Fortress of Owls

by C. J. Cherryh

  “And how was the journey?” Bonden-on-Wyk wanted to know, and Luriel, delving into a fashionable 202 / C. J. CHERRYH

  little sewing basket, gave the widow a bland, curious look.

  “Very well, Your Grace,” Luriel said. “As any return must be.

  I have no dissatisfactions…not a one.”

  Did she not? Brusanne was not quick as some, but counting the rumors of last night, she blushed rosy pink.

  Oh, indeed, Luriel was no dullard, no starched Quinalt virgin.

  This was the girl who would very gladly have been queen, and who was far from blind to the substance and the claim in her remarks.

  “How fine that a thaw preceded your arrival,” Ninévrisë returned the shot. “And how fortunate.”

  Their glances crossed like rapiers, and her husband’s former mistress engaged with a look sober as a salute.

  “I found it so.”

  “Confusion and bad weather to my enemies one and all, and kind winds to my friends that come to this court: is that linen you have? What a lovely shade! Let me see it.”

  Luriel brought the frame close to her, and for a moment they were very close. “Your Grace is very kind.”

  “To my friends. I value loyalty very greatly.”

  The others had fallen silent, listening to the passage between them, and Bonden-on-Wyk said, “A winter wedding, will it be?”

  “Madiden!” said Olwydesse.

  “Well, will it?” Bonden-on-Wyk asked, and Luriel gave a small, fierce smile.

  “Ah, gossip never waits an hour in this room, does it?”

  “Well?”

  “He’s handsome,” Luriel said, gathering her frame FORTRESS OF OWLS / 203

  and setting it toward the light, “and has very fine prospects.”

  She did not say, in this room, what those prospects were.

  Ninévrisë saw the glances and the lips nipped shut just in time, the widow Madiden’s head tilted like a wise carrion crow’s above a likely morsel.

  Oh, Cefwyn, Ninévrisë thought, feeling still the prick of the fine steel. Lucky escaped, lucky this one’s not with child.

  Jealous? No, not of such a narrow escape: he knows, he well knows this lady. Cold steel for a bedmate, this one: not one ever to trust.

  Nor to envy…why should I ever envy Luriel? She had her moment and lost it, and is wise enough to take charity from me, while it profits. I would I could like her, but she is only wiser than Artisane.

  Give me my kingdom, give me land across the river from Murandys, and we’ll see whose fisheries supply the court; give me an army at my beck and call and see if Ryssand’s daughter brings another lying accusation of me.

  Needles in and needles out, gold flowers and green leaves on the linen while winter frosts the glass and the heavens glow white with fire. Winter weddings and springtime war.

  Give me the soil of my land underfoot, and let my husband see he’s married no fool. Meanwhile I smile on his mistress and let the vixens in my hall wonder for a season: they see my husband’s foreign wife, but not yet my father’s daughter.

  My father, sealed in stone in Althalen’s ruined walls, my father, who wards the seat of kings from strayed Amefin sheep and attends shepherds in their wanderings…father who saved me from marriages to cowards and to his dying hour helped me to the husband I have. Wise father, brave father, see me sit 204 / C. J. CHERRYH

  and stitch so patiently, making wishes with every thread. Luriel has until spring to win my friendship: I will allow her that fair trial.

  Father, who had the Sihhë blood and passed it down to me, bind wishes in the threads that make meadow flowers in this cold white day. Bespell me the bright blue of the Lines you keep, the palace you ward, all Lines and light. I do not forget. How could I forget?

  Father, Uleman, Regent for all these years, I love him. I do love. I forgive him all the past, all his grandfather’s works and all his father’s: I love, and forgiving is natural for one who loves.

  I make him these silly flowers, I stitch the meadows of the spring when we will go to war, he and I, and when I pray the people believe in me. I stitch the blue Lines for a border, your palace of light, dear Father.

  They give me this silly, sotted priest, Father, because the Quinalt fears my skirts, have you heard this foolishness, where you lie? Or has a rumor of it gotten to you? You said I had the Gift, in small part. If I have it, in small part, however, small, I sew my wishes into this linen cloth, smiling at my husband’s mistress, and thinking we must be allies, we two, against the folly abundant in this room.

