Fortress of Ice

by C. J. Cherryh

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  c. j. cherryh

  He wished, not for the first time, that Tristen had heeded his invitations and come to visit. He wished that, well before this day, he had risked the notoriety of the deed and ridden into the west himself, to visit his old friend.

  “Help me,” he might have said, had he had the chance to plan this visit for himself.

  You left me this boy. You advised me to treat him kindly and do justice by him.

  Now look. Now look, my old friend. He can’t come to the Quinaltine.

  He more than will not: there’s been this maid, this silly maid, it turns out, who spied the young fool doing what his Gran doubtless honestly taught him, and runs gibbering the news through all the Guelesfort.

  And who sent the maid?

  My youngest son did, Aewyn, who meant the boy no harm, no harm at all. I’m sure of that, among other things far less certain.

  Are you aware what’s happened here, my old friend? I fear this is not just bad luck. It can never do so much damage and be nothing more than bad luck, can it?

  But you told me once that luck was a sort of magic in itself, did you not?

  Or the workings of magic, was it?

  Well, luck has run completely against the boy you bade me preserve, when it involves the Quinaltine. You told me yourself there was ill in that place, grievous ill, and old harm. Efanor confirmed it. And was it only my desire to be ahead of the priests and the gossip that made me force the boy into this appearance?

  I mislike what I’ve done. I mislike greatly what has happened here, old friend. Be careful, you said. And was I careful enough, in my haste to see this through?

  Clearly not so. Not nearly careful enough.

  “My love?” Ninévrisë said, in his long silence.

  “Do you perceive anything untoward?” he asked. The wizard - gift was in Ninévrisë, from her father and his fathers before him. Perhaps he should tell her about the writing there in the frost. He knew he was blind and deaf to such stirrings in the world, deaf as a stone; but something for good or for ill made him reticent, and her son, her son, Aewyn, who had always seemed as blind and deaf as his father— where was he, this morning, after fi dgeting his way through services?

  Their Aewyn had become as slippery as Otter, and sped off on the hunt without a word to his parents, bent on solving matters himself.

  A father was the point the boys shared, the blind and deaf heritage. He 1 0 0

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  had always assumed his blond, bluff son was like him; that if there was any witchery to turn up in his children, small, dark Aemaryen would have that perilous gift, and fair, tall Aewyn would be as deaf as his father.

  “Otter is afraid,” Ninévrisë said softly. “Be forgiving of him.”

  Another woman might take satisfaction in a rival’s child’s diffi culty. Not Ninévrisë. Another woman might have been blind to the risks in the boy coming here, and equally those in his never coming here at all. Not Ninévrisë. She knew what was at issue and where it began.

  He laid his hand on hers, where it rested on his shoulder. “Forgiving is all I can be. He is what he is, and I brought him here on Tristen’s advice.”

  “None better,” Ninévrisë said. “And I will warrant the boy conjured nothing.” A little contraction of her fingers against his shoulder. “Whatever he did, did not pass the wards. I would feel it if he had.”

  “Good for that,” he said, watching the snow fall and hoping he didn’t have a son out on the roads at this moment.

  “Your Majesty.” The Lord Chamberlain himself entered the room. “His Highness Prince Aewyn, with Otter.”

  Oh, indeed? That quickly?

  He turned a serene countenance toward his staff, slipping Ninévrisë’s hand to his arm.

  “Admit them.”

  Bows, courtesies, ceremonies of approach and departure delayed everything in his life, and never the ones he wanted delayed. The Lord Chamberlain, an old, old man, went out to the foyer, doors opened, doors closed, opened again, and Aewyn finally came through them with Otter in tow, Otter wrapped in Aewyn’s cloak, the one puzzle in the sight, and Aewyn and Otter both a little cobwebby about the shoulders, which was no puzzle at all.

  “He didn’t mean to,” Aewyn began, the immemorial beginning of excuses.

  “One is very sure,” Cefwyn said.

  “It was that fool Madelys, my serving - maid,” Aewyn said. “I sent her with breakfast, before the hour, and she screamed and Otter spilled oil all over himself, and he’d ruined his clothes. Paisi’s in Amefel.”

