Fortress of Ice

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Yesterday.”

  “Yesterday, Your Majesty.”

  “Where did he go?” Aewyn asked, entirely out of turn, and Cefwyn drew a deep, carefully patient breath and asked the same question, in more courtesy.

  “Do you know, my friend?”

  “West,” Crissand said with conviction. “His man Paisi came back. They were parted in the storm. Your son carried my ring. I gave him that . . . I wrote to Your Majesty . . .”

  “Best discuss it inside,” Cefwyn said. Crissand was freezing, shivering in the cold wind, clearly full of news they needed, and much as his heart wanted to go chasing off after the boy, the horses were done. He was done.

  Certainly Aewyn must be. And even if they were to leave on a further search tonight, they would have to supply themselves off Crissand’s resources, saddle new horses, and perhaps go out with Paisi to guide them. If the boy had been gone a day, there was no chasing him. Tracks would be covered.

  “Your Majesty,” Crissand said, and led them up into the fortress itself by the side entry, up steps made both foul and passable by ash and sand, a black area that had frozen into ice all about the steps. It had the feeling of times past, of another winter when the snow had kept coming, and things had gone vastly awry.

  Tristen was coming. He believed it. He cast Otter’s welfare on it . . . perhaps more than one Otter’s welfare, counting the boy’s connections to that tower above them. He did not want Aewyn exposed to risk, and the more calmly they dealt with this, the more he could settle his son to calm and reason.

  They entered the lower hall, right beneath his old rooms, when he had been viceroy here, and walked down the hall to the little audience chamber, an intimate room with a good fireplace. Heat inside met them like a wall after so long in the cold.

  “Find Paisi,” Crissand said to one of his guards. “He’s up in the boy’s rooms. And get mulled wine up here. Tea, with it.”

  The man hastened, all but running back down the hall, shouting indecorously for servants and for a man to go find the witch’s grandson; but before they had even shed their cloaks, Paisi himself showed up at the door.

  “Come in, man,” Crissand said. “Come in. You’re wanted.”

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  “M’lord,” Paisi said, in a quiet, miserable voice.

  “Your Majesty,” Crissand said, and offered Cefwyn the seat from which Crissand himself would hold audiences in this room.

  Cefwyn sat. He pointed Aewyn to the chair nearest, Crissand to a lordly seat opposite, and said to Crissand, “No ceremony, man, just the news, from the start. What happened here? Where did he go? Have you still got his mother?”

  “Her, I have, Your Majesty,” Crissand said, settling into a plain chair, and proceeded to tell him that Paisi’s gran was dead in the fire, that Otter had violated the library and destroyed a wall, finding a book, to which Paisi could attest. Then Otter had taken off ahead of all inquiry, with Crissand’s ring to ease the way, convinced that this newfound treasure should go to Lord Tristen.

  “We met Paisi, coming back,” Crissand said. “Paisi had lost him in the blizzard, and all my sense of where the ring was, had faded at what must have been the same time. I had no more indication where he might be, nor have, to this hour. I fear he might have traveled some distance, but I have no more sense where he is.”

  “Paisi,” Cefwyn said. Paisi waited, standing, hands clasped, gripped on each other until the knuckles were white. “Have you anything to contrib-ute?”

  “Nothin’, Your Majesty, only I’d ha’ died before I’d ha’ left ’im. He were goin’ t’ find Lord Tristen, was all he said. He said what he had, had to go to him.”

  “Not the worst notion,” Cefwyn said, as much to comfort Aewyn as because he needed to say it to Crissand or to Paisi. “How did he find this thing?”

  “One hardly knows,” Crissand said, and Paisi, when Cefwyn looked at him:

  “He was uneasy wi’ his ma,” Paisi said. “He was thinkin’ because he’d told her Lord Tristen was comin’, she’d took it out on Gran an’ burned the house down, an’ he said ’t was his fault, which I said not, but he weren’t easy in his mind. They was goin’ to send the horses down t’ winter pasture,” Paisi added, apparently extraneously, “an’ I ask’t him, an’ he said no, right sharp, then again, no, you was comin’ an’ Lord Tristen was comin’ and there might be cause to need ’em, so I told the stablemaster to keep ’em here.”

