Fortress of Owls

by C. J. Cherryh

  “And to you, sir?”

  “Damn, but we’re full of questions. Question, question, question.”

  “So Mauryl taught me. So I learn, sir, or try to. I’ve been respectful and said yes, master Emuin. But you said I should study wizardry. You said I should look at all the faces of the dice.” He understood dismissal, however, in Emuin’s distress and reticence: Emuin wished him gone, so he rose and crossed the room and set his hand on the door, with a backward look at the stone, unplastered chamber, at shelves untidy and groaning under their load, and a bed at least supplied with new blankets.

  More blankets were under the bed, where Paisi had tucked a pallet, perhaps; it looked to be that, or a repository of Emuin’s discarded clothes.

  “I’m glad you’ve shut the windows,” he remarked in leaving,

  “and I’m glad you’re not alone here.”

  “Bryaltine nuns,” Emuin muttered. “The Sihhë star in the marketplace and hung on pillars, and His Reverence to Guelessar. Don’t surprise Cefwyn with these things. And in your writing to Idrys, apart from Cefwyn, make a thorough job of explaining, lad. Make it very thorough. I’ve no doubt His Reverence will.”

  C H A P T E R 7

  The senior clerk came to the ducal apartment at Tristen’s request, and proudly presented a thick set of papers, figures, great long lists of carefully penned numbers and tallies. Tristen had found a keen interest in his resources since his venture out to the river and back. He had inquired of his clerk what he had at his disposal.

  But this was not the answer, at least not in a form that Unfolded to him. And asking the clerk what the sum of the accounts meant he could buy produced only confusion, a business of owed and received and entitled and the seasonal difficulty with contrary winds in distant Casmyndan, southward.

  “Ciphering,” Uwen said, when the clerk had gone, and added with a little laugh, “which I don’t know wi’out I count on my fingers, an’ for large sums I wiggle toes. So I ain’t a help there.

  I’d best take mysel’ to the horses an’ the men and leave ye to your readin’, which ye don’t lack in that stack.”

  “It’s coins. It all stands for coins, does it?”

  “Coins, m’lord. Aye, I reckon, in a way, it does that.”

  “Crowns and pennies,” Tristen said, and drew up that sheet of common southern paper, one of a score of papers on which long columns marched in martial order. But not of martial things. “Five hundred crowns and seventy pennies of sheep.”

  FORTRESS OF OWLS / 317

  “’At’s some few sheep,” Uwen said. “An’ ’at there’s why Your Grace has clerks.”

  “I have no difficulty with the numbers,” Tristen said, “only this business of pennies and pence coming from them.”

  “Pennies and ha’pennies and small pence,” Uwen said, in that quiet, astonished mildness that attended such close, odd questions, “an’ being as we’re in Amefel, the king’s pence an’

  th’ old pence an’ the farthing an’ ha’farthing, an’ the king’s reckonin’ an’ the old reckonin’. All in the market at the same time, in Amefel: no small wonder if ye blink at it.”

  “Show me,” he said, pushing the papers across the desk, “if you will. You understand.”

  “Good gods, I ain’t the one.”

  “The clerk hasn’t helped. You show me.”

  Nothing had Unfolded, nothing showed any least promise of Unfolding to show him the sense in these papers and accounts, which he had asked for, and he had until the first hour after noon before he should meet with the earls and give his own report.

  Uwen obediently came closer, picked up a paper, and looked at it.

  “Here’s fine, fair writin’, but the sense of it’s far above me, m’lord.”

  “So are farthings and half farthings above me.” Tristen laid his finger on a number on a paper that chanced to be in front of him, that of one fleece. “What’s that to a penny? That one there.”

  Uwen craned sideways to look. “That ’un I can show ye.”

  “Here.” He swept aside the papers, and found a fair unwritten one. But Uwen, disdaining the pen and the clean sheet, sat down on the other side of the table, emptied out his purse, and showed him how many coppers made a gold crown, and each five coppers a

  318 / C. J. CHERRYH

  king’s penny, and what was a farthing piece, worth a cup of ale, and why ha’farthings were in the reckoning but left out of the actual payment because there was no such coin ever minted in the history of the world.