  Now there was a model of concise reporting.

  “Paisi’s in Amefel, you say.”

  “He was worried about Gran, Your Majesty,” Otter said faintly, “with the weather, and all.”

  “So I was going to have my staff look after him,” Aewyn said, with no 1 0 1

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  space for a breath between them, “and see he had breakfast, but that fool maid walked in without a sound and thought she saw what she didn’t see.”

  “Was there magic?” Ninévrisë asked, dropping her hand from Cefwyn’s arm. “Otter, tell the truth.”

  “I tried, Your Majesty,” Otter said in the very faintest of voices. “I’m very sorry.”

  “Why would Paisi go home?” Cefwyn asked.

  “A dream, Your Majesty,” Otter said in anguish. “I had a dream. So did Paisi. So I told him he had to go.”

  “When was this?”

  “Yesterday.”

  A full day on the road, in this weather. Fool boy, Cefwyn thought, hoping Paisi was not frozen in a snowbank somewhere along the road. He made a little wave of his hand. “Let us see. Let us see the damage. Unwrap the cloak, if you please.”

  Otter had clutched it tightly about him. The boots were not auspicious.

  He opened the garment, and showed a wreckage of good tailoring, from oil to attic cobwebs and dust, head to foot.

  “Oh, dear,” Ninévrisë said.

  Otter looked as if he wished he could sink through the fl oor.

  “It’s not his fault!” Aewyn said.

  “No, now, be still. Let Otter answer for himself. Paisi left yesterday, alone, one presumes.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. Well . . . not alone. I sent him with some traders.”

  Cefwyn raised a brow. There had been a certain resourcefulness in the plot. There was a likelihood Paisi would get through.

  “And being without wiser counsel, you took to witchcraft to see his progress? Or was there more to it?”

  “I dreamed again. But I don’t know who Sent it.”

  “A very prudent thought,” Ninévrisë said, with a look at Cefwyn. “Paisi’s gran might have Sent to him: there is that special connection. But Sending past all protections? I never felt it.”

  Wizardry had passed the wards no less than Tristen Sihhë had laid about the Guelesfort windows . . . there was a troubling thought. An ordinary mouse could have made a new hole, a way into the walls, who knew? Ninévrisë saw to such things, quietly, in her own way, but there were ways to make a breach.

  And there was— he never forgot it— one ready source of bad dreams in Amefel.

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  “So you sent Paisi away,” Cefwyn said deliberately, in the tone with which he daunted councillors. “And told no one.”

  “He told me,” his younger son said.

  “So you joined this conspiracy.”

  “Paisi was already gone,” Aewyn protested, “and he wanted to tell you, but there was the dinner, and uncle was there, and he had no chance to, because of how he knew, and the servants coming and going; and he was going to tell you after services today, but the fool maid ruined everything.”

  “Indeed. And where is the fool maid at this moment?”

  “I sent her to the kitchens and told her not to talk to anyone.”

  “In the kitchens, not to talk. Gods save us, boy!”

  “I threat
ened her life,” Aewyn said.

  “Of course,” Cefwyn said, ignoring Aewyn’s protestations, and looked straight into Otter’s eyes. “A problem broadening by the hour. Do you understand that?”

  “I am the only one to blame, Your Majesty.”

  No excuses, no temporizing. And, alas, no ready excuse that would cover it. The pale gray eyes that damned the boy in the observation of honest Guelenfolk stared back at him, incontrovertible heritage.

  “Don’t use magic,” he said bluntly. “Am I asking a bird not to fl y?”

  “No, Your Majesty,” the boy said, and in the silence he left for further comment: “I didn’t want to use it. I won’t use it. I won’t, again, Your Majesty.”

  A damned cold word, that. Father might have carried more intimacy, but the boy had never used that word to him. The exchanges between himself and his own father had been that remote; the tone recalled that fact with an unpleasant chill about the heart, remembering where that bond had ended.