  “When was this?”

  “The day before. The day before that night.”

  “That night,” Cefwyn said.

  “He had a key to the library,” Crissand said, “which the librarian gave 3 1 2

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  him, because he identified himself as Elfwyn Aswydd and had my ring for authority. He read the History of Amefel. He was there all that day and stayed after the librarian left.”

  “An’ he come home, he drank wine, he didn’t eat more ’n a bird, an’ woke out of bed,” Paisi said, “whilst I was sleepin’. He went down there, and they say he made a hole in the wall under a counter, and there was plaster all over. All I know is, he come back wi’ a book an’ sayin’ the guards was after him. An’ I should ha’ done better, I know I should, Your Majesty, but ’e were scairt, and sayin’ that book had to get away from ’is ma, fast as it could.”

  “From his mother,” Cefwyn said. “Was this what he said?”

  “Aye, Your Majesty. An’ bein’ as I served Lord Tristen an’ Master Emuin, meself, I weren’t inclined to ask too deep where it was any wizard writing—if his ma wanted that thing and he wanted to go to Lord Tristen with it, says I, better run for Lord Tristen. So we did. But we didn’t never get there.” Paisi was, in his way, a hard man, from a hard life, and it was something that his chin trembled when he said it. “The wind come between us, an’ the snow blew, and then he weren’t there. I searched and searched, and I couldn’t fi nd

  ’im, an’ I suppose he couldn’t find me, neither, Your Majesty, because I know he’d ha’ tried.”

  “I’ve sent men to Marna today,” Lord Crissand said, “attempting to get through. As yet there’s been no report, but there’s not been time for it.”

  “You’ve done the best anyone could,” Cefwyn said. A slow chill ran through him when he contemplated the several branches of the facts at hand.

  He sat in a room he well knew, in a seat he had occupied when he fi rst laid eyes on Tristen. In that hour he had looked into eyes that knew absolutely nothing of the world of Men, the innocence, the absolute innocence he had never met in man or child since. That gaze had challenged the validity of everything he believed, made him question what he knew for real and just, all those things, in the very hour he was warm and guilty from the Aswydd women’s bed— because Mauryl Gestaurien had called up a soul from out of the dark, and clothed it in flesh, and sent Tristen into the world to confront his enemy.

  Mauryl’s enemy, certainly. Mankind’s enemy, by complete inconsequence, he feared, to that entity— individual Men, that force swept aside as casually as sweeping dust off the step. It was beyond dangerous, Tristen’s enemy. It was absolutely inimical to everything he loved, and he, and his, had been in the way of it— it had tried to lay hands on the stolen books, he much suspected— and the Aswydd woman, Elfwyn’s mother, was only its hands remaining in the world.

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  He’d never been as afraid as he had been in those days. He’d stared it down, on a battlefield in Elwynor. He’d risked everything on that fi eld, and the next, and he’d won, instead, against all expectation, thanks to Tristen.

  He had a lifelong friend in Tristen, a friend who’d been unable to stay in the world of Men simply because, in some ways, Tristen was still that innocent, that bewildered by petty wickedness, although he had been reborn to face something very, very dangerously wicked, supposing wickedness was even a word it understood.

  Gran was dead, her protections evide
ntly inadequate. And a book had gone missing, from a hiding place they had supposed empty, the books in question either destroyed or in Tristen’s possession, at Ynefel. The boy was right: if, all protections fallen, he had found something of the sort, that was exactly where it belonged.

  Breath in the room seemed very close at the moment. He looked into Paisi’s eyes, and into Crissand’s, no king in that moment, but a Man with other Men who’d seen the same improbable things he’d seen and carried the scars of it.

  The amulet he wore gave no clue, no hint of a clue what was happening in the world, or where Tristen was.

  Find him, he wished his old friend. Find my son. Keep him safe. A book is loose in the world.