  Ha’farthings, a petty sum, did not pay the bill when he considered what the cost was to feed and clothe and house the staff, and then to fit out men-at-arms and build the ruined walls.

  And Uwen professed his purse out of coins, and not even one fleece was accounted for.

  “Get those in the cupboard,” Tristen said, for he knew there were gold ones there, and silver, and Uwen and he made stacks and piles in order, until they accounted for a whole flock at once.

  After that he could look at his list of sheep and know how much gold that was, and therefore how many of those sacks that were in the strong room deep, deep in the heart of the Zeide, where the strongest guard was mounted.

  “Let us go downstairs,” he said.

  “M’lord,” Uwen protested, “we can’t be stackin’ the bags in th’ countin’ room.”

  “I wish to see it,” he said, “now that I understand this much.”

  So down they went, the two of them, and the guard that always attended him, all rattling and clumping down to the main hall and down and down the stairs that otherwise led to Emuin’s tower, until they came to the strong room and the guarded door.

  To him the strong-room guards, members of the Dragon Guard, deferred, and unlocked and unbarred the place. The escort as well took up station outside, and Tristen and Uwen stood amid stacks and bags of gold, and plate, and cups, and all the service that had graced Lord Heryn’s table, besides the ducal crown and various jeweled bracelets and other such.

  FORTRESS OF OWLS / 319

  “Now, them jewels,” Uwen said, “I hain’t the least idea.”

  Tristen said nothing, for the sight of all of it seemed at last to Unfold to him a comprehension of the treasure Lord Heryn had. He had been down here once before, in his first days here.

  But only now, well lit and laid out as it was, he began to know the extent of it.

  “M’lord?”

  He drew in a deep breath, more and more troubled by what he saw.

  “This is a very great lot of gold,” he said.

  “That it is.”

  “Men died for this,” he said. “Very many men died for this.”

  “An’ damn cold comfort,” Uwen said, thrusting his hands into his belt and letting go a great sigh, “’cept as it buys firewood and all. An’ don’t ask me why gold should be worth so much, ’cept it’s such as a man can carry the worth of a horse in his purse, an’ damn unlikely he could carry the horse.”

  He scarcely heard Uwen, except the last, and he gathered up the threads of it belatedly and gave a small, shaken laugh.

  “That it is. But there are too many horses in this room and not enough in the stable; and too many loaves of bread here and not enough in Meiden’s villages, aren’t there? That’s what you mean.”

  “I think it is, m’lord. A box like as we brought from Guelemara, we’d fill it a lot of times in this room, and that box full up with gold is enough for two hundred men and horses for half a year. That’s the ciphering I know.”

  “Imor and Olmern sell grain for gold.”

  “Both do, and is likely to be jealous of each other, if ye pardon me, m’lord. Imor don’t like the Olmernmen, but the Olmernmen have the boats.”

  320 / C. J. CHERRYH

  Amefel could do with both grain and boats in its defense, Tristen thought, and standing in all this wealth of gold, he knew that he beheld a kind of magic in itself, to summon boats, and feed men. Gold became grain, and sheep, and well-f
ed villages. Parsynan had gathered taxes and put them in this room; so had Heryn, over years of rule, and aethelings before him had done it since the time of Barrakkêth and before. Cefwyn, he knew, had taken some sum of money away, so Cefwyn had said at summer’s end, for the welfare of the province, and because the king’s tax was due, but far more was here than the tax should ever have required, and what was anyone doing with it?

  It was far in excess of what needs he even yet understood, in flocks, grain, wagons, food, and horses.

  The visit to the strong room was in the morning; the afternoon belonged to the earls, Crissand, Drumman, Azant, Marmaschen, Durell, and the rest, with some who had come in from the country, all gathered downstairs in the little hall, over maps which told their own story…the capital of Elwynor, not far from the river, fallen now, and the loyal subjects of Her Grace prey to the rebels under Tasmôrden: red marked the disasters, red of blood.

