Fortress of Ice

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Tristen,” Cefwyn said, laying a hand on his arm. “Tristen, Ninévrisë is in Elwynor. With the baby. Could they be going toward her?”

  It was not good news. He shook his head. “The two boys are in this world. I believe they are. I cannot reach them, but I shall try to hold them on this side of the river, as much as I can. No, I do not think it would be a good thing.”

  “Is it that damned woman? Is it Tarien Aswydd?”

  “She hasn’t done this alone,” Emuin said.

  “Hasufin,” Tristen said quietly. And: “Get horses. We must go in this world, as quickly as we can. If I am nearer to them than he is, I believe I can hold them.”

  “The book,” Emuin said. “The book evaded her when he took it; in his hands it is not compliant, and the boy’s will is not inconsiderable. He defi ed me— and I dared not take it in my own hands— I doubt I could have held on to it, or survived the attempt. He’s done quite well at holding on to it, thus far. But I fear that book is still dragging him bit by bit where he ought not to go, and dragging your other son along with him.”

  “If it alone is the cause,” Tristen said. Pieces unfolded to him, bits of knowledge, the rest eluding him; but at his heart was the cold thought that his time in the world, already longer than he had expected, might be running out, and that with scattered pieces that had been Hasufi n Heltain coming unstuck from their separate places in the world, it was not good for two unskilled boys to try to hold onto one of them. “It’s going where it’s bespelled to go,” he said, thinking of the fate of the rest of that trove of books. “Where it was always bespelled to go. When we recovered the other manuscripts, they were at the river, were they not, and failed to cross. Best we hurry. The river is some sort of barrier to it, at least for a time.”

  “Horses,” Cefwyn said. “Horses, Crissand! Now!”

  3 7 1

  c. j. cherryh

  iii

  the wind had let them go again, and their feet had found the ground, the two of them clinging together by both hands, refusing to be parted—separately, Elfwyn thought, they would be carried who knew where, but they were down again, standing next to other stonework, next to a wall that broke the wind.

  A cliff dropped away at their feet, and the river lay below them, all frozen, in the strange storm light, and a great bridge spanned it.

  “Everything is mad,” Elfwyn said. “I don’t know what to do. We aren’t at Lewen Field any longer, I think.”

  “That is certainly the Lenúalim,” Aewyn said, his voice ragged with cold.

  “That’s the bridge. We’ve come to the border, is where we are.” The wind began to blow again, and the fog came with it, a chill that reached the soul.

  “Don’t let us move, Otter! Stop us!”

  Elfwyn had had enough of being swept here and there. He attempted to set his feet on the earth and defy what came down on them, but Aewyn seized hold of the rock face itself and dragged Elfwyn to him with one strong arm, refusing to budge. “Hold to the rock,” Aewyn shouted into his ear. “Don’t let it blow us away again!”

  He tried to hold on. But the fog came around them— around him, bone -

  deep and cold.

  “Lord Tristen!” he cried.

  All around them, shadows moved, some soldiers, some not, some mere wisps without faces. He knew only one thing for real, which was his brother’s warm grip on his hand, as if Aewyn alone held them.

  “Lord Tristen!” he whispered, and had a sense of direction for the moment, as if the man he sought lay somewhere behind them, far distant.

  “We’re here,” he tried to say, but made only a raven’s creak.

  “Don’t leave,” Aewyn implored him, jerking at his arm. “Otter, stay here, stay with me. Hold on!”

  “I’m in a place,” he said in a thread of a voice. “I’m in a place without ground under me. I see shadows. And there’s something beside us. There is.”

  “Don’t go,” his brother said. “I’m not going again, Otter! I shan’t go, so you have to stop.”

  Someone was in the mist, something quick, and stealthy and powerful, and he reached out for it, thinking it was Tristen, and in the next beat of his heart knowing it was different . . . like Mouse with the crumb, he shied off 3 7 2

  fortress of ice

  and would not take it. He became Mouse, and slipped back again, became Otter, and dived deep, and slipped away in the currents of that place . . .

