Fortress of Ice

by C. J. Cherryh

c. j. cherryh

  Lord Tristen even seeming to notice them. Lord Tristen led him to the stairs, and up and up the rickety web. The steps trembled and groaned underfoot, and Elfwyn gripped the rail as he went.

  They passed one of the faces. He would have sworn it turned, when he looked back, and did catch it in motion.

  “Don’t look at them,” Tristen said. “Don’t talk to them. Not all are trustworthy.”

  Did they speak? He heard nothing but groaning, nor wanted to hear. He gripped the rail, white - knuckled, and kept close to Lord Tristen as they arrived on an upper balcony.

  “You may sleep up here tonight,” Lord Tristen said. “My wards are constant about the keep, and you will not weaken them.”

  Tristen took a lighted candle from its sconce, pulled the latch of a door, and let him into a small, stone - walled room with a shuttered horn - pane window. A crack split that wall. It ran around the window and up and down, above the ceiling and below the floor. It was a little room, with scarcely room for the bed and table it contained.

  Tristen went to that window and ran his hand across its sill, across the crack. “Follow the line of the window, not the rift: the wall is a Line that Masons drew, do you see, and the stone is a barrier. But in that protection, for us to come and go there must needs be breaches, doors and windows, and these are its weaknesses. Locking a door is a ward. So is a wish to draw a line and to keep harm out. Draw it with fire or with the warmth of a hand.”

  This he did, and now a faint blue light showed in the shadowy places, a Line brought to life.

  Elfwyn drew in his breath, alone with this power, and with magic itself, and not knowing what might happen next.

  “Stones remember such things very well,” Tristen said. “And doors and shutters become part of them. The Line Masons draw is potent, if renewed.”

  “It glows,” Elfwyn said, and this caused Tristen to look sharply at him.

  “Not all will see a light, but this is a magic Men can use even without Seeing, and one you can use without fear— it lies upon the earth, deeply, and has the earth’s bones for strength: it will not come back on you or betray you. It can be broken, by great strength, but never turned against you. Only beware of casting outward, of looking beyond those wards if enemies are about.”

  “Are there enemies?” he asked, not believing they would ever come here.

  “You know you have enemies,” Tristen said.

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  “The priests,” he said.

  “More than that,” Tristen said. “Be Mouse. Mouse did not grow as old as he is by ignoring Owl. He always looks about him.”

  “I don’t know where to look,” Elfwyn said, hoping for an answer, but Tristen walked to the door, and he made his appeal. “Show me wizardry.

  Teach me. I want to learn.”

  “So you can be Owl?”

  He didn’t know the right answer to that. Tristen gave him no clues. He had always been good at saying what the authority that ruled him wanted to hear, and now he found authority who gave him no clue how to please.

  “I don’t know, my lord. I don’t know what’s right.”

  “Be content. Be content right now.”

  “But will I see Aewyn again?” he asked. “And will Gran be safe from my mother?”

  “Patience is one thing you lack,” Tristen said quietly. “Patience is one thing you must gain. Vision is another.”

  Elfwyn drew a breath, and another, seeing he was losing ground, and that the very person who held all he possibly wanted had, indeed, posed him a lesson: not one he wanted, but at least Tristen posed him a challenge he could overcome.

  “I shall try,” he said quietly. “If I understood what you mean, I think I could do better.”

  “Words Unfold to me, in their time. Perhaps these words will Unfold to you.”

  “Unfold.”

  “Like a flower blooming,” Tristen said. “They open.”

  “I wish they would,” Elfwyn said in despair, and Tristen said:

  “Wishing may indeed help.”

  He might have said, in bitter honesty— It would help me more if you explained to me, but the candle - shadow caught Tristen’s face at that moment, and turned it from young man to that grim and somber visage— the Tristen Sihhë of legend, the terrible man on the black horse, the man who became a dragon.

  Patience and Vision. Simpleminded advice, each syllable of which struck his heart like a hammerblow, at this dark, lonely hour, in this place.

