Fortress of Ice

by C. J. Cherryh

  “You may read it at this table,” the librarian said, and drew back a chair for him. He sat down, and opened it very carefully, and read at length. It was not the best copyist who had produced this volume, in an overblown script.

  It was a labor to read it, and he found it a dry, scholarly style, nothing that informed him, nothing so perilous or exciting as he had hoped to fi nd in The Red Chronicle. This one began with very old records, back in the reign of the High Kings, and named every single lord of every single holding, with all the begetting and descending and disputing.

  Still, in courtesy to the old librarian who had particularly offered this to him, he stayed at it, laboring over the obscure script, and curious, stiff illuminations of people who stood like pillars, with exactly the same faces and differing gestures. Paisi finally surprised him, having tracked him down.

  “I wondered where ye’d gone, m’lord,” Paisi said.

  “I wanted to read,” he lied. He suddenly realized everything he’d done since leaving Paisi outside was one long lie, and he didn’t know why he wanted to be here now, but he did and was afraid to be. The book at least gave him respite from dreams and uncertainties: its dry diffi culties drew all his faculties into one effort, and left no time for extraneous thoughts, or remembering Gran, or wondering what he would do with himself hereafter.

  It was only time he had to fill to get from waking to dark, and reading fi lled it well enough.

  Paisi was all over dust and smelled of the stables, not books. “So shall ye be up to supper?”

  “In a bit. Go up to the room and rest if you like.”

  “More like down to the kitchens to get a bite,” Paisi said. “I’m half -

  starved. D’ ye want anything, m’lord? Shall I have your supper sent upstairs?”

  “In an hour or so,” he said. “Thank you, Paisi.” He didn’t feel hungry. He turned a page carefully, wishing only not to be distracted from where he was, as if he were walking a rail and mustn’t fall off, mustn’t distract himself.

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  Paisi, probably annoyed with him, or at least not understanding what he was about, left on his own business.

  This book was not the thing he wanted. But the library was the place he wanted. He didn’t want to leave it. He didn’t want to look away from his pages. He just wanted to stay where he was, where his heart didn’t hurt and his memories and his dreams didn’t keep slipping into his head.

  “Might I stay longer?” he asked when the librarian said that he had to go to supper, and went about to turn out the few old men who had occupied other tables.

  The old man looked at him carefully and gave him a key. “These are very, very few,” the old man said. “You may come in and read, lad, as pleases you.

  I can see you read like a scholar. Admirable. Admirable in a lad. But have extreme care of candles, bank the fire, and lock the door when you leave.

  These books are the kingdom’s treasures, and irreplaceable.”

  “I shall be careful, sir,” he said, taking the key, which tingled in his fi ngers, the longed - for prize. “I shall be ever so careful.”

  He stayed a little while after. Once he was sure the old man was gone, he got up and took The Red Chronicle from its shelf. He read by close candlelight— the windows were dimming— how the Sihhë - lords’ reign had extended over Amefel, Elwynor, and most that was now Ylesuin. In those days magic had been ordinary, and the Sihhë lived long lives, spanning generations of Men, doing as they pleased. Guelemara had not been the capital in those days: it was a place called Althalen, in Amefel. And a great wizard, Mauryl Gestaurien, had served the Sihhë - lords, from the fortress of Ynefel.

  So had Selwyn Marhanen, a warlord under the Sihhë King.

  Nothing was then as it was now. Gran had never told him these things.

  Paisi hadn’t.

  And this Selwyn Marhanen, this warlord out of Guelessar, had defended the borders of the Sihhë from attacks from the south, while making secret alliances with a priest of a militant sect, the Quinalt— in that day when most Men were Bryalt, or, always in the case of wizards, Teranthine . . .

  Was the Quinaltine not yet built, then? Or all the great city of Guelemara? He tried to imagine the world as it had been, and leafed carefully ahead to see that Selwyn Marhanen had killed several of his brother lords among the districts of Men, and entered into agreements with others. The Sihhë King in those days was Elfwyn, Elfwyn Sihhë, who relied on the Marhanen and trusted him.