  “I’ve given Her Grace’s men leave to cross the river,” Tristen said to the earls, seated at the end of the table whereon the maps were spread, heavy books weighting their corners. A stack of books the clerks had found pertinent in the ravaged archive sat beside the maps, overwhelming in the sheer volume of what he did not know. “Captain Anwyll has orders to disarm the armed men when he finds them and assure them they may trust Amefel for protection. So we must provide that protection.”

  By that the earls might

  FORTRESS OF OWLS / 321

  Understand he intended them move to a winter muster, but he added quickly, “The Ivanim are providing that guard of archers for the days the bridge is open, and Lord Cevulirn will send more if they find themselves pressed. So may others. He’s advising all the southern provinces of the danger. What we need to do is stand ready to help the troops they may send with supplies and transport. And in some part of which we may be able to rely on boats from Olmern. Lord Cevulirn will request that, too, and Lord Sovrag is our friend.”

  “The Olmernmen will want pay, all the same,” said Drumman.

  “Let them have Heryn’s gold dinnerplates,” Tristen said, “if they value them. I had far rather boats full of grain and enough men to keep the border.”

  There were glum looks, then. He did not quite see why.

  “Do you think I’m wrong?” he asked in all honesty.

  “Your Grace,” Azant said, “I will contribute.”

  “And I,” Crissand said, a little ahead of a muttered agreement from others, men who days ago had been arguing the poverty of their people.

  “Use your resources for your villages. And to help Bryn build its wall,” Tristen said, for he had sent word to everyone about his promises to Bryn: Drumman was here, but his men were already moving to Bryn’s aid. “I ask of you all the same thing.

  Amefel has a treasure-room full of Heryn Aswydd’s gold. I don’t know the cost of the boats and the grain, but we’ll use that first, build the defenses in Bryn’s lands, and supply food and shelter to the Elwynim that cross to us.”

  “We can’t deplete the treasury entirely.”

  “I’m told a gold coin is a sack of grain, and I think we have more coins in the treasury than we do sacks of grain in all Amefel.”

  That also drew a curious stare. “How many?” was the careful distillation of the question.

  322 / C. J. CHERRYH

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” Tristen said, and in fact, did not know the tally. But at that, one of the younger Amefin clerks looked as if he had something behind his teeth he was afraid to let escape.

  “Sir?” Tristen asked the man, seeing the look.

  “Elwynim,” the young clerk said, faintly, and had to clear his throat in mid-utterance. “And the tax collecting. —Which I’m not supposed to know, my lord, but master Wydnin fled across the river when the king came back from Lewen field, and he took some of the books with him. So we don’t have the account of the treasury, not since this summer, and not even the king had an accounting. Parsynan started one. But he went away.”

  The clerk moistened his lips. “It never was done.”

  “We have no accounting? But Tasmôrden does?”

  There was a murmur among the lords, all of whom had conspired with Tasmôrden…that Tasmôrden turned out to know more than they did about what was in the Amefin treasury.

  And the clerk’s report made perfect sense. No few of the house servants had fled when it turned out Cefwyn had won at Lewenbrook. The archivist, who might have known more secrets than he had yet told, was now dead, murdered, in the matter of Mauryl’s letters. More, if Parsynan had had a counting in progress, that was a mystery to him.

  “Master clerk,” he said, to his own clerk, who had come with him out of Guelessar, and the man stepped anxiously forward.

  “Do you have any account the lord viceroy began?”

  “No, my lord. I fear not.”

  “So that’s gone, too.”

  “It seems it has.”

  This flood of papers toward Tasmôrden was alarming: Tasmôrden knew very much of their resources, FORTRESS OF OWLS / 323

  their proceedings, and Mauryl’s correspondence with the Aswydds, Heryn, and those before him…and that contained, surely, some of Mauryl’s notions about defense, perhaps about Althalen, perhaps about wizards and wizardous resources as great as the treasury. It was not alone the accounts that Cefwyn had found muddled when he arrived here, the books all out of order and in stacks on the tables and jammed into the shelves…it was the books of the library itself that had been disappearing to avoid Cefwyn discovering the Aswydds’ fortune and their dealings with Mauryl and perhaps other wizards.