  I sew wishes for an early spring. And for your easy rest, and for the rest of the dead at Ilefínian, for there will be many, many dead. Give Tasmôrden no peace and the faithful dead at least the hope of rescue.

  I sew wishes that Tristen be well, my husband’s best ally, and the one he dares not regard. He would cross the river and my husband forbids it, all for Murandys, and Ryssand, who threaten him: when I am Regent in Elwynor, I will remember all of this against them.

  The sun passed the edge of the glass, just, and light grew less intense.

  FORTRESS OF OWLS / 205

  “I don’t like this green,” said Bonden-on-Wyk. “I think a brighter shade.”

  “Too bright,” said Panys’ daughter, who was a creature of pale shades about her dress, always faded.

  “Not too bright,” said Luriel. “Add a darker for contrast. That other green. There’s a match. —What do you think, Your Grace?”

  The girl who had worn vixen colors to reconcile with the king asked her opinion.

  “Oh, I think you’re quite right,” Ninévrisë said, willing to be an ally. Give her a run at the leash, and see where she went, Ninévrisë thought, and consciously smiled. “I approve.”

  “Well, well,” said Bonden-on-Wyk, peering at the combination of greens. “Who’d have thought those two would go together?”

  BOOK

  TWO

  C H A P T E R 1

  Two lords of Ylesuin rode out under a sky filled with scattered clouds, a heaven pasturing fat, misdirected sheep. It portended fair if fickle weather as they went out the gates of Henas’amef, two lords with a mingled guard of Ivanim and Guelenfolk…a mixed guard, and a startled flock of pigeons, winging out and out toward the still-sleepy west.

  Hold court, Emuin had said, and that Tristen had done, if hastily. Take account, Emuin had said, and that accounting, given Cevulirn’s brief but essential personal presence, had seemed the most pressing thing.

  Other matters were already attended: the garrison flag flew atop the hill they had left, no longer under the same captain, but firmly in the hand of Uwen Lewen’s-son, who had some distress at being left behind this morning, but there he was.

  “I ain’t troubled for you, m’lord,” Uwen had said last night,

  “as ye manages things right well when they come to ye, but ye do have this way o’ findin’ the trouble in a place. An’ pokin’

  about the north, lad—are ye sure we’re ready for’t?”

  Tristen had laughed, as Uwen could make him laugh even considering such a dire possibility. But he thought they were indeed ready. It was the river he proposed to visit, and Captain Anwyll, and his intention was not to provoke Tasmôrden.

  “I fear worse if we leave Bryn to its own devices 210 / C. J. CHERRYH

  even another day,” he had said to Uwen this morning, just at the top of the hill, when they were setting out, “and you’ve Drumman, and Azant to advise you, so you should do very well even if the king’s officers come visiting. Never fear.”

  “It’s the Elwynim come visitin’ concerns me,” Uwen said.

  And standing very near him, face-to-face before he set his foot in the stirrup: “Ye take care, lad. Ye take great care.”

  “We will,” Tristen had assured him, and they had parted with an embrace…no man else would he have trusted so much, not with the chance that the flight of the officers to Guelessar might rouse some inquiry. The bette
r men of the Guelen Guard had come into line once Uwen had walked in with fire in his eye and set the garrison barracks in order, and indeed, some rode with him now. Uwen would shake the Guelen Guard until order fell out: he might have evaded command all this time, but he had waded into the matter with a clear notion of what he expected, as he said, from otherwise good soldiers, and he had the loyalty of the remaining sergeants: that was of great importance.

  Accordingly Tristen had far less worry leaving the town than when the former captain had commanded all the armed might in his capital, and them a foreign, hated presence. He had no doubt his letter would reach Idrys, either, in the good sergeant’s hands…and the Lord Commander, once warned, was completely capable of dealing with the Guelen captain.

  So he and Cevulirn, Amefel, and Ivanor, rode out together to see the riverside, taking their course around to the north of the town and its hill.

