Fortress of Ice

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Your Grace,” he murmured.

  “This ring is more than a ring. It comes from him. It will guard you as well as supply you. Do not let it leave your fi nger.”

  “I shall take great care of it, Your Grace, and bring it back as soon as—”

  “Wear it for your gran’s sake, until Lord Tristen comes, to be sure you want for nothing, nor meet any need or obstacle this small thing can clear.

  This I lend you, since we do not have his letter, or know his intent: this will keep you safe until he gives me better advice. But know that if you do any mischief, this ring will not be good to you. Dare you wear it?”

  “I,” he began, the ring clenched in his fist and that fist held against his heart. “Bringing this near my mother— if she took it from me—”

  Crissand smiled. “Let her try. Challenge Ynefel? That is what it would be. I think it will rest very safely on your hand in such circumstances. She will be of no mind to touch it, or you, while you wear it.”

  He put it on with trepidation. His whole hand tingled. “My lord duke,”

  he said, still perturbed, and Duke Crissand patted his arm and held it close for a moment.

  “Your father’s son,” Crissand said, “far more than hers. Head - on and headlong, reckless in all things. I love him, but I do advise him, and you, as much as I can— be careful.”

  “I shall be, m’lord.”

  Crissand let him go then, and he bowed, and walked away, and bowed 2 4 5

  c. j. cherryh

  again, as respectful in this grand hall as people would be in leaving his father’s presence. He went all the way out the double doors, where the guard was, and Paisi was waiting for him.

  “He gave me a ring,” he said, and showed it to Paisi, a silver band worked in vines and grapes. The guard saw it at the same time, he was sure of that, and he was extraordinarily proud to be back in his father’s good graces, and to have a thing from the duke of Amefel that the priests in Guelessar would never, ever countenance his wearing. It was a vindication, the very power he had hoped for to defend himself and Gran and Paisi, and he by no means intended to misuse it or to let any accident befall it. “So I can see my mother, he says. So he’ll know where I am. With this I can bring Gran anything she needs.”

  “Will ye really see your mum?” Paisi asked, who must have been listening.

  That settled him to earth. Not yet, he decided, although the thought had taken root in him that he should do it before Lord Tristen came, and before she thought she’d scared him into lasting fear of her, and before he lost all chance to see her.

  He just didn’t want to face her yet, while he was still so tired he wasn’t thinking clearly. Tomorrow, perhaps. Tomorrow, he might come back into town.

  iv

  YOUR SON HAS RETURNED SAFELY, crissand wrote that same morning. WHEN

  your ward reached his house, he indeed went west, and reports he has seen Lord Tristen, who he says has informed him he should carry the name Elfwyn. He reports that the lord of Ynefel will come as far as Henas’amef, how soon and in what intent, unfortunately, I do not know. He says that Ynefel gave him a message for me, but that he lost it on the way, in bad weather.

  This alarms me, as I am sure it will trouble us all.

  In the loss of Ynefel’s message, I have lent your ward the ring which Ynefel gave me, the nature of which I have made clear to your ward, and which he did not fear to take, except that he feared its presence might incite his mother. He has indeed asked to visit her. He is convinced her ill will may have caused certain misfortunes, and he seems to believe that Ynefel’s arrival may deal with her. I am uneasy in his intention, but mindful of your request to allow him all former privileges, and considering that, indeed, 2 4 6

  fortress of ice

  things might be afoot in which my forbidding him might have consequences I cannot foresee, I provided Ynefel’s ring as a protection against her infl uence and trust that his power will not permit harm to your son. Priests inform me that she has remained quiet, though your son’s insistence that she bears responsibility for his difficulties continues to trouble me as I write. I hope that I have done wisely in granting this request, and I shall continue vigilant in her case.

  In all matters Amefel remains staunch and earnest in service of Your Majesty and Ylesuin. Likewise we remain confident our brother lords round about will be ready, as before, to support Your Majesty by all efforts, including our attendance in court in Guelemara, no matter the season, if requested. In this our brother lords surely concur.