  “I shall wish, my lord. I shall wish it earnestly.”

  A somber look, directly at him. “Beware of the quality of your wishes, and beware, not of anger, but of selfi sh anger.”

  “Only selfi sh anger, my lord?”

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  “This too: love you must have, love that comes to you from outside, un-bought and unasked for. Do you understand? You cannot hold it. You cannot compel it. But you must keep it when it comes.”

  He had had a glimmering of that sort of love. He had it from Gran. He had it from Paisi. He knew it now with particular poignancy. He had had the merest taste of it in Aewyn, before Guelen hate drove him out.

  “How do I keep it, then?” Elfwyn asked.

  “Deserve it,” Tristen said.

  The air seemed too heavy to breathe.

  “Give as well as get,” Tristen said. “Be honest. Be more than just. Be kind. And consider carefully what you are and what others are.”

  Kind. That was Gran’s sort of advice. It wasn’t what he hoped to hear as a beginning of wizard - work.

  “Above all,” Tristen said, “you mustn’t stay here when I leave.”

  Elfwyn’s heart beat faster and faster. “Are you going somewhere?”

  “I believe I must,” Tristen said.

  “May I go with you, my lord?”

  Tristen shook his head. “No. You will go ahead of me. My enemies are your enemies, and not to your good. You have a knack for opening doors.

  You must go with fi rst light.”

  “Sir?” He was completely dismayed. He’d learned nothing, and now was he dismissed?

  “You must go,” Tristen said, “well supplied, and with Owl to guide you out. Otherwise, you might not find your way back to your house. Gran and Paisi are waiting for you.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said, deeply disappointed.

  “For the safety of us all,” Tristen said, “remember everything I’ve said.

  Your enemies will want you to forget, and to fear, and you must do neither.

  Sleep now.”

  Elfwyn sank down with one knee on the patchwork quilt, and Tristen lit the candle on the little table beside the bed, then left, closing the door. The latch clicked, and Elfwyn found his eyes growing heavier and heavier. He didn’t want to sleep. He didn’t want to be shut in this room.

  And he most of all didn’t want to leave in the morning, but he saw no choice for himself. Tristen had never answered his questions, except to warn him— you have a knack for opening doors, as if everything were his fault, the way Trassin had said; and except to explain about wards, and to strengthen one, right in front of him, a crack that, unmended, split the wall and let in the cold.

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  He got under the covers, having no other recourse. The bed was comfortable and not at all musty, the bedclothes well kept.

  And now that Tristen had mentioned Gran and Paisi, he felt a rising anxiousness for them, a surety he truly needed to be going back, that this place, even Uwen’s cottage, was not the right place for him.

  He didn’t know what had turned his opinion around. He suspected Tristen had, and he wished he hadn’t, and that his answer had been different, but Gran— Gran did miss him, and Paisi did, and if Lord Tristen was going to ride out into the world again— then the power that had decreed he ought to live in the first place would come and see how things were in the land, and maybe set his life in order.
At least there might be a hope for him.

  He slept.

  And waked again, with the candle out, and in darkness. For some reason he felt alarm. He heard a series of noises, like someone thumping at boards just outside the door.

  He lay still, fearing to move, for a long time, and ashamed of himself.

  Then there came a scratching at his door, as if someone were playing a game with him, and that made him angry. He rolled out of bed, and pulled the latch, to face whatever it was in the light outside.

  A rush of air and a battering of claws and broad wings drove him back in.

  Owl, he realized. Owl had prevented him leaving. The terrible sight of swinging stairs and faces alive in the walls lingered in his vision, branded there by the one burst of light, before he had slammed the door to keep Owl away from him.

  He reeled away, and sat down on the bedclothes, then recalled what Tristen told him about wards.

  He made a pass of his hand across the door, and all about the wall, wanting, this time, not to be the one who opened windows. He did it all around three times, to be sure. Then he tucked down into the warm covers, hearing the sigh of wind outside. But everywhere he had just walked, the wards glowed palest blue.