  There they turned off on the snowy, lesser-used road that wended through low hills toward the north FORTRESS OF OWLS / 211

  and its villages. The road they took now was the same that led to Elwynor, the same that, once across the river by the bridge Anwyll guarded, led on to Ilefínian.

  Theirs was not the only party going out from Henas’amef today. He had sent Crissand to Levey and to his other villages, and southward, as his right hand…for the pieces and parts of a policy had begun to fall into place, and messengers of various sort were carrying word of decisions taken. Before Cevulirn had come in, he had feared he might have no choice but to call up men a second time in a year and fling them against a better-armed, trained enemy to support the Marhanen king. The Amefin had faced yet one more unwanted war, if not on their own soil, then just across the river, with their backs to the water, in no enviable position and without the strength to carry an attack on foot to any great distance at all. They would become the anvil to Cefwyn’s hammer from the northeast.

  But with Cevulirn’s promise of defense, came the hope that southern villages like Levey might keep their sons and plant their fields and expect to enjoy the harvest of them. Now they had a chance to bring troops to bear on the riverside, make firm that defense, and set a camp this spring on Tasmôrden’s side of the river. For with the fast-moving light horse Cevulirn could supply, and with other lords coming in from the south, they would become a force that could strike hard and deep from such a camp and, with support from behind and bridges in their control, never be pinned with their backs against the river.

  So, a situation with which he was far better pleased, they were riding north to inform the riverside villages that Ivanor was with Amefel, and to let them see with their own eyes that they had a strong force protecting them.

  And, second and not the least reason for his going 212 / C. J. CHERRYH

  this direction himself, Bryn’s lands lay between here and the river. From the small region nearest the town and for a good distance more had been Lord Cuthan’s land, a district foremost in Amefel’s councils, their lord able to secure whatever he wished, even from the viceroy.

  Now suddenly these villagers of Bryn were left as worse than lordless men, unrepresented in council; they were left with their oaths of fealty connecting them to an angry and embittered exile across the river…and they were left, as Lord Drumman had said, without any confidence in their new duke’s disposition toward them, whether under a new duke of Amefel they would become the spoils of some angry rival of Cuthan’s who might be granted the earldom, or whether they might simply be neglected and set at disadvantage among the earldoms. At very least, they might doubt the enthusiasm of their new duke for drawing his firmest defense to include them.

  That situation of doubt, he and all the council were resolved, could not continue. Lord Cuthan was now formally dispossessed, by vote of the council of peers, nothing coerced, and that settled any claims of succession. So the other earls had taken other resolutions to sever the ties and the claim Cuthan had on them, and had those resolutions witnessed and sealed by the Bryaltine abbot. Those documents also Tristen had in hand, on a very important purpose of their riding out, if not the only one.

  Far faster for a troop of riders to traverse this road to the river than it was for laden oxcarts. The deep frozen traces they followed were those of heavy wheels, inconvenient for the horses, who paced beside the ruts. Their course took them among low hills and within view of small woods, cut back from the road. Lord Heryn had removed all potential cover for ban FORTRESS OF OWLS / 213

  ditry from roads and from rides: so Crissand had said. Lord Heryn had done most of the clearing, having no forester such as Cefwyn had over the extensive Crown lands, preserving and maintaining the woods, but simply directing where trees might be cut and where wood rights might be let to various earls for money. Removing the woods might have been a mistake, and Tristen wondered what the land might have been before Heryn; but still, the forces Amefel might raise were infantry that were accustomed to stand in lines, not slip through forest. Fighting among trees disordered their ranks and confused their signals: he had no difficulty understanding Heryn’s reasons. The forces Cevulirn lent, too, light horse, were such as might use the Aswydds’ roads to good advantage, riding with lightning speed as the Ivanim did, each with a horse in reserve…overland at need, but at no point through woods.

  Still, if he could bring in Lanfarnesse, who used the woods and hills very willingly, he might yet bring force through the wooded lands to the west, assuring Amefel that no Elwynim army could slip in unseen.

  And if he could bring in the help of Sovrag of Olmern, who could bring supply right to the bridgeheads by river barge, he could bring daunting force to bear on Tasmôrden’s underbelly, while Tasmôrden’s face was toward Cefwyn. Tasmôrden would not like it, not in the least, to be forced to face Cefwyn and the Guelen heavy horse on Cefwyn’s terms, on the flat ground the maps showed in Elwynor’s middle.