  Something was hunting, something with a presence as quick as lightning: it followed him, and he dived and spun and dived deep, quicker still, and slippery as his namesake, playing the game; but this, he knew, heart thumping hard, was no game.

  He treated it as one. He was Otter. He could lead the hunter indefi nitely—he slid, and rose, and dived down again, hunter and prey at once. He evaded traps. He spun his own. He laughed, a wicked laugh— don’t get too wise, Paisi would chide him, but he knew what he did. He led the hunter farther and farther. He might be lost, but so was the one chasing him. Aewyn couldn’t find him— his brother, his anchor in the world, was utterly confused, because he relied on a world in which one place connected logically to another, in which moments followed moments and roads led where they had always led . . .

  Not when Otter played. He baffled the hunter. He was smug with his triumph when he surfaced— shook off the fog that he had learned to use and found himself just where he had been, with Aewyn holding on to him.

  The places were connected, he thought. One place led to another— the house to Marna, then to the old battlefield, to the river . . . but why did this place lead to that? How were they associated? The battlefield was from before he was born. Why could they not lead where he wanted, when he wanted?

  The hunter hated to be confused, or laughed at. And he laughed. He was all these places, in his own order, and back again. He could be anywhere but where he most wanted to be, which was safe at home, which was cold ashes, and that was the trap, that the snare . . .

  He evaded it, and blinked, and was back with Aewyn again.

  The sun was rising above the bridge, yellow and wan, on what he took for the east.

  “Otter!” Aewyn exclaimed, and snatched at him hard, while the winds died and the fog cleared. He was too numb in his lower limbs to feel pain any longer. He kept one hand clenched on his brother’s and one arm locked about the rock, the bones of the earth itself, refusing to be swept up again.

  He grew tired. And the game grew dangerous.

  Aewyn could not go where he did. He tried to move him, but Aewyn caught his arm and clung fast to the rock.

  “What are you doing?” Aewyn said. “You were gone, Otter— you’ve been gone for hours. One moment your hand just went away, and then you were 3 7 3

  c. j. cherryh

  there again, holding on, and then gone again! Don’t leave me. . . . Don’t leave like that!”

  He had never meant to. He had never meant to leave Aewyn. He just hung on, thinking— he must believe— he had done wizardry, on his own. It was something he could do.

  But he was by no means sure that he governed what happened when he did. That was the frightening thing.

  In time things grew calmer, and he realized all sensation had left his fi ngers in that hand, so tightly Aewyn held to him. The winds faded, in favor of a thick snowfall. Below, beyond their perch atop the cliff, the river ran, mostly frozen, and the ice snowed over, so that the great Lenúalim, which he had heard about all his life, seemed no wider here than it ran beside Ynefel.

  His mind conjured a deep chasm, here as there. He grew dizzy, thinking about that river deep. He began to hear the water. He fancied if he thought about it very, very hard, he might reach out through the fogs that came and just be there, safe, at Ynefel. Even if Lord Tristen had left, there was a place no enemy of his would dare to come.

  He might try it, if he could only find a way to drag his brother through with him.

  He did try, shutting his eyes and wishing very hard for the fog to com
e close, close, so that he could test where it might send him this time. He could bring his brother with him. Aewyn had been with him when they moved through Marna, and through the battlefield, had he not? So he could do it.

  The fog came, deep and pearly - gray, lustrous as a jewel, and wrapped softly around him. He had only to think very hard of Ynefel. He had their escape.

  But the hunter slipped onto his track, and now, with Aewyn failing and falling, he tried to hasten him along but failed. The shadow trailed him, tracked him, and Aewyn drifted, as if he were drowning in water.

  “Brother!” Elfwyn called, shaking at him till his fair hair flew, and everything proceeded slowly as in a dream. He tried to carry Aewyn, dragging him along, away from what hunted them, his heart pounding and his breath coming so hard he knew the hunter could hear it.

  A shadow loomed up before him in the fog, the shadow of a robed fi gure, clearer and clearer in the gray, while the hunter came behind him, dreamlike and inexorable.