  Did I do that? he asked himself in wonder. Did I do that?

  Or did Lord Tristen?

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  vi

  A GOOD BOY, tristen thought, sitting by the fire. he wished paisi might have come with the boy, though if Gran was ill, there was ample reason not.

  Gran being ill, now, that was a very grave business, one that might bring danger on them all prematurely, and whether it was the course of nature or not, he felt uneasy to have that news.

  He had reached so seldom out of Ynefel. It was never wise to put forth magic carelessly, however potent, and he disliked breaching his own wards, for whatever purpose.

  But this boy—

  This boy was the very reason he had pent himself up in Ynefel in recent years: he had been reluctant to lay hands on the situation too early and often, fearing he might blind himself to what truly was moving through it.

  Now, clear of the quiet workings of Tarien Aswydd, he had gained a certain perspective, enough to see past others’ fears. And his own.

  Elfwyn’s heart was clean, still clean. But he had seen him attack Owl himself, up above, and he had felt the wards, how they quivered, not quite what they had been. There was in the boy that little darkness that could well nest something else, something older and more dangerous— that was the thing to fear. The sins at first would be inadvertent, the opening of a window for the best of intentions. The boy was a cipher, and with threads of connection running under doors that could not safely be opened . . . not safely, because there was no sure way to close them after.

  And that Elfwyn had recourse here, unasked— that was worth a question: he had battered at the gates asking help— but at whose will? Something had wanted the boy to come to him. Perhaps it was even his own will, in some obscure, inclusive circle of his wards about those he loved: Sihhë magic could work that way. He wondered if Gran herself was strong enough to do it, or if possibly— least likely— the boy’s own will had found its own direction.

  That was what he had indeed hoped, even wished over the infant, who had become Otter and now Elfwyn— that Hasufin, who had created that intended vessel for his own shell, would be driven so far from the world he would be ages finding his way back; or at very least— that the vessel itself would not be overcome without such a struggle that it would advise him of the danger.

  There was a hollow spot in Elfwyn, as in the first Elfwyn’s child. Perhaps there always would be that hollow spot in the boy— not want of a soul: he 2 1 8

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  had that. Perhaps it was want of love. At least what wanted him— an old enemy, the oldest of enemies— had not gotten in at his birth, or thereafter.

  He was still an innocent. Thank Gran for that. It was not an old soul who had gotten past his front gates, to Uwen’s peril, but a young and innocent one, not quite as innocent or as vulnerable as he had been, but still clean.

  The power that wanted him born had not gotten in.

  But this year the boy, nearly a man, came under attack. Everyone attached to the boy now came into danger. Elfwyn was Unfolding, like a word; and that Unfolding would shape him— would, at its worst, work like luck and move everything and everyone aside who opposed the Shape he was born to have— would, blind force, like a seed in the ground that pushes and shoves to reach life below and above, become stronger as it progressed. Elfwyn might yet prove a shell, a husk around an undetectable seed.

  That was the danger. Elfwyn was no match, yet, for what might begin to flower in him.

  Had he done wrong to preserve the child?

  Preserving him, he preserved Cefwyn. He preserved a good king, and a good man, and his friend.

  Preserving him, he preserved himself from a deed he could not contemplate and still be himself.

  Preserving him— and knowing where he was, and trying to fi ll that hollow place—

  Well, at least they had a watch over him.

  Tristen bent, reached to the woodpile by the fireside, and put a stick in, letting the fire take it, watching the bright light that had always been wonderful to him— warmth and pain, the two first lessons of his life, close together and so finely divided. His body, after all his wounds, bore only one scar. It was on his hand, the fi rst one.

  Perhaps, he thought, he should go immediately as far as to Henas’amef and meet with Crissand . . . or send, as he could, and bring Cefwyn here.

  One stride through the gray space, and he could do that.

