Fortress of Owls

by C. J. Cherryh

  “And I, sir?”

  “At least this manner of rebirth does no harm to him.”

  From the edge of the water to very, very deep waters indeed, and shattering accusations.

  “I am his friend, sir!” Tristen dropped to a bench near the fire, rested his elbows on his knees, and met the old man face-to-face, seeking one level, honest look

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  from him. “Look at me, master Emuin! Have I given anyone any reason to think otherwise? Have I ever given you or Cefwyn any reason to think otherwise of me?”

  “This boy you found,” said Emuin, shifting the tide of question again onto a former shore, “this boy who’s provoked His Reverence to disastrous measures and brought us all manner of trouble also happens to inform me of various things. A wisewoman, one of the grandmothers, has mothered young Paisi since he was left as a babe at her door. I’m fairly sure there’s the old blood in him, which doubtless frightened his unfortunate mother into abandonment. That, or she had the Sight herself and saw him tangled with your fate.”

  “I wasn’t here yet! Mauryl hadn’t Summoned me.”

  “All the same.”

  “Why? Why should anyone fear me?”

  “Why should anyone fear you? What do you think? And considering the small matter of His Reverence, tell me what you think he’s apt to do.”

  “Spread trouble in Guelessar.”

  “Is it absolution you want or a better answer?”

  “What shall I do about it?”

  “Why did you bring Paisi out of gaol? Why was it important to find him?”

  Wizards. Like Mauryl, Emuin shifted the ground under his feet and answered questions with questions on an utterly different matter: aim at him, and the shot came back double…and with terrible, dreadful surmises.

  He mustered his wits to answer that question, as levelly and patiently and completely as he could: no lies, no evasions with master Emuin…to lead his guide to wrong conclusions served no good at all.

  “He was my first guide when I came from Mauryl to Henas’amef. Paisi was. Should I leave him free, sir, 306 / C. J. CHERRYH

  counting all you’ve taught me of wizardry, to fall to other influences? Something moved him to bring me to the right place on the right night. As it moved me to settle the fugitives at Althalen.”

  “A question, is that? Should you have heeded Paisi in the first place?”

  “Do you think Mauryl sent him to guide me? Was it his doing?”

  “Think you so?” Emuin asked him.

  “Who else might?” The impatience in him scarcely restrained his hands from clenching into fists. He wished to leap up and move, tear himself from this uncomfortable confrontation he had provoked.

  But he had not sat learning of wizards for no gain. Listening and trying to answer Emuin’s questions was the best course, the only course that would ever bring him an answer.

  And it was so, that Mauryl, lost with Ynefel, had reached far, very far with his spells. At one time it had seemed perfectly clear that Hasufin Heltain was the cause of Emuin’s fear. But Hasufin was gone now, was he not?

  And yet Emuin seemed more afraid than before.

  “Who indeed else would have sent the boy?” Emuin said.

  “Since no one but Mauryl knew the why and wherefore.”

  “Might Mauryl’s wishes for me,” he asked, “have entered into some other pattern, one of, say, someone else’s making?”

  “Troubling thought,” Emuin said faintly, rapping the soup-coated spoon clear on the rim of the pot. “There are so many choices.”

  “You.”

  “Not to my knowledge. I assure you I had never besought the gods for another student.”

  “The enemy… Hasufin.”

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  “A remote chance,” Emuin said, and plunged the spoon back into the pot. He swung the pot off the fire.

  “But you think not.”

  “I think not.”

  “Paisi himself guided the meeting?”

  “Possible, too, remoter still though it be.”

  Remote, yes. So he had thought. “Someone should care for the boy,” Tristen said, attempting a diversion of his own, from an area he did not now want to discuss. “And you lacked a boy. You need a good pair of legs, and he needs a Place, or something else may indeed find him. I think I was right in that.”

  “A gift, now drawn into our web. What more?”

  “A very little of the gift, I think.”

