Silly boy, Mauryl would say. There’s so little time. Don’t wool-gather.

  Reflection in the rain-barrel. Light coming past his shoulders.

  Reflection of sky. The shadow of a boy who was not a boy. He had not known how to see himself, then. He had not had the power.

  He wondered what he was in the gray space. And as quick as thinking it, he saw—he saw—

  Light.

  He shut his eyes and came back, his heart pounding in his chest. It was so bright, so bright it burned, and burned his hand.

  It was hard to hold the mirror. But he could call the light into it. He could see his own face, blinding-bright, and frightening in its brightness. He could take the silver mirror into that Place.

  He wondered if he could take the Book—or reflect it there—and when he wondered, a light from the mirror fell, a patch of brilliance, like sun off metal, onto the page of the Book.

  Moving the mirror into the gray place, and calling the light back onto the page was the first magic he had ever worked that succeeded, just to move light and the reflection of light from place to place.

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  So he did know something now that he had not known before; and he tried, though it was hard, to manage both Places at once, the one hand with the Book, the other with the mirror, until, out of the gray world the mirror drew into the world of substance, and looking only at the mirror, and reaching into the gray place, he saw the Book appear in the reflection the mirror held.

  But the mirror’s image of the Book was blurred to him, until he could manage the mirror with one hand in the gray place, and angle it just so, and the Book in the hand that was in the other world, so that he could see the reflection of the page in that gray world.

  Then he could see the letters. Then he knew what they were:

  It is a notion of Men, it said, that Time should be divided:

  this they do in order to remember and order their lives.

  But this is an invention of Men, and Time is not, itself,

  divided in any fashion. So one can say of Place. That there

  is more than one Place is a notion of Men: this they…

  … this they believe; but Place is not itself divided in any fashion.

  Who understands these things knows that Time and Place are very large indeed, and compass more than Men have divided and named…

  He was no longer reading. He was thinking the Words and they echoed ahead of his reading them. He thought ahead, further and further into the pages, and knew the things the Book contained. He had written them. Or would write them.

  That was what it meant—to one who could move things between the gray space and the world of substance.

  He let down the Book and folded it on the mirror, and took up the sword again, not for a sword, but only for something to lean on while he thought.

  That was how he waked, bowed over the sword, Uwen’s hands on his; he lifted his head and Uwen took the sword from his fingers and laid it carefully aside.

  “It’s time, m’lord,” Uwen said. “The lamps is lit next door.

  His Majesty is arming and he’s ordered out the heavy horses.

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  We’re leaving the camp standing and going on. The lady’s seein’

  to that. Scouts ain’t seen nothing, though that ain’t necessarily what we want to hear, may be. I hate like everything t’ wake ye, but there just ain’t no more time.”

  In the sense Uwen spoke—there was no more time. But things he knew rattled through his thoughts. He bent and took off his ordinary boots. And stood up.

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  C H A P T E R 3 4

  H e held out his arms patiently as Uwen assisted him into his armor, still by lamplight, with great care for the fittings. He stepped one after the other into the boots that belonged to the armor, and Tassand buckled them snugly at the holes that were marked. Uwen belted his weapons about him, sword and dagger, and slipped the small boot knife into the sheath that held it.

  There was only the lightest of breakfasts, a crust of bread, a swallow of wine, which took no fire-making, and put no stress on the body. So Uwen said. And he knew Uwen was right.

  Mauryl’s Book— his Book, held no comfort at all in the sense that he understood now what Hasufin had understood all along and that he knew what Hasufin wanted.

  Most of all he knew what Hasufin wanted to do, which was to unmake Mauryl’s work: him, for a beginning, but, oh, more than that.

  Hasufin wanted Galasien back, for a second part.

  Hasufin wanted substance enough to use what was in that Book, for a third. Those desires were enough to account for all that was and might be. But that was not all Hasufin wanted.

  Beyond that—he could also imagine. That was what put him out of the notion of breakfast, and made him certain that, whatever defense the armor was, Hasufin would be determined to turn every weapon on the field toward him—for Hasufin, he was sure, cared very little about Aséyneddin, only to maneuver to his own advantage. All, all that would be out there was nothing other than what Hasufin willed, s
ubstantial so long as Men were willing or able to contend; and in so many places.

  He even guessed what had brushed past him that night 748

  while he slept on the Road in Marna, and why he had dreaded it so. It was, in a strange sense—himself.

  But this time he must go toward that sensible fear from which he had once fled—and what there was to meet, he must meet, and go wherever he must.

  He was glad that Uwen saw nothing of what he saw. He would not wish that understanding on him for any price, not on Idrys, or Cevulirn or Umanon; nor on Pelumer, in whatever nightmare the Lanfarnesse forces might be struggling next the woods.

  And not on Sovrag, who, if things went well, might yet arrive to strike at the Elwynim from the river, but he much doubted it: the Olmernmen had Marna to traverse to reach this far past Emwy, if they would go by water, and Marna of all places would not aid them.

  But now with all the fear, came an impatience for this meeting.

  Something in him longed in a human way for encounter with Ninévrisë’s enemies, to feel the wicked certainty of himself he had felt before, with the sword in his hand, and such certainty what had to come next. Nowhere else and at no other time did he have that.

  And for no reason, tears flooded his eyes and spilled. He wiped them unconsciously.

  “M’lord?”

  Uwen thought he wept for dread. But he wept for Mauryl’s gentleness, which only he had seen; he wept for Cefwyn’s, for Uwen’s kindness, which he did not have—not in their terms.

  He knew what he could do. He knew what he had done, and knew that he could not, by the nature of what Hasufin had loosed in the land, wholly win.

  If there was disaster about to fall on those he loved, it was of his attraction, and he—

  He had one thing to do. Beyond it—he could not see anything for himself, but he wanted it: he could no longer temporize with it, or delay it, or understand any more than he did, and he could not bear the increasing burden of his own household his own following—men who looked to him for

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  reason and right, men who wanted to pour out their devotion on him, never knowing him as he was, not seeing into his heart, and not knowing—not knowing he enjoyed that dreadful time when the sword flew in his hand like a living thing and he had no questions.