  “Well,” the cloaked fi gure said.

  And he knew that voice. It belonged in a tower in Henas’amef. It belonged in a prison Lord Tristen himself had sealed. It was his mother. And 3 7 4

  fortress of ice

  his heart plummeted, feeling pursuit closer and closer behind them, and her in front. “Well. Well . . .”

  He tried to dart aside. She was still before him, once, twice, three times, and the hunter came nearer and nearer, a cold presence, and terrible, behind them.

  “Come along,” his mother said.

  “No!” As the shadow spread out behind him, all - encompassing, now.

  “Stand away! Let me go!”

  “Fool, boy. Great fool.”

  He was not standing where he had. The shadow behind him was at a greater distance, his mother had gained them that, but it advanced, inexorable in its pace.

  “I can save you,” his mother said. “Death follows you. Do you recognize it? I do.”

  He clung to Aewyn, who said nothing, knew nothing, drifting half -

  conscious beside him. He held Aewyn’s arm close and dragged him with him in a sudden bid to escape.

  His mother was before him, lifting her shadowy arms.

  “Fool, I say, my dear boy. Let me save you. Let me bring you to warmth, and safety.”

  She was a shadow here, but she was imprisoned in Lord Crissand’s fortress. If she brought him there, if she brought both of them with her, they would be within hail of her guards, and safe, safe in her tower, exactly where he wanted to be.

  Wanting was enough. He felt Aewyn begin to slip from his arms.

  “No!” he cried. “My brother, too! If we go where you like, my brother goes with me!”

  “Of course,” his mother said in her silkiest voice. “Of course he will. Let go, let go, dear fool. Trust me to guide us.”

  He did not trust her. He did not believe, in the next instant, that he heard anything like the truth. The hunter came close behind and, in the very moment he felt that darkness reach up for them, Aewyn slipped from his arms and plummeted away into the dark.

  “Aewyn!” he called out, a last desperate bid to save him. “Aewyn! Wake up!” If his brother waked, he might escape the fog. It might be a condition of the mist that carried them, that Aewyn seemed to dream, and Aewyn’s waking might drive the hunter away. It was all he could hope. His hands were empty.

  And in the very moment of his concern for Aewyn, he felt the ground 3 7 5

  c. j. cherryh

  come up under his feet, and warmth come around him. He was with his mother in what seemed, for a heartbeat, her room.

  But it differed from her tower. There were couches, and cushions, and drapes— but the colors were green and gold, not the motley brocades his mother’s room had owned. There was a fireplace with an iron screen that had the aspect of a grinning monster. A harp stood in one corner, and the floor was gray, ancient stone, not wood.

  “Where are we?” he demanded. It was not the Zeide. It was not Lord Crissand’s fortress at all. Nothing smelled or felt the same, and his question met the empty air. “Mother?”

  He was alone. There was a door. It was solid oak, and locked, and he beat his fist on it in rage.

  “Mother!” he shouted, betrayed— she had deceived him, but never lied.

  She still had not lied. He had assumed everything and lost everything, even his brother. He raged, and beat at the door, and yelled until his voice cracked.

  No answer came.

  iv

  snow could be hard, hard enough to knock the breath out of a body—

  Aewyn had found that out before this. It was a long time before he wanted to move, and it was a while more before he could gather his elbows and his knees under him and get up.

  “Elfwyn?” he asked the surrounding air, in which snow fell thick. He was unsteady on his feet and staggered backward when he tried to turn.

  His back met something solid, and when he put out a hand and turned about, he found himself next to a man - high stone wall.

  Lucky, he thought, not to have come down on that. Or perhaps he had.

  The only parts of him that did not hurt were only numb with cold, and his head ached— there was a lump on his brow, he thought, but his fi ngers were too cold to tell.

