Fortress of Ice

by C. J. Cherryh

  “My lord king,” Idrys said unbidden, “consider, not alone the boy’s mother, but the mother’s sister. Born at a sorceress’s will—”

  “You are about to offend me, Crow.”

  “Sorcery brought you into the Aswydd’s bed, sorcery conceived a son you will not now disavow— on what advice, yes, has generally been good advice, 1 3 7

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  but Lord Tristen never counseled you to bring that boy into the Quinalt, my lord king. I would wager heavily on that. This was your own notion.”

  “Damn you, Crow!”

  “Oh, I’ll deserve it more before I’m done speaking. What you do, you do broad and far. You were a wild and froward boy. You are a generous and occasionally excessive man, where it touches your demonstrations of the gentler sentiments: love me, love my boys, or be damned to you all. Do I mistake your intent to press popular sentiment to the wall? You appointed the Holy Father: you can unseat him if he crosses you— but you’ll come to me to do the deed. Oh, I do serve you, my lord king, but His Grace has warned you, and I warn you. I miss Master Grayfrock. He’d mince no words. You fi nd yourself hell - bent on a course that will destroy you— wizards are in it. And is there not a smell of wizardry about this boy? Say no, and I’ll know for a certainty you’re bespelled, my lord king.”

  It was one of Crow’s better speeches. It left Cefwyn silent, except to say:

  “You advised me drown him at birth.”

  “I don’t think I specified the method, my lord king, but I did foresee this moment.”

  “So did His Majesty,” Efanor said, “or he’d not have been so stubborn in this matter.”

  “Damn both of you! This is not for jest!”

  “You brought this boy in,” Idrys said in measured tones, “while I was otherwise occupied. You had no wish to hear my opinions on the matter. But being here now, I give them, gratis.”

  “If I’m ever cut, Idrys will bring salt, will he not?”

  “The boy,” Efanor said, “has no ill will, nor malice in him, nor practices anything unwholesome. He is innocent, and as Emuin would say, worse than that, he is ignorant. That said, this morning proves he has the Gift, in what measure I cannot tell— but enough: enough to make him a door through which Tarien Aswydd can look into this place, if not enter. The Quinaltine dead are roused . . . to what, I cannot say. It was no simple sneeze that hurled that censer to the stones. It was a struggle between what thin line protects the Quinaltine and what forces would bring utmost harm on you, on the queen, and on both your sons.”

  “No.”

  “Hear me. In him, Tarien has what she still lusts after: power. You always meant to take him from his mother. You snatched him from her at birth, you instructed him to fear her. But you had no power to break her desire for him.”

  “What would I, kill her and loose another ghost?”

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  “What will you? Disinherit Crissand’s sons and install this boy as the Aswydd?”

  “No. That is not my intent.”

  “No place for him, then, in Amefel, where he might live. What shall you teach him to be, then? A captain of the Guard? He can’t ride, or fence. A cleric, perhaps! An Aswydd cleric!”

  “If I wanted him a cleric, I’d send him to the Teranthines.”

  “If we could find one. Their shrines stand vacant. And even they would fear him. For what do you prepare this boy?”

  “I am making a lasting peace between my sons, exactly the reverse of our father’s intent for us.”

  “Sons defy their fathers’ wishes. What, when your sons defy yours?”

  He could argue with Master Crow. Crow only vexed him. Efanor had a way of cutting deeper, touching his fear for Nevris, for his daughter, and his son, in for the likelihood that Aswydd sorcery had indeed some purpose for his long - ago misdeeds, and revenge as its object. His stomach was upset, and for a moment he averted his face from the arguments, standing, arms folded, face to the windows.

  “The boy should go home,” Idrys said.

  “Crow.” The Marhanen temper threatened to get the better of him.

  “Time you left.”