  “Has the calamity of his presence been little? His Reverence sped to Guelessar? And now this boy in my care? Doubly dangerous to be poking and prying around a wizard’s pots with gifted fingers. I had trouble enough with the brothers from Anwyfar, and them scared witless. A gift is not to judge by its surface or its apparent depth. By the waters that churn around him, mark me, this boy is dangerous.”

  “He may be,” Tristen said, “but that means he’s dangerous to be wandering free, too, and moiling other waters.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “He needs a Place, does he not? Is he not more dangerous without a Place?”

  “And so you lend him this one, gods save me. He’ll go through clothes, he’ll eat like a troop of the Guard, and his feet will grow. I do not cook, mind you! Nothing except my own meals.”

  It comforted him, that Emuin did not seem as set against Paisi as he had feared, and within the mundane complaints he heard nothing so grievous as their prior discussion. “All that he needs the Zeide has for the ask

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  ing. And he can cook for you.” Another shift of direction. “He’s running your errands, so I think, to the market, yours as well as mine.”

  “I sent him after turnips yesterday.”

  “Turnips. Is there some flaw in Cook’s turnips?”

  “You’re such a troublesome young man!”

  “I fear I’ve become so,” he said sadly. He envied Paisi, to do no more than run a wizard’s errands, and to learn the ways of bird nests, and all such things as had passed his reach. Another boy belonged to Emuin. He did not. He had become something else, as Cefwyn had passed through Emuin’s hands and become something else. A severance had occurred without his seeing it coming.

  But he had learned Emuin’s greater lessons: patience, and examination of himself. And what had he interrupted Emuin saying to him: something about turnips and the marketplace?

  “Taking in thieves,” Emuin muttered. “Conversing with exiles…”

  “Cevulirn came north to discuss Cefwyn’s affairs with me,”

  Tristen said sharply, “and something very powerful wished to prevent him. I’m all but sure it wasn’t Auld Syes who raised that storm. Tell me again and tell me true: was it you?”

  Emuin’s brows lifted in mild wonder, and Emuin did look at him eye-to-eye, his gaze for the moment as clear as glass.

  “No, not I. Have you another thought?”

  “What do you seek in the market?” Tristen asked in Emuin’s style: divert, feint, and under the guard.

  “Much the same as your questions to the boy, thank you.

  Especially the old women have ears, and the sort of awareness you and I have. They’re a valuable resource, the witches, the wisewomen of Amefel. I’ve used them from time to time. Now you’ve thought of the same resource and asked the right question.

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  Shall I tell you what I know?”

  “Yes, sir. If you please.”

  “Then look about you: the people have had a rebirth of their faith. So the Bryaltines say. The old symbols appear openly in certain alleys, and people wear charms and set them in their doorways. They hang bells in the wind, so their dimmer ears can hear what we hear in it. All this affronted the good Quinalt father, and scandalized our missing sergeant, I’m sure, gods save his devout soul.” This Emuin said not without sarcasm.

  “I suppose I’ve seen it.”

  “You know you’ve seen it. You’ve not found
it remarkable until I mention it. And in your absence, however brief, the Bryalt father turns out to have gained two nuns of his order, women formerly in the service of the Zeide, who two days ago were prophesying in the street…saying openly that the Sihhë

  have risen in Henas’amef and in Amefel. And, do you know, they prophesied the rewakening of Althalen?”

  Tristen was appalled.

  “Oh, and this before you came back to say so, perhaps on the very day you did it. So they have the Sight and have it in good measure. And on that news, the good father quit the town and struck out down the road in mortal offense, behind the captain and the sergeants who also went to Guelemara. Can you imagine the meeting at Clusyn?”

  The monastery where travelers stayed.

  “So you’re building at Althalen,” Emuin said, “nuns are in the street foretelling the rise of the Sihhë-lords and the return of the King To Come, and gods save us all…they saw what you were doing.”