  So Tristen said to Cevulirn, divulging his thoughts in this privacy of two riders with their guard some little distance behind.

  “Tasmôrden thought he could create distraction here in Amefel,” Tristen said, “and if I have your help, we’ll make it so this border is no choice for him.”

  214 / C. J. CHERRYH

  “A very good prospect,” Cevulirn agreed, while the ground passed beneath them at a good, brisk clip.

  Tristen rode Petelly, with Gery in reserve; and Cevulirn on the elder of the pair of dapple grays, the best of Ivanim breeding, a horse near white, gloriously beautiful even in winter coat…which no one could say of bay Petelly. All the horsemen behind were Ivanim, wearing colors of gray and green, on horses mostly that Crysin breed that was the pride of the Ivanim, light and quick and docile in handling, intelligent on the trail and willing and brave in the heat of battle. Even Petelly’s willful stubbornness abated in the Ivanim’s influence, and Gery went as calmly as the others at lead. If the Ivanim’s skill with horses was magic, it was a magic Tristen set himself to learn, but he despaired ever of teaching it to his Amefin folk, who were devoted to the earth, kept their feet generally on it, and were only stable in battle as long as they were going forward. Count the Guelens much the same, but heavy-armed and deliberate, a great force once they arrived, but slow. It was the Ivanim which Tristen envied their lord, the Ivanim whose fast-moving help had revised all possibilities.

  Crissand, he feared, was jealous, left behind, jealous and concerned, yet proclaiming for himself the visit to Levey. Crissand went alone and was possibly out of sorts, being no help such as Cevulirn could be, having no horse, only a depleted infantry and a store of weapons.

  “I’ll assure Your Grace of their loyalty,” Crissand had said, in the dawn, “and take them your goodwill.”

  Clearly Crissand had wished to go where Tristen went, and was downcast in his hopes.

  “I rely on you,” Tristen had said to him, and, a word he still found troubling to have uttered, “as aetheling when the time comes.”

  Then Crissand had looked taken vastly aback, and FORTRESS OF
OWLS / 215

  all vestige of resentment fled his face and his demeanor.

  “My lord,” Crissand had said then, and taken himself off to Levey, as stunned to have heard it as Tristen found himself, having said it, riding out with the cavalry he far more coveted, and with Cevulirn, whose alliance gave him a weapon he could wield with far greater subtlety than the blunt, brute force of the Amefin and Guelen foot.

  What had possessed him, to have said it?

  Yet he had seen the resentment, and felt there was justice in that resentment, and he knew that Crissand had heard the word aetheling the same as he, when Auld Syes had said it. So he brought it into the light, and let Crissand know he had a place with him, and that he was not dispossessed, either of friendship or of inheritance. Crissand had ridden off on his mission with a great possibility in his hands, and he had caught the fear of it as well as the honor.

  But now, this morning, having cast that knowledge into the light, and riding free and with the Ivanim around him, he felt a lightness of spirit he had not felt since summer. He had done the thing he needed do. He had found a missing boy and confirmed a friend’s place in his heart. The snows of winter lay all about, the cold made everything difficult, and yet he soared on a sense of hope, as if this morning important things were at last going as they ought.

  They made good time in such good weather, such uncommon cooperation of the heavens. They made change and change about with the horses, after the Ivanim custom…and they went so much faster than the oxcarts he had sent out on the day of meeting Cevulirn that they passed two camps the ox train had used before the sun stood high over the western hills.

  216 / C. J. CHERRYH

  “We may yet overtake the captain,” Cevulirn said. “He may not have his camp built yet.”

  But toward evening, and without overtaking Anwyll, they reached the place they had aimed for as their way stop…and their first destination, a small huddle of huts in a snowy surrounds of sheep-meadow and forest-crowned hills. The huts centered around a rustic, modest hall with a stubby stone tower at its north end for defense and lookout—its sole truly warlike feature a wooden archer’s gallery around the tower summit.