He stood very still. The boy hid in nameless terror of Mauryl’s steps on the stairs, and feared the voices, oh, the voices, as all the imprisoned faces in the stone walls cried together.
Any moment Mauryl would come through that door, and confront him, the dearest sight and the most dreadful in all the world.
And dared they meet? Dared they, he and Mauryl, cross life and death and stand face-to-face, time present, time never to come?
Dared he? Dared they? Was it folly, or would Mauryl even see him if he tried?
His very breath seemed to stick between the bellows strokes of his chest, the hammerblows of his heart.
But he was not done with the loft. To go back undefeated, still master of this place, he must not run from it in fear: he must find what it wanted tonight, in Henas’amef.
There was a terror here besides Mauryl. And to find it he must face the blank wall at the end of his loft…which was not the end at all.
That wall secluded the true Shadow which ruled the heights of Ynefel, a perch surrounded by detritus of his depredation.
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Owl lived there.
And one day a boy in Ynefel had found the way to Owl…and now the man came back, seeking what he had feared in that hour.
He looked through the broken boards, saw Owl on his perch, and Owl turned on him a furious glance.
Then wind rushed through the loft, a dreadful wind, and the place changed. Light streamed and spun through the broken beams and ruined wall, and ghostly wings stirred about him, hunters seeking prey, seeking him, so it seemed, and denying him any gain here. The old mews reshaped themselves around him, drawing him back and back, but Ynefel was still just beyond, still with danger in it.
“M’lord!” Uwen shouted.
And in the pale heart of the light, at the very end of the old mews, he saw a great blunt-winged shape flying, flying, striving to reach him in the world of Men. Owl was coming, desperately beating through that storm of light and wind.
He lifted his hand the rest of the way, offering a place for Owl’s feet, and called out to him, “Owl!” which was all the name Owl had. The blued light caught the great orbs of Owl’s eyes, whose centers drank in all light, whose intent seemed some prey beyond him.
Perverse bird. Owl was never biddable. He would miss him, fly astray, Tristen thought.
But at the very last Owl reached him and checked his speed, blunt wings rowing in the wind…lowered with a buffet of air, and feather-skirted feet clamped hard on his hand.
Owl sat safely then, no great weight, despite his size, but a weight, all the same. Abruptly Owl’s head swiveled completely around, golden eyes regarding him sharply, in what seemed profound amazement at one
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instant, and secret knowledge in another.
“Owl,” Tristen said, resettling his grip on the borrowed sword to nudge Owl’s feathers with a finger. Owl struck with his beak—closing on nothing, for Tristen was quicker.
“Where now?” he asked Owl, unoffended. “Where must I go?”
But Owl gave him no answer, only hunched down, no glowing apparition of an owl, now, but a lump of untidy feathers and a turned shoulder, as obstinate in presence as he had been in illusion.
“M’lord,” Uwen said, right beside him.
The wind had fallen away. The perches all around him were vacant. The light quieted to a soft and dimming glow.
Of a sudden he was aware of the Place diminishing around him, and of his way back diminishing as well. He swung around, saw Emuin and Uwen too close to him for safety.
Then he was in a hallway under a few faint candles. Crissand and Cevulirn were waiting. Umanon and Sovrag and Pelumer all had weapons drawn. Even the waif Paisi was there, his eyes wide as saucers.
“M’lord,” Uwen said then, as if to call him back to himself, to life, and his friends.
“I was at Ynefel,” he said. He had never intended other than honesty with the lords, and knew he would trouble them with that advisement, but honesty he would hew to. “Owl came to me. I don’t know why.”
“What meaning to it?” Sovrag asked. “D’ ye know?”
“No. I don’t.” He was cold from his sojourn in the gray space, and now very weary. He saw they were troubled. Emuin watched, with what feeling, whether approval or disapproval, Emuin did not impart to him, not even in the gray space.