  He heard. The words echoed in the air, off the walls of events past and present. He heard the hammer strokes of men at work on stone, not uncommon in the

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  Zeide these days; but it echoed work elsewhere, on a ruined wall; he heard the whisper of the wind at the eaves, warning of change in the weather: he heard the running footsteps of a boy on an errand, illusion only, for the boy himself, desperate and afraid of help as well as harm, was well out of the vicinity by now, seeking wood and salt, he had said.

  “I have not resettled Althalen, not as a name. I settled a handful of fugitives there, a mere handful of desperate folk wanting shelter from the snow. There were walls to use, and it’s remote from the road. Is that wicked of me?”

  “And what more do buildings and walls do, young lord, what do they do more than shelter us from the weather?”

  Nothing, was the quick answer; but, no, that was not so, in wizard-craft, and in his heart he knew it: buildings had wards.

  And those ruins had the strongest in all of Amefel, the protection of the Lord Regent, Ninévrisë’s father, whose tomb was there. He had chosen Althalen precisely because of that, and it had seemed right. Now Emuin chided him on that very matter, and the whole complexion of his decision shifted.

  “They are a Place,” he said. “Lines on the earth.”

  “So you have given Place to Elwynim at Althalen. And lo!

  you have subjects there, Lord Sihhë. You have subjects who are not Amefin, not in our king’s gift, not in authority he gave you. And we have nuns telling visions in the streets. Was this wise?”

  He was struck cold and silent, asking himself how things could have so turned about.

  “I have,” he admitted after a moment, “likewise ordered the wall restored near Modeyneth. What do you say about that?”

  But he already knew. He had himself rebuilt the ward there, too, consciously, in defense of

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  Amefel, and never thought of its other significance, as a ward the Sihhë had laid. He had thought of the protection the wards afforded the fugitives. He had not thought of the strength inhabitants gave the wards: Althalen was alive again, and of his doing.

  “Thank the gods,” said Emuin, “His Reverence left before he heard this news.”

  “I sent a message to Cefwyn from Anwyll’s camp. So has Anwyll, already, once we knew Ilefínian had fallen. The messenger was to ride straight through, not even stopping here. I sent another last night, before I slept. The people that escape Tasmôrden will flee into Amefel. It’s all they can do. But I can’t allow the border to be overrun by troops and fugitives, stealing and slaughtering the villagers. Do justice, Cefwyn told me, and I swore I would. Is it justice to stand aside and let war come here, when I could stop it?”

  “Justice is a hard word to define. Kings battle over it.”

  Diversion and regrouping. The ground had become untenable. “Whose storm was it?”

  “I had no wish to prevent your talking to Cevulirn. I had no forewarning, and I would never quarrel with Auld Syes.—Whose was the lightning stroke that drove you from Guelessar?”

  “I don’t know,” he confessed. “Was it a wizard? It must be a powerful wizard who could do that. Could it be Auld Syes?”

  “I doubt it. Amefel is her concern, and her Place.”

  “Yet…conspiracy among the earls, the overthrow of Lord Parsynan…all these things were happening when the lightning came down.”

  “None of which His Majesty knew when he sent you. Lightning struck the Quinaltine roof, and you found yourself on the road.”

  “So it was not chance, not the lightning, and not Cefwyn sending me.”

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  “It was, and it was not. Do you know so little of wizardry, young lord? No. I forget you need not know a damned thing about wizardry. You need not learn anything. Things Unfold to you. Might leaps to your fingertips and all nature bends when you stamp your foot.”

  Emuin was exaggerating, vastly so, but reminding him how little he had bent himself to Emuin’s art, and how little he knew of it.

  “For us mere Men,” Emuin said in a surly tone, “it’s chance and not chance that such things happen. Learn this: wizardry loads the dice, young lord, but they still can roll against the wall. Surely you know that much. And maybe it’s a flaw in you, that you need not study, but find it all at your fingertips: gods know what you can do.”

  “I wish to learn, master Emuin. I wish to be taught. I’ve asked nothing more.”

