Deep let the snow lie on Ilefínian, deepest there, and 380 / C. J. CHERRYH
give no relief to the enemy; and a blessing of wind on the south, drying the puddles, drying the fields. Let the river empty out the flood, and give easy passage to Olmern’s boats, and let them come to feed the hungry and to provision the defense of Amefel: that was his business, and he found in all he saw that he had not done badly.
So he wished. And when he reached the citadel again, and his own apartments, he gathered up his maps, he called in Crissand, and sent also to Azant, as the lords nearest to hand.
“We have guests,” he began, in the intimacy of what was, at other hours, his dining table. “We have guests in the downhill stables and others at Althalen. An Elwynim company escaped, with its weapons, and swears to our service.”
What the men had wished to swear to him, and what they might have sworn in their hearts, he did not say, nor did Uwen.
By now he was sure the men were sleeping, and likely to remain asleep for hours.
In all of it since his return he was aware of Paisi slipping about, and running here and there for master Emuin, and by now he was aware that master Emuin was listening to all that happened.
It seemed superfluous to mount the stairs to master Emuin’s chamber, but when he had told Crissand and Azant all he knew, he took that belated course, quietly, even meekly.
“Well, well, well,” Emuin said when Tristen shut the door at his back and faced him, “and what have we done today, young lord?”
“I’ve settled Althalen with a village and had men swear to me as the King To Come.” He flung all of it out, the bald truth, and felt oddly abashed. He feared in the matter of inviting the Elwynim there was very much more than he had yet accounted of, and that he
FORTRESS OF OWLS / 381
had been very much the fool Emuin called him. Done was done, yet not as widely or as publicly as might have been…or might yet be. He was at least forewarned.
“Well, well.” Emuin was seated at his table, charts spread far and wide and weighted with dubious small pots and a teacup.
“And you say you’re distressed, young lord? But are you quite surprised?”
“I wish nothing to Cefwyn’s harm. And what shall I do?”
His voice sank, so difficult was it suddenly to utter. “I find myself afraid, sir. The Elwynim are in the stable, with men who’ve sworn to me not to talk. But they said it, all the same.
And they will say it, and the lords of the south will come here, and what will happen then? This army is Cefwyn’s army. Elwynor is Her Grace’s, not mine.”
Emuin rose from his table and turned his back, setting his face toward the window shutters. Paisi was out and about somewhere, for which Tristen was thankful: he could at least speak without another witness.
“Cefwyn knows,” Emuin said in a voice as quiet. “So did his father, for that matter.”
“Ináreddrin? About me?”
“Cefwyn wrote to him this summer saying he had found the Elwynim King To Come. Saying also he’d bound you by an oath of fealty—underhanded, since at the time you had no notion what you are, and presumptuous in the king’s way of thinking, his son and heir taking oaths from…” Emuin gave a long breath. “From the heir of the Sihhë. And directly after, Ináreddrin rode south in a fair frothing rage of suspicion…which sent him into the Aswydds’ ambush, failing a little of delivering all the Marhanens to one battlefield. There was folly, if you wish an example of royal extravagance. He could have sent someone. Sending subordinates would have changed everything,
382 / C. J. CHERRYH
a fact I’ve urged on Cefwyn most vehemently. And Ináreddrin died for that extravagance of passion.”
He heard it all in alarm. And one thing came clear to him.
“Cefwyn knew.”
“Oh, no doubt.”
“He knew the prophecy when he gave me Althalen.”
“Oh, aye, indeed he did. For that matter, young lord, I thought long and hard on what he’d done. But do it he must, perhaps, one way or another, and chose the easiest course, with no blow struck.”
“I’d not strike any blow at him. Ever.”
“Of course not. You call him your friend. So now we may wrestle with prophecies, and wizardry. He’s your friend, and therefore has avoided the worst pitfalls. He knew from the first he laid eyes on you that he saw something uncommon in you, and yet he liked you well, and he made you his friend on my advice. That was my advice to him, and it served him very well.”