  “He’s done all you wished,” Efanor said. “He’s forgiven and blessed, and written in the holy record. And if his gran, as we have now established with Brother Trassin, is ill— if she should get worse— if there were a messenger to arrive with dire news, if the boy were simply to fly home to his gran, as a consequence of such a missive, it would be a great success he has achieved here. Would it not? There would be an explanation for his departure. And talk would die down.”

  Cefwyn let go a long, diffi cult breath.

  “I like the boy,” Efanor said. “He has admirable qualities.”

  “We are not burying him, damn it all! He will be back!”

  “Indeed.” Idrys had not gone away as requested. Cefwyn looked at him, where Idrys leaned, long arms folded, against the royal writing desk. “The stench of fire in the sanctuary is too evident, my lord king. And if we strip another stone from the chapel, and another, why, the priests will pray on bare earth by snowmelt.”

  “Aewyn will be in mourning,” Cefwyn said.

  “And what ever endeared itself to a boy’s heart like the forbidden?”

  Efanor asked. “Separate them, and they’ll fl y together.”

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  “And hate me for it.”

  “The boy is worried about his gran. This is my advice. Satisfy that. Let a message call the boy home now. Then bring him back in fat, lazy summer, when the streets are dusty and people are in more generous humor. Let the people see him out in the country, hunting with Aewyn, attending harvest dances, and playing pranks like boys, not— not visiting the Quinaltine at the hinge of the year, when everything is at odds. Let the people see his better qualities.”

  “Shall I tell you how he misled the stablemaster?” Idrys said smoothly.

  “Wit and guile together. Those are important qualities.”

  Cefwyn’s fist hit the table nearest. “You have what you want, damn you, Crow. And if it’s bad influence you want, you’re sending him closest to it.”

  “You will be sending him back to Paisi’s gran, with due warning, and a little wiser about the wide world. In all these years, he’s been safe there.”

  “I’ll want to know the rumors out of Amefel,” Cefwyn said, “with no salt or sauce on them.”

  “That you shall,” Idrys said. “But nearer at hand, there is the spy the Holy Father settled in the boy’s rooms. That man should be fed a careful diet in the next few hours— for the Holy Father’s benefi t.”

  “I’ll see to it,” Efanor said.

  “Feed him what you like,” Cefwyn said to Efanor’s departing back, “but get him out the Guelesfort doors within the hour. And you may tell the Holy Father that the Quinalt will resolve this matter, or their king will be offended. We are well certain that through lack of zeal on their part— perhaps even conspiracy against us, for political reasons— they have damaged the stones and attempted this threat to the Crown.”

  Efanor stopped dead. “I would hesitate at this point to declare war on the Holy Father.”

  “The Holy Father will not have my ear, I say, until this business is smoothed over. I’m sure you can state that position with suffi cient diplomacy.”

  “Shall I advise the boy to prepare?” Efanor asked.

  Cefwyn shook his head and cast a look at Idrys. “One of your men can contrive a message from Amefel. Do that first. Let him come into the hall, spread gossip in the kitchens, the usual thing.”

  “Whenever my lord king commands,” Idrys said.

  “He is my son, damn you. My son, who is nowhere at fault in this. Dispatch your messenger, let that damned spy see it when you deliver it— I fear the boy will have to believe it at least for an hour. I’ll tell the boy the truth directly before supper. Arrange an escort to leave with him, before daybreak tomorrow.”


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  “My lord king,” Idrys said, grimly satisfi ed.

  Efanor said nothing, only left.

  iii

  otter had no appetite for food. the lay brother had set a tray down on the table and taken a certain amount back to his little chamber, where he ate and drank as if there were no spot on the Quinaltine floor and no shadow there.

  Otter’s stomach knew otherwise. Aewyn had dined with his mother this noon, and asked him to come, too; but he had no desire to sit at table with the queen asking him questions he would not know how to answer.

  Was it better today? Her Majesty might ask.

  No, he would have to say, if he were honest.

  And: What troubles you? she might ask, which was worse, because the dreams were back, just behind his eyelids, whenever he shut his eyes at all, now. He saw fi re, firelight on snow, and Henas’amef sitting on its hill, and a trail leading through snowy woods.