Crissand gazed at him as if
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he had found a strange creature in their midst, a strange creature, fearsome, and dreadful. Cevulirn regarded him with doubt. Only Uwen was still by him unchanged, undaunted, faithful as the stone underfoot, standing here before an ordinary wall, before candles which had turned out to be lighted after all.
What might he do, but what he had done? The wards had stood fast. Nothing had gotten in.
He turned, he walked, still holding Owl, toward the only refuge of comfortable light that beckoned him, and that was the great hall.
He was aware of his allies following him. He met the shocked whispers and stares of frightened guests as he walked back into his hall. The young girls who had been so full of chatter were silent, now, holding close to their mother. Men stood in stark, stiff groups, watching, asking themselves, surely, to what they were sworn.
Owl launched himself suddenly and flew ahead of him on silent wings, rising to alight high up on a cornice, above the oak-leaf frieze.
Tristen wished the comfort of a table, a cup of ale—most of all a laugh to dispel fear. But even Sovrag failed him in that, and the tables were drawn back for the dancing, so there was no place to dispose his trembling limbs but the dais and the chair of state. So he climbed up and sat, necessarily facing the solemn gathering of lords, whose looks toward him were unanswered questions.
Where did he find an answer for them?
To his dismay Owl chose that time to swoop down and settle on the finial near his hand, regarding first him with that mad, impassioned stare, then swiveling his head to cast his mad stare at all the hall, daunting those who had waited.
Some backed away. But Uwen, Emuin, and the 514 / C. J. CHERRYH
lords of the south stood fast, and Crissand—Crissand of all of them—came closer, pale of face, but daring the moment and the silent question.
“He’s only an owl,” Tristen said, desperately. He teased Owl’s breast feathers as he would those of his tame pigeons, to make light of him, and Owl gave him a look of furious indignation: never at ease, never at peace, was Owl. “He was at Ynefel, and guided me through Marna Wood, and generally he minds his own business.” A further assay of the soft feathers won a nip at his fingers, a sharp strike that failed to draw blood.
Dared he forget that Auld Syes had been here, and that now there was Owl? So many things seemed ordinary to him, that did not seem so to Men. The lords had seen Owl before, on Lewen field…but that was hardly reassurance.
“Uwen,” he said. And Uwen stepped up to the low dais at once and without question, while he continued, helplessly, to look out at the assembly.
“Is there any threat, any harm to the halls or the town?”
“None as I see, m’lord,” Uwen said, in that reasonable, plain voice that brought quiet to horses and men alike. “Gi’ or take the old lady an’ the owl.”
There was laughter, then, an anxious, brief and loud laughter.
Tristen laughed softly, too, and afforded Owl the side of his hand to side on. Owl’s talons this time drew blood, but that was negligible. He was rescued by the laughter, grateful to tears for the presence of friends who he now believed would not turn their shoulders to him and whisper behind their hands.
“Owl’s not altogether an ordinary bird,” he said in the difficult silence that followed, and drew another, uncertain laugh.
“He goes and comes where he likes, and I suppose at the moment he likes to be here, but he FORTRESS OF OWLS / 515
may just as well decide to live in the woods. I think it
bodes well, his coming.”
As if Owl heard, he took off toward the cornice again, and sat up there, staring balefully at all below him.
“There,” Tristen said. He wondered, distracted thought—if Owl was a Shadow, did Owl need to eat? The loft had shown he did. The servants should leave at least one door open…to a fierce winter draft and the hazard of his pigeons, he was sure.
He dreaded that prospect, and saw the lords’ lingering disquiet.
“He’s only an owl,” he said, “no matter how he comes and goes.”
“Lord Tristen is no different than he was,” Emuin said then, speaking up. “And be assured, he wishes well to all of you.”
It was in some part strange to be talked about in his hearing, much as Cefwyn and Idrys and Emuin had used to discuss him as if he were a chair or a table, when he had first arrived in Cefwyn’s hands.