  And nothing answered that plea, not a whisper or a sensation.

  “Your men will not arrest Otter, will they?” Aewyn asked, breaking the spell.

  “By no means,” Crissand said earnestly. “But persuade him to come back, that, if they can.”

  “I could persuade him,” Aewyn said. “He would believe me.”

  “No,” Cefwyn said, more sharply than he intended. He softened it immediately, seeing the shock on his son’s face. “No. For his sake and yours.”

  The thought of what they might be dealing with turned him cold as ice, and he reached a hand to his son’s arm, wondering what he might do to occupy his son and keep him safe and busy, this close to Tarien Aswydd and without Tristen or Elfwyn to protect him. “Best you go to Captain Awen and get down to the kitchens: there’s a good warm spot, and you can do as I used to do, nip a late meal from the cooks. See the men are fed. That’s the job you can do for me.”

  “I don’t want to be down in the kitchen! I want them to find my brother!”

  “Well, they can’t do it on empty stomachs and no rest, young sir, and don’t dispute me in front of another lord, even if he is an old friend.”

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  “Father,” Aewyn said, looking quite undone, and having just let fl y, when very good behavior had been the rule for two whole days, even when they had come on the ruin of Gran’s farm. “Forgive me, sir.” This last to Lord Crissand.

  “Your Highness,” Crissand said, with a sober nod of his head, and a very weary prince got up from a hard chair and limped on out the door, collecting his cloak as he left.

  “The boys got on well,” Cefwyn said, an understatement, in the boy’s departure. “He’s had a long, hard ride, he’s seen unpleasant sights, and he’s chilled through.”

  “Understandable in a grown man,” Crissand said, formality gone.

  “Paisi, sit down.”

  “Your Majesty.” Paisi made that diffident little protest, but he sat down on the raised hearth of the fireside, without fuss or ceremony.

  There were matters to discuss: old murders, old wars, in which they all three had had their part. An absent friend, who should have arrived much before this, if things were ordinary. Magic had that way about it: ordinary Men might be diverted by a stray breeze or a whim, but when the real storms of magic raged, determined Men, being blind to it, could sometimes blunder on by sheer will through forces that would stop a wizard cold.

  Had he blundered through such opposition, he and his ungifted son, in getting here at all? Gran was dead. Crissand had had to turn back. Paisi, trying to track Elfwyn, had simply blinked and lost him into the night. And after, Crissand had lost all awareness where Elfwyn was. Crissand knew that situation, when magic moved things where they had never intended to be.

  A Man fell right on through the sieve of magic and stood staring and wondering what was happening, when the shadow - ways were at issue. And gods knew where Elfwyn was now, or who had moved him. He only hoped it was Tristen himself; but Tristen, years ago, had not found the book his sorcerous - born son had found, despite his searching, and Tristen had greatly desired to find anything left of that cache, which no one had ever explained being there in the first place— not to mention the murder of one elderly librarian by another.

  A book had been left, after all the murder and connivance. A book had been overlooked, forgotten, missed, even by Tristen himself.

  That was not a good thing, either, not at all.

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  ii

  cast out, after a reasonable objection, was aewyn’s view. of course he knew the men were tired and his father was tired— and cross. He was tired and disappointed and vastly upset, and he had been a little forward, but he would go on and look for his brother, if anybody listened to him, and all that his father and Crissand were doing up there they could do on horseback, out looking in the meanwhile. This was a town. There were other horses. He was tired, but he could keep going. He hadn’t meant to be dis-respectful to his father, who often talked to Lord Crissand as if he were family . . . but he was right, and they weren’t finding his brother, and he certainly didn’t deserve to be sent down to the kitchens and shut out of any news they might get.

  But his father being king, everyone had to obey him even if they didn’t like it, and if his father said he was to see the men were fed, nobody else was going to do it if he didn’t, and they would all suffer for it. So he walked on to the guard station where all the soldiers gathered— there were enough inside that they were spilling out into the hall and hanging in the doorway, exchanging rumors. They stood up straighter when he walked up.