  The guttering candle wavered, making the letters crawl and move. He looked up, realized that the windows were now completely dark, the fi re in 2 8 2

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  the little fireplace was out, and his whole body was stiffened from long sitting.

  He shivered, held his chilling fingers above the candleflame to warm them, and simultaneously realized, with a little touch of dismay, that Paisi might not realize he was still here, now that the door shut.

  There was tomorrow. There were any number of tomorrows for books.

  He shut the History of Amefel on the table, to protect its pages from drafts, before returning The Red Chronicle to the shelf. He would, he told himself, be back when he was not cold and hungry and getting to the end of a candle stub. He lifted the candleholder to light his way to the door, careful not to spill the brimming wax, and as it tipped, a little did spill into the catch -

  basin, and the flame leapt up on a clear wick, showing him the way, indeed, but making all the room a threatening place, the tall cases and the looming stacks full of secrets, tales that had shaped his present existence, laws and rights of rule— so, so many things he didn’t understand and needed to know, if only to defend himself from forces he did not comprehend.

  But for now he took his single candle to the door and let himself out, blew out the candle stub, and left it on the ledge outside the door, to be renewed by servants who saw that such things appeared in due order. The halls were mostly deserted, and he remembered that horrid apparition— he hadn’t realized he’d trapped himself on the other side of it, after dark, and he didn’t want to go near that place, not even with his mother’s guards on watch down there.

  There was, however, the way the servants used.

  He went down to the end of the short hall, and found, indeed, the servants’ stairs, and climbed up those short, dark stairs to a dimly lighted hall above— one bend and another, which took him above the haunt. He hurried along, breathless, trying not to break into a fearful run. Servants were going up and down the halls at this hour, collecting the washing and used dishes of other residents, the minor lords of the town and the province, lords who lived here, or visited here, where now a witch’s son found refuge from calamity.

  He didn’t feel he belonged in this place. He wanted not to be here, under his mother’s witness. He wanted to be back in Guelessar if he had to live in a palace. He wasn’t sure he wanted to read more of the book, and to know how his namesake had died, and, in detail, how Aewyn’s family had turned on the Sihhë King.

  He reached his own door, pushed the latch and whipped inside, breathlessly glad to meet light and warmth and, indeed, the smell of supper.

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  “Well, now,” Paisi said. “Thank the gods. Where was you? With ’is Grace?”

  “In the library, still,” he said.

  “I came by, an’ the door shut. I hoped ye was with ’is Grace, but I couldn’t get no sense out of the servants. There’s supper, if ye wish ’t.”

  “In a bit. A little wine, maybe.”

  “That we can do.” Paisi went to the table and poured a cup, and from a second pitcher, water. “What was you readin’ so late and so urgent?”

  “A history. A history of Elfwyn King.”

  “Oh, well,” Paisi said, worried - looking. The same boding dark was outside the windows, firelight glittering on the glass, as he gave him the cup.

  “That ain’t too che
ery, is it?”

  “No. It wasn’t.” He didn’t want to explain the tightness in his chest or the unrest in his heart. He drank, and sat down by the fire, ignoring supper. It was only the drink he wanted, to take the dust of the place out of his mouth and the attraction of it out of his mind. “It wasn’t.”

  Paisi stretched his feet out in front him, warming his boots. “Well, I got a far simpler question for ye. I was talkin’ to the stablemaster, an’ they were talkin’ o’ takin’ the horses down to the pastures as they do, to the winter stables. But the four paddocks left free down there is way on the end, an’ they’re askin’ if we’re apt to be needin’ the horses too often. I said I’d ask you.”

  “I don’t know,” he said, which was foolish, because he did know, and there wasn’t much chance they’d be riding about the countryside anytime soon.

  Unless Aewyn came with his father. There was that.