Now he heard Emuin assuring his friends he would do no harm to them—and was it so? Whatever Owl was or meant, he was no natural bird, and did an ordinary lord keep a Shadow for a guest? He had his few, his faithful; but he saw all the faith, all the trust he had built with other Men near to falling in shards and pieces.
“Dance,” he said, “and drink.”
“At’s right,” Uwen said loudly. “Fill the cups, there, and bring the sweets, and you harpers set to, somethin’ quick, wi’ the drummers!”
The drums rattled into a light cadence, Owl glared from the cornice, and the piper found his wind.
Then as Uwen came close, so Sovrag joined them, and Umanon, Azant, and others of the earls…not shunning him, but seeking his presence.
“What’s the meanin’ on ’t?” Sovrag asked. “Lights goin’ out and strange old women comin’ into hall…were she a ghost?”
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“Change,” said Emuin. “Change is in the stars, change is in the wind, and safer to ride it than to be ridden down.”
And meanwhile the gray space roiled and swirled, alive not only to the two of them, but to other presences, however faint and far.
Close at hand he felt the preternatural awareness of lords such as Crissand, in whom the wizard-gift burned, in Cevulirn, in whom it shone like a candle-flame, and in more than one of the others in the general company.
— Do you know? Tristen asked Emuin. Were you aware
there were so many with the gift?
— This is the south, Emuin said, as if that answered all.
And you are lord of it. Be wise. Bare no more secrets to
these men, for your own sake. And Cefwyn’s.
Owl, on his perch, turned his back to the sounds. Men and women uncertainly took hands and danced.
Emuin, in his gray court robes, stood silent and composed himself until he made not even a ripple in the gray place.
Are you angry? Tristen wondered. He found he was, and he did not know at what, except the fear he had just passed.
And that fear perched, a little ball of feathers, up on a cornice in the hall.
Come here, he wished the bird peevishly, expecting no obedience. But to his surprise Owl flew down and, instead of perching, flew out the doors of the hall, out into the corridors.
Half the matter was solved, at least. The guards opened doors to let various folk come and go, and Owl would take care of himself.
C H A P T E R 6
The smell of burning might be only the fire in the fireplace, but Cefwyn’s memory could not purge itself of the unholy reek that had hung over the square.
Fire had not spread from the shrine to the wooden porches nearby, which some cited as a miracle; but it was no miracle that the rioters, driven from the square, had slipped out into the town to make mischief.
All through the night the several Guard companies had alternately stood guard and chased drunken looters, until exhausted men, a tavern owner, and short tempers had clashed bloodily at Market and Hobnail Alley just before the hallowed dawn.
It was Midwinter Day.
A new year began, and the streets stood at last in numb, universal quiet, the convulsion spent…so Idrys had reported, blood-spattered and smeared with soot when last they had spoken to each other.
Toward midnight they had admitted an orderly line of mourners through the shrine, the Holy Father decently robed and the shrine aglow with hundreds of candles and echoing with choral music. Passions sank, in that solemn, dignified sight, and Efanor’s suggestion of a second penny to every man, woman, and child who passed the altar had brought whole streets out, with wives and children, outnumbering the ruffians and bringing a more
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sober, decent crowd to the heart of the town. The line had gone on till dawn…was still going, at the last he heard, and some likely in line three times, but the royal coffers would disburse it, as cheaper than burned buildings.
But at the dawn he had heeded his guard’s strong requests to take himself out of the dangerous outer streets, and go back to the safe center and up to his apartment, to lie on his bed if not to sleep. “The kingdom needs a live king with his wits about him,” Idrys had said, when they had dealt with a roving, armed band of thieves. “Go. Hunting brigands is my work.”
So he had come back, under escort, and found Ninévrisë had never gone to her own apartments. She had taken charge of his pages, taken his desk, sat all night directing the servant staff’s oversight of the threatened Guelesfort and the care of the town’s wounded—rendering judgment, too, where Annas found her advice useful, with her primary aid a handful of exhausted, frightened pages. The Tower of Elwynor, Annas had called her gratefully, referring to the arms of her house; and that was the way she had stood through the storm, the center to which all messages could come and where all news could be found.