He was struck to the heart. “I’m glad you gave it, sir. But only on your advice?”
Emuin shook his head. “No, not only on my advice. He does love you. That’s the truth of it, as you love him.”
The fear was no less. “What should I do? And do not you give me a glib answer this time, sir. Should I take horse and ride back to Ynefel and face his enemies? Perhaps…” The thought had come back to him, as he had thought this fall, that perhaps Mauryl had set a limit to his Summoning and Shaping, and that there was no time for him beyond this year, or some night this spring. “If Mauryl’s spell vanishes with some midnight this spring, that would solve it all, would it not? Will I vanish, with it? And should I?”
FORTRESS OF OWLS / 383
“I don’t know,” Emuin said. “As to wizardry, I see no reason the spell should end.”
“I do. I see very many reasons, if Mauryl had any care for the Marhanen.”
Emuin looked at him with the arch of a white brow. “Care for the Marhanen? None that I know.”
That gave him no cheer at all. It had begun as a remarkable day, and the day came down to dark in one frightening admission after another.
“Was Mauryl their enemy? What was in those letters to the Aswydds? This is where you lived, was it not? What was in the letters?”
“Ah. A good question.”
“Then answer it!”
“Mauryl used the Marhanens to bring down the Sihhë. They were not friends, but they saw the use in each other…as Selwyn Marhanen exempted two wizards from the Quinalt ban. I was one.”
“And Mauryl the other. What of the others who helped him at Althalen?”
“Dead. Three there, others over the years. One in Elwynor.”
“In Elwynor!”
“Dead, I say. An Aswydd. Taryn was his name. But if he were alive, I’d know it.”
“How can you not have told me this?”
“Perhaps because it doesn’t matter. Taryn Aswydd is irrelevant to you. The others—”
“The others—”
“May have relevance. The Aswydds living and dead Cefwyn exiled from this province. Dug them up, hauled them out of their tombs, and sent the whole lot over the border to hallowed ground in Guelessar. That for necromancy. The only one missing is Taryn, in some tomb or grave in Elwynor.”
“I need your advice this time. I know you wish me 384 / C. J. CHERRYH
to think of things for myself, but in this, I ask you, sir, tell me most solemnly what you see.”
Emuin breathed deeply. “Advice? I’ll cut through all the cords at once. One stroke. As I advised Cefwyn to win your friendship, I advise you…win his.”
“Have I not…his friendship?”
“Win his.”
Emuin at his most obscure, most informative, and most obdurate and maddening. A dead Aswydd in Elwynor, live ones in exile in Guelessar, Elwynim down in the stable, and Emuin talked of friendship. Cefwyn had lamented that trait of obdurate silence, and cursed it, but Tristen did neither, at the moment.
Curious strictures bound Emuin, he had begun to know that: to know somewhat, and not to know enough, and to know that naming a thing had power…that was a burden. He had let loose a wish for snow and fair weather and had almost loosed disaster, unthinking.
The narrow escape sobered him, chastened him, made him think twice how he railed on Emuin, who did very little and that after long, long thought.
“Thank you, sir.”
“For
what?”
“For your constancy. Your silence. Your thinking things through.”
Now Emuin laughed, of sheer surprise, it seemed. “Mauryl said I was fickle as the breeze.”
“As hard to catch.” Now the boy Paisi was on the stairs, thumping and gasping, carrying something heavy, and their time of privacy was ended.
Win his. Win Cefwyn’s friendship, of all tasks Emuin might have set him the dearest to his heart, and perhaps the thorniest.
He had come here almost in despair, and now opened the door for the boy with a light heart and a consciousness that, no, he no longer
FORTRESS OF OWLS / 385
was the boy, the wizard’s fetch-all and carry-all. Master Emuin had set him a task he could do, and wished to do, a great task, a lord’s task.
Paisi had baskets with him…supper, meat pies, by the delicious aroma. “Shall I fetch for you, m’lor’?” Paisi asked in dismay. “I didn’t see your guards, m’lor’.”