  “Maybe they could stay up here just a little longer,” he said.

  “It’s fair cramped here, m’lord. They’d be happier.”

  “I don’t want my horse down the hill!” he said, more curtly than he meant. But he couldn’t think of a reason. He took another sip and swallowed half the cup after. “He’s mine. I want him here, is all.”

  “I’ll tell ’em so,” Paisi said. “Ain’t ye goin’ t’ eat, m’lord?”

  “I’m not that hungry,” he said glumly, but he came and sat at the table and picked at the food, and had another cup of watered wine. Paisi had his own wine plain, not in the brightest of moods.

  They sat for a while. “If Aewyn should come,” Elfwyn said, to mend his earlier tone, and because what had sat for hours at the bottom of his thoughts had finally bobbed up to the surface, the conviction that nothing they would do here was permanent— “and with Lord Tristen here, too— I might want my horse— I’d hope to go riding with Aewyn. I don’t know when they will come. I don’t know what might happen.”

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  “Aye,” Paisi said then, seeming happier having a reason. “That might be.

  An’ then I’d have mine, too, because ye ain’t t’ go nowhere wi’out me, hear?

  Ain’t got Gran to look after, and if you go ridin’ off wi’ Lord Tristen or ’Is young Highness, I’m goin’, no question. So I’ll tell ’em that.”

  Paisi didn’t ask about the books. Elfwyn didn’t mention the detail of things he’d learned. The forced good humor of yesterday, dealing with Gran’s death, had grown weary on them both. Gran was a matter they neither one mentioned this evening. There was nothing they could plan for themselves: all they could plan remained at the king’s pleasure, and the duke’s, and Lord Tristen’s, when he might arrive. The rooms they shared were only lent, nothing their own, and they had no duty except to each other. Even that needed very little: house servants did all the work and all the carrying, and arrived more often than they needed, so Paisi was at loose ends, and Elfwyn even more so.

  They waited uneasily and without speaking about their unease— waited for Lord Tristen, waited, possibly, for the king, and for Aewyn to come.

  They waited for what might change the whole course of their lives, and fi -

  nally sighed and decided on bed, to face another day of much the same.

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  c h a p t e r s i x

  the wind turned foul toward dark, carrying blown snow into their faces, stinging eyes and noses. It was a hard day’s ride for a boy, and Cefwyn rode between his son and the wind while the Dragon Guard rode around them, and ahead, trampling the snow into a broader path.

  Aewyn’s flow of questions had stopped even before the sun went down.

  If they did not come to the way shelter before too long, Cefwyn thought, he would order tents broken out of their small pack train. In this weather, and with a boy in the company, they traveled at least with canvas, and fi re-pots, and a certain amount of food already prepared.

  A guardsman rode near to say they had smelled smoke, and the waft of it came with the messenger, borne on the same wind. “The shelter, Your Majesty,” that man said, pointing ahead, and so it must be— one of the little three - sided stone waystops he had ordered built along the King’s Road south and north, where there were wells or nearby water: he ordered his foresters to provide each its small store of fi rewood.

  That was their destination tonight, the last such shelter before they would cross the river— the bridge had gone down in the fall rains: old Lenúalim was notoriously hard to bridge, all along this shore: not that it ran deep here, but wide. It took down bridges with ice, or scouring, and most recently lightning, which was so strange a circumstance that no few had named it as a sign there ought not to be a bridge over the river at all. So they would ford it at the old place, by the last shelter before the monastery, which was said to be frozen over, and Cefwyn had no desire to risk doing it in the dark. They had pressed hard today, bypassing one shelter at midafternoon, determined to reach this one, and to make time so that they could cross by fair daylight tomorrow. He had thought he might have overreached, and doomed them all to the labor of making a roadside camp, and now the news that they were coming into a shelter occupied, and with a fire already going was cheerful news.

  fortress of ice

  The smoke was more definite on the wind as they rode, so that all the company knew it. The pace picked up a little. Aewyn said not a thing, only clenched his cloak about him and stayed beside him, brave lad, at a faster clip.