  He saw Gran’s house as all blackened sticks.

  Doors opened and closed. He supposed Brother Trassin had taken his noon dishes out himself, though the man had done little else, and fed himself prodigiously, to judge by the size of the tray he had taken to his rooms.

  In time, the man came back from the kitchens. Otter was reading at the time, and only noted it, and kept reading, trying to lose himself in the words.

  But the poetry had failed to hold him. It was all about spring and fl owers, and outside his windows, snow was coming down again, thick and wild, piling up on the sills—

  Snow would be falling, likewise, in Amefel, across the river. Snow would put out fires. Gran was never careless with fires. She never had been.

  Brother Trassin came to the doorway of the room with a rolled paper in hand.

  “Pray to the gods,” the brother said. “Bad news, poor boy. Very bad news.”

  He didn’t understand, at first, what the brother meant. But he laid his book aside on the table. “Sir?” he asked, rising.

  “This has come,” Brother Trassin said, and handed him an opened document, its two seals already cracked, two shades of red wax. “I have the greatest concern, boy, the greatest concern for you.”

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  He was puzzled. He understood he was to read the paper, and held it so the window’s light shone through it. It was from a military clerk’s hand.

  It said, beyond the opening and name of the Guelen clerk, that a guardsman who had visited Gran had come to the Guelesfort at midafternoon with a spoken message, which was rendered here as the guardsman said it and meant to be delivered to him.

  The woman is very ill. She urgently wants her grandson at her side.

  It was hardly Gran’s way of saying things, or even a soldier’s, but it had evidently come through a clerk, and the words would have changed. There was, appended to the bottom of the paper another statement, from the Commander of the Dragon Guard: His Majesty excuses you from services.

  Somehow— not by the ordinary way messengers came and went— this had gotten into Trassin’s hands. The broken seals— the first was plain, but the second looked like an official seal, with the Dragon on it, in red wax, said that Trassin had read it.

  Fear made his stomach upset. He felt a profound shock and all the same, he was angry.

  “How did you get this?”

  “From the Lord Commander, in your name, boy, as in care of you.”

  “And read it? How long have you had it?”

  “Dear boy!”

  “How long have you had it?”

  “Just now I got it. I was in the kitchens. The Guard is forming an escort for you, in the early hours. They are calling up the horses and packing for the journey. They will escort you out before the sun, back to Amefel, to deliver you back into Lord Crissand’s lordship and lose no time about it. I heard this, and went to the Prince, who confirmed it, and I came here, to bring you the message myself, poor boy.”

  A message from Gran would have passed Paisi on the road and Paisi would be with her by now. Paisi would be seeing to her welfare. She would be well by now. There was surely no reason to worry— this was at least three days old. Or more than that. And his father knew it, and was sending him with an escort of soldiers—

  “Your dreams,” Brother Trassin said, “your dreams of misfortune must have some unhappy foundation in fact, and, poor boy, this instruction is in error. You cannot hope to help your gran. You have your own soul to save, you are written in the book, here you are on the verge of bettering yourself, and this woman sends after you, I can only imagine with what infl uence at work. I can appeal to the Holy Father—”

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  “I shall pray for my gran, sir.” His mouth could scarcely shape words that might mollify this man, and he had no idea what to say. Brother Trassin had spoken to him very little except to pray over him, and now wanted to advise him not to go, and he had no idea what his father was about, unless— unless they knew of some reason Paisi hadn’t gotten there.

  He wanted to fling the missive down, to run, as fast as he could for better advice. But this man had already been to His Grace. Where was there, but Aewyn? And Aewyn would know nothing, not about messages that came through the Lord Commander.

  “Pray for yourself, poor boy. Let me counsel you, your gran’s country witchcraft may seem innocent, but it will drag you down to a deeper well of corruption, by ever so little steps, if you listen to wicked dreams. Sorcery wants you back, but you must not go. Your whole upbringing is out of wizardry and worse. Sorcery wants you. Fires, the fires you dream of at night, boy— those are the fires of hell.”