  “Elfwyn?” he shouted, thinking his brother might well have fallen onto some roof, or onto the other side of the wall. He waded through the snow, following the wall, hoping it would lead to a window, a door, a gate, or some living person— Guelen he was, and Guelen he looked, in Amefel, which did not love Guelenfolk; but he thought he could count on hospitality, Lord Crissand being his father’s friend. He would call Lord Crissand the aetheling when he referred to him, the way Amefin liked to think of him— he would 3 7 6

  fortress of ice

  be very respectful of any farmer he met, and ask a message be sent to Lord Crissand— not to his father. That would be the politic way to do things in this countryside.

  His father would be beyond anger by now. His father would be worried sick, was what, and he was heartily ashamed, the worse since he had fainted half a dozen times and been a weight on his brother, who now had fl own off somewhere by wizardry and lost himself in what he was well sure was no ordinary trick of the weather, even in Amefel. There had been ghosts— his shaken wits remembered that. There had been voices, and shadows, and they had been beside the river, but he was nowhere near it now: the river had a voice, and all he heard was the crunch of snow under his own boots and his own panting after breath.

  Fool, he said to himself. He should be thinking where he was. Even if they had flown randomly about the map, there was a wall, and a wall was a structure, and structures were on his map. It might be the defensive wall, the one they had built in the war, and if that was so, he might come to the hold of Earl Drusenan of Bryn; or if it was farther south, it could even be part of old Althalen, which had been the capital of the High Kings, when the Sihhë had ruled the realm . . . So he told himself, walking along a wall that seemed to go on forever and trying to gain a sense of what direction he was going in this murk. The fog seemed to have persisted about him. He had never yet come out of it. And the wall went on and on, and seemed in worse and worse repair.

  A small group of Elwynim had settled at Althalen. The map had had to be changed because of that. Old Althalen had been cursed ground— cursed by the Quinalt and the Bryaltines, which was uncommon; but people who had fled the wars in Elwynor had wanted to live there and farm there again.

  They wanted to make orchards, which they said had once fl ourished there.

  They had tried to take the curse away, so he had heard.

  But part of the ground they would not build on. He had read that in notes appended to his map. In the lack of anything substantial to see in the world around him, he built his own room, his work strewn across his desk, the great parchment map fastened up above it. He had committed it all to memory. He could recall the shape of the ruins, some inner details of which were left
vague because no one would venture into such a haunted place just to draw a map, even with a lord’s commission. The palace ruin had a long wall on its northern side. In his own safe room he had liked to picture what the Sihhë palace had looked like, building its lost upper tiers in his imagination . . . all, all of this had filled his lonely hours when Otter had gone away south.

  3 7 7

  c. j. cherryh

  His own room was real enough in his vision that he wondered if he could be there as easily as he could be in the woods or at the old battlefi eld, if he took the chance and just wished hard enough; but if he succeeded, it would take him leagues away from his father, who would be searching the hills for him, and leagues separate from his brother, who had to be hereabouts, if he just kept looking, and damned if he would give up. They must have arrived close to each other. Perhaps, he thought, he had just started out looking in the wrong direction. Perhaps he should go the other way, and try that, since this direction had led to nothing, not even a corner to the never- ending wall.

  He was growing desperate in this nightmarish continuance of one solid wall, and being without Elfwyn, he grew afraid, more afraid than he had ever been in his life. Nothing he had ever met had dared threaten him. No one in Guelessar had dared stand up to him, certainly none of the boys brought in to be his associates. But this thwarted him. The unnatural fog and the blowing snow confused him.

  He still knew where he was. He knew where he was, the way he knew he was standing on solid ground. It was Elfwyn who was lost.

  He was surprised, even indignant, to find his legs growing weak in the struggle to walk, and his hands without feeling. He went all the way to his knees, which was no place for a prince, and he got up, astonished and ashamed, and continued walking— he had lost contact with the wall as he fell, but he found it, hoping it was the same wall, and doggedly followed it back the way he had come. He had had enough of rest, had he not? He had slept through the business with the old man, he had slept his way through the fog, when they had gotten swept away to the woods, and he was entirely put out with himself. His father would not be sleeping his way through a calamity, would he? His mother, whose blood he had in his veins, would take action and See her way through it, with that Gift she never admitted to the priests.