“I escaped them,” Tristen said, and went his way out the door and down the steps as if his feet had wings.
Below, far down the hall, two of his exasperated guards did find him. So did importunate workmen, pleading that the doors had to be finished, and they were fine carpenters, not makers of stables.
“Yet it’s stables and barracks we need,” Tristen said in all patience, “so we needn’t have axes at these doors again, if you please. Finish your carvings later. Make them fine when there’s time. Now we need beams up, and roofs.”
“Get along there,” Lusin said…only Lusin and Tawwys had come for him. “Shame, to be pestering His Grace with plaints and preferences, gods bless! —M’lord, the Elwynim has come up the hill, or Aeself has. The others…master Haman’s seein’
to ’em, sayin’ they’ve the look of fever an’ he don’t want sick men in the town.”
Disease and all the ills of war, Tristen recalled the warning.
Would an unscrupulous wizard unleash that against them?
Any gap in their armor had to be seen to.
“Master Haman can deal with fevers,” he said, “but all the same, go up and tell Emuin. He’ll have something for them, to prevent it. He’ll know.”
“Aye, m’lord.” Tawwys was up the stairs in a trice, but Lusin stayed below with him, and the two of them walked toward the stairs. “Cook’s sent supper to the
386 / C. J. CHERRYH
little hall, m’lord, an’ a small table set, countin’ the visitor.”
“Set out the maps,” he said. “Not all the maps, but sufficient to ask the man where he went and how he crossed, and where Tasmôrden might be, and doing what. —And I’ll want a clerk, to have it all written down.” The whole day had passed in one rush after another, and Lusin caught a passing servant, sending her running for the archive and the clerk.
He would write to Cefwyn with what he learned. He would deserve Cefwyn’s friendship.
Meanwhile Uwen was coming down the stairs, and Crissand joined them from the west, in from the stable-court, with his bodyguard. Durell was close behind him.
Likely curiosity had spread through the court, until he had as well have used the great hall for his welcome to Aeself and the rest. Lords he had not summoned were finding excuses to come and obtain an invitation.
“Here, and here,” Aeself said, a noble conversant with maps and charts, a commander willing, in the carrying-away of the dishes of their simple supper, to move a trembling and much-injured hand over the canvas map and show them all what he knew.
“There,” he said, drawing a line by Ilefínian to note the presence of Tasmôrden’s forces, and the road that led up to the border and the riverside Cefwyn defended, all but one of its bridges destroyed. “The Guelenmen move with heavy wagons,” Aeself said, “and this Tasmôrden expects.” He had a cough, himself, and took a sip of wine laced with one of Emuin’s potions. “So Lord Elfwyn believed the reports we had.
My lord is dead, now, almost beyond a doubt…and so all this army…” Aeself passed his hand over the
FORTRESS OF OWLS / 387
region of the town. “The gates did not withstand him. They opened.”
“Force of arms?” Tristen asked. “Or did he use other means?”
“My lord…” Aeself lost his voice a moment, in coughing. “I don’t know. They opened at night, and if a man of ours would do it, then damn him for it, but we don’t know how, otherwise, except wizardry, and that we don’t discount.”
“Is he known to have such help?”
“He’s known for one himself, my lord.”
That was not quite a surprise, counting that the claim to be a High King meant Sihhë blood, however thin.
“But sufficient for that?”
“No one knows. Some say it’s all trickery, to fulfill the prophecy. Some say he hides what he does have, and sheds his soldiers’ blood when he could win past without a battle, all to hide his wizardry from us. To this hour we don’t know.”
Either a strong wizard or not: again, no news, and Tristen had no knowledge of his own on the matter.
“We were on the outside of Ilefínian,” Aeself continued, “had been, attempting to bring relief to the town, back from the north. But when we came there, we found the gates breached, the earl’s men inside looting the town. We attempted to turn the tables on him, and besiege the besiegers, but he was cannier than that, and we rode into archers at the east gates. So twenty-two of us died, and the Saendal, the damned brigands, dragged two more of us down. It was no honor to us that we ran, my lord, but I looked to save something, and we’d no prospects there. There was no knowing then where the earl was. They knew where we were, they always knew, and if that was natural, he’s a clever man.”