  They had assumed it was Mauryl’s writings that had been secreted in that wall, because that was the nature of the burned fragments…but those letters they had burned, he suspected now from going through the fragments, were useless to them.

  The question was not what they had left as chaff, but what they had taken as valuable, and how long this traffic in books and records had been going on.

  And had some of those found their way to Elwynor…missing books of unknown nature, themselves as valuable as gold. The senior archivist was dead, and the junior fled, with what final treasure…and of Mauryl’s writings…or someone else’s?

  The archive of correspondence had probably gone into the wall when Heryn knew Cefwyn was coming…and when he was coming the junior archivist had murdered the senior and fled with a few precious items, likely to Lord Cuthan; and Lord Cuthan, confronted with his own treason…fled, again, to Elwynor, leaving behind his own culling of less important, less concealable documents, for they had found certain things left behind in Cuthan’s house that they were relatively sure should have been in the archive. They suspected those were part of the stolen documents…but they had never found the junior 324 / C. J. CHERRYH

  archivist, and while they suspected Cuthan might have gotten something past the searchers and into Elwynor, they were never entirely sure.

  More and more, however, he was sure it was not just one theft, but a pattern of theft, the slow pilferage of years, and a junior archivist overwhelmed with fear, seizing the best of the concealed items, burning the rest and fleeing for fear of the whole business coming out.

  “My lord,” said Marmaschen, who rarely spoke. “Lord Heryn was known for asking gold for favors, besides his surcharge on the Guelen king’s tax. We knew he had accumulated a great deal in the treasury, but no man but Lord Heryn’s closest familiars went there. And his master of accounts. But that man fled to Elwynor.”

  “Very likely, too,” said Drumman, “Lord Heryn sold the old king’s life, and had gold for it. So I think. No Amefin will be mourning Ináreddrin, as may be, but that’s likely the source of some that’s there. Blood money.”

  “And anything Aséyneddin might have wanted to know,”

  said Marmaschen. “That, too, Lord Heryn would have reported, if gold flowed.”

  “What would he do with it?” Tristen asked, and received astonished, confused stares, wh
ich he took to mean his question was foolish. “Did he buy grain?”

  “He kept it,” Drumman said.

  “He had gold plates. Gold cups. He had boxes and boxes of it.”

  “My lord,” said Marmaschen, fingering his beard, and in a cautious voice, “does this mean my lord will levy no war tax?”

  “I see no need to,” Tristen said. “When there is need, then I shall.”

  There was a general letting-forth of breath, as it were one body.

  FORTRESS OF OWLS / 325

  “And the levy of troops?” Drumman ventured. “Will we be taking the field, or does the wall answer the need? We’ve no great disadvantage sending men off the land in the winter, while the weather holds.”

  “I hope it will hold. I wish it to hold.” He dared say so with these men. “And Bryn needs all the help all of you can send, to build the wall. The more men, the faster the stones move.

  And they’ll need ox teams there for the heavy pulling. I’ve delayed the king’s carts as long as I can. I can’t keep them into the spring.”

  “The spring planting…” Crissand said.

  “We can let the land lie a year if need be. We’ll still have grain. We’ll have brought it in Olmern’s boats.”

  That brought consternation.

  “Do we understand Your Grace means to supply grain to all the families in the villages and the town as well as to the men under arms? And to muster out every able man in Amefel? Is that what we face?”

  “No,” he said. “But to feed an army, that we may. The southern lords will come. Cevulirn will bring them. We won’t let Tasmôrden bring his war here, and I won’t let him have the riverside.”

  There were slow intakes of breath, the understanding, perhaps, that all they had discussed with Cevulirn before they had gone to the river had begun to happen.

  “So we’re to provide for an army,” Crissand dared say, for all the rest. “And does the Guelen king know, my lord? Or to what are you leading us? Go we will, but to what are you leading us?”

  The question struck him to silence, a long silence, gazing into Crissand’s troubled face across the width of the table.