  Amefel salutes you and the Bryaltine fathers hold you in their prayers, against all harm, in constant intercession . . .

  So it went, the usual formula at the end, with unusual force, considering.

  If he himself had leaned to any sect, it had been to the Teranthines, the sect of wizards, which had few rites, nineteen gods, a great deal of study, and not a single other adherent within all Amefel, that he knew. His hand felt naked without the ring he had lent the boy, and he felt less aware of the world than he had been. He had been long on the edge of wizardry and sorcery, he had the latter hanging quite literally over his head, and the absence of that trinket and its perceptions ought to be a relief, but it was not.

  And the boy— the boy, another Aswydd, and now claiming that name—

  He cared nothing for his own title. He had had no ambitions to be duke of Amefel, or aetheling, that peculiar honor that was, in history and in legality, a kingship in its own right. Amefel had wished to be like Elwynor, which was independent under Ninévrisë; but Amefel had become, by bloody murder, more closely bound; the aethelings, the Aswydd house, however, had continued to rule . . . payment for a bit of treachery.

  No, he hadn’t wanted the title. But he had a wife, and the children, and his boys, other Aswydds, might remotely be in danger, if Otter— now Elfwyn Aswydd— found adherents to put forth a claim to set him in that offi ce.

  He had faith in Cefwyn Marhanen— to say that any Aswydd had faith in a Marhanen king was unprecedented; but he did, in the man, if not in the lineage. He had faith that this Marhanen king was very unlike the last two, the first of whom had slaughtered the last remnant of the Sihhë - lords in Amefel, namely Elfwyn Sihhë . . .

  Cefwyn Marhanen had taken a most uncommon friend, and, after all but wiping out the Aswydd lineage, had set him in power, and saved Lady 2 4 7

  c. j. cherryh

  Tarien, and kept his own Aswydd bastard alive— at Tristen’s behest, true, but also because Cefwyn was a new thing in that bloody line— a Marhanen king who stuck at murder . . .

  An Aswydd duke with a family to protect ought rightly to take precautions now, establish ties to Bryalt priests, who always had been uneasy under Cefwyn’s rule . . . find others who chafed under what were essentially fair laws and fair taxes: but what would that make him if he followed his own father’s course?

  He found no course for himself but to stay loyal, and care for the king’s son, and hope to the gods he so frequently offended that events would not come sliding down on his head, or worse, on his wife’s and his children’s heads. He trusted Cefwyn. He trusted Tristen. And the young Marhanen prince— Aewyn— himself half - Syrillas, which was to say, of the house of the Regents of Elwynor— with a sister, now, who would someday sit on the Regent’s throne . . . Aewyn seemed apt to be a good boy.

  Another tangle, Cefwyn having the current Regent as his queen, gathering the Aswydds into his house on the one side, and the Elwynim Regents on the other, the Marhanen king now bringing into his own bloodline even a little Sihhë lineage—

  It might be frightening, for those who had learned to hate the bloody Marhanen as a matter of local faith. Frightening, too for the Quinaltines, who had learned to think of their faith as the king’s only faith— and also for the Bryaltines, who had gotten most of their wealth from Amefin and Elwynim folk greatly opposed to the Quinalt and the Marhanen.

  Now a living Sihhë sat in Ynefel, the Regent slept with the
Marhanen king, and the duke of Amefel had a half - Marhanen, half - Aswydd boy in his care who might one day overthrow him and dispossess his children.

  But Crissand stayed faithful, all the same, knowing that when everything came together, when powers that slept moved again, the world would shake.

  Gods, he had had misgivings when Cefwyn chose Festival as the time to bring his firstborn son out of rural obscurity. It had been bravely done, thoroughly in character for Cefwyn, who had all the best traits of the bloody Marhanen, courage and will, and a less favorable one— a tendency to do the very thing that would annoy his detractors the most, simply because it would vex them, and give him, perhaps, a chance to bring those forces into the open . . .