  But above all, he had to be careful. His own will was potent: he could fi ll that hollow in Elfwyn with a Word, and if he did, and if he began to work toward a thing in the outside world, he himself might bend the world in ways that he could not predict . . . precisely because Hasufin was gone from the world. His enemies had a value to the world: they could oppose him, and most things could not. He had all but unstoppable power. But he had learned a hard lesson in Elwynor, that his own will was not necessarily wisest or best for the world.

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  The stick burned to a wisp of ash and fell away. He rose from his seat then and walked out into the echoing great hall, and to the door.

  A face appeared there, looking inward.

  “Mauryl,” he said. “Mauryl, my teacher.”

  The face seemed to change somewhat, or maybe it was the candlefl ame moving.

  He remembered his days with Mouse and Owl, prey and predator, how he had learned to esteem each, and how such things as a rain barrel had taught him, when Mauryl lived in Ynefel.

  It had all come crashing down one day, when the beams fell, when a foolish boy had made a mistake with the wards.

  “A boy has come here, Master,” he said. “A boy has come to me for help.

  What shall I do?”

  Dared he go out into the world and learn what had become of the things he knew, what mortals had come into the world, and who of his old friends had left it?

  He wasn’t sure, tonight, that he had the courage.

  The eyes of the face moved, and looked at him.

  “Let him go,” the stone face said.

  Let him go, echoed through the depths of the fortress. Not simple words.

  Mauryl’s words never were. They had to be understood at every depth. Let him go.

  Let go of him. Don’t touch him. Let him fly free. Let him do what he will.

  It was not what he wanted to hear. Mauryl’s advice rarely was.

  Mauryl himself had been known to be wrong, had he not? Wrong, or Mauryl would not be as he was. But Mauryl had, at the end of his life, known his enemy.

  Let him go.

  He waited until daylight, then, and went out to the yard by fi rst light.

  Uwen was up and about, tending the boy’s horse.
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br />   “Saddle him,” Tristen said. “Our guest has to go this morning.”

  Uwen’s hands stopped their work, a soldier’s hands, gentle at their present task. And Uwen straightened his back and looked at the sky, which was overcast and sifting snow, before he looked back again. “Weather’s hard, still. Shall I escort ’im to the edge, m’lord?”

  “No,” Tristen said. “Owl will guide him, such as he can. We shall be riding out ourselves, soon, to Henas’amef. But not today.”

  A little silence. Uwen never asked to understand what he did, but seemed to know, at times, more than most Men.

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  “Aye, m’lord,” Uwen said, and kept at his brushing. “I’ll have ’im ready just after breakfast.”

  After that encounter, he went inside to write a message, and to wait until Cook’s boy brought cakes over, and until Elfwyn stirred forth and came down the stairs.

  “Breakfast,” Tristen said, and offered him cakes and tea. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Mostly, my lord,” Elfwyn said, which was truth with a hollow spot, too.

  Tristen said nothing to that, only shared breakfast with him and put him out of doors with his own good cloak, a fire kit, and a packet of cakes to go with him.

  “Uwen has your horse saddled,” Tristen said, “and grain for him in the bags. Owl will guide you. Don’t stop or turn aside for anything.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Elfwyn said, as they stood on the steps. “Thank you very much.”

  It had a wistful sound. Elfwyn had wanted ever so much more from him.

  But he left in possession of his right name, and he had heard the truth and had a bag full of Cook’s cakes. There were less useful answers to a petition.

  “Be careful,” Tristen wished him, and took him by the arms and looked him close in the eyes, searching for any flaw. It was not apparent in him, except that little frown: anger, always anger. “Find Paisi, care for Gran, and take this—” He drew a little sealed paper from his belt and gave it to him.

  “Take it to Lord Crissand and wish him well from me.”

  “Yes, my lord.” The boy tucked the paper into his own bosom, and took his bag and his blessing, and went down the steps to the courtyard, where Uwen and Cook and Cadun all waited outside to bid him good - bye.