  “Oh, you’ve asked far more, young lord. You’ve asked much, much more. But let us walk together down this path of chance and if and maybe. Let us look at the landmarks and learn to be wise. If there had been no lightning stroke and you had not come, and then Amefel had risen…what would have happened?”

  “Calamity.”

  “So. But then what did happen?”

  “Crissand’s father and his men took the fortress. And then I took it.”

  “And Crissand Adiran survived, but his father did not. Was this chance, too? The rebels took the fortress. They died. Two events not necessarily benefiting the same power. Crissand escaped the slaughter. A third event. You seized Amefel. A fourth.”

  Not necessarily benefiting the same power.

  “Lad,” Emuin gazed straight at him. “Lad, are you listening to what we’re saying?”

  “Yes, sir.”

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  “What have I told you?”

  “That there may be two powers.”

  “No. That there may be more than one.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said in utter solemnity. “I do hear.”

  “You are one of those powers,” Emuin said. “That’s always worth remembering. Don’t act carelessly. Don’t assume the dice have only one face. It’s only by considering all the faces that you can load one of them. That’s wizardry, young lord.

  That’s why it means learning, difficult, farseeing learning.”

  The echoes in the air remained, a brazen, troubling liveliness, as if all events balanced on a point of time and might go careering off in any direction without warning.

  “I can swear I didn’t raise the storm or conjure Auld Syes,”

  Tristen said, grasping at that straw.

  “Then reckon at least three with the ability must be involved here,” Emuin said, “and four, young sir, for I didn’t raise them, either.”

  “Lady Orien?”

  “Think you so, lord of Amefel?”

  Emuin changed salutations and none of it was without significance. It was lessons again. It was a signal to him: he was not at this moment young lord.

  And he gave Emuin as honest answers as he had given to Mauryl, last spring, in hope ultimately of revelations about himself such as Mauryl had given him.

  “Her dragons lean over me as I write. Lady Orien broke the great Lines there, in that room in particular, when she opened it and let in Hasufin. I repaired them as I could. But I never am at ease in that place.” />
  “Well, well,” Emuin said, “and well reckoned. Now never after this say that I failed to advise you. I have advise you. Now and at last you may have heard what I say, beyond all my expectations. I have warned you, as best I can.”

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  “And else?” Tristen asked. “Is Orien all your warning?—Or is it Hasufin?”

  Emuin’s charts lay scattered across the table, charts of great sweeping lines and writing that teased his eye with recognition, but that was not the fine round hand Men used nowadays. He moved one, in Emuin’s silence, and made no sense of the parchment, the visible sign of studies Emuin pursued and would not divulge.

  “Don’t disarrange my charts, pray. Go raise walls against the law. Chastise the fool boy you’ve given me. I leave it to you. Leave me to my ciphering. Gods! Don’t—”

  He had picked up a chart, almost, and let it down again.

  “Don’t disarrange them. I’ve enough troubles.”

  “Does the order matter? What do you cipher, sir? Wherein is it wizards’ business, all these writings? Do you draw Lines also across the sky and ward the stars, too?”

  “None of your concern, young lord! Leave my charts, I say, and go find that wretched boy wizard you freed from a just and deserved hanging. He’s probably filched three purses on his way to the kitchens.”

  “He’s mine, at least…that he’s in my care. And his listening in the town is for my sake. And if he helps you, claim duty of him; but he won’t cease to be mine, master Emuin, unless you ask for him. Until you give me reasons, I won’t change it.” His converse with Emuin had skipped from question to question, all around the things he most wished to know, and grew cryptic and uneasy. “Why the stars, sir? What can you hope to find?

  Or to do?”

  “Curiosity. A lifelong study. My diversion. All wizards have such charts.”

  “Mauryl did. Parchments, papers, everywhere, and FORTRESS OF OWLS / 315

  all blown about when the tower fell. I find it curious you have the same study.”

  “Mauryl lived centuries. The planets were a passing show to him.”