  Well, the tactic might work in the field, and even work in politics with the Guelenfolk and the northern provinces, but it was damned dangerous where 2 4 8

  fortress of ice

  it regarded Aswydd blood, and forces that couldn’t be seen so readily, forces another Aswydd did recognize, right over his very head.

  Dared he think the boy might be right, that that decision of the king to bring the boy to Guelessar had been Worked, and nudged, and moved, very quietly?

  Dared he write an honest Aswydd opinion to the Marhanen king? You were bespelled once, into begetting the boy. Don’t do the things you fi nd yourself tempted to do. Don’t corner an Aswydd in hot blood and Marhanen temper . . . we don’t go at things head - on. We never have. That woman is a prisoner, but she is still aware of her son.

  He did add a postscriptum, but not that. He wrote: If you should decide to come to Amefel for any purpose, pray wait for Lord Tristen’s arrival here.

  Then questions can be asked and answers given.

  Tristen, when he did stir forth, tended to a harbinger of troubles. But having Tristen here, whatever the attendant perils of his company, would make him feel ever so much safer.

  v

  it was a damned great mess, in cefwyn’s opinion— the weather delayed the messages he hoped for, the Quinaltine fuss simmered on, and he had no word at all from Tristen by any means. He hoped his son had found a quiet place to winter over.

  The secret business at the Quinaltine was at least proceeding under Efanor’s direction, the notion of building a new Quinaltine being still closely held in a very small circle, the Holy Father tending toward the pronouncement that the Quinaltine as a physical structure was not unalterable, that it was, with priestly blessing, able to be enlarged— that was the Holy Father’s current position: that they might enlarge the sanctuary forward and move the altar to what was now the front steps, which would make it larger than the Guelesfort itself, and, no, that would not happen . . . Cefwyn had decided that matter before ever it became a whisper on the wind. Efanor had informed the Holy Father, who was balking at utter abandonment of the sacred precinct, and on and on it went.

  And he had a hearing to attend on the morrow, a most distasteful hearing, a rural squire dead under unprovable circumstances, six young girls being his sole issue. The eldest, aged twelve, and not particularly outspoken, was betrothed, since his death, to a neighbor and second cousin, Leismond, 2 4 9

  c. j. cherryh

  while the grieving widow had drowned in the same sinking boat, so the report was. The servants had allegedly made off with the household silver, neither servants nor silver being yet found. The fi shermen on the estate, meanwhile, had no one seeing to their rights. The marriage document only wanted a royal seal, perfunctorily granted, ordinarily, but he liked nothing about it. Marriage with the girl sent the land to Leismond, who coveted a river access, and the fishery— Squire Widin’s death was in that case suspiciously ironic— and he suspected it just possible the twelve - year- old bride might likewise come to grief within a fortnight of her marriage. He could delay a royal permission until the girl reached majority: that was easy— but the estate was failing fast. He could take temporary lordship of the land, which bordered the royal hunting preserve, cast a number of peasants out of their homes, set up a pliable and seemingly foolish child as a royal ward, denying Leismond or putting him off indefinitely. But that meant the Crown paying out six attractive dowries, or the children forever on the eldest sister’s husband’s charity— and where was he to find a husband besides Leismond who wanted to take in five underage and penniless sisters - in - law? The girl, questioned, denied she had been coerced. Oh, no, no, Leismond had been kind and helped them. It all reeked to the heavens.

  Gods, he hated cases like this one.

  He found himself at that window again, where on a happier day he had looked down on his two sons at practice. The yard was deep in snow, now, and desolate. Aewyn moped about, attending his studies, and having pinned a large map of Amefel above his study desk. Aewyn had stopped his rebellion, finally, and admitted his new tutor was a decent fellow, and that learning history was a good thing. Aewyn had even, by way of apology, he supposed, given him a very nice copy of the Rules of Courtly Order, written in a young hand that had begun to have clerkly flourishes perhaps unbecoming in a future king.

  It was such a sad compliance, where there had been such joyous skirting of the rules . . .

  He looked down at snow - covered stones, and measured the depth by the degree to which the rosebush in the corner was buried: only its pruned top and heap of mulch was above the snow, which seemed at its thinnest, there.