She slept, exhausted, once she had him by her, resting against his side.
“Where is Luriel?” he finally thought to ask her, at one waking. “Is she still in her apartments?”
“She came back,” Ninévrisë said. “Her gown is the worse for wear, so Fiselle says.”
“Panys’ son was with the Guard, the last I saw him. A good man.” His fingers strayed across Ninévrisë’s shoulder, finding her arm as prone to tremors as his own, utter weariness, no more. Then the enormity of it own, utter weariness, no more.
Then the enormity of it all, and memory of the Holy Father’s last visit, when he had been so afraid, came back to him. “I never
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expected it, Nevris. The old man warned me. He tried to warn me. I didn’t think they’d dare anything like this.”
“Poor Benwyn.” Her voice was hoarse, unlike herself. “He had nothing to do with sorcery, or magic…he never threatened the Holy Father. He had nothing to do with it.”
Benwyn had nothing to do with it, but someone had taken pains to paint the murder with an Amefin look.
And who would know so well what Amefin charms looked like, but one who had been there?
And was that not the Amefin patriarch…but suspect the man of murder, and him shut in his quarters, a sick man?
He doubted it. He much doubted it.
And yet they urgently needed a suspect, a place to point the blame, something, anything to distract the commons from Benwyn…Benwyn’s connection with Ninévrisë. The mob that had risen had gone for Benwyn because he was Amefin…one of their own, but not Guelen. And because he was the foreign consort’s priest.
“The soldiers that came back with the Amefin father,” he said. “They’re familiar enough with Amefin charms, and the Bryalt.” He held her close, his thoughts scurrying through the underbrush of lordly ambitions and guilty secrets like so many frightened hares. “But would they dare, on their own? And why? Emuin would say…Emuin would say if a thing is common, you don’t see it. And what’s common under the Quinaltine roof?”
“Another priest?” Ninévrisë asked. “That zealot priest?”
“Udryn. Udryn, the name is. Idrys removed him somewhere—at least—he’s been removed
somewhere, dropped in the country somewhere remote. Scare him, the notion was. But a priest could reach the robing
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room without notice. A priest could gain entry. We thought this Udryn was the primary danger. But who would dare attack the Holy Father?”
“Ryssand?”
“Not directly. Not directly. But a zealot could do this, he well could. Jormys himself is in danger. He’s in a mail shirt at the moment…Efanor gave it to him and told him wear it constantly. But Father Jormys will eat and sleep in the Quinaltine, where our guards can’t go. And meanwhile we can’t point the finger at the zealots or Ryssand without better proof than one of them being in the Quinaltine where they have every right to be. We can put one of them out. We can drop Udryn and whoever else we catch down a well. But how many are there?
Who are they? We know the ones that have argued in public, but how do we find what a man thinks?”
“The priests might know.”
“We have no authority except to appoint. We can’t arrest, we can’t charge, we can’t investigate. The priests have to do it.”
“They aren’t all murderers, and they know each other. Make the murderer ashamed to face them. Make him guilty.”
He had taken it as his part, man and king, to console her fears, even to lie to her, to see her have rest. He drew back a little, remembering that the warm, sweet presence was the Regent of Elwynor, Uleman’s daughter, priestly and canny as ever her father was…and it was clear good sense she was offering him.
“They’ve passed out cloths with the Holy Father’s blood—anything that touched him. The people stand for hours to see him. He’s half a damn saint—forgive me.” He had been with soldiers all night, and under attack.
“The people need one. Don’t they?”
“But who killed him, but another priest, Ryssand’s FORTRESS OF OWLS / 521
priest, and if I had Ryssand’s signed confession with his seal on it I couldn’t use it. I need Ryssand, until I can marry Efanor to his daughter, gods save me. There’s still a murderer in the Quinaltine, and Benwyn’s still dead, and there’s still the Amefin charms, real or not. For your sake and for Tristen’s we can’t have that.”
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