  His heart beat faster. “What about the fires?” His own dream from last night eluded him, increasingly, hiding details and fading from his grasp: Brother Trassin had waked him and sent it scattering and fading in the shock of being wakened. “What did I say last night?”

  “ ‘Gran,’ you cried, and ‘the fire, the fire in the wood.’ And when I waked you, you looked about as if you were there, not here, and you shouted aloud,

  ‘Watch out for the beam,’ as if you were seeing something not present. These dreams are devil - sent, boy, I know they are. And I told you that you should get up immediately and pray to stop them, but you said go away. So I did. I did, but I did pray for you, boy, and I had the utmost reason, in your refusal.”

  “It was just a dream, was all.” He tried to believe that, and to argue rationally with the man. “This is a message from my gran. It came by horse, not devils!”

  Even if my father knows something different.

  “Devils, I say, devils. The gods never sent you these persistent dreams of fire and harm. The devils do. They called away the witch’s grandson. He had no trouble answering. And if you fall into these visions, and go back to that benighted province, I fear for you. You have not the strength on your own to fight these influences. And think of this— think of this, boy. If the gods do take your grandmother, it may be in time to turn your soul from ruin and save her soul from worse sin. Mark me, boy: the gods in their mercy may have wished to save the young soul who lived under that roof, but you have to turn from your mother’s wicked ways. The gods will not forgive a willful lapse, boy. The gods’ retribution may be delayed, but not . . .”

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  “No,” he cried a second time, and struck out, knocking the precious book of poetry to the floor. “My gran heals her neighbors. Her spells heal or find lost things!”

  “Her healing is a false healing. Her knowledge is blasphemous. The gods’

  prerogatives are not for ignorant hands to use.”

  “Go away!” he cried. “Just leave, damn you! Don’t come back!”

  “If I do go, I take the gods’ mercy with me. It may be forever, boy!”

  “Get out!” He moved toward Brother Trassin, to shove him bodily out of the rooms, but Brother Trassin mistook his intent and abandoned his stance
in haste, crying,

  “Violence! Gods save us from devils!”

  Brother Trassin fled through the arch, across the sitting room, out the door and slammed it.

  Otter stood shaking beside the table, unable to prevent the man from spreading lies or offer reason to silence him. Trassin was the Patriarch’s man, and bent on damning him with the priests of the Quinalt and with Prince Efanor and now with every devout Quinaltine, because this man, Efanor had warned him, was here for that very purpose. Priests had power. He had seen that, in the king’s anxiousness to have him please the Quinalt and have his name written in the book, and now everything must have gone wrong.

  Priests in the Quinaltine might have seen the spot on the floor, and the shadows, and the lines of fire that had grown up during services; Efanor had gripped his hand: he could see them, too, though nobody else had seemed to notice . . . he had thought he had gotten away safely, escaped the harm and left it all behind.

  But his dream pursued him. The letter advised him that Gran was desperate— or that his father had realized what was in the sanctuary hated him.

  The Five Gods surely hated him and wanted him out of their sanctuary, was it not clear? His father’s gods wanted nothing to do with sorcery, or the Aswydds, or him. They were going to send him out with soldiers, in the dead of night, when dark things should be abroad.

  And now that man ran down the Guelesfort halls crying out about devils and violence, and the report would get to the Quinaltine, and it would be bad. If he stayed to argue, or got into some tangle between his father and the priests and the soldiers— and who knew what had happened to delay Paisi, or if he had gotten there at all?— Gran might die alone.

  Beware this man, his uncle had said, pinning great importance on it, and he had failed to mollify Brother Trassin. Trassin was his enemy, things in the Quinaltine had gone wrong, Efanor had probably told his father, and 1 4 4

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  everything had collapsed in ruin. He would be lucky if he ever saw Aewyn until they both were men, and by then they might be enemies, as Guelenfolk tended to be toward Amefi n.