  “Well, well, we have to repair the damage as best we can. Tomorrow, dress in your second - best, that’s the way of it. More clothes are coming.”

  A hesitation. “There’s a stain on it, Your Majesty.”

  “Gods save us, dress in your third - best tomorrow and walk with us. We shall find you staff— who will not, hereafter, see you practicing witchcraft, if you please.”

  “No, Your Majesty. Witchcraft, that is.”

  “You’re confusing the boy,” Ninévrisë said, holding out her hand. “Otter.

  Elfwyn. Lad. Come. You shall have servants, if you please, and you shall walk with us in the morning to the services, if you will, and mend things with the Quinalt, the gods willing. Here. Give me your hand.”

  Ever so gingerly Otter gave his hand, and Ninévrisë took it, kindly drew 1 0 3

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  him close. “Don’t ever fear to approach your father, or me. It was a mistake, is all, a simple mistake, was it not? Your father will send men to Amefel to be sure Paisi is safe— will you not, my lord?”

  Cefwyn cleared his throat. He had not yet thought of it, but it was the sensible thing to do.

  “Bryalt as I am,” Ninévrisë said. “At least say that you are. Unaccustomed to Quinalt holidays, are you, lad? You shall have one of my candles: it smells of evergreen. You may light it in private, and no one will dare say witchcraft, only so you don’t do it in the halls. And you shall have holiday cake, after Fast Day is over. I shall send you some spiced cake, with honey, just the same as in Amefel, even if it is a little early in the season.”

  Were there tears on those lashes? “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

  “And I shall have my own servants look in on you in your quarters, and draw your bath, honest Bryalt folk who won’t take alarm at a holiday candle.”

  The voice grew fainter still. “Thank you ever so much, Your Majesty.”

  “You could indeed have reported the dream to me or to your father, you know. You could have told it within this chamber, and even within our servants’ hearing.”

  “And within Efanor’s,” Cefwyn muttered. “There’s no doing in Amefel that will affright any of this household. Be sure of that.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” The barest whisper.

  “So Paisi left for Amefel,” Cefwyn said. “Afoot?”

  A little hesitation. A look of dread. “On my horse, sir. We couldn’t get to Paisi’s. But Paisi will take good care of him. And Feiny went in all his gear.”

  An interesting notion. “If he isn’t hanged for a horse thief, clever lad.”

  “My lord,” Ninévrisë chided him.

  “Well, he should have come to us early,” Cefwyn said. “Have I ever done anything but good to your gran? Could you doubt I would send someone to inquire?”

  “It was just a dream, Your Majesty.”

  “Adequate to send Paisi out in the snow.”

  “But if I did say, and you sent your guard, and they came to her door, Gran would never tell the truth, not if soldiers came asking after her. We cut all the wood we thought she might need, but this storm’s been going for days. She needs Paisi; she really needed him from the start, but she insisted on sending him with me. She’s all alone, now, and we had the dream, and she can’t haul the wood in if she’s sick.”

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  “Do you believe she is ill?”

  “We both dreamed it, that she was sick.”

  Otter’s behavior encompassed a wide maze of young thinking and young solutions, and with it, a fair amount of adult enterprise, slipping a highbred horse out of the stables, down the hill, and out the city gates in full kit. In the scales of magic active and passive, it was worth noting that after two days, there never yet had been a report the horse was missing, none yet that Paisi’s absence forecast Otter’s adventure in the Guelesfort rooftrees. No less than the Dragon Guard, skilled at uncovering miscreants of every sort, had been turning the Guelesfort upside down for hours without discovering either fact, let alone sending a boy into the heights.

  Slippery and clever: that was one troubling attribute; and as glumly unexpressive toward his king as a habitual felon toward a familiar judge: the one might be a useful skill, even a princely one, but the other would not serve at all, not unless the boy found employment as a bailiff or a town magistrate.

  “Well,” Cefwyn said, trying to provoke a happy spark in those gray eyes,

  “well, take care hereafter. And pray be caught by the servants in some Quinalt rite and stand with the family tomorrow dawn in services. If there arises any question you have observed the Fast— you have observed the Fast, have you not?”