  Two guardsmen broke ahead of the party, to be sure who was there; and it was a little space before they came atop the rise and whistled a signal back to their comrades that all was well.

  It was a rush, after that, weary horses encouraged to move, with the smell of smoke and shelter in their nostrils and the prospect of grain before them.

  It was, Cefwyn thought, a small merchant party they would meet, with a fire already built, possibly with useful wares or commodities to offer fellow travelers. Winter merchants, traveling to the villages and back, were usually the younger traders, and the hungrier, especially to be out on the road in a bad streak like this.

  There was no such party camped around. Guardsmen dismounted, and Cefwyn did, neglecting to help his son down at the moment, his attention all for the single man at a small scrap of a fire, a huge pile of ash, but only a little fire; and a man wrapped in his cloak and a single blanket.

  “Here’s your king,” a guardsman said. “Can you stand, fellow?”

  “Leg’s broken,” the man said, and scanned the lot of them, looking for authority, as it seemed. Cefwyn came to stand in front of him, and, as the man fl ung back his cloak and the blanket, he saw the red and black Amefi n colors and, indeed, a roughly splinted leg. “Lord Crissand’s courier,” the man said through cracked lips. “Your Majesty.”

  Cefwyn squatted at eye level and saw a man, indeed, in dire straits.

  “A message,” the man said, and felt within his coat. He came out with a crushed and bloody letter, in a hand itself black with scabs and dirt. “My lord— my lord— said it was urgent. An’ me horse went down on the ice.”

  “Care for this man,” Cefwyn said. “More wood.” It must have cost this man agony to get back and forth between the diminished woodpile and the fire pit. “Cut more, if you need.” Any cutting on the king’s right of way had to have royal permission. It had that, tonight.

  “What is it?” came a young voice. Aewyn had gotten down from his horse, and finally found a question, squatting down beside him as he broke the seal and held the letter, fairly written, in good black ink, so that the fi re lit it from behind.

  Your son has returned safely, Crissand had written, himself: he knew that strong, clear hand. When your ward reached his house, he indeed went west, and reports he has seen Lord Tristen, who he says has informed him he 2 8 7

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  should carry the name Elfwyn. He reports that the lord of Ynefel will come as far as Henas’amef, how soon and in what i
ntent, 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 . . .

  Lost it on the way, for the gods’ sake. That was uncommon bad luck, for one of Tristen’s messages.

  Surely Tristen knew it was lost. Didn’t he? Had Crissand gotten another message from him by now, since the dispatch of the letter?

  And Otter— Elfwyn— was safe. Safe, and going under his given name, by Tristen’s instruction.

  And carrying Crissand’s ring, as potent as Cefwyn’s own amulet. That was welcome news, but it indicated Crissand was very worried, and wanted to be sure where the boy was.

  Tristen, gods be praised, was coming to Amefel.

  “What does it say?” his son asked, trying to see.

  “That your brother has made it back safely.”

  “Then I shall see him!” Aewyn cried.

  Should he see him? Cefwyn wondered. Tristen was involved. The boy had come back under some instruction from him, and there the matter of Ynefel’s ring, and Otter— Elfwyn— electing to visit his mother, of all damned things. 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 . . .

  Not the half of it, Cefwyn thought. Crissand wrote: my forbidding him might have consequences I cannot foresee, and I hope that I have done wisely in granting this request, and I shall continue vigilant . . .

  Bloody hell, he thought. Small wonder Crissand had granted Otter the ring, in that case. Tristen was involved. Crissand hadn’t felt he had the authority to stop Otter, but he hadn’t liked that request to visit the woman, which might not have come from Tristen.

  He wanted to be back on the road, never mind the hour. He wanted a fresh horse and a clear road, and he wanted to send Aewyn back home, to be safe in Guelemara under Efanor’s not inconsiderable protection.