“What do you think?”
388 / C. J. CHERRYH
“He claims the Kingship, and he claims to be Sihhë. He has to have the blood, so he has to say so, true or not. He has somewhat the look.”
“Does he?” asked Crissand, and Aeself faltered.
“Not so much as m’lord does,” Aeself said faintly. “Seeing him, one knows the difference, as I’ve never seen, not in my life.”
“Tasmôrden’s army,” Tristen said, unwilling to allow that to go further. “Where?”
Aeself touched the map, the circle around Ilefínian. “Here’s the most of his forces, which with the loot and the taverns, isn’t likely moving. And here to the east, there’s a shred of Her Grace’s men under arms, that the earl hasn’t gone to take yet, but the loyal army is thin, they’re thin, my lord. There’s force on the earl’s side and force in his hands, and there’s some who say he is what he says, and has the blood, and the magic in him, but if he has, he can’t keep his men out of the wine stores.
That saved us, if anything.”
Tristen listened, hands braced before his lips, eyes fixed on a canvas land that became visible to him with Aeself’s telling, and a fair telling it seemed to be. He had come to Emuin in fear, he had come from Emuin in hope, and now he saw the quandary laid before him…bad news regarding the forces at Ilefínian, bad news regarding Her Grace’s loyal forces in the country, and a bad outlook for the eastern bridges where Cefwyn proposed to force a crossing, but Cefwyn had foreseen that would happen, and had good maps…had taken the best maps, as he knew, out of Amefel, leaving him older, less reliable ones. He had brought two good ones with him out of Guelessar, but they informed him no better about the height of hills or the difficulty of a given road.
Aeself might. Aeself, however, was all but spent, and had grown more pale and more unsteady as a fair-sized FORTRESS OF OWLS / 389
supper and the ale combined with the volley of questions. Now he looked torn between desire to be believed and the exhaustion that was near to claiming him. Tristen set a hand on Aeself’s arm, and said, “Will you go back to your friends, sir? Or rest in the Zeide tonight?”
“At my lord’s will. But I’d rather go to my comrades.”
“Go,” he said. “Tawwys will escort
you down.” He reached into the gray space as he said it, and gathered nothing of presence there, as he had not for these men from the time they had met.
But within that space he could do some things he could not do in the world of Men. He brought out a little of the brightness of the gray space, and encouraged the life in Aeself: he snared a little of that silvery force and lent it to Aeself, so a ring on his wounded hand flared with an inner spark—and Aeself gathered himself as if he had gotten a second wind, and looked at him with trepidation.
“My blessing on you,” Tristen said. He had gathered that word with difficulty out of Efanor’s little book and Uwen’s anxious seeking; but now, faced with pain, he knew the use of it, and he saw the ease come on Aeself’s face, and the light into his eyes.
“My lord,” Aeself said, all open to him, utterly, so that what Aeself knew he was sure he knew, and it was not great. A second time he touched Aeself, this time on the hand.
“Go. Rest. Take the little basket with you.”
Emuin had sent down a collection of simples during their supper, odorous little pots, wizard-blessed and potent, Tristen was well sure, salves and pungent smokes that would cure horses and men alike. And Aeself understood him, and the need for silence: Aeself saw how authority sat in this small council, and that he met as a man among men with these friendly lords,
390 / C. J. CHERRYH
needing no kneeling or other signs of respect. M’lord he was.
He made that enough.
“Go,” Tristen said again. “M’lord,” Aeself said, and taking the basket, took his leave.
His guests, still standing about the table and the maps, had no awareness that something had transpired in that last moment. Durell was contentedly diminishing the quantity of wine remaining.
Crissand, however, sent a thoughtful look at Aeself’s back, a look not completely pleased.
“You find something amiss,” Tristen said quietly, between the two of them.
Fortress of Owls Page 36