  “Yes, sire.”

  “Well, well, much to the good. We’ll have a priest to declare it, and record your name— your true name, Elfwyn— in the Festival Record tomorrow.”

  Otter brushed— uselessly— at his cobwebby, greasy finery, as if that could erase the oil. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “And there remains the welfare of that rascal Paisi now as well as your honest gran. I shall send men down the road to be sure he got there and see that your gran receives all necessary attentions and supplies, without asking if she needs them.”

  “Thank you, sire.” Gratitude shone out of those gray eyes, utterly clear and bright, lightening all about him for the moment it lived.

  “Well, well, get on with you.” He gave a wave of his hand, dismissing the boys. A dark presence had come in by the door and deserved immediate attention. “Do as you please until morning. Then, gods save you, be on time in the morning! Nevris, I have a message waiting, doubtless. Your patience.”

  “I’ll see the boys to the hall,” Ninévrisë said, understanding, and pressed his hand and swept the boys and the commotion out, doubtless to direct her maids to take certain action. A maid swept a candle and an evergreen bough from the mantel, then hurried off in a flurry of skirts.

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  He, himself had business with the shadow that, after due courtesy to the departing queen, had reappeared in his doorway.

  iii

  “well, master crow?’’ cefwyn said, and the shadow, a man all in black whose appropriate name was Idrys, entered the room. Lord Commander of the Dragon Guard, Idrys was, and in no happy mood— but that might be due to arriving from a long ride on Fast Day noon: no food, no drink to be had, and hours yet to wait for both.

  Idrys gave a cursory nod, a weary nod, and sank into a chair. He had that privilege, in private as they were, and Cefwyn took the seat opposite.

  “Lord Piram is buried, the old scoundrel,” Idrys reported. “With appropriate honors. And his nephew has overcome the son to take the lordship.

  The will was oddly found to confirm it— subject, of course, to royal approval.”

  Never ask how that happened. But the son was feckless and a bully, the nephew worthy. At times Crow’s attendance on a scene improved matters immensely.

  “I cannot offer you drin
k today, alas.”

  Idrys shrugged, long - faced.

  “I have, however, a mission, which you may undertake yourself, or commit to a man you favor.”

  Eyebrow lifted.

  “A mission of mercy, as is. Young Otter has had a vision. His man Paisi has gone haring off to Amefel to see to his gran’s safety— never ask why the boy became uneasy; but Paisi took a good horse and left. Search for Paisi along the road and make sure he gets to Amefel safely. In any case, the old woman is to have the best of care.”

  “I’m to go chasing after the servant in a blizzard?” Idrys frowned, weary and out of sorts. “And this is my great benefi ce?”

  “Yes, after the servant, Crow. Tristen set him to his post, so far more than a servant, and one I would not have missing in a snowbank, thank you. Nor would I see harm come to the old woman, with her connections. He’s taken my son’s horse, and he’s had two days’ start.”

  “A horse thief, to boot. Do you hint I should go personally, or shall I indeed send a man?”

  “Use your discretion. I am uneasy about this. I cannot define why, but 1 0 6

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  it seems remarkable to me that Otter’s conspiracy could steal a highbred horse, escape the gate, and elude all detection for two days by the best of your men.”

  The eyebrow rose a second time, and stayed. Master Crow understood such things, and knew that a run of luck where Aswydds or Sihhë blood might be involved was worth a closer look. He had fought in Elwynor and seen what he had seen.

  “They’ll be coming to holidays in the west,” Cefwyn added slyly, “by the time your man could reach Amefel. There is the benefi ce.”

  “The boy is here. Consequently I worry for things here, my lord king. I’ll send a man.”

  “Cakes and ale,” Cefwyn said wickedly.

  “They can be had here, today.” A man on Fast Day was not even supposed to entertain such thoughts. “A little removed from the heart of noble sanctity.”

  “Blasphemy.”

  “Yet the boy stayed behind and sent his man to Amefel. Duty to his sov-ereign, do you think, m’lord king? Filial affection? Ambition?”