  “I’m to go with you to the kitchen and be sure you have your suppers,”

  Aewyn said.

  “Your Highness.” There was complete attention from his father’s guard.

  “And sometimes staff knows things the lords don’t,” Aewyn added, “so we may learn something while we’re there.” He had learned that wisdom from Paisi, who despite his scruffy appearance and his southern speech, was a very wise and clever man. He had been a thief, and knew all sorts of ways to get past precautions and locks, and to go unseen.

  And that thought put an idea in his head, a wicked and desperate idea, and one he knew would upset his father, but things were more desperate than anyone seemed willing to say. Paisi’s gran was not just sick, as Otter—

  Elfwyn— had thought; she turned out to be dead in a fire, and Elfwyn had run off from Paisi, or Paisi hadn’t been able to keep up with him, which was the same, so things couldn’t wait until morning. Elfwyn never would part from Paisi, especially if something had happened to Gran . . . Elfwyn hadn’t stolen any book because he was naturally a thief, or because Paisi was; he’d stolen it either because it was his, or because it was important for him to do that, and maybe even Lord Crissand wasn’t supposed to have it in his possession.

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  Lord Tristen who had wanted him to do what he’d done and sent him here to do it. Wizards . . . and Lord Tristen was something more than a wizard . . .

  did things for reasons nobody could understand at the time, but it was for the good, if it was a good wizard doing it. The things Lord Tristen did were good things, white magic, hadn’t his father told him that, and told him never to say that to the Quinalt brothers?

  That was because Amefin folk and Elwynim did things differently from the start: they respected witches like Gran, they hung charms in their windows, which no Guelen dared do, and they danced at festival— altogether a wilder, freer folk than Guelens, in his estimation, and maybe one reason why he had always liked his brother, who was ever so ready to enter into a bit of mischief and never really feared any rebuke but Gran’s. Who was dead. And it was very sure that whatever had caused that fire was not Lord Tristen, and was not friendly to his brother, who was alone out there.

  He walked down the kitchen steps at the head of his father’s towering, armored guard, and presented himself to the kitchen staff. “My father’s guard wants supper, if you please, and hot tea and mulled ale.” It was what they had ordered upstairs, and he knew the guardsmen would gladly agree to that. “And who is t
he chief cook?”

  A white - bearded man came forward and bowed. “Prince Aewyn? May I serve?”

  “That I am,” he said. “And you may. My father and the duke are in conference upstairs, and my father wishes his men fed and comfortable.”

  “Your Highness.” A gratifying bow, and a wave of his hand sent the staff into motion.

  “And I personally wish to ask, sir, if you know why there would be a book in the wall of the library?”

  The cook looked confused, entirely, and guiltily distressed. “Perhaps you could ask the librarian, Your Highness.”

  “I may. I wonder if you’ve heard anything about it. What are the rumors?”

  “The rumors, now.” The man wiped flour onto his apron, looking worried. “The rumors, Your Highness.” He lowered his voice considerably, and took on a secretive look. “As there was a murder there, back in the last duke’s time. One librarian killed the other, both old men, and books was missing, which never was found . . . except . . .”

  “Except, sir?”

  The man hesitated, and hesitated twice. “They was found last night, or at least . . . the boy, the Aswydd boy . . .”

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  “My half brother,” Aewyn said, to help the narrative along.

  “Yes, Your Highness. Rumor is he took ’em, and fled the town. His Grace went after, but only him an’ the man came back, the witch’s grandson.”

  “Paisi.”

  “Aye, Your Highness, Paisi. And neither hide nor hair of the Aswydd—your half brother, begging your pardon, Your Highness.”

  “No, no. I’m very anxious to hear every bit you know. Which way did he ride off?”

  “West, as seems. Thinkin’ is, with her up there—” The cook gave an uneasy glance over his shoulder and up, as if the tower threatened above him.

  “Whatever it was, he went west, and maybe south, too, maybe to Marna, as nobody can guess. Things finds their way to Marna, if they have to. That’s the rumor, that.”