  A great icicle hung down from the eave, and several predecessors had crashed below, in the cyclic warming and chill of previous days.

  His breath made a fog on the window, a veil between him and the courtyard. And suddenly his vision centered on a disturbance in that fogged glass.

  A word appeared.

  2 5 0

  fortress of ice

  Come, it said. Just that. Come.

  Chilling as the first warning, to caution . . . and what dared he do?

  He wanted to rush downstairs on the next breath, call for his horse, and ride, unprepared and unheralded, but a king had obligations . . . his person to protect, for the kingdom’s sake; documents to sign, matters which had been most carefully negotiated; the fate of two children to decide, that case on which important things rested . . . not least Efanor’s question of the Quinaltine . . .

  He looked twice more at the window glass, to be absolutely sure, before he wiped it out with his sleeve and left no record.

  Tristen had his other son in hand. Tristen wanted him to come to Ynefel.

  That was what. But it wouldn’t be a matter of his son’s life and death, not with Tristen protecting him. So the urgency was a little less.

  He labored through the next few hours, wishing he knew exactly what to do with the Quinaltine, knowing that a priestly fuss was bound to break out in all its fury, with Ninévrisë here with Efanor, and Ninévrisë the higher authority, a Bryaltine, an Elwynim, and the target of all discontent: that worried him most. She was due, when snowmelt came, to take Aemaryen to Elwynor, the baby to be presented to the Elwynim as their heir to the Regency, their Princess, the fulfi llment of the Marhanen promise to that kingdom; and she could not delay that journey for her own people, even if she became embroiled in priestly politics on this side of the Lenúalim.

  Best she go, now, ahead of time, rather than late: best Efanor sit in power over the priests without the controversy of an Elwynim queen. Efanor knew how to argue with the Holy Father: gifted with the power of the king’s commission, and his alliances as duke of Guelessar, he could make progress with the Holy Father, if the Holy Father had no one else with whom to politic.

  He had to get Ninévrisë and her ladies on the road early, that was what.

  Then he could go to Amefel and from there on to Ynefel, where he ached to be, at least for the season. The prospect was beyond attractive.

  “A little snow never can daunt me,” was Ninévrisë’s answer when he told her his intent. “But why so sudden?”

  “Tristen Sent,” he said. To her, he could tell the entire truth. “He has Otter in keeping. He wants
me. And I have to go.”

  “Aewyn will go into mourning if you don’t take him with you,” Ninévrisë said, and that was the truth. He had thought of sending Aewyn with her, but it was very much the truth . . . and very much better politics among Guelenfolk not to have his son and heir in Elwynor while his wife, the Regent of Elwynor, was presenting his sister to the Elwynim as their own treaty -

  promised possession.

  2 5 1

  c. j. cherryh

  “He could meet Tristen,” Ninévrisë said. “I should ever so much wish to go, myself . . . but the treaty— they expect us this spring.”

  “I know.” They stood at the same window, which now had one smeared pane, and he took her in his arms and kissed her. He loved this woman. He loved her for her steady calm and her lightning wit; and now for fi nding a clear, smooth way to do in an organized way what had seemed so impossibly difficult before he broke the news to her. Of course she would go. Of course a winter trip would be a strenuous adventure, but this was a woman who’d ridden to war, managed a soldiers’ camp, and could wield a weapon without a qualm. A little snow didn’t daunt her, indeed, not even with an infant in arms.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “Flattery, flattery. You’ll leave Efanor to manage things?”

  “He can do everything I would do. More, with the priests: he knows all their secrets. Only you stay safe.”

  “You keep an eye on our son,” Ninévrisë said, straight to the heart of the matter, a warning with a mother’s understanding of their son’s habits and the possibilities in the venture.

  “He is growing up,” he said, to reassure her. “He made me a copy of the Courtly Order, do you know? It looked like a clerk’s hand. He mopes, grievously. He reads, this winter. He hasn’t stolen a